“Perhaps the best river runners are Taoists at heart. Taoism considers someone wise if they accommodate themselves to the rhythms of the universe.”
- Christopher Norment, The Journey Itself Is Home, Collector’s Edition:
Sitting at his morning journal the words flowed from some unknown source through his hand , to the pen and onto the virgin pages:
It seems to me that as a young boy teachers , parents , Priests and all kinds of folks who seemed to pass some marker of progress hiding their own sins and missteps while on their Odysseys felt qualified to ask the same question to young people over and over as if it were some test. I think it was vain attempt at redemption so young people wouldn’t make the same mistakes:
They asked:
“So what are you going to be when you grow up?”
As the years seemed to continue carry this travel wearied vessel downstream to some unknown sea the question persisted . So, I started making up answers-
Truck Driver…Why? They get to travel around the country and get paid for it.
A hobo - See the country by riding the rails and maybe I could get day jobs here and there.
A Priest - As I owed God big time for helping me pass that 8th grade exam I didn’t study for and I prayed and prayed up until the test papers were handed out. The Nuns said God never forgets!
Musician - When I heard Buddy Holly and saw the Kingsmen of Louie Louie fame I said “this it , I gotta do this” and when the Beatles arrived I was baptized and confirmed all at once to venture down that long and winding road…didn’t get very far though. Distracted as usual .
Maybe a Writer - of some sort…I had started reading stories and poems that interested me and I began a journal , writing in the late hours or just before dawn in a spiral notebook with bits and pieces of just about anything one could write about. I never did share those writings with anyone nor did I tell anyone out of fear that someone might find out the truth about who I really was and why,
Counselor or teacher - you know a ‘Catcher in the Rye’ where I could live out my fantasy of being just like the character in Holden Caufield's dream.
….( Actually a grand plan was never developed . The plan evolved into to having no plan. The goal was refined to have no goal. Well, in truth any and all plans and goals shifted like the wind. Besides Lennon seemed to write directly to me that ‘life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.” )….
Then there was brief consideration about becoming an Athlete - Sounded good but I lacked the physical talent yet I did have a youth baseball coach who encouraged me constantly and much to my surprise I was selected for the league’s all-star team. I was having too much fun to realize that I had developed some skills and was performing above average. That coach used to say ‘just be yourself , have fun besides you will only be remembered by how you played the game.
As the summer ended we went our separate ways and coach gave me a crumpled up piece of paper with a poem. I thought ‘ poem?”
It read..
Game Called.( G. Rice)
Across the field of play
the dusk has come, the hour is late.
The fight is done and lost or won,
the player files out through the gate.
The tumult dies, the cheer is hushed,
the stands are bare, the park is still.
But through the night there shines the light,
home beyond the silent hill.
Game Called.
Where in the golden light
the bugle rolled the reveille.
The shadows creep where night falls deep,
and taps has called the end of play.
The game is done, the score is in,
the final cheer and jeer have passed.
But in the night, beyond the fight,
the player finds his rest at last.
Game Called.
Upon the field of life
the darkness gathers far and wide,
the dream is done, the score is spun
that stands forever in the guide.
Nor victory, nor yet defeat
is chalked against the players name.
But down the roll, the final scroll,
shows only how he played the game.
Sometimes the best lessons about being who we are meant to be and life come from those secret mystical unexpected places that echo and caress the truth.
…………………………………
This is That - B. Wilson
Life/Purpose and such - G.Harrison Last Interview
“What’s truly of value in life? what gives our lives meaning? We weren't born to cause trouble or harm. To be of value, we must develop basic good human qualities warmth, kindness, compassion. Then our life will become happier and more meaningful.”
- Dalai Llama
“A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying [God]. It “consents,” so to speak, to [God's] creative love. It is expressing an idea which is in God and which is not distinct from the essence of God, and therefore a tree imitates God by being a tr
- T. Merton
Final Scene - “Kundun”- M. Scorsese
https://youtu.be/WB5Buz0MvZM
The Goal - L. Cohen
I Can’t leave my house
Or answer the phone
I'm going down again
But I'm not alone
Settling at last
Accounts of the soul
This for the trash
That paid in full
As for the fall, it
Began long ago
Can't stop the rain
Can't stop the snow
I sit in my chair
I look at the street
The neighbor returns
My smile of defeat
I move with the leaves I shine
with the chrome
I'm almost alive
I'm almost at home
But please do not follow
I've nothing to teach
except that goal
falls short of the reach
But please do not follow
I've nothing to teach
except that goal
falls short of the reach
( thanks to member of the band for pointing this poem out in a collection gathering dust on the shelf)
Autumn Poem - Mary Oliver
In the last jovial, clear-sky days of autumn
the mockingbird
in his monk-gray coat
and his arrowy wings
the mockingbird
in his monk-gray coat
and his arrowy wings
flies
from the hedge to the top of the pine
and begins to sing — but it's neither loose, nor lilting, nor lovely —
from the hedge to the top of the pine
and begins to sing — but it's neither loose, nor lilting, nor lovely —
it's more like whistles and truck brakes and dry hinges.
All birds are birds of heaven
but this one, especially, adores the earth so well
he would imitate, for half the day and on into the
evening,
All birds are birds of heaven
but this one, especially, adores the earth so well
he would imitate, for half the day and on into the
evening,
its ticks and wheezings,
and so I have to wait a long time
for the soft, true voice
of his own glossy life
and so I have to wait a long time
for the soft, true voice
of his own glossy life
to come through,
and of course I do.
I don't know what it is that makes him, finally, look
inward
and of course I do.
I don't know what it is that makes him, finally, look
inward
to the sweet spring of himself, that mirror of heaven,
but when it happens —
when he lifts his head
and the feathers of his throat tremble,
but when it happens —
when he lifts his head
and the feathers of his throat tremble,
and he begins, like Saint Francis,
little flutterings and leapings from the pine's forelock,
resettling his strong feet each time among the branches,
I am recalled,
little flutterings and leapings from the pine's forelock,
resettling his strong feet each time among the branches,
I am recalled,
from so many wrong paths I can't count them,
simply to stand, and listen.
All my life I have lived in a kind of haste and darkness
of desire, ambition, accomplishment.
simply to stand, and listen.
All my life I have lived in a kind of haste and darkness
of desire, ambition, accomplishment.
Now the bird is singing, but not anymore of this world.
And something inside myself is fluttering and leaping, is
trying
And something inside myself is fluttering and leaping, is
trying
to type it down, in lumped-up language,
in outcry, in patience, in music, in a snow-white book.
in outcry, in patience, in music, in a snow-white book.
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Amdg
Copyright 2019 all Rights Reserved JF Sobecki
