Ever been to the Revels?
Author: Jnana Hodson
In downsizing to a remote fishing village in Downeast Maine, this eclectic writer feels everything's coming together.
YES AND YET
The mind dances here and there, rarely in a linear fashion. So what’s on my mind these days? How about counting on these fingers?
~*~
- She’s big on Christmas traditions, including our observing Advent these days. I’m still surprised she inherited none of it in her family! Created it like a radical quilt. Makes this array all the more remarkable, from my perspective.
- Slush on the windshield. Ice underfoot.
- Winter’s setting in, though I’m already tired of it.
- The earliest sunsets of the year have plateau’d and are already inching back in my part of the world. The oppressive late-afternoon darkness will soon be obviously relenting. We don’t wait for the solstice.
- I like the Eastern Orthodox insight of Mary as the Mother of Light.
- In reality, I hate being the caretaker, responsible one, cleaner-upper, put-awayer. Contrary to my self-image.
- It’s been a long road to here. Sometimes it feels like a hangover.
- In working a seasonal job, she has a curious freedom in not having to worry about being fired, losing the mortgage, and so on. Just put the hours in and go home.
- Whatever happened to my collection of winter scarves? (As if I really need to ask.)
- Authenticity: something that speaks to the bones.
~*~
CLEARING, FROM SNOW
after the blizzard, a raven
lands over our suet and cracked corn bird feeders
and then, while digging out
the driveway
the front steps for the mail carrier
and the barn steps for the grandmother
a pathway to the compost bins, on one side
and the stacked firewood, on the other
I’m at the heart of my universe
while my wife tends the fires
in our kitchen
Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
To see the full set of Home Maintenance poems, click here.
ESPRESSO FIT FOR THE GODS
Vittorio’s in the North End is famed for its espresso and pastries. With Mercury as one of the coffee makers, you can see why the neighborhood is also renowned as Little Italy.
Boston is a rich and varied destination – the Hub of New England, or the Universe, as they used to say. Living a little more than an hour to the north, we’re well within its orb.
REVELATION, BEGINNING WITH GROUNDHOG’S DAY
BEING SINGLE AND without children for much of my adult life, I could get around Christmas without getting caught up in many of its trappings. One year, getting my holiday greetings out late, I launched my annual letter with “A happy Ground Hog’s Day to thee.”
That’s particular calendar date had seemed so weird, until I discovered there are “solar seasons” as well as the ones our calendars show. In solar winter, for instance, the solstice comes at the middle of the season, rather than the beginning; so Christmas would be right around the middle of solar winter, even though it’s at the beginning of the calendar winter. Why does my brain ever go into these bizarre leaps? Oh well, as long as we’re at it: If my calculations are right, Ground Hog’s day comes at the end of solar winter. Follow that? In other words, as far as the amount of sunlight falling on the Earth is concerned, winter is over, even if we wind up getting another six weeks or so of cold and snowy weather, right up to the vernal equinox. So what I really began asking was whether Punxsutawney Phil, the official ground hog those Pennsylvanians in tuxedos and stovepipe hats bring out every year, is stuffed or live. He sure looks stuffed in the official portrait the wire services move, but what do I know? One of my coworkers, who has witnessed the event, claims it’s a living critter.
Awareness of solar seasons puts other events into perspective. Halloween, for instance, acknowledges the beginning of solar winter. May Day brings solar summer. The Midsummer’s Day or Night, ostensibly announcing the beginning of calendar summer, really does come at solar midsummer. The beginning of August is the invisible event in our awareness.
(Neo-Pagans, incidentally, put their own significance into this alternative alignment of seasons.)
Dwelling in northern New England, as I do, presents another awareness of seasons. They are not evenly divided across the year, as a calendar would do, but are instead of unequal duration. Winter, for instance, begins around Halloween and lingers until the beginning of April – five months, rather than three. Summer, on the other hand, opens around the Fourth of July and ends by mid-August – all of a month and a half. That leaves three months for spring and two-and-a-half months for autumn. Within that there are other divisions. Winter, for example, ends with Mud Season, Black-Fly Season, and Mosquito Season. Or some Mainers see the year as Freezin’ Season, Black-Fly Season, and Road Construction Season.
It’s easy to make the leap to the emotional dimension of the seasons. Skiers and ice fishermen can view deep winter with their own appreciation. I revel in the glorious mutations of October foliage, while another friend dreads its appearance, knowing all too well the gloom that will follow.
Some creatures, of course, will hibernate.
~*~
For more Seasons of the Spirit, click here.
POSTAL PERSPECTIVE
A three-year-old girl
held a life-size Mr. ZIP’s
cardboard hand in her own
while waiting for Daddy
or an interior lobby
stoplight to change.
Can we go now?
These days, she
must be
my wife’s age.
To continue, click here.
Copyright 2015
JUST WONDERING
Ever been in a hot spring?
NOT ALONE BY A LONG SHOT
When the name Jnana was bestowed on me back in 1972, it was soon expanded to Jnana-Devanandashram – or Jnana-Dev, in a diminutive.
Apart from recognizing my unique character and giving it focus, the name also linked me to a major saint and at least one mythical spirit in India’s past.
Prominent among them was Jnanadev, born in 1275 and described – I love this – as a mystic poet and slave of love. His Jnaneshwari is considered the second most-important commentary on the Bhagavad Gita. Alas, he died at age 21.
Now I see there’s another of our own time who’s a musician who performs with Tibetan monks.
That’s before we get to Facebook, with its host of entries, or the Jnana Yoga displays. As for Jnana alone in a Google search? There are millions, thanks to those software engineers from India.
Still, let me guess, I’m the only one you know. Am I wrong?
CURTAINS
to embrace something with the wisdom of the final round
people crowding the boulevard in Baltimore
to watch Robert Kennedy’s funeral train pass
overhead
in that portrait of seven famed figures
Annie, turned to stone under a blue-jay feather
how that small town in snow looks more like Pennsylvania
or Midwest
than New England
Blake, the Muggletonian and lithographer
the surviving Beats portrayed
as Ginsberg tying a shoelace
would see something with the sharpness of the first time
all that baroque light over a cathedral altar
the cumulus effect
enveloping a solo deer
naked
in the garden
awaiting snowfall
Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
To see the full set of Partitas, click here.
NOTING A GLINT OR TWO
These field notes from religious aspiration and practice spring from a muse of fire. As much as Dr. Bronner’s bottle-label diatribes arose from a splash of water, at least when we read them, usually while showering or bathing.
A brief flash. Something that sparkles or shimmers. A half-seen motion, perhaps recollected later. Illumination. A beacon. A guide. A break in the night. Sometimes, this is something even the blind perceive. A word of truth. Prophecy or healing. A vision of eternal mysteries. A star or hint of coming dawn. And then, as James Nayler instructed: “And as thou followest the light out of the world, thou wilt come to see the seed, which to the world’s wisdom and glory is crucified” (Journal, 349). Everything is transformed and made new. Mind the Light.
~*~
DEVOLUTION AND RESURRECTION
Tat Ekam
that one thing
prakriti, pra = before
or kriti, creation
a sutra is only a note / a stitch / a knot
Wading into holy waters
to sink or be overwhelmed
decades later,
thunder
within
silence
returning to art
“keeps my feet on the ground”
carving wood and marble, “It’s so smooth”
these steps leading down to the water
in the sense water
is always below you
unless, that is, you’re in
up to your neck, as it were
some calm other than drowning
“We’re descended from lower-level gods
who mated with apes.”
Now outraged at other deities
next, we’ll encounter human brains
in tigers prowling along the street
all thanks to science.
Mine owners will be confined to the lands they’ve debauched / despoiled.
The Hidden Way –
Sometimes it’s Tao
Sometimes, passion
Sometimes, only a sunset
Or fog lifting
The saved love letters
become curled, black crumbling leaves
falling from the fire.
to UNBURDEN
AND MAKE NEW
first, burn all of the out-dated financial records,
then all of the old passionate drivel
that is, to MAKE FEW
as the Hidden Way
Is the route that opened
Through Glint’s own sea of reeds
Parting, at the base of mountains
she’s come through
a prayer of the earth, actually, of Seed
clearing, recentering
LIFT JESUS HIGHER
painted at the top
of a barn roof
Poem copyright 2017 by Jnana Hodson
For more, click here.
