WHITE OAK, night branches . . . (Quercus alba) [ click photo for next . . . ]

LET US TAKE SUFFERING DOWN
FROM THE TREE OF LIFE . . .


"We shape the world and the world shapes us.
The most insidious of all degradations is the loss
of something vitally important for which we do
not yet have a name.


I don't wish to here shock or offend any of my
readers, but I feel that the image of a savior,
as I see it, nailed to the tree of life is an utterly
ugly and repulsive image.

(Early crusifixes—an appalling word in itself—were more
stylised trees than formal crosses, as they still
are to this day in the rugged mountains of the Alps.)

Why? Simply becasue I think it is a sin against
Nature herself. Both a sin against trees, probably the
most grand and beautiful and exemplary creatures on our
wonderful blue planet of peace. But also because it
glorifies in a distorted way suffering. Especially
the suffering of someone else that I neither want
nor need. Like soldiers of Empire the world would,
in my view, be much better without. I shall suffer and
fight for my own inner liberation and freedom. Thank
you.

But I also strongly object to what I see as the
colonization of sacred natural time. Like expropriating
ALL SAINTS'—the simple yet profound celebration of
7/8ths of the Solar Year and the Earth's marvelous
and wonderful re-awakening of abundance—for other
purposes. So now, we have in the West, either a
thoroughly cheapened and commercialized "HALLOWEEN"
or even worse"ALL SAINTS'" of the Catholic Church. I
do not wish to participate in either, but I do wish
and long for music, and poetry, and ritual, that marks
and celebrates this important station in the rhythms
of the natural year in a new way

The narrative, metaphysical poem below, takes on
in sound and rhythm, some of these themes

[TWEET X.15.2012]

WATCH
Cleaning up drek of the past PUSSY RIOT style,
FEMENE activist w/ chainsaw fells once &
for all the cross of Kiev http://t.co/F3x29aHd

[Although I'm totally committed to nonviolence, I completely
sympathize w/ the natural outrage captured in this
video clip, which I first saw on Dutch TV.
RELGION, as we know it, is, after all,
not a part of the solution, but the essence of the problem,
the problem of violence, in the world.

A native of North America.

IN PRAISE OF NATURAL COMPLEXITY


From a single trunk, a thousand branches;

From a thousand rivulets and rills, a single stream.

Simple to complex; Complex to simple.


Complexity is richness, is diversity, is always good.

Complicatedness, or the unnecessarily convoluted or

difficult, is always bad.


Complicatedness, because of the contradictory, meaningless

way it wastes energy, is never a part of the Earth's

watercourse way.

TREE OF LIFE

Let us take suffering down
from the tree of life.

Our only sin is belief
in belief, the hope that nailing pain
to the wood of a cross would somehow
make a difference, somehow ease,
lighten our heavy burden.

But nothing has changed,
prayers go unanswered, and
the same old tired song
goes on and on
and on.

Does the tree feel pain
in change?
Does it need someone, some
ideal, to direct its growth?

We sleep deep in the sweet illusions
of self-made visions,
seeing only what we want to see.
What is born again is the image.
Not something sacred, not something true,
but just another cheap picture
to hang on the walls of our selves.

Rejecting the symbol, trading in
the crown of thorns for a machine gun
or book of German verse is not enough, for
Who is doing the rejecting?
Who is waiting for this most recent
sacrifice to be repaid in full?

The young boy cuts his name
into the oak;
The grown man returns and
not a trace is left,
the desire for permanence having
disappeared into the
living tissues of life.
But our soul-scars last a lifetime,
wounds scratched open with each passing day,
like ruts cut deep in the soft spring earth,
a hungry animal spiraling endlessly,
back and forth, chained:—

to a tree.




| download mpe TREE OF LIFE [ 5.4 MB] |

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