Mojave Desert, Pacific Coast -- Jim Leftwich, in Virginia
Jim Leftwich
Nov 21, 2021, 4:08 PM
to billy
The desert sears an image of self onto its sensorial vastness. We are less than we have ever thought of ourselves, more than we might have imagined. Unless an ocotillo is cliche to the kangaroo rat, there is no sense in which the knowing is separate from the being, known. Around a curve you will hardly remember one vastness opens onto another. The sun setting, sinking, settling into the Pacific Ocean, permits the ego, compressed at a pragmatic density, to openly fall in love with itself, in an exchange of gifts like stars scurrying among their grains of sand -- utilitarian, somatic, existential. We think the desert tortoise is moving slowly, until we look out over the Davidson Seamount, and remember the long, air-conditioned drive from Baker to Bakersfield. The volume of the moment, wrote George Oppen, against all easy modifications of the emptier signified.
Jim Leftwich
Nov 21, 2021, 6:26 PM
to billy
Where the desert spills into the sea... It fills us with itself, as we fill ourselves with it, and as a kind of gift which at times is a kind of love, we fill it with ourselves, our little part of it, which we have of course received from it, itself.
Jim Leftwich
Nov 21, 2021, 7:15 PM
to billy
It is the same, of course, wherever we are. But in the Mojave desert and at the edge of the Pacific the experience comes to us as a teaching, incessant and relentless, in which the world will not permit us to deny our presence in it.
Jim Leftwich
Nov 21, 2021, 8:10 PM
to billy
I look in the mirror of the desert, in the mirror of the Pacific, and see both the old dog and the new teacher. The mind can learn new tricks whenever it is willing to do so. Gratitude wakes us up, and insists that we stay alert
to billy
The desert sears an image of self onto its sensorial vastness. We are less than we have ever thought of ourselves, more than we might have imagined. Unless an ocotillo is cliche to the kangaroo rat, there is no sense in which the knowing is separate from the being, known. Around a curve you will hardly remember one vastness opens onto another. The sun setting, sinking, settling into the Pacific Ocean, permits the ego, compressed at a pragmatic density, to openly fall in love with itself, in an exchange of gifts like stars scurrying among their grains of sand -- utilitarian, somatic, existential. We think the desert tortoise is moving slowly, until we look out over the Davidson Seamount, and remember the long, air-conditioned drive from Baker to Bakersfield. The volume of the moment, wrote George Oppen, against all easy modifications of the emptier signified.
Jim Leftwich
Nov 21, 2021, 6:26 PM
to billy
Where the desert spills into the sea... It fills us with itself, as we fill ourselves with it, and as a kind of gift which at times is a kind of love, we fill it with ourselves, our little part of it, which we have of course received from it, itself.
Jim Leftwich
Nov 21, 2021, 7:15 PM
to billy
It is the same, of course, wherever we are. But in the Mojave desert and at the edge of the Pacific the experience comes to us as a teaching, incessant and relentless, in which the world will not permit us to deny our presence in it.
Jim Leftwich
Nov 21, 2021, 8:10 PM
to billy
I look in the mirror of the desert, in the mirror of the Pacific, and see both the old dog and the new teacher. The mind can learn new tricks whenever it is willing to do so. Gratitude wakes us up, and insists that we stay alert
posted by jim leftwich at 3:21 PM
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