The Motion

"I'm a dark horse

Running on a dark race course

I'm a blue moon

Since I stepped out of the womb

I've been a cool jerk

Looking for the source

I'm a dark horse"

- Dark Horse , G. Harrison

"We have a tendency to think in terms of doing and not in terms of being.We think when we are not doing anything are wasting our time.

But that is not true. Our time is first of all to be.

To be what? To be alive, to be peaceful, to be joyful, to be loving.And that is what the world needs most"

 - Thich Nhat Hanh

-------------------

The Motion

Some say seasickness is self sabotage.

The perpetual perplexed pilgrim was presented to the great teacher.

"A sailor is an artist whose medium is the wind ( the breath of the great divine),"

Whispered the wonder-filled wiseman.

Sometimes it is not the storms that frighten us

But the constant rising and lowering of the magnificent

Seemingly uncontrollable waves,

Rocking and severely heeling fragile unprepared vessels.

Stomachs churn inside out while scaring the most adventurous of spirits.

Healthy tolerance of ambiguity and reasonable locus of control

Get lost on Homo Sapiens focused on worldly promises of "success"

By abiding to a preprogrammed plotted course - come hell or high water.

The best charted passages and the most scientific analytics

Of future forecasts and anticipations are often at best "wish lists."

Not knowing and the worry about what's next fuel 

The flames of fear and self doubt.

Leading weak egos to the wearing of masks 24/7.

It has never been about what one does,

What one has accumulated or not or one's 

Desires or accomplishing long term goals.

Isn't it about how you do what you do,

Turning the page the message is clear

"You don't need a reason to help people."

A companion once confided that the more love

One gives to others is the best way to honor their own journey.

The experienced navigators and scientific prognosticators 

Sometimes might volunteer and become defensive about their imperfection.

Futurists craft visions in their anticipation

But their calculations and projected forecasts

Are never quite one hundred percent accurate.

Homo sapiens are not as bright as we say they are .

How significant is it that  Hemingway may have reported disdain

About the fog he encountered and getting off course sailing 

From Key West to Cuba?

The tide comes in and out.

No need to get seasick . Panic helps no one.

Be grateful, authentic and precisely who we are

Meant to be.

Savor the sanctifying serenity that is ever-present 

Even if we get shaken by the motion

And remain constant sandpipers .

                             - JF Sobecki

----------------------------------------------------------------

Sandpipers - Cathleen Engelsen

--------------------------

Just The Motion - R. Thompson

https://youtu.be/QfjdXKitiPY

Wasted on The Way - Crosby,Stills and Nash

https://youtu.be/nWlEsta4xS8

Doctor My Eyes - J Browne

https://youtu.be/BrCLkeYKuEw

Will People Ever See It  - G. Harrison 

https://youtu.be/FxL69A5d7kk

What Makes a Good Life - R.Waldinger

https://youtu.be/8KkKuTCFvzI

Til I Die 0 Beach Boys

https://youtu.be/Qx-taep4NNg

Beware of Darkness - G. Harrison

https://youtu.be/VqRRnb4S_6U

A Labor Day Song (  for all who work  - and my dad R.I.P.)

Factory - B.Springsteen

 

https://youtu.be/plaOhNjJeBg

amdg

Copyright JF Sobecki LLC 2021 All Rights Reserved

The Ballad of The Wolf Moon 2021: ( A Post Covid 19 Reflection)

The Wolf Moon 2021

"I heave myself out of the darkness , slowly painfully. And there I am , and there he is."

       - Jean Rhys

"Goodnight room

Goodnight moon

Goodnight cow jumping over the moon."

- Margaret Wise Brown

"...Now the moon is almost hidden, the stars are beginning to hide

The fortune telling lady has taken all her things inside

All except for Cain and Abel and the Hunchback of Notre Dame

Everybody is making love or else expecting rain

And the Good Samaritan , he's dressing, he's getting ready for the show

He's going to the carnival tonight on Desolation Row."

 - Desolation Row, Bob Dylan

----------

 

The Ballad of The Wolf Moon 2021

 It was the first day of the new year

The pilgrim cowboy's lament sounded familiar

A wayfaring stranger's voice in the wilderness

Everything was supposed to be alright

But the changes continued the devastation

The truth it was told

It was bold, going home

No thing really ever lasts

That dreaded contagion deflated the two on their passage

Energy zapped and drained last dreams of deceiving hope

And the feared but expected news had come...

The immortal king was dead

In their quarantine left to their own devices

An isolation even they could not share

Where to go from here?

What is past is past, now is now, and that's that

The rough riders ready on call

The sacred dome under siege

The brown eyed girl and the pilgrim stared at the screen aghast in shock

That which was once forever might be left behind

The sister and the daughters,

Nightingales in deep disguise,

Bert and Ernie and that solo companion too

All on the road to a distant town called Emmaus

Lifelines cast in love

"You can't save another 

If you can't save yourself"

The mystic junkman of the backstreet singing, singing

The lost angelic choir's voices faded

Saying goodnight to the moon

No time for grandchildren playing 

The innocence of discovery lockdown

Their world has been cheated

Do they know what's been denied?

Does it really matter?

Do they care?

The only sound that can be heard

As the last string snaps as it is wound too tight

Is Cinderella and the pilgrim holding onto the sweet sound

Of that grace of what they once had found

Now there's a point to every story

This is what was Homer once wrote

Every life is a soul searching journey

With a secret divine treasure that might be discovered

Some lose faith on the way , Some just get lost in love

First responders watch for raging fires

The truth burning ever present

Where the eternal spark remains

Each decision has repercussions

The hobo soapbox preacher proposed

Not to decide is to decide

Redemption sometimes comes to to those who wait

Is profound eloquence poetry?

The billboard read "writing is knowing"

What do we know as we aimlessly dance along

On the yellow brick road to a  place called Disneyland?

Detectives probe with constant queries ...

Why one life lives a lifetime or why another is cut too short ?

The answers lie in the sacrament of connectedness

So goodnight moon

Until as the morning is again broken and the race returns.

 - JF Sobecki

------------------------------------------

Morning Has Broken - Cat Stevens

https://youtu.be/3Rifby1tVE8

Wayfairing Stranger - 1917

https://youtu.be/fp7mdSMNQB0

Desolation Row - Bob Dylan

https://youtu.be/jJxtX8M4UVU

Right Back Where we started from - Maxine Nightingale

https://youtu.be/1gbFfLeHNA4

Don't Dream It's Over - Crowded House

https://youtu.be/FTj92GpQABQ

One - H. Nilsson

https://youtu.be/haT8g7oKnns

You Make Me feel So Good

https://youtu.be/ZlnV21PU31s

New York City Serenade - B. Springsteen

https://youtu.be/8EooiBaW1BA

Enjoy Yourself - L. Prima

https://youtu.be/kisr3daNRx0

Midnight Sky - Trailer

https://youtu.be/lwaYSBEiEzs

                                                                 Anton Oliver ( w Otis)

amdg

Copyright 2021 All Rights Reserved JF Sobecki LLC

The Leap Day Maze

The Great Maze

"At the day of judgement we shall not be asked by what we have read but what we have done."

― Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

“There is no success like failure and failure is no success at all”

              - Bob Dylan, Love Minus Zero

+++++++++++++++++++++

A Leap Day Maze

Just  like that six score and 12 years 

Flashed with the blink of an innocent eye.

He launched into a maze that no deity

Would ever conjure .

Walls were built, channels criss crossed, and

Paths designed by self- indulgent architects

Desiring subordination of the innocents, with 

Constructs and myths crafted to assure compliance.

Someone determined that the earth rotates every

23 hours , 56 minutes and 4.09053 seconds while

Traveling at 1,000 miles per second around the sun.

And so the story goes.

Trees , streams, rivers , oceans, birds

And all aspects of nature showed no concern for

Mortal interpretations of a mystical grand design.

The pilgrim given choices to discern , he reflected:

“Was Frost right ? Does it really matter in the end

What road to follow?

What of Carroll’s Cheshire Cat’s declaration

About choices ?

So in the grand plan was this determination

That Caesar proclaimed

An extra calendar day every four years

A benefit or just another fallacious 

Pronouncement from the mask of authority?”

While the soothsayer witch doctors, 

Self appointed kings, masters of war and violence ,silo fillers

Schemed and decreed sanctions and rewards

Defining success and failure,

There are those mystics, poets and spiritual guides 

Who choose to let go and be peace,

Listening to the voices of angels-

Following the truth discovered when one

Feels the breath of the divine 

In the wind and in the silence of the sanctity of the heart.

Humbled , grateful and serene in the simplicity…

He closed his eyes and was swept away.

            - JF Sobecki

+++++++++

Questions for the Angels - P.Simon

https://youtu.be/ddPRNqhAypk

The King of Bohemia - R. Thompson

https://youtu.be/kNxvpJUPct0

Once I was - Cowboy Junkies (T. Buckley)

https://youtu.be/Awmxs0YFQQE

Love Minus Zero - Bob Dylan

https://youtu.be/7ZzyRcySgK8

The Road Not Taken - R. Frost

https://youtu.be/ie2Mspukx14

The Journey - D.Whyte

https://youtu.be/6PK3GhnHOJc

Amdg

Copyright 2020 All Righted Reserved JF Sobecki LLC

The New Year's Ballad of the Wrong Answer Boy

"For last year's words belong to last year's language. And next year's words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning."

—T.S. Eliot

The New Year’s Ballad of the Wrong Answer Boy

Contemplating the arbitrariness of the celebrated 

annual milestone

He thought it a benefit to consider the sometime 

mile markers

On the decades of the pilgrimage  labeled the

Odd-yssey thus far.

(Sort of a long term Ignatian Examen of sorts)

The first remembrance that flashed was during 

during the elementary days when the

good Sister asked “ 

So, what is it you want to be?” “Kind” ,he said.

The weaponized yardstick swiftly appeared

Cracking down the back of his head.

She said “Again”

Pondering a possible right answer the boy whispered,

“Just who I was meant to be.”

That yardstick raised and his arm stiffens holding back the

swoosh saying to the 

Shocked nun, “never again.” Since that incident he was

left to his own mistaken devices  

falling off the track on a number of occasions .

He eventually found solace in music, poetry and books. 

The next test was the future 

father in law’s Interrogation “ So what can you do with being

an English Major? 

How will you provide for a family ?” And on and on… 

The now young man just smiled 

confidently and said “ I’ll figure it out.”

Again, wrong answer.

After twelve years of institutional spiritual formation … 

‘these are the rules… the divine DNA is in all things, love one

another, live in peace , be selfless, be merciful, trust and have

faith and live in truth and 

integrity , action is greater than words ,follow the rules in our

book and don’t forget to memorize and say these prayers 

daily.” But , the world didn’t care much about that “Holy roller.stuff.” 

How much do you have 

;How important are you and why should I care about you seemed 

to become the metrics of 

importance and success. How well one panders to others was 

defined as a key foundational 

standardized barometer. He got lost on that river and found 

himself submitting to worldly 

promises.Some wizards tried to rescue him converging 

the religious formula with
promises of prosperity. “That might work”, he believed. 

Again, he was wrong. It didn’t.

It wasn’t until he crossed that line when his heart half 

broken that the only way to
continue was to get a second chance.Somehow 

someone something intervened . 

Some mysterious angelic voice in a dream reached

into that cage encouraging to 

him to shed the ragged coat  and mask that confused 

everyone even himself and “

Don’t let the darkness rule you.. let go and let that 

authentic voice within surface

and just let the wind and the river take you 

where you need to go.”

That caged bird mysteriously was released and 

he was last seen singing up a

storm as he let go… sanctified, soaring somewhere. 

Paradise? Some say 

he was finally getting it right

……JF Sobecki

Autumn Poem

In the last jovial, clear-sky days of autumn
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 — 

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, 

its ticks and wheezings,
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 

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, 

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, 

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. 

Now the bird is singing, but not anymore of this world.
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.

 - Mary Oliver

Free as a Bird - The Beatles

https://youtu.be/ODIvONHPqpk

Head full of doubt /Road full of Promise - Avett Brothers

https://youtu.be/lGuqjNRmzvg

Great Big Love - Bruce Cockburn

https://youtu.be/ALy65QqM348

Lost On The River - New Lost Basement Tapes ( E. Costello 

https://youtu.be/fDwx_tFfSGw

Can’t Find  My Way Back Home- R. Price ( S. Winwood )

https://youtu.be/1xZxxVlu7BM

Days Gone By - V. Morrison

https://youtu.be/WpJ1WbHP5DQ

Let It Be - The Beatles

https://youtu.be/QDYfEBY9NM4

Amdg

Dedicated to the  family , friends and all those I met and will meet along the way.

Copyright 2020 All Rights Reserved JF Sobecki LLC

A Scent of Paradise

“All Children are born artists.The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up.”

   - Pablo Picasso

“If all the insects were to disappear from earth, within 50 years all life on earth would end. If all human beings disappeared from the earth, within 50 years all other forms of life would flourish.”

   - Jonas Salk

"The Element: How Finding Your Passion Means Everything"
If You Watch or view anything on this blog - Please View This!

https://youtu.be/03v_UScdLQY

“I think it is ok to think about what you want to do …until it’s time to start doing what you were meant to do.”

   - The Rookie (Movie)

——————————-

A Scent of Paradise

Birds of Edith sing of no regrets or desires

Sun rises, sun sets

Winds without known origin blow

Carrying tired pilgrim sailors who dare to be-

Odysseys unbound.

The great manipulative pedagogy sucks and

Spits out bots to support the needs of the one percent

A few unfit or unprepared are squashed;

Some shake free and head out for Robert’s Road.

The seed of that magnanimous source

Wisely conceived diversified Promethean spirits 

With gifts to be discovered and flourish.

Even the great teacher knew where treasures lie

And that teacher was tortured , humiliated and put to death.

And the expectation persists that energy for freedom

And creativity should end at puberty.

Standing on the shoreline

The essence of the divine incense of salted air,

The silence augmented by sweet soft lapping waves

Onto the ever patient beach

Receive the light and warmth of the risen sun

Emboldens souls who are ready to wake up and

Be precisely who they are intended to be.

—- JF Sobecki

———————-

Don’t Forget April is National Poetry Month

Why Do We Read and Write Poetry?

Dead Poets Society.

https://youtu.be/R_zsMwCOoEs

O Me! O Life!

Oh me! Oh Life! Of these questions recurring.

Of these trains of the faithless, of

Cities fill’d with the foolish,

Of myself forever reproaching myself,

(for more foolish than I, and who more faithless ?)

Of eye that vainly crave the light , of the objects mean,

Of the struggles renew’d,

Of the poor results of all, of the plodding

And sordid crowds see around me,

Of the empty and useless years of the

rest, with the rest me intertwined, 

The question , O Me! So sad recurring _ 

What good amid these, O me , O life?

Answer.

That you are here — that life exists and identity,

That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse.

—- Leaves of Grass, W. Whitman

———————-

A fun visit might be to check out this web site were average everyday people and a celebrity or two read their favorite poems.

http://www.favoritepoem.org

———————-

The Cloths of Heaven

Had The heaven’s embroidered cloths,

Enrought with golden and silver light;

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

I would spread the cloths

Of Night and half-light;

I would spread the cloths under your feet;

But, I being poor , have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

• W. B. Yeats

For the Anniversary of My Death

Every year without knowing it I have

Passed the day

When the fires will wave to me

And the silence will set out

Like the beam of a lightless star

Then I will no longer

Find myself in life as in a strange garment

Surprised at the earth

And the love of one woman

And the shamelessness of men

As today writing after three days of rain

Hearing the wren sing and the falling

cease

And bowing not knowing to what

— W. S. Merwin (d. 3/15,2019)

R.I.P. W. S. Merwin

I am not sure what to say

I think I know what I feel

Another sacred piece has been untethered

From its earthly home…

Lack and gratitude

   - JF Sobecki

—————————

A few random factoids to reflect on

• Freud once suggested that the most important aspects of life in the western world are “work” and ‘love” and in that order - he was not being complimentary
• In the US 27 % of college graduates work in the field of their major
• 70 % of working Americans are dissatisfied with their work
• College graduates historically change their careers at least 3 x
• Only 2% of young Americans follow their dreams in terms of work and the type of life they desire
• Young people are expected to make life long decisions at age 19 and the choices for the most part are usually college(major), a trade or military service
• A Majority of heart attacks occur first thing Monday morning
• The ONLY indicator of longevity of a person’s life is stress and stress is known as the primary indicator for cardio vascular disease and other significant physical maladies

  __________________

Follow Your Dreams - J. Messina

https://youtu.be/HOMypivzLns

Non, Je Ne Regrette - E. Piaf

https://youtu.be/t6wjCcWC2aE

————————————

Sometimes you need a good a song just because

Boots and Hearts - Tragically Hip

https://youtu.be/6OKHwnkaU5Y

Forty Light Years - K. Osmond

https://youtu.be/gQ2Pq3o3X5s

amdg

“One day I will find the right words and they will be simple”

        - Jack Kerouac

“The only truth is music”

       - Jack Kerouac

Copyright 2019 JF Sobecki LLC All Rights Reserved