Impossibilities Lost

"Practice only impossibilities."
--John Lily

Impossibilities. How could you practice such things? They must be closely related to imagination. They are those things, those wonders, that lie outside the borders of what we know and understand.

There seems to be fewer of them--those things that are in the category of impossibilities--as we humans become more and more civilized and inoculated against wonder of any sort. Human beings have seem to have grown up, so to speak. We have went from living around a fire burning at the mouth of a cave surrounded by mysteries of the surrounding terrain, to what living is now. The noises, sights, and textures of being alive have become predictable and have been explained to us by wise and foolish men. Jean de La Fontaine summed up how mysteries are vanquished from the human experience when he explained that "Man is so made that when anything fires his soul, impossibilities vanish. We sail oceans, travel at the speed of sound, dive in the deepest ocean, and travel across the vacuum of space. All things that would have seemed miraculous acts to the ancients. Especially those that sat around the ancient fires. Even fire to them of the past was an impossibility made possible. Trying to understand all this is what makes my weak soul stronger somehow.

But there remains many, many tiny fragments of wonder--and I would put forth impossibilities--that when you look closely at this world that we exist in, you can still find them. I was cleaning out a birdhouse and I came across what I thought was a bumble bee and upon closer examination I discovered it was a moth. It seems impossible to understand the evolutionary marvels of nature. Creation is a delightfully wondrous place. I am trying very hard to hold back trying to explain to myself everything and just to delight in it.

Below is the hummingbird moth. My lovely bride captured it magnificently on her phone's camera.
 

Words Written and the Ash that Remains

"If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry."--Emily Dickinson

Someone like Miss Emily Dickinson writing about how brutal writing can seem is profound. She was able to write the most beautiful verse that has been imagined and to think that it made her feel that way makes me wonder why I try to write. Writing does feel that way to me at times. But then other things in my life can make it seem like the top of my head was taken off. Not only has it been taken off but it has been muddled with by meanness, touched by kindness, blessed with friendship, filled with surprise and wonder, stirred with desire, mixed with confusion and other universal tribulations that are part of the human experience. But I seem to always find laughter and love that repairs the soul that resides in my skull.

Leonard Cohen, one of my favorite singer/songwriters said "Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash." Leonard is "write" about poetry, and art of any type that has that certain daemon inside of us wishing to express itself to others. A daemon that wants to burn our artistry to a beautiful ash. And I know also that what I write is just graffiti of my muddled mind, and writing it is a way to free my thoughts. Send them into the ether to dissolve among the other verses of the many, many other poets.

My poem for today:

I am fermenting

My mind, my spirit,

To try to hear the

Difference between

The sounds of

Trees and stones.

May the Sun, Moon, Rain, Breeze...

“May the sun bring you new energy by day,

May the moon softly restore you by night,

May the rain wash away your worries,

May the breeze blow new strength into your being,

May you walk gently through the world and know its beauty all the days of your life.” -- Apache blessing

The above blessing was shared with me as a gift. It is printed on a magnet that my wife gave me as a present for Christmas. This small token of love is special to me in that it importantly speaks to levels of my relationship with life, spirit, and personal connectiveness. Specifically, connectiveness is that sense of belonging, a component of relatedness, a new and powerful word in a modern life.

And these are not easy bonds to hold on to.

Struggling to make sense of things seems to turn my thoughts inward and that can be a shadowy place at times. So to be reminded that the sun is there and to try to obtain new energy from it is a great stimulant to shed those shadows. To know that there is still light, even in the darkest night or mood, if only from the faint glow of a lunar globe, there also, seems hope. Rain can cleanse the earth and can wash what is covered with dust, grime and other hiders of what lies beneath them. A breeze can massage the skin with the fact that an invisible force still has physical sensations attached to it.

And the best part of the saying is the last wish for the reader, what my wife saw in the words that she felt strongly that I would wish to read. How it would be to walk gently through the world, among the many changing seasons and life stages, knowing the joy surrounding you.

Help me to recognize and celebrate them, away from the constant shadows.