THE HEIGHTS OF OUR HEAVENS

We modern folk seem ever to be wanting more out of life than we're getting out of being virtualized toward artificiality; what’s going missing, other than we ourselves? Modern knowledge as handed down via commercial and other media pays little heed to the vital portion of our being that generates no profit. It is as though time past has gone only into the dust of history, as though it weren’t coiled up in us vital still and always, living back to the first of all... 

What impresses me the more I age is the extreme youthful difficulty, as viewed from even this mere vantage, of avoiding the conventional channels of thought, the standard lifemoves and the received ambitions to which they give rise, while the natural mental topography, traced with ancient pathways, is fundamental in our thoughts, concordant with the ancient knowings, where understanding is as the flowing stream to the mountain slope. The meditative mind when let to fly soon finds its true compass and nourishment for the journey, inner light acting upon a mind as the sun upon a garden.

I recommend that you become a hawk for a time; use your own wings. Discover for yourself the heights of your heavens and see what once was unseen that is yours; move in dimensions where no bodied man has been. What person would refuse this experience, even one chronically virtualized? The truest way to earth is from your own heaven.

SECOND HEAVEN

The first big tsuyu rainfall washes heaven down from upmountain in the form of all the debris of winter that has gathered at the forest’s edge, the torrential flow down and off the road having such force that it rolls a rock or two the size of footballs into our section of the culvert, where they get stuck and block up all the other runoff debris that follows - leaves, rotted wood, sand, soil, other wild vegetable matter - packing it in there so densely that at the bottom of our driveway the swelling buildup often lifts off the heavy gratings and starts moving THEM down the mountain. Gets pretty unsightly if left too long, which I prefer to do until it becomes a strong reminder, so it’s usually right about now that the task hits number one on my meter-long to-do list.

Thus in the cool of this afternoon I got out the culvert shovel and a couple of big buckets, removed the gratings and got to work. I should mention that, along with all the other stuff from upmountain, the rain washes down earthworms. A lot of earthworms. So when I lifted the first shovelful into the air it looked like Medusa’s hair, only of happy earthworms. Nowhere else have I seen such a density of fat and sassy earthworms in one cubic measure of anything. They appeared to believe they were in heaven. There were little newbies and great biggies in there, all just lolling around in the absolute richness; those on the edge would just fall from the shovel and lay there, no need to panic in heaven. This is what I call the pate de foie gras of compost.

I filled about 8 buckets to overflowing (there's more for later), carried them out back and scattered them over our 4-meter square growing compost pile of leaves, kitchen and garden waste, which is already rich with worms; the new arrivals just dove in and out of the broadness of their new wealth the way dolphins cruise on top of their ocean. It was the worm’s second heaven, out there in the shade of the cherry tree, an even bigger heaven than they’d enjoyed before.

Gave me a sense of how it must feel to be a benevolent god.

THE WISHES OF HEAVEN

When there's a slow steady snow falling in large flakes through the cold still air and a full day-and-night supply of prime dried firewood stacked next to the stove, which is glowing gold with a well-stocked flame of oak and cherry and there's no point in shoveling off the deck anyway until the snow stops, and besides you've just had a big lunch of hot three-bean soup with toasted baguette and that mystery you put the bookmark in the day before yesterday is right at the point that makes a mystery worth reading - plus it takes place in winter - you'd have to be some kind of insane to wash the dishes, let alone do laundry right now, and thus fly in the face of the almighty, for there is no opposing the vectors, the many powerful vectors that point like the finger of god to the celestial aspects of arranging a few cushions in front of the stove and fulfilling the wishes of heaven, is there.

BRIEF TRIPS TO HEAVEN

Within splendid lakeside breezes among famed black pines I watch hawks catch fish too big for them, then watch them react much the way humans often do with big ideas-- can't regain the elevation, the effort is too much and they have to drop the fish.

One such hawk flew close overhead and I could see that the fish looked amazed: it hung there stock still in the awe that comes with extreme experience; then the fish was dropped back into his world and said to his schoolmates: You're not gonna believe this, but there's another world above this one! They took him at his word, or so it appeared, because after that it seemed like a lot more fish were caught and dropped.

Before I let go of this idea, by a rough count I'd surmise that the hawks and fish have a deal going: one meal for every ten rides into heaven.