Building a mushroom raft

The mailbox this Satyr's day morning in TulseyTown is filling with rain . . .

To advance from where you can no longer advance and to do what can no longer be done, you must make yourself into a raft or ferryboat for others. —Mazu Daoyi

No tree branches, terminal or not, exist without their root brain tucked into soil and slipped into the teeming plurality of a forest wide mycorrhizal consciousness. . . .Knowing a stone is alive keeps me alive. – Sophie Strand

Sophie and Merlin Sheldrake are two major contributors to what is sometimes being referred to as “radical ecology” which is challenging and transforming not only biology but science. While Strand tends to use metaphor as the material for her ontological lens, Sheldrake is using the tools of science – think laser powered 3D photography in real time. If I've peaked your curiosity with this brief, take a look at Sheldrake discussing his book, 'Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures' (Random House), with bestselling writer Helen Macdonald, author of 'H is for Hawk'.

McDonald is also a poet. Her collection Shaler's Fish. was published in 2016 by Atlantic Monthly Press in a reissue edition (February 2, 2016)

A solitary boat is making its way without oars in the dim moonlight. When I turn my head, I see waterweed motionless on the ancient river bank. —Keizan Jokin

Born Yesterday

Born again today

and again just a moment ago.

If you look close you might

see me yet again

emerging between these words.

– 8.5.23 jb

Dancing on a hot stove

It's Freya's day …

You put your hand on a hot stove top; you lose your temper and slam the door and your thumb at the same time; the fish you just caught bites you; a sudden shift in the wind collapses the spinnaker. In those situations, you are in direct contact with the energies that are alive in the situation. Situations automatically provide you with your next move when you are present to them. Life becomes like music. You dance in accordance with life. It's almost impossible to dance when your mind is wandering.

Yesterday, in a magistrate judge’s courtroom in the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in Washington, D.C., Trump faced the beginnings of accountability for trying to end democracy. It’s every American’s obligation to follow this process. – Joyce Vance

The prospects of an acquittal are vanishingly small. – Harry Litman (LA Times)

Louis Armstrong was born on this date in1901 Storyville, the poorest neighborhood of New Orleans.

The first African-American to be awarded the post of Poet Laureate Consultant to the Library of Congress, Robert Hayden was born today in 1913 Detroit, Michigan. Robert Hayden was the name given him by his adoptive family.

Its the 231st anniversary of Percy Bysshe Shelley's birth. The poet and essayist was born today in 1792 Field Place, Sussex, England.

Mary Oliver, a poet who continues to inform and enlighten me, loved dogs. Shortly after the death of her beloved “Percy” (after the poet Shelly) she published a memory from the experience (edited). . .

The first time Percy came back

he was not sailing on a cloud.

He was loping along the sand as though

he had come a great way.

… he was unreachable. As music

is present yet you can't touch it.

..."Yes, it's all different," he said.

"You're going to be very surprised...

And now you'll be telling stories

of my coming back

and they won't be false, and they won't be true,

but they'll be real."

And then, as he used to, he said, "Let's go!"

And we walked down the beach together.

– Mary Oliver, “The first time Percy came back.” In A Thousand Mornings: Poems. Penguin Press, 2012.

Blue Sky God

It's Thor's day and the weatherfeathers are saying that the heat-hammer is preparing to move away from Okieland over the coming weekend. Yeah. We shall see. The mailbox is already almost too hot to touch …

The poet Hayden Carruth was born on this date in 1921 Waterbury, Connecticut. If you don't know him, consider doing so. informed by his political radicalism and sense of cultural responsibility, many of Carruth’s best-known poems are about the people and places of northern Vermont, as well as rural poverty and hardship.

It is also the birth date of "Ernie" Pyle. the journalist and war correspondent was born near Dana, Indiana in 1900.

Love is what we most fear. We can’t let anybody love us for nothing. True intimacy with anyone terrifies us. – Richard Rohr (not the usual link)

So that others do not see our love

– after Rilke

We kneel and make pious gestures,

build domes of gold,

worship a blue-sky god

remaining ignorant of Indra's net

connecting us to our earthly origins

our roots shared by mushrooms and stars.

8.3.23 jb

from “The Bearer”

He came from the forest. . .At last he came to his people far

In the darkness. He smiled and spoke his words,

And he looked intently into their eyes gleaming

In firelight. He cried when they cried. No rest

For his lungs. He flinched and lay down while they

Began to kill him with clubs and heavy stones.

– Hayden Carruth, “The Bearer” from Collected Shorter Poems, 1946-1991. Copper Canyon Press. 1992. National Book Critics Circle Award 1992.