I ran across this earlier today upon opening Lawrence Weschler's book Everything that Rises: a Book of Convergences.

Tree, always in the middle
of everything that surrounds it [...]

Tree, that (who knows?)
may be thinking there inside

--Rainer Maria Rilke, from "Le meyer'

An old friend mentioned her music to me last night, and I remembered how much I enjoy it. I hope you do too.

.....there are always two paths to take; one back towards the comforts and security of death, the other forward to nowhere.

--Henry Miller

A friend recently gave me a copy of Louise Gluck's book of poetry A Village Life. I have had mixed feelings about her poems in the past but I love these. She creates a simple, luminous world with and in these poems and I like going there.
 

Twilight

All day he works at his cousin's mill,

So when he gets home at twilight, he always sits down at this one window,

Sees one time of day, twilight.

There should be more time like this, to sit and dream.

It's as his cousin says:

Living---living takes you away from sitting.

In the window, not the world but a squared-off landscape

Representing the world. The seasons change,

Each visible only a few hours a day.

Green things followed by golden things followed by whiteness---

Abstractions from which come intense pleasures,

Like the figs on the table.

At dusk, the sun goes down in a haze of red fire between two poplars.

It goes down late in summer----sometimes it's hard to stay awake.

Then everything falls away.

The world for a little longer

Is something to see, then only something to hear,

Crickets, cicadas.

Or to smell sometimes, aroma of lemon trees, of orange trees.

Then sleep takes this away also.

But it's easier to give things up like this, experimentally,

For a matter of hours.

I open my fingers---

I let everything go.

Visual world, language,

Rustling of leaves in the night,

Smell of high grass, of woodsmoke.

I let it go, then I light the candle.

--Louise Gluck

I don't have time to be bored, but even if I did, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't feel that way. I can't remember the last time I did. My mind doesn't seem to want to let me. Even when I'm standing in line or stuck in traffic, my mind always finds a way to create stories, to remember things, to suppose and conjecture. (This can be problematic at times, actually.) I can get cynical, restless, pensive, eager for change, indignant, pissy, wistful, but not bored. There are too many friends and family members to catch up with and see, too much music, too many books, too many films, too many photographs to take, too many things happening, too much change to help along, too many stories to hear and tell. The issue for me has more to do with making choices about which book? which road to drive down? which film? which music? Life is rich and full, and boredom doesn't suit it.

I think I need this CD. I haven't been buying new music for awhile, but I like the sound of this.

Two mirrors facing each other. There is no image in between.

--Zen proverb

I don't think I've been there yet. It's not utterly remote but has a sort of collective sense of the importance of living consciously and kindly and so it isn't a city. It's not too cold nor too humid. It doesn't have any sort of tourist industry turning it cynical and kitschy around the edges. There are eccentric folks there who don't have televisions,  who (like me) let scared little snakes that wander into their houses hang out in the walls. I don't know what the landscape might be like. Sometimes I think of Flagstaff, Arizona. It seems closest to my sense of where I'd like to be (if I had to pick one place) but then there are greener places that appeal to me too. I miss Athens, Georgia, where I lived for many years, but I don't want to live there particularly. Sometimes too I think of moving overseas, perhaps to Australia or New Zealand. I'm glad, though, that this is a mystery. It will be fun to see how things go, and where.

Something like these......