Heretical silence . . .

Friday, May 30, 2025. It's Frigg's (Freya's) day. A cool start to the day in TulseyTown, brought on by easy Northerlies. Forecasts indicate a preview of Summer with a warming trend settling in the 80's with sunny skies until the rains return Tuesday.

Art is the music we make from the bewildered cry of being alive — sometimes a cry of exultant astonishment, but often a cry of devastation at the collision between our wishes and the will of the world. – Carl Jung, in Maria Popova's The Marginalian (online).

Today is the day in 1431 that Joan of Arc was burned at the stake for heresy in Rouen, France.

Yesterday in 1914, the first poem of what would later be published as The Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters was published.

On Poetry: A Spell Against Indifference

I was a latecomer to poetry — an art form I did not understand and, as we tend to do with what we do not understand, discounted. But under its slow seduction, I came to see how it shines a sidewise gleam on the invisible and unnameable regions of being where the truest truths dwell, the most difficult and the most beautiful; how it sneaks in through the backdoor of consciousness to reveal us more fully to ourselves; how it gives us an instrument for paying attention, which is how we learn to love the world more. When I first began writing poetry, it was privately, almost secretly, certainly shyly. But I have come to see that while poetry may be a language for the silent places in us, it is also a language of connection — a way of finding the intimate in the universal and the universal in the intimate — and so it is meant to be shared. – Maria Popova, The Marginalian.

Cacophony

Throw away the words.

Pray let the silence be.

Let there be of distinctions

an absence – a stillness

enveloping leaves falling to ground,

grasses talking with wind,

birdsong celebrating sunrise,

the mocking bird the moon,

the sky sharing itself as rain –

a language only microbes understand,

translating life – which has to be

the noisiest amphitheater ever –

while we call it silence.

— jab

The wild and lonely self . . .

Thursday, May 29, 2025. It's Thor's day . . . Morning rains are already ending as I check the Mailbox here in TulseyTown. The weatherfeather indicates slight rain chances throughout the cool, cloudy day. Easy Northerlies are to bring a peek at the sun off and on through the day.

I will take with me the emptiness of my hands. What you do not have you find everywhere. – W.S. Merwin.

The courts agree: Trump's tariff's are illegal. – Heather Cox Richardson, in Letters From An American.

Big Bird is fighting back. – Joyce Vance in Civil Discourse.

After a night at the Strauss opera Salome, Garrison wonders about an opera with Trump as Herod.

Today is the 108th birth anniversary of our 35th President, John F. Kennedy. The youngest President was born on this dayin 1917 Brookline, Massachusetts.

And on this day in 1953, New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay became the first to reach the summit of Mount Everest

The Shadow Self II

Creating a false self to mask fears and insecurities has become so common that many of us forget who we are and what we feel underneath the pretense – bell hooks, in Mediations, The Center for Action and Meditation.

Our optics of the self, the way in which the individual becomes “subjective center of the world,” is the defining feature of this most recent chapter of the history of our species. And yet everything around us reveals its illusory nature. – Maria Popova, The Marginalian.

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. – John Muir

Wild, Wild

[…] Wild sings the bird of the heart

in the forests of our lives.

[…] Why couldn't Romeo have

settled for someone else?

[…] Over and over Faust,

standing in the garden,

doesn't know anything,

he only sees the face of Marguerite,

which is irresistible.

And wild, wild sings the bird.

– Mary Oliver, “Wild Wild,” New and Selected Poems, Vol. Two, Beacon Press. 2005.

Crop failure . . .

Wednesday, May 28, 2025. It's Odin's day . . . some sunshine returns to TulseyTown today. Forecasts indicate a mix of clouds and sun with easy Northerlies and mid 70's. 50/50 rain is indicated tonight and tomorrow morning.

Throughout human history, wise women and men, in their own ways, have understood the old Sufi parable of the person who looks for the key under the lamppost because that’s where the light is, but it’s not where the key was dropped, which is in the darkness. – Connie Zweig and Steve Wolf, “Searching in the Shadows,” in Meditations, The Center for Action and Meditation,

The Shadow Self I

During the first half of our lives (and for many, into the chronological second half of life), we ... tend to develop those things which are acceptable and repress those things which are not. Its the “not” that becomes the shadow. – Fr. Richard Rohr, Meditations, The Center for Action and Meditation.

All the “insanity” of Trump flows from his malignant narcissism and all of it – the contradictions, flip/flopping, personal attacks – all of it is calculated. The angst you are feeling is precisely what he wants everybody to experience and remain in.The instability in the markets is purposeful. While he upsets the more liberal, he appeals to his base with targeted attacks. Angst-filled people are easier to distract and manipulate. There are ways to deal with this. – Dr. Jocelyn Sze, writing for The Huffpost.

Heather Cox Richardson's recent post in Letters From An American provided a perfect portrait of Trump's disease.

And last night, Richardson posted an update to Trump's legalities, noting that Trump and the administration suffered a 96% loss rate in federal courts in the month of May.

Two words to self-correct and get you back into The Way. From Jonathan Van Ness (Queer Eye) with Marie Forleo, in a free-wheeling exchange celebrating creativity.

There are no wrong turns, only unexpected paths. – Mark Nepo