PUCCINI ARIA
by Kenny Tanemura

It's the way we'd sound if the office work didn't turn
our voices into pens without ink scratching semaphores
on white snowscapes some dead author dreamt.
This one hour is a plum waiting to be picked

off a Japanese screen where Buson looks at
ice on the junipers, one word cutting 
into another, as if it couldn't be helped.
The pleasure in reading is the same as the pleasure

in the forbidden, Helene Cixous said.
And what of listening, as I listen now
to Kiri Te Kanawa sing Sole e amore, watch midnight
streetlights filter through her single voice?

MAKING THE HOUSE READY FOR THE LORD
Mary Oliver

Dear Lord, I have swept and I have washed but
still nothing is as shining as it should be
for you.  Under the sink, for example, is an
uproar of mice - it is the season of their
many children.  What shall I do?  And under the eaves
and through the walls the squirrels
have gnawed their ragged entrances - but it is the season
when they need the shelter, so what shall I do?  And
the racoon limps into the kitchen and opens the cupboard
while the dog snores, the cat hugs the pillow;
what shall I do?  Beautiful is the new snow falling
in the yard and the fox who is staring boldly
up the path, to the door.  And still I believe you will
come, Lord: you will, when I speak to the fox,
the sparrow, the lost dog, the shivering sea-goose, know
that really I am speaking to you whenever I say,
as I do all morning and afternoon: Come in, Come in.

The Swan, Mary Oliver

The Swan

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

- Mary Oliver 

The excerpt below is from
*THE TELEVISIONARY ORACLE*
by Rob Brezsny
available at Amazon: http://bit.ly/Televisionary
or Powells: http://bit.ly/TelevisionaryPowells

Think globally,
but act locally.

Plan for the future,
but act in the present.

Dream of all the masterpieces you'd be thrilled to create,
but work on just one at a time.

Lust for every enticing soul you see,
but only make love to the imperfect beauty you're actually with.

Allow yourself to tune in
to every last feeling that bubbles up from your subconscious,
but understand that only a very few of these feelings
need to be expressed.

Be passionately attuned
to all the injustices and hypocrisies you see around you,
but be selective when choosing which of those you will actually fight,
and fight them with cheerful life-affirming zeal,
not bitter, resentful chagrin.

Jeanette Winterson

What things matter?  What things have a value of their own instead of a borrowed glory?  Is there such a thing as an intrinsic worth?  It's fashionable to say no.  To say a tree is only its wood, that any painting is a work of art, that journalism can be literature, that love is self-interest or that ethics are mores.  It is right to question standards but wrong to assume that there aren't any.  Where there are no standards the market-place obtains.

(Jeanette Winterson, Art and Lies pg 101)

Jeanette Winterson

Then David's anger was greatly kindled against the man and he said to Nathan, 'As the Lord lives the man who has done this deserves to die and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing and because he had no pity.'  Nathan said to David "You are the man.'  (2  Samuel, 12)

'Because he had no pity.'  The punishable sin is not lust, not even adultery, the sin is not do with sex at all.  It is a failure of feeling.  Not an excess of passion but a lack of compassion.

Jeanette Winterson, Art and Lies

The tall, hooded man who played the Jack with me, when I was a child.  He who cut wild flowers with his sickle and made me a hedge-chain I did not want to take off.  I went with him, hand in hand, child-crowned with his curious flowers.  It was easy to walk beside him while his steps were met to mine.  I never saw his face, only his hands, and the long days juggled.

When was it that he became impatient?  Insisted that we hurry, and hurry faster, though not through press of destination?  I had nowhere to go.  Why did the sun not lull him as it did once?  The still days and the luminous water.  The afternoons that lasted for years.  Wasn’t that him, dark shadow on the bank, unroused and unrousable?  He was deaf in those days and for every long and hated hour, produced another, a soft sewn ball thrown to me.  Yet I was happy and forgot.  When was it that he became impatient?

The little chain of wild flowers, sap stalks and sun heads, petrified.  I was fast-bound to him.  I am his bondsman.  Yearly now, he claims his feudal tithe, and I wither visibly.  Each year there is less, and less to claim, but he does claim it, no matter how thin the harvest.

I have seen his face close up, the strange lop-sided grin, that turns to me immobile, although everyday we are moving faster.  There are others, all of us, the chain gang on the charcoal hill, bound in the danse macabre.

Do I try to cheat him with wigs, dyes, concoctions, ghastly operations and lambskins for my mutton flesh?  Here I am, prancing on my back legs in a borrowed skin.  Must keep up with the times.  Must keep up with Time.  When was it he became impatient?

Too fast.  Kick off my dancing shoes and crawl on all fours.  Drag me, how he drags me, knows the creature that I am.  Beg him?  He is deaf still.  In spite of that I cry out.

On we go, the blurring body and the cheated soul.  Why did no-one tell me to provide for it?  Everything I have has been the outward show.  Everything I have belongs to Time.  Art?  Don’t be silly.  The contemplative life?  Where can I get one? What then  for my soul as Time pulls me on.  What then for my soul?

(Jeanette Winterson, Art and Lies, pp 141-143)