Creature of the Light #16

John Legend, "Refuge (When it's cold outside)" --click to play:

I pray for better days to come
I pray that I would see the sun
Cuz life is so burdensome
When everyday's a rainy one

But suddenly there's no more clouds
I believe without a doubt
That heaven sent an angel down
And then she turned my life around

You know and I know
Friends come and friends go
Storms rise and winds blow
But one thing I know for sure

When it's cold outside
There's no need to worry cuz
I'm so warm inside
You give me peace
When the storm's outside
Cuz we're in love I know
It'll be alright
Alright it's alright

Oooh...

Now peace is so hard to find
We're terrorized and victimized
But that's when I close my eyes
And think of you to ease my mind
You take me to another place
There's no more war (no more war)
Just love and grace
Baby you restore my faith
I know the struggle's not in vain
You know and I know
Through all the battles
Baghdad to Israel
There's one thing I know for sure

When it's cold outside
There's no need to worry cuz
I'm so warm inside
You give me peace
When the storm's outside
Cuz we're in love I know
It'll be alright
Alright it's alright

Alright it's alright
Alright it's alright
Alright it's alright

Specie of the Dark #7

The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me,
And I cannot, cannot go.
The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow;
The storm is fast descending,
And yet I cannot go.
Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below;
But nothing drear can move me:
I will not, cannot go.

Emily Brontë, "The Night".

Butterfly of Light and Darkness

Tell me what's happening to me?
Why is my heart beating so fervently?
why has this madness, like a wave,
Broken through the rock of habit?

Is it my strength or just my torment
I'm too disturbed to tell:
From the shimmering lines of life
I extract a forgotten phrase…

Is it a thief who turns his lantern
Upon the crowd of dreary letters?
I can't help reading the phrase,
But haven't the strength to go back…

It really had to flare up,
But it only harries the darkness;
All night, like a gas-flame butterfly
It trembles, but cannot escape…

Innokentii Fedorovich Annensky, "A gas butterfly".

Purple wheel of Dharma

This is an unfinished dharma wheel, it lacks one of the wheel spokes: the acting body is there, the feeling body, the karmic, the mind, the soul, the spirit, the will, the higher self, and the sacred heart... one is missing for runnerfrog, and he's rocking his ears off to not hear the terrible sound of the incomplete wheel turning. The song is down there.



Bruce Dickinson, Darkside of Aquarius:

The first hellrider came on wings a-plenty in the dark
Hauled out his poison and they blew away his mark
The fascist from the east is coming, mothers hide your sons

The second hellrider came from flaming seas and molten sands
Half is played in Hell's commands
Hauled out his poison with his promises of promised lands
Glad, good times of lying leaders

Here comes the riders as the wheel of dharma's running out of time
Here comes the riders as the wheel of dharma's running out of time

The third hellrider came teaching brothers to kill brother man
And the fourth hellrider waits on an acid trail for an acid world
Walls of old religions' fools and superstitious men
Throw some scary tarot cards and...

Here comes the riders as the wheel of dharma's running out of time
Here comes the riders as the revolution's stepping out to light
the dark aside of Aquarius has robbed us of our souls and minds
Here comes the riders as the wheel of time is running out of time

From the starlit sky on the silver sea
a lonely silver surfer comes to push the wheel for me
a lonely silver surfer comes to push the wheel for me

Gotta move, gotta move, gotta move that wheel right round

Gotta push the wheel of dharma round

I've gotta move the wheel of torment
move that wheel around

Gotta move the wheel of time, I've round.

The priestess

And the priestess spoke again and said: "Speak to us of Reason and Passion."

And he answered saying:

Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against passion and your appetite.

Would that I could be the peacemaker in your soul, that I might turn the discord and the rivalry of your elements into oneness and melody.

But how shall I, unless you yourselves be also the peacemakers, nay, the lovers of all your elements?

Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul.

If either your sails or our rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas.

For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction.

Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion; that it may sing;

And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes.

I would have you consider your judgment and your appetite even as you would two loved guests in your house.

Surely you would not honour one guest above the other; for he who is more mindful of one loses the love and the faith of both.

Among the hills, when you sit in the cool shade of the white poplars, sharing the peace and serenity of distant fields and meadows - then let your heart say in silence, "God rests in reason."

And when the storm comes, and the mighty wind shakes the forest, and thunder and lightning proclaim the majesty of the sky, - then let your heart say in awe, "God moves in passion."

And since you are a breath In God's sphere, and a leaf in God's forest, you too should rest in reason and move in passion.

Khalil Gibran, "Reason and Passion".

3D Genetic Algorithms - Abstract #84

When you turn the corner
And you run into yourself
Then you know that you have turned
All the corners that are left

Langston Hughes, "Final curve".

Specie of the Dark #6

I shall hate you
Like a dart of singing steel
Shot through still air
At even-tide,
Or solemnly
As pines are sober
When they stand etched
Against the sky.
Hating you shall be a game
Played with cool hands
And slim fingers.
Your heart will yearn
For the lonely splendor
Of the pine tree
While rekindled fires
In my eyes
Shall wound you like swift arrows.
Memory will lay its hands
Upon your breast
And you will understand
My hatred.

Gwendolyn Bennett, "Hatred".

Creature of the Light #15

We do not grasp ourselves, but still drift on
As aimless as a mote in the warm air,
Whose senses take the sweetness of the time,
And in a moment let existence go,
Its tiny death-squeak an indefinite thing
Recorded in the general ear of God.

Robert Crawford, "Insect".

Creature of the Light #14

Evil itself may be but good disguised,
As many a virtue now was once a vice,
Or held to be such by the moralists;
Or as even in the eyes of foreigners
Our virtues may be vices, theirs to us
As vicious too. We make us new laws still,
And hold that finable and barred to-day
That was but yesterday allowable.
Our neighbours haply no such laws enact,
And privilege what we make punitive.
So right and wrong are still conditional,
And there's no absolute morality
In all the world; for conscience herself is
Full oft but Custom's creature, whom he keeps,
Who sees with him, and hears with him, and acts
As by his power of attorney still.

Robert Crawford, "Morality".

Creature of the Light #13

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.


When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense.

Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi.

3D Genetic Algorithms - Abstract #83

This aloneness is worth more than a thousand lives.
This freedom is worth more than all the lands on earth.
To be one with the truth for just a moment,
Is worth more than the world and life itself.

Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi.

Plumage

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Emily Dickinson, 254.

Specie of the Dark #5

Hard seeds of hate I planted
That should by now be grown,—
Rough stalks, and from thick stamens
A poisonous pollen blown,
And odors rank, unbreathable,
From dark corollas thrown!
At dawn from my damp garden
I shook the chilly dew;
The thin boughs locked behind me
That sprang to let me through;
The blossoms slept,—I sought a place
Where nothing lovely grew.
And there, when day was breaking,
I knelt and looked around:
The light was near, the silence
Was palpitant with sound;
I drew my hate from out my breast
And thrust it in the ground.
Oh, ye so fiercely tended,
Ye little seeds of hate!
I bent above your growing
Early and noon and late,
Yet are ye drooped and pitiful,—
I cannot rear ye straight!
The sun seeks out my garden,
No nook is left in shade,
No mist nor mold nor mildew
Endures on any blade,
Sweet rain slants under every bough:
Ye falter, and ye fade.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Blight".

Wing (again)

There's nothing more argentinian than this. Recorded in N.Y. with the heart away. If you're curious for one of the highest points of the music of the 20th century, play the gadget (Astor Piazzola, "Milonga del Ángel"):

Specie of the Dark #4

The worm, the rich worm, has a noble domain
In the field that is stored with its millions of slain ;
The charnel-grounds widen, to me they belong,
With the vaults of the sepulchre, sculptured and strong.
The tower of ages in fragments is laid,
Moss grows on the stones, and I lurk in its shade ;
And the hand of the giant and heart of the brave
Must turn weak and submit to the worm and the grave.

Daughters of earth, if I happen to meet
Your bloom-plucking fingers and sod-treading feet—
Oh ! turn not away with the shriek of disgust
From the thing you must mate with in darkness and dust.
Your eyes may be flashing in pleasure and pride,
'Neath the crown of a Queen or the wreath of a bride ;
Your lips may be fresh and your cheeks may be fair—
Let a few years pass over, and I shall be there.

Cities of splendour, where palace and gate,
Where the marble of strength and the purple of state ;
Where the mart and arena, the olive and vine,
Once flourished in glory ; oh ! are ye not mine ?
Go look for famed Carthage, and I shall be found
In the desolate ruin and weed-covered mound ;
And the slime of my trailing discovers my home,
'Mid the pillars of Tyre and the temples of Rome.

I am sacredly sheltered and daintily fed
Where the velvet bedecks, and the white lawn is spread ;
I may feast undisturbed, I may dwell and carouse
On the sweetest of lips and the smoothest of brows.
The voice of the sexton, the chink of the spade,
Sound merrily under the willow's dank shade.
They are carnival notes, and I travel with glee
To learn what the churchyard has given to me.

Oh ! the worm, the rich worm, has a noble domain,
For where monarchs are voiceless I revel and reign ;
I delve at my ease and regale where I may ;
None dispute with the worm in his will or his way.
The high and the bright for my feasting must fall—
Youth, Beauty, and Manhood, I prey on ye all :
The Prince and the peasant, the despot and slave ;
All, all must bow down to the worm and the grave.

Eliza Cook, "Song of the worm".

Specie of the Dark #3

Pain has an element of blank;
It cannot recollect
When it began, or if there were
A day when it was not.

It has no future but itself,
Its infinite realms contain
Its past, enlightened to perceive
New periods of pain.

Emily Dickinson, 650.

Creature of the Light #12

Which is the weakest thing of all
Mine heart can ponder?
The sun, a little cloud can pall
With darkness yonder?
The cloud, a little wind can move
Where'er it listeth?
The wind, a little leaf above,
Though sere, resisteth?

What time that yellow leaf was green,
My days were gladder;
But now, whatever Spring may mean,
I must grow sadder.
Ah me! a leaf with sighs can wring
My lips asunder -
Then is mine heart the weakest thing
Itself can ponder.

Yet, Heart, when sun and cloud are pined
And drop together,
And at a blast, which is not wind,
The forests wither,
Thou, from the darkening deathly curse
To glory breakest, -
The Strongest of the universe
Guarding the weakest!

Elizabeth Barret Browning, "The weakest thing".

Creature of the Light #11

My enemy came nigh,
And I
Stared fiercely in his face.
My lips went writhing back in a grimace,
And stern I watched him with a narrow eye.
Then, as I turned away, my enemy,
That bitter heart and savage, said to me:
"Some day, when this is past,
When all the arrows that we have are cast,
We may ask one another why we hate,
And fail to find a story to relate.
It may seem then to us a mystery
That we should hate each other."

Thus said he,
And did not turn away,
Waiting to hear what I might have to say,
But I fled quickly, fearing had I stayed
I might have kissed him as I would a maid.

James Stephens, "Hate".

Specie of the Dark Nº2 (Again)

A brighter version, to try some brighter appreciation of something darker.



This tango, my fellow reader, oh, this tango... Oh, the high piece of art it is, oh my, so big, so high. This poem --where the parallelism of a lifetime as a (theatre) play in drunkenness, coming from a poetic character sinking his pain of love in alcohol- have immense appreciation here in Argentina. I don't know if it's needed to be argentinian to fully appreciate it, but here's a translation that don't make justice to the amazing treatment of the language on the original, and down below there's a gadget to play it.

My heart, bandoneon, is hurt
by your maliciously groaning curse.
Your tears of rum take me
to the deep underworld
where the mud is in upheaval.

I know, don't tell me! You are right!
Life is an absurd wound,
and it is all so fleeting
that it is a drunkenness, my confession,
nothing more!

Tell me of my sentence,
tell me your failure,
don't you see the pain that has wounded me?
And speak simply to me
about that absent love
in search of a fragment of oblivion.
I know that it harms me!
I know that I hurt you
crying my wine sermon.
But it's the old love
that trembles, bandoneon,
and searches in a liquor that stuns
the drunkenness, that at the end
finishes the show,
drawing a curtain over the heart.

A little bit of remembrance and nausea
is dripping with your slow moan.
Your liquor dizzies and prods
the little heard on the left of the chest
with the strain of the last drunkenness.
Close the window;
the sun burns
its slow snail of sleep.
Don't you see that I come from a land
of oblivion, forever gray,
behind the alcohol?...

Cátulo Castillo, "The last drunkenness" (La última curda, Argentinian tango).
A. Troilo orchestra, R. Goyeneche singing; click to play:

Nine-pointed star

The presence of the number 9 is frequent in Bahá'í symbols. The number nine represents perfection, and it is the numerical value of the word Bahá’. Its most common representation is the nine-pointed star, which encloses the fruits of the spirit. In the catholic tradition they're listed on the epistle to the galatians (5:22).
Normally, the nine-pointed star is a symbol that means that the highest instance (whichever that is in your beliefs) shares a part of its divine nature in these nine qualities right up into our souls and personalities.
Here in my image, the nine-pointed star is intendedly not emmiting shadow, but yes reflection.

Spirit Divine! Eternal! Holy Dove!
These sacred fruits are thine,—peace, joy, and love,
Even peace with heaven, and peace on earth; a joy
Earth cannot give, nor, leagued with hell, destroy.
Love! 'tis the love thy presence sheds abroad
In hearts renew'd, the love supreme of God;
Long-suffering, when assailed by wrong or scorn;
Calm gentleness, though tried and spirit-worn;
True goodness, flowing from its source Divine;
And faith, that whispers, Saviour, Thou art mine!
Mild tranquil meekness, with her lowly grace;
And temperance, ruling measure, mood, and place,
In words, in deeds, in meats, in drinks, in all,
In every phase of life her warning call
Observ'd, obey'd; 'gainst such no law is found,
With heaven-born graces richly robed and crown'd.
Spirit of God! o'er the dark waters move,
That whelm our souls, where light, nor life, nor love,
Stir the dull chaos: come with life and power,
Creating light, and beauty, fruit, and flower!

Janet Hamilton, "The Fruits of the Spirit".

Floating flowering

Another Being placed outside the frontiers of Fauna and Flora, suddenly born of curved light.

The curve of your eyes embraces my heart
A ring of sweetness and dance
halo of time, sure nocturnal cradle,
And if I no longer know all I have lived through
It’s that your eyes have not always been mine.

Leaves of day and moss of dew,
Reeds of breeze, smiles perfumed,
Wings covering the world of light,
Boats charged with sky and sea,
Hunters of sound and sources of colour

Perfume enclosed by a covey of dawns
that beds forever on the straw of stars,
As the day depends on innocence
The whole world depends on your pure eyes
And all my blood flows under their sight.

Paul Éluard, "The Curve Of Your Eyes"