Leaves and pools don’t mix:
Time is now quick-moving and the pool is opened still. Now swamp-like, assuming late-season “pondness,” it is all looking quite chillingly ill.
I meant to …., well, you know. It’s a good idea to beat the leaves to the water, but crucial dates come and go.
So, today’s the day, I’ll churn and sweep it, suck out the debris, make it healthy, make it fit.
The gods of clean living and suburban propriety, can then again take heart as I avoid notoriety. There is work to do, and do it I will, or the cleaning becomes too great, too much, a great “pill,” a millennium’s-worth of leaves to distill. The cure, once that happens, is knee-deeping in Spring, bathing in a leaf-soup of stench that can sting.
This is all a great lesson, a message surely it must be, for all the beauty on the branches of that yonder tree, will soon become nothing more than great piles of debris.
This is the way of the cycle, the way of what is, when is-ness becomes no more, and the light-bright colors become the dark-night microbes of soil we soon abhor. From manure comes great vegetables, flowers, grasses, and trees, so what we hold onto, what we think is so dear, bows deeply to that which we otherwise fear.
All things that are passing go to where they once were, back home to the essence, where things first occur: mourning becomes morning, earth becomes birth, dark to spark, duller to color, and then all back again. So goes the wheel of universes, and interverses, and inverses. Right, left, up, down: all things trade places, positions, orientations.
Positive flips negative, and the other way around. Whatever we think we know today, will likely the other way soon astound.
We open pools with fanfare and close them in toil, and time we jealously measure for the things that give us pleasure. Oh, to dance naked in wildflower meadows, pretending no end to the reds, blues, and yellows. Ah, what a dancing dunce is Man, always clinging and singing of loss he can’t stand.
Ignore finality, then superficiality.
The Marianas Trench is deep indeed, an Everest of mind-numbing fathoms, yet the cave inside has many more crevasses and unexplored chasms.
The last true adventure is into the abyssal zone of Mind, odder creatures than in “Sphere,” “20,000 Leagues,” and “Journey to the Center … ” we shall there most surely find. Imagination is our chariot, our way to inquire, our transporting glider for a mind set-afire.
No reason to fear it; the dark-other and deep. It is wisdom we”ll gather, insight we’ll reap.
We intuit the One who penned this great play, arranged the sets, works the lights, and gave us words we could say. Our task is not abstract, our mandate quite clear, join in the dance, be bold, there’s nothing to fear.
Practice, practice, and we’ll get it right. First the foot on the left, then the one on the right. Now step back, and bow, deliver the lines, you know how, and do so from the heart, and the performance will be smart.
All minstrels we, mandolins in hand, as we do the cosmic cha-cha upon the shifting sand. The flamenco, tango, and rumba too, each step giving birth, each moment something new.
Let us dance. Let us sing. Eternity is ours. We are not lost within it, for we are surely the stars.
Are we angels fallen reborn as mortal, or mortals still earning our wings?
The answer is in closing the pool, raking and vacuuming, adding the chemicals with a laugh and a smile, allowing the mystery to warm and beguile.
The Spirit awaits us in the next chore we do, in the next hollow thing we’d rather eschew, in the muck and mire of the enigma right here, and not not-being anywhere.
I guess, leaves and pools do mix after all. Time is a-wasting, let me no longer stall.
© Brother Anton and The Harried Mystic, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.
Read Full Post »
The Harried Mystic 