toward the east

i was given a book before i left town by a dear friend and today was the first time i could sit and read it knowing that i could clear my mind and actually read it.

there were certain lines that stood out to me and resonated to be true to me and my adventures of late. i guess i wanted to share them because they were shared with me. i can say that my lesson over and over is that i should let the change happen and be a part of it instead of trying to keep the past going. it is gone and has always been gone. it's not a bad thing at all. just a thing.

in my beginning is my end. in succession
houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
is an empty field, or a factory, or a by-pass.

old fire to ashes and ashes to earth
which is already flesh, fur and feces

houses live and die: there is a time for building

what was to be the value of the long looked forward to,
long hoped for calm, the autumnal serenity
and the wisdom of age? had they deceived us
or deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders,
bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit?

the houses are all gone under the sea.

the dancers are all gone under the hill.

to arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
you must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
in order to arrive at what you do not know
you must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
in order to possess what you do not possess
you must go by the way of dispossession.
in order to arrive at what you are not
you must go through the way in which you are not.

...but perhaps neither gain nor loss.
for us, there is only the trying. the rest is not our business.

home is where one starts from. as we grow older
the world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
of dead and living. not the intense moment
isolated, with no before and after,

here and there does not matter
we must be still and still moving
into another intensity

through the dark cold and the empty isolation,

in my end is my beginning.


t.s.e.