A Community of the Spirit

There is a community of the spirit.
Join it, and feel the delight
of walking in the noisy street,
and being the noise.

Drink all your passion,
and be a disgrace.

Close both eyes
to see with the other eye.

Open your hands,
if you want to be held.

Sit down in this circle.

Quit acting like a wolf, and feel
the shepherd's love filling you.

At night, your beloved wanders.
Don't accept consolations.

Close your mouth against food.
Taste the lover's mouth in yours.

You moan, "She left me." "He left me."
Twenty more will come.

Be empty of worrying.
think of who created thought!

Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?

Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.

Flow down and down in always
widening rings of being.


Rumi 1207-1273

Hello Darkness...

All of my life I have been very aware of the natural world around me, flora, fauna, seasons, weather. And it effects me in a very deep, visceral way. Even in the city.

This is the time of year when the sun goes to it's rest earlier and earlier each evening. Arising later and later each day. There are more days of gray, damp, chilly air that make one envy those mammals who, even now, may be hibernating in their cozy dens, or long for a roaring fire to chase away the early darkness.

Somehow it seems that time speeds up; that we rush headlong toward the winter solstice, that time of death and rebirth. Each day flying by faster and faster, less and less sunlight, less warmth, like sand running out of the proverbial hourglass.

Anticipation makes the return to life seem endless. Through those dark days of the first two and a half months of the new year each day becomes a month and each month a year. Every second of daylight gained seeming hard won.

And I, who so desperately need the sun, find myself waking at first light to open the curtains wide and soak up every drop. Keeping them open late to watch the last fading blush of day leave the sky, so as to lose not one precious second of the day and it's gift.

Adventures In Tenement Living - Part One

tenement - n. 1. A building to live in, esp. one rented to tenants. 2. A run-down, low-rental apartment building whose facilities and upkeep barely meet minimum standards.



Let's just be clear... both definitions describe where I currently live. Especially the second one. And I'm not even sure we meet minimum standards.

I moved to the city last year for a reason. Several actually, but one was that I was heartily sick of the suburbs and the country. I've spent my whole life in one or the other and wanted something different.

Well, I got my wish and then some! The first neighborhood I lived in here was very quiet compared to where I am now. There were times that it was so quiet, you wouldn't know you were in the middle of one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the US.

Now I know I live in the city!

The first night in my new tenement, I discovered that after the sun sets, my front stoop is the local businessman's 'turf'. He works a couple of feet away, his muscle sits on my stoop. It took a few days, but we worked it out. I ignore their existence, they move out of the way if I need to get in my door. They were actually quite polite and I miss them now that the local gendarmes have busted them.

Miss them? you say with incredulity! Yes, miss them. You see, a 'storefront' like this doesn't stay empty. New businessmen move in as the old ones are moved out. But the new ones aren't polite. And they're scary. It makes coming home after dark a bit of an adventure, and these days it's dark by 5:30 pm.

Gives a whole new meaning to the saying "early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise"...