How to reconcile moments of pure beauty and light our restless world offers, with the heavy darkness of human ignorance? How is it the guiding spirit that is shining through everything so often escapes the unseeing eye? Is it our wounded hearts, or our anxious busy thoughts that prevent spontaneous being? Many of us like twilight, the dawn, the dusk, mist, where darkness and light do not negate but enhance each other. They mingle. As friends do, or lovers. Twilight is poetry in motion.
And what, you may ask, does she mean by the guiding spirit that shines through everything. It’s a core in me that connects to the one soul-being I belong to, the only self I really know. And while I’m not enlightened, I do experience timeless moments, glimpses into the sixth dimension, nodal points around which the fiction of my existence is woven.
The other day, my long-ridiculed romantic fool tossed out these lines:
like tiny cherubs
white butterflies loop across
green teeming canvas
thou – sweet silent mystery
do you sense me sigh
when the cold moon-rock rises
as luminous globe – hello dear ones lost in time – your intense living – is forever part of me
‘Long live the dead because we live in them.’ … Clarice Lispector, A Breath of Life
When there is no other near to share such paradoxical quickening with, I may call on those who enriched my life but are no longer present. I adore the moon, the ancient chunk of earth, reflecting and making tolerable the blinding beams of the sun, granting us poetry and symbolic language.
That night I had a dream and remembered its last facet … I’m floating through a soft, vibrant darkness. A small voice says, ‘You’re the light, look again.’ Sure enough, I spot the outline of a building and bright points, like glittering stars. A series of scenes unfolds, which brings clarity to a puzzling questions. Darkness holds memories, visions and vital knowledge, though it requires trust in the guiding spirit as a mode of orientation. Insights are shy; they wait to be found.
Nature, being energy manifested in slow motion, breathes life into countless rhythms and tunes from the recorded symphonic sounds of the universe – to continuously re-animate the one being of eternal life. Yet we humans, who pride ourselves in aiding this process with heightened consciousness, are increasingly busy destroying the homeostasis life depends on. Can a virus offer a long enough pause for the powers in charge to acknowledge this self-destructive madness? Below anger, I feel the deep sadness, the spiritual starvation, an unfulfilled longing for meaning, for being worthwhile, accepted and loved.
I sense a change of mood in the collective mind, a call for change. Upfront are manic voices using the language of warfare against the invisible enemy – let’s control it – defeat I – kill it – get on top of it. I feel this kind of rhetoric misses the point entirely.
In Sept. 2012 I did a blog post on the unseen stuff.
We must see things fresh, not through tired ideas our establishments bank on, that destroy nature’s homeostasis and spill imbalances into cultures too poor to afford resistance. I say – let our children and young people decide what’s worth living for?
‘A day, whether six or seven years ago or whether six thousand years ago, is just as near to the present as yesterday. Why? Because all time is contained in now.’ – Meister Eckhart
Sun, finally, bliss. I sit in the garden, reading, among Robin friends flitting through the apple blossoms. After two hours in the heat my body needs shade. I resolve to clear some cobwebbed drawers in the shed.
some two pfennig coins had acquired high iconic value. Up to 1968 German pennies were of copper, from there on steel was added, which made the coins magnetic.
With hundreds of pennies, the odds seemed promising, at least compared to the lottery ticket I buy once a week.
How do I cope? I don’t watch TV, haven’t done so for years. I prefer to read coherent articles and watch movies on BFI. And I’m lucky to have a garden, with nature to touch and absorb. The lilac tree waves, the laurel hedge sparkles; Robins build their nests, tulips nod in the breeze. Oh, and to end my ramblings, I just picked some delicate violets and forget-me-nots from my garden. They both have five leaves.
I was in Prague. My then companion, for his birthday celebration, had organised a small group of friends to spend a weekend in this beautiful city, coinciding with the moon landing. We could afford a 5 star hotel, due to a bargain currency exchange rate in the wake of the short-lived 
This time of year I like reading in the garden. Last week I forgot to take a book inside – ‘The Hand of Poetry,’ collected poems from Sanai, Attar, Rumi, Saadi and Hafiz, translated by Coleman/Barks, with introductions taken from talks by Inayat Khan. During a short but heavy shower that night, the book greedily feasted on rain. I found it blown up, like a balloon, to double its size.
and three times over. On the third day I hung the book by its spine on the washing line. Once dry, I managed to press the volume with a heavy vintage iron into reasonable shape again. The ordeal required my undivided attention. The re-read pages during those hours lodged themselves with refreshed presence in my heart. 
Meanwhile I enjoy some treasures close by …
a dried-up vessel
As painters or sculptors do, I frequently step back from my writing projects, searching for the core, a half imagined essence to shine through and re-animate the creative flow. Skills alone don’t do it, techniques alone don’t do it, nor style. As long as the essence of what I try to express floats in the unconscious, my efforts will baffle and tease me.
Marie was one-of-a-kind, a unicum, einzigartig. Considered a fool, she was waddling through the streets of my childhood village in search of rejected items.
Marie found good – even in the flawed. She says:
chased by hungry spirits hovering over their houses. They resent and envy my freedom. I scare them, because I remind them of the ravages of time. I’m beholden to no one, which is why they spread lies about me. I’ve sharp ears.
There you have it. Ask me anything and you get truth, since I’ve got nothing to lose. The absurdity of human behaviour makes rejection bearable. I learned to live with it. Consequently, my brain cells can’t help being impressed by discarded objects. It’s compulsive. When you get there one day, remember me, the woman in the street, shouting, ‘We ripe, we rot, it’s all the same. Do as you like.’
Our selfless neighbours left an indelible impression on my son. They made him a valued and loved part of a small community. Our farmer friend, Hope, was hungry for knowledge, though never realised her dream of travelling as a journalist. She had however the most vivid visions of Tibet; a place neither of us had visited but felt strong emotional connection with. Not the first time, I had a shock of appreciation for the unremembered sparking instant rapport slipping through time.
I was thirty then, had travelled much and been involved with innumerable internationally composed groupings, circles upon circles – this was to continue for decades to come. Among the groups were people who felt strangely familiar, like Hope. We would guard out solitude, cry together, or laugh hilariously about silly things. Equally there were those wary of me, often for reasons unknown to themselves, which made me wary of them. You may know this treading-on-eggshells feeling.
Course of Mirrors 