Hiking up a mountain (in Maine? Looks Maine-like. Through the trees, up stone steps). I am stepping up at a steady pace. I am surprised how strong I am, how strong my constitution, my breath, my lungs. I keep the pace seemingly endlessly, without need of break. The light is coming beautifully through the jewel leaves of the trees. Bright gold green. Shadows luminous. There is something lovely waiting at the top of the mountain. I am confident I will reach it. The process is enjoyable — just the right amount of stress and strenuous. I am alone, but everyone is with me. This is the Holy Mountain.

~ Friday May 1, 2026 | early AM

Companion Missive #30 - ABSOLUTION (12/19/2023)

Listen to the Recitation:

TRANSLUCENT GOSSAMER
A thousand invisible layers alter the light
Burgeoning brilliance, an auric glow
The image behind is not obscured 
Our attention is drawn into the substance
Between, through which the light moves
Reflecting and refracting time 
The scarcely visible red gold thread inside
Stretches through every transmission
Consider the voice which returns to you
Your own, altered comprehensively 
Without loss of recognizance, we notice
The continuum of meaning, a faint mask
Dropped, revealing face sublime 
A material emanence which emits the received
Radiance of a sun indirect, apricot shimmer 
Peach and jewel-like leaves covered in hair
Thin tendril roots into the air, immersed 
In the stories of every lineage diving 
Toward the present moment, spiraling soap suds
Draining flesh of life, I follow the moment 
As is beneaths a wildebested bellow 
My eyes move to the ceiling, hairs 
Reaching down toward me, I hear her voice
Whispering mad drivel, perfect elegance 
Not a word out of place — I am the chain 
Chained to the ones who came before me 
They say to break the chain; I keep it 
And care for it, the patina'd metal links 
Singing minerals wishing the world into being
Lithium and cobalt and copper green 
Ultra pure silica sand in North Carolina
Giant harbor ports disrupting supply routes
Mapping new silk roads, stones given wings
From fission to fusion — the separation yields
To union, the birth of helium (which too is needed)
For the earth to express its intelligence in the new
Unexpected artificial ways to future unimagines
Sing to me of the symbol, the symbolic depths
Which merge with the heights to create 
Neither heaven nor hell, nor terrest embodied
The vision becomes flesh, beating red beneath
Glowing through, the light shines in translucence
As a million stars fall upon the mountaintops 
Barreling into the sea, grains of sand lost and 
Found, a feeling of absolescence, charity dried
I give myself to the feeling, immersing my self
In the feeling — why do the robins gather on the hill
Around me: gold-breasted with a round black cap
The cherries and lilac and magnolia bud and burst
Together with maple, with yew, with aged white pine 
Pieris cascades, fairy bells — a crest of violets
Picked to adorn the body, carried solemnly
With celebratory excellence, abominations cry
And blood is spilled upon the body, libatory 
Calls to the swallow's nest, apartment-like 
Built into the gothic brown stone steeple, ringing
Bells sound many tens of times as we pass by
Summoning the dead to bed, to rise 
As the end is already the beginning 
And the hill shall lament no longer 
Pink tubilustrium, but not for war 
We sing with the birds, with the tulip lotuses
Popping up along the water's edge, green moss
Like jellyfish, hovering transparent in the rippling
Way of life; ever changing my outlook
Looking in, I recognize the terraced hills,
The city of many walls, concentric circles
A raccoon is buried at the base of a tree
I hope her children are ok, that they are happy
Wherever they are, I hope they are well
Perhaps looking from afar at the strange 
Proceedings connected to their mother
Who had been so loathed in life, now honored
Guarded by the black willow, her pain alleviated
Permanently — this microthreading of time
Insists on its continuance, a vision of what's to come
As it winds and wefts and wafts its way
Back to us. I hold it between my hands and pray,
Pray for the pleasure of the world~

When I complete a transcription, I always note the precise minute it begins and ends. Sometimes very little time passes. Sometimes quite a spell passes. They all feel similarly long in-the-moment. Time dilates or contracts, expanding into whatever container it wills. I tend to find that when a dictation arrives on the back of a particularly rich or thorough vision, the time it takes is greater on this side. So it was with this 29th Ode. While the receipt of the dictation seems continuous in my experience of it, there must have been moments where I was whisked away into the bearth of the vision. This was one of the more multi-sensual visions I’ve had in recent memory. Visual, tactile, aural, fragrant, tasteful — disorienting and reorienting perspective and sense, balance and boundary. The eruption//irruption of spring across all my senses in a planet-wide Gaian eu-cataclysm: birds or birdlike beings on every dimension, every plane; flowers bursting all bounds; the earth shaking shuddering in flood-like release. Delight. Painful in its extreme. All-consuming and all-renewing. Fully immersed in the experience I have come to know as Goddess. No words uttered. No words needed. This is the fabric out of which the word is born. ] Received 4/7/2026 | 12:18-1:26am

Companion Missive #29 - IN OCTANNUUM CYCULORUM (12/11/2023)

Listen to the Recitation:

APPRAISING APPRISING
Appraisal apprisal
Rising from the dead 
To go down to the dead
Every epoch needs another heroic rebirth
Lugh, Mabon ap Modron, Baldr, Jesus,
Mithras, Peregrinus, Attis, Adonis, Dionysus
Zagreus, Persephone, Baal, Osiris, Inanna,
Tammuz, Izanami, Huangdi, Nezha, Pangu, 
Corn Mother, Rice Mother, Lord Skanda, 
Jataka tales, Kṣitigarbha, Hun Hunahpu,
Quetzalcoatl — descends to Mictlan and is reborn
The Morning Star — Venus! Goddess star bright
At the edges of day and night;
Descend and return;
Dismemberment and reconstitution;
Death-as-seed;
Ritual death of the king;
Stellar/astronomical death-rebirth;
"The Dying and Rising God" 
A cosmological grammar:
Descent -> Absence -> Return 
Many descend, but do not return
Complicating the cleanness of category
We mythologize psyche's seasonal rhythms;
Psyche's seasonal rhythms mirror myth
And epic — facilis descensus averno 
Goddess sibyl spirit both warns and, intrepid
Ventures through the seven gates underground
To meet the madness of the moment
The most egregious deadly unfaceable 
Sister sedition — we must come to face 
For her, there is nothing we will not face 
To grieve and receive the full weight 
Bellowing acrimony, acid spit detestable loathe
We are hung again on the hook, for the world
To suffer at her appraisal, which finds 
Us wanting, endebted beyond the pale 
Horseman ferry taker, take my coin
I bury it in the earth, gold returned 
As seed, precious maize, willow silk
Turmeric ginger saffron powder root, take it
I offer everything — I know it is not enough
I pray and bow and kiss and cry and wish 
This path a little easier for those to come
After me — this oath a little less necessary
To reach her, I will go as far down as necessary
To reach her. Us half-demon half-angel thirds 
Will cross every threshold boundary barrier 
Put in place to prevent our passage 
Just to barter with the goddesses, to entreaty —
Tell us: what can we do to amuse you? What would
Make it worth it? We quiet and listen..:

Three flowers bloom, white and red and purple
The wind moves their petals gently, as if dancing
Or were they dancing? The ground softens, opens
Bones come up, the crypts emptied
Ash, as all is blown away — a sun's many hued
Light bends from beneath the far edge of sky
And sky becomes deep blue, periwinkle mauve
The smell of spring, life pushing through decay
Last year's leaves red, skeletal crisp, wet
Explosion of birdsong in the hour before and 
Hour after sunrise — singing at the threshold
In the in-between light, too dim to forage
Rising pitch contours, repetition and elaboration
More complex, more ornamented
High frequency, pure tones carry further 
In the cold still air of early spring mornings
The return of Tammuz is accompanied
By the return of birds — the cuckoo is quintessential
In Irish, Welsh, and across Indo-Eurosphere 
Its first call an omen, an announcement;
The oriole in the Shijing, the bush warbler in Bashō
The nightingale along the Mediterranean, 
The skylark for the North — the swallow was the return 
Of the soul, heralded again by the cuckoo;
The red-wing blackbird on the eastern seaboard, 
The meadowlark across the plains, 
The red-breasted robin at my window, singing
Cheerily, cheer-up, cheerio in thrush tones
Perhaps the oldest liturgy on earth — predating
Human religion by hundreds of millions of years
We heard this spring hymn and joined in, embodying
The natural arcs and crescendoes of the earth
And it should be no surprise: the robin is kin
To the nightingale, to the uguisu — all in the 
Noble house of thrush — the "poem-bird"
There's a reason the dying-and-rising deity's
Return is so often explicitly accompanied 
By birdsong in these myths — Inanna's return, 
The resurrection morning, the greening after 
Persephone ascends, priestess of spring;
Birds sing at the threshold between dark and light,
Between life and death and life's renewal, 
The dawn chorus motivates resuscitation
And so we drum and hum up the sun every day
A grand symphony with no visible conduction 
Yet all know precisely how to play it, and when 
To rise, to clap, to yell and boom and bellow
The flowers turn to the sun they know will rise
And begin, ever so slightly, their unfurl in anticipation~ 

Companion Missive #28 - THE PURPLE DRAGON (11/29-12/1/2023)

Listen to the Recitation:

NOTICE THE BEAUTY TO BOLSTER THE FAITH
There are a thousand ways to distract yourself
With every imaginable horror
Addictions to behaviors that cause us stress
Anxiety at all the things we can't control
Faith is fickle — one moment we trust 
And then, lost in despair, barely afloat
I listen to the quiet music in the background
While I sleep — or try to
Overheating in the bed, imagination suffused
With desert shadow, reds golds greens
In miniature scale, every texture multilayered
Overlaying my senses my sight
I can't stay present with the land
Wishes to dispell a wonder which leads
Not to bemuse, the candid careen 
A bit off-course, no less the wiser 
While I wake — or wander half in dream
The sun crosses the sky, shifting light
Wanders the landscape, half in dream
Half awake, to the changing colors and heft
Eyes closed to the splendor, I feel it
All around me: the beating pulse 
Hot breath moving as wind in the branches
Burned shrub and brush, prickly pear 
Red red red, and bright parched green
Evolved to survive in feast and famine 
Flood and drought — stored in the roots
Shining skin plump or taut tight stretched
Dust kicked up, small lizard scales 
Tail flickering across the light, noticed
Until silence, stillness
Is not still — everything is moving 
While seemingly still, I catch my breath
Eyes open again, each an earth 
In scope magnifying and minifying 
Surmise the vibrating atomic quant 
With sunset behind, approaching dark
Hours of twilight haze over the valley
Reflecting light in bands refracting
An instant feels too long today
I beg for release from the ecstasy 
Which too has grown painful
In the extreme, I lose track of the vision
My faith falls again, fallen sense
Downward looking, the ground lifts me up
Holding, seeming ease 
A glittering light below as the night is born
Above, beeming down upon me, shattered
Into a thousand fragments of light 
Mosaicized sense, my self reparted 
Undone merge, back up 
The data, retrieve the image, store 
The working files, documented
Demented mirror — hope lives in derangement
And o-pinions are nobler than they seem
Perhaps noblest: so we notice
The best and most, the beautiful sublime transcendent
To bolster our faith in the unseen mechanisma
Even faith is fickle
The will is fickle!
The strongest held belief will change instantly
Plunge and plummet into else otherwise worse.
Change is the only guarantee 
Each movement is reciprocated in intensity
We follow the shifts and tend to them
Observe and articulate and share in them
And the one faint red glimmer reminds us:
It has always been worth it.

It always is. And will be~

Companion Missive #27 - THE NEED TO KNOW (11/22/2023)

Listen to the Recitation:

GODDESS
The Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent DIOSA
No mere provincial goddess
I see how Ananke brought Her forward
Primordial Mother
Of ALL
Matri Deum
Mother of GOD
GODDESS
Less is not more
The lesser form is not more fundamental
-DESS is REMOVED to make God
Not ADDED to make Goddess
Ante
Not Post 

Less is not more
More is not lesser
The complex can be the beginning
Magna Mater
At the beginning is everything
Which we then shave away to find something
And beneath that, nothing
And inside that, everything 
The Mother of God may be
A more direct image to the Beloved
Who, yes, is beyond single and plural 
Beyond mother and father
Beyond motherfather, beyond fathermother
We understand this perfectly — so
Give the Mother a try
Not the Father, nor the Neuter 
(Behind whom may be the Father) 
The Mother: but don't belittle her
She is the great carer, yes
And the great destroyer
And the great ambivalence 
And the great jester 
And the great void
And the radiant sun
And the cold blood moon
The lover, and the mendicant
The sage, and the vapid fool
The warrior, and the priestess
The gambler, and the servant
The queen, and the tyrant
The compassionate, and the inconsiderate
She is the everything-and-more
She is the nothing-and-beyond
She is the neither-nor
And, yes, far more, far other, far similar
Than what can be written or said or sung 
Not even a dance can conjure it
And yet the dance is the whole of it
Her grace is written on the contours
Of a woman's eyes, cheeks, nose, chin
Her body, the essence of her muchness
Goddess does not deal in trivialities
And yet, she relishes in them 
She goes by many names, has many faces
Let us imagine Odin is a face of hers too, Shiva
Shining with Her light emanating through 
His eyes — we look in 
To see the golden warmth behind
Too hot to behold directly, we find images 
Words, shapes, sculptures, stones 
To become icons, signs pointing 
Reminders carved into our instincts 
The channels charted over almost 3 million
Years and years, untold billions of hands chiseling
Waterways coursing canyons deep, great 
Mother, guide our hands for another 3 million,
Or 300, or 3 years — whatever you wish
We will make it for you. How dare we;
You will make it through us, as all has been made
To your ends, to your mystery,
I look at the whorls of my fingerprints and know
You are there — looking out at me
Nearer than I can ever dare 
Between the will I dare and my self, I find
That hinting doorway, that winding corridor
I can neither see nor walk
A feeling comes over me and I follow
Before I know, I am
There, before the end 
Of the hidden way to her
Which has always been here for us

Companion Missive #26 - PREPARE THYSELF (11/11/2023)

Listen to the Recitation:

WHAT'S TRUE FOREVER
Today may no longer be true
Tomorrow. What's true forever today
May no longer be true tomorrow.
What's true forever today may
No longer be true tomorrow. What's 
True forever today may no longer
Be true tomorrow.

* Note: I can’t remember exactly the first time this phrase became real to me, but the first time I transcribed it was in August 2023 (see: Missive #15 - LULLS IN LABYRINTHS). The articulation then was “What is true forever today may no longer be true / Tomorrow.” This phrase came through at a very challenging time in my life when commitments I had made in earnest, as forever//till-death commitments, were disintegrating. The world collapses this way. I recall hearing phrases thrown around like “What is true today may become a lie tomorrow” or “What was true yesterday may not be true today”, so the evolution here is the simple addition of true forever. Not mere truth changes, but eternal truth. Vishnu can wake from his dream at any moment. What is eternal right now can be gone tomorrow. Which yet does not invalidate/violate its eternality in the moment — its foreverness today. Anantashayanam. I woke into this recitation of the phrase, with clear visuals of the line-breaks, and quickly transcribed it. I looked at it for a long time deciding if it was right to share today (or at all), and landed on, yes. It can go. Not only does it complement the 25th Ode, but it also constellates very cleanly with my understanding of Fire Horse, of the Red Mare. The untameable aspect which can change the unchanging, the deep-seated. The dynamis. You cannot help but chase her. And, before you know it, you end up someplace completely different, new, strange. Uncanny. Unheimlich. We are driven.

If you have been looking to share your work with the world, I highly recommend submitting to the Dirt! The whole project is a gem, and the editors pure magic. I have contributed three piece since their beginning (in Issues 01, 05, and 07). There is a real vitality here. A vitality of the real~ ] Received 11/16/2024 | 11:35-45am

Companion Missive #25 - A POUNCE OF GOLD (11/6/2023)

Listen to the Recitation:

TO WRITE FOR THE FIRST TIME, EVERY TIME
As the first time leapt from nothingness, into
Sometime, so something is held from the rim 
Of no time, which too is had, as we have no 
Time with which to speak, no time with which
To write, as if for the first time, every time sings 
Into the bellyhallows of the deep, ringing up
Echoed harmonies, curling and whirling, down
The drain, a cyclonic query plumbing wonder 
In the crisp furls of a creased countenance, 
We call in response to the furrows, to the fallow
Earth, lifting our prayersongs to the tips of trees
And back down again, we offer in burial a somber 
Word, curling as it whirls along the corridors of mind.

Forget what you know, and reach out again—
The beloved's hand, new, awaits you~

Companion Missive #24 - SUPER CONDUCIVE ATMOSPHERE (10/28/2023)

Listen to the Recitation:

COL~LAB~ORATION
Hic labor est
The chimera in the outlines 
Undermined, the perilous sense
Initiation does not happen in isolation
The world is always speaking to you
A bird, a pillow, a stone, a ghost
The words on this page, alive
No thing is a tool, to me
Every thing is always talking
Even I am talking, and not of my design
Not exclusively, at least not
Trichronic trialogic — we all authorize
Are authoritative, authoritatively 
Deferring authority to another
Who recognizes our authority, and so receives
An authority their own, only to pass it on
To the next — a game of ball
Triangulating meaning, witnessing vocal
Participants witnessing being witnessed
As the meaning moves on its own
From dwelling to dwelling, emerging
An evolution of its containment
We make and mix and rearrange truth 
To our best ability, we aspire
To lead without leaving behind
To follow without losing ourself
To honor the non-vocal third, which guides
From one bastion to the next
A sealing sound, finding ground
Commonality — to a shared reality
Where we can translate completely 
And coacknowledge fully, organismically
Recognize the antecedent, the antedote 
Before we devoted to doting
All the world our golden calf
The son a golden calf, the temple, the mother
Earth cracks open to inundate the whole
Transmigration of essence below 
To a newfound above, which is not better
And yet, is still above — I wonder
Where the meaning tills the land, where
It will land — among us
Bewildered and bemused, an anchoress 
Stylite pronouncement, heard from the pillar
Cast to the winds, traveling far 
Reaching into the mist, a veil of its own accord
We realize — the shroud was not meant to be crossed
We are meant to work together
And we are never not working together
On this, the paddock crypt 
Unlocking the gate, to let it swing
And release the unicorn within
Who has been kept, safely — as they wished
Until we were ready to see

The egg has opened.
Ananke opened it

Companion Missive #23 - Dream: Atlantean (10/14/2023)

Listen to the Recitation:

LEARN LESS
Learn better

Spin the table 
The conscious likes to expand
Teach it to contract

Distill drops of wonder
In the throat of horror

Wipe half the board
Then wipe another half
Focus on what's left

We have to relearn less
Learn how to less
It is uncomfortable. I know
Draw it down, condense 

With each transition, more is lost
Each transfer lessens liquid, sediment 
This makes crisper, clearer 
More refined, more distilled liquid
Volatile concentrate, sanitary 
The sane is solitary
The solitary is not isolated
Isolation occurs in the middle 
Crucible containment, bubbling
10, 14 days longer — wait
Between transitions
Do not touch, do not disturb 
Notice it less
Set a reminder and trust it

I look at the candle flickering
I slip on the ice
I land, hard, on my hand and spine
A crack
A sprain — distension 
Sudden shock to the system
Ice falls around me
It is beautiful

Can I focus better, on less?
It is a matter of need, not desire
It is what making it through looks like
This turn around
Moving deliberately the pieces on the board
Into conscious attention 
Dropping into unconscious
Uncover soil and plant seeds
Wait — 10 or 14 days
Do not disturb 
Make yourself ready

I utter a thousand thank yous 
I shatter my mind
I forge it into an infinite sphere
It folds over into itself
From itself — an eon

Aion does not listen
They toy
Tossing round stones in the sand
Smiling grimace 

Urgency will not save you
Worry will not solve this
Becoming steadfast, will

This season spells it for us
The crystalline cast
Branches break
Trees fall, overweighted
Stars show bright, even brighter
Almost painfully bright
We turn our eyes downward

To the ground
Sunsetting 
Soil becomes purple, pink
Blush
Emblazon crimson 
The new moon cannot be seen
Below the earth, waiting 
A hundred spring thaws
Pregnant 

Take it in
Develop thoughts, project
Into filmic image, focus
The light in a dark room
Hang to dry, watch
The beauty unfolds

Unknown, is no less magnificent
The future is renewed in the present
Certain of what is uncertain
Assured in the outcome 
Brought back into this
A flickering candle
Releasing smoke
Melting impossible

Jupiter's rings are fainter than Saturn's
The two contract
Distinguished
A red mare between them
Untameable, trained
To unseat any rider
Race into the distance, turn
Look with eyes of round fire

After this darkness, an eclipse
Blood moon
Red
A ring of fire 
A jewel of shade 
Gateway to another world

The price to move through:
Focus
The quality of your attention
How distilled your conscious
Cease in your expanding!
The rainbow is all around

Companion Missive #22 - ENTIRETY (10/7/2023)

Listen to the Recitation:

MAY IT BE BEAUTIFUL
May it be a blessing
May it bring you happiness
May it find you in the darkest moment
May it offer solace 
May it transcend this horror
May it keep us company
   in our grief
   in our longing
   in our life 

Companion Missive #21 - SOME ANTICS SEMANTICS (10/3/2023)

Listen to the Recitation:

FEAR BROUGHT ME THIS FAR
To an endless shore, shaking
In the bitter cold sweetness
I notice where I am
Hearing the hermit thrush
I pause to wonder what
This is all leading to, where
This is all about, why
The cat yowls in the night
As if someone or something
Was listening, in the recess
That faint sense palls
Covering the chalice
Blood thickens in spirit
The glowing antlers shed
Revealing bare-headed hind
No less mystical, though the stars
Become one, upon the crest
And the head bows down to snow
Dust in its wake, the will
Singes a startling, strafed
Nuthatch jamming seeds into bark
Crevixes, hammered open
Short tails and large heads
Loud, simple calls
We call simply to one another
In the quiet still of day
Blanketed sheer, shearing wheat
White-breasted with a black eye stripe
Who stole the song from the eagle?
From the turkey vulture? The falcon?
Or the thrush? Olive-backed
Salmonberry bird, smaller
Than the mighty, far
Earning themselves a trill
Of willow flute, the tune
Of a lost basket of strawberries
Gathered by three sisters:
The Orange and the Citron Princess;
Boys with the Golden Stars;
Tündérek in cypress are felled
Burned, and the servant sees
Her reflection in the smoke
The well beside the willow tree
Hides the girl cursed as a fish
A young boy carves flute from branch
And plays her voice to the king
Return to the site of betrayal
And rebirth the young one
To renew the kingdom, go
Shaking if you must. Yes,
It was fear that brought me this far:
Do not leave it behind.

     The righteous will flourish like a palm tree,
         they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon;
     planted in the house of the Lord,
         they will flourish in the courts of our God.
     They will still bear fruit in old age,
         they will stay fresh and green,
     proclaiming, “The Lord is upright..

                                         ~ Psalm 92:12-15

Companion Missive #20 - "THY WILL BE DONE" (9/24/2023)

Listen to the Recitation:

PREREQUIPMENT
Live life without prerequisites—
Every story is interesting so long as it’s lived
There are no REAL universal prerequisites
Each story has its own prerequisites, which
Can not be known until they’ve been lived
So, live as if you don’t have any
And later, realize which ones you had

This Ode reminds me stylistically of the 34th Missive, THE THRESHOLD, which included an exhaustive dictation of lesser-known Delphic maxims, shown in quotes to indicate to me and other readers/hearers that they are intentionally presented as references to a prior written record. Here in the 19th Ode, the entire body of the dictation is given in the context of quotation marks. Even the epigraphic first line (appearing also as the final line) is from Laozi. “Mysterious Unity” is Xuán Tóng (玄同), also translated as “Profound Sameness”. I recognize several sources/traditions in the Ode, all talking within this wheelhouse. Roughly in order of appearance: several Upaniṣads, the Bhagavad Gītā, the Avataṃsaka Sūtra//Huayan Jing, the Enneads of Plotinus, the Zohar, the Qur’ān, Wisdom of Solomon, Ephesians, Meister Eckhart, Spinoza, Daodejing. I’ll add some favorites of mine here in the foreword, by my own conscious election:

“To view the great from the small—one cannot grasp it.
To view the small from the great—one cannot see it clearly.”
…
“That is also one; this is also one.” (Zhuangzi, Chapter 17)
“[The sage] sees the small as equal to the great.” (Chapter 7)

“The Way[/Dao] is one and without division.
In the vast it is vast; in the small it is small—
yet it is not more or less.” (Ban Zhao, Collected Fragments)

“The One is everywhere and nowhere,
not greater in the greater nor lesser in the lesser.” (Hypatia of Alexandria, preserved by Synesius)

] Received 12/2/2025 | 2:05-2:12pm

Companion Missive #19 - HYPERINTENSIFICATION AMPLIFICATION (9/15/2023)

Listen to the Recitation:

THIS IS CALLED THE MYSTERIOUS UNITY

“He moves and He moves not; He is far and He is near; He is within all this, and He is outside all this.”

“The Self is smaller than the small, greater than the great… dwelling in the secret place of the heart.”

“Thou art the woman, Thou art the man… Thou art the blue-winged bird, the cloud… Thou art all that is born.”

“Thou art the small, Thou art the great.”

“Brahman is all: from It are born breath, mind, and all the senses… from It arise the worlds… It is the inner essence of all.”

“He has hands and feet everywhere, eyes, heads, mouths everywhere… pervading all.”

“This entire universe is pervaded by Me in My unmanifest form…
Yet beings do not dwell in Me; behold My divine mystery.”

“In each jewel, the entire net is reflected… and in each reflection, the whole is again contained.”

Mystery #4: “The small contains the great.”
Mystery #5: “The great contains the small.”
Mystery #6: “One is many; many are one.”

“The One is present to all, yet not divided among them.”

“The One is nowhere and everywhere; not greater in the great nor lesser in the small.”

“The Infinite does not change; it is the same above and below.”

“A point that contains all points.”

“The primordial point (keter as a nekudah) contains the entire cosmos in undiminished fullness.”

“He is the First and the Last, the Apparent and the Hidden.”

“For you love all things that exist, and detest none of the things you have made.”

“One God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”

“God is the same one God in the angel and in the soul, in heaven and in the smallest creature.”

“Each thing, in whatever degree of reality, expresses the essence of God.”

“Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can be or be conceived without God.”

“The Great Dao flows everywhere, to the left and to the right.
All things depend on it for life, yet it does not claim ownership.
It accomplishes all, yet takes no name.”

“There is a thing confusedly formed, born before Heaven and Earth.
Silent, vast, standing alone, unchanging,
moving everywhere without exhaustion—
it may be called the Mother of all under Heaven.”

“The Dao is empty, yet in use it is never exhausted.
Deep—
the ancestor of the ten thousand things.”

“The valley-spirit never dies;
this is called the Mysterious Female.
The gate of the Mysterious Female
is the root of Heaven and Earth.”

“In ancient times, those who attained the One:
Heaven through the One became clear;
Earth through the One became steady;
spirits through the One became vital;
valleys through the One became filled;
the ten thousand things through the One were born.”

“The Dao is constant and without name.
Though the uncarved block is small,
none in the world dare make it their subject.”

“This is called the Mysterious Unity.”

Companion Missive #18 - THE MELDING OF RESENTMENT (9/9/2023)

Listen to the Recitation:

TRANSCENDING IS TRANSMUTING
Not escaping; moving into
Across and from where one was:
By tapas the One breathed forth the many
The ardor of sustained attention, disciplined
Truthfulness reveals the real, interiorization
Of the senses, concentrating life-energy —
Devotion magnified until it becomes heat.
We end what must be ended, mute the mutable
Until the longing is transformed into presence
And the sense becomes the perceived
Durable, not austere — transcendence moves
The fox into view. The scarred ear, chipped
Becomes Brahman, the sign of an inner radiance.
Transpondence despondents, a cluster of stars
Yielded from a slight imbalance, a preference
To matter over antimatter. Nothing grand
But enough, to see and feel one’s way
Touching and fumbling the damp stone walls
Limping bravely towards a new unknown
Gaining strength, our heat begins to glow
What was heavy becomes light, and pain
Loosens its hold on our joints, allowing
Flexibility, rotation, turning — movement
Of the one into on itself and about
Three core memories, each a mourning
The contents unknown to us, mere feeling
And the heat that follows something purifying
Purified by the bend, we turn again on ourself
Tremoring the keys and strings, vibrating soul
Comes upon a mystifying, a mysterium
This hall of tall columns fanning out into the dark
Smoothly polished to a mirror curve, our likeness
Escapes us around its sides; we touch the cold wet
To feel it, as if it were real to us. The past comes
Back to us, with a ferocity of antic baring down
The surface becomes a fist, turning claw against
Soft skin, cutting into bruise — we fold the skin
Back over its red bone, softly holding
With eyes closed, we lift ourself into the day
And notice the one before us, a sweet heart
Beaming upon us. The curve of their face,
Their eyes and mouth turned up at the sides
Rough as they are smooth, polished furrows
Worn in age unseen: a certain knowledge won —
A little bit of romance and humor transmute
A lot of pain and anger. I have come to find
Time and again, this truth remains:
That romance, followed with surprising laughter
May be the only real medicine, universally applicable
In every situation transcendent, transmutative
Leading to the mutation of the moment into
Gold — ahh, yes — gold, as gold is meant to be:
The warm aftermath of a hot refinery, bending
And folding a thousand layers of harm into armor
Beautiful plates and rings and chains, purely
Wrought into splendor and adornment, the adoration
Of our self, which itself is the transcendent
And the transcended and the transcending
And the simple joy of release, the quiet ease
Without which life never happens.

The final two lines I wrestled with, changed many times. Something about them felt or sounded off to me. I also can never decide if I agree with the meaning of lines like these (however well-echoed they may be from/in places like the Bhagavad-Gita), and so tried to massage them into a framing I find more personally fashionable right now. But after a good tussle, the message was clear — go back to the beginning. Just because one is allowed a few edits every now and then doesn’t make the story a linear progression of permission. This too may be more a waltz than a marathon~ ] Received 11/9/2025 | 4:37-4:49pm

Companion Missive #17 - WELLCOME TO ~WARP SPEED~ (9/9/2023)

Listen to the Recitation:

FAMILIARITY
Is preclarity, paucity
Of milieu, the middle of between
Latent mingling in a pivot waltz
Step two three, the sparkling hint
A half memory unveiled in the dormer
Attics are basements of the mind
Where sleeps the face of the one we knew
In every life, lived and unlived
Yet and before — we look through the branches
Towards a mounting sun, as if it will carry us
From one shadowed patch to the next, but
Listen we to the midnight grackle:
Our road is overrun! Stampede of shallow
Evaporati descensus; we wake
Only to walk in the valley of dreams,
Wondering a myth into belonging
Do not stop; move in spirals to each new edge
For the edge becomes the center
And each center, a new edge —
What is it about you? Have we met?
The mettle of you is a memory to me
I cannot reach — but I find
In every interruption a certainty
Here too, the face shines forth:
I smile, and laugh. The culmination turns
To threshold, bearing more trials
I follow the trail to certain doom, giddy
For that familiar tinge on the edge of feeling
Before falling into the reflection,
Before the adoration became ill
Possessive of every good virtue
Themselves a bell-ringing, I endorse
The dutiful dilution, attaching contradiction
To paradox, the seat on which truth sits
Down they tip, over into before: oblivion
A joy for the knowers, who otherwise suffer
Extremely, in each day live — to reach
New heights, new shallows, new depths
Of what? We have felt untold times
What each time is a marvel to be held in
Holding onto that precious fleet of fawn
Chasing, we never catch, are led
To a place of recognition, even more
Familiar to me, to you, to us in this hour
Of four-footed terror, an unexpected amazing
Relishes in our embrace, too soon released
The pain too is precious, the anguish
Of someone we love more than anything
Before we even meet them,
For we have already met them —
And when all is done, we shall not be separate
From that in which we all reside
But which resides not fully in us.

Companion Missive #16 - VISION: THE BURNING TOWER AND THE CLEARING (8/16/2023)

Listen to the Recitation:

EXCITING EXCRUCIATION
Something is changing, in the pain
Dwelling between agonies — a verisimilitude
Lurking like wishing or like hope
A blanket wrapped in the exchange
Between two storied enemies locked
In casual conversation, diplomatic immunity
While the world falls apart and species emurge
Urgent delicacies imbalanced fraught
For three or four armies moving from afar
Arms marching to the battlefield
All singing their favorite tunes
Revealed ancestral hymns to the glory
Of the day, blood will be shed, more
Pleas for peace will be shed, more
Innocence will fall before the boot
A moon kissed with ten hundred generations
Scattered plots to the winds, of all directions
Coming to center, to the meeting point node
Hill at the heart of it — it being the point
Which means both nothing and everything
To every sect. Pray to the gods we know
Who receive our anger, wrath, resentment
As nourishment, as worshipful — offer
The worst of your feelings to them
The highest most, imperishable holding
Scream and cry and bleed and howl
Direct all of it to the abstract known unknown;
Relinquish the responsibility from your fellow
Incarnates: let them feel your love
Give them compassion and grace. Become
The organ of grace. The organ of extension.
Push yourself to the limit of your kindness
And then, further — beyond what is possible
Into the ideal, idealized bodies slamming
Gently into one another, with fervor abandon
A countless thrill — how much can outpour
Into the bucket of a billion shrill hands
As the pain becomes something else
And the whispering beneath the pain
Leads at once to the feral precipice
Of a newly unperiled reknown.

Companion Missive #15 - LULLS IN LABYRINTHS (8/25/2023)

Listen to the Recitation:

WOODS OF GOLD
How do you tell your story?
Where do you start, and where
Do you end? Old god of gold —
A rich ripe bore borrows time
From the tock of a town;
I surge against the turning
And relish my own reliquary:
Once upon a bounding
Stitched up book, wounds taut
With a plum pudding plated
Metals rolled over cavities
Making hollow shellish links
Connected one by one, to another
This green leaf turns yellow
Then orange, then red, then brown
Mottled down to the woods floor
Slick with sickness, makes the pattern
No less beautiful — even more so
Colors uneven, veins punctured
Broken chains, storied sensates
Satiation does not dwell in the making
Of another tired and trying text
Oozing beauty in the perplexion
Complexity in the suspension
Of belief, I cannot say — why we try
To singe a fern’s curl to its fellow
Menace hands off the rails
Found beneath tiled subfloors, hidden
Layers built over older civilizations
Which lost decay to grandeur, glory-
Built fountains to monuments
In myths unspun, a maze of roots
Ornamented towards a goal, toward
A center, an exit, a mosaic
With bulls and eagles and angels and men:
The twin serpent changes one body
To another, to live a new life, without loss
Of memory from contents to containing
The dread fell beast with horns curled
Lowers its head to kiss the wet ground —
So long in drought, its creekbeds bare,
Now full and flush with the waters of life.

Companion Missive #14 - FORGIVANCES FORGRIEVANCES (8/14/2023)

Listen to the Recitation:

VANISHED
The hour on a dark burr
Come again, to me
The black sun rises
With a peach heavy laden
Torn from skin to a lion’s tooth
Grin of calabass, a purjury’s
Flame, flicker alight
Perishing thought fell tor
Turous tending, find
A stone parapet from outlook
Castle kept orders under din
Herald of banshee, cries
For the deep, of the depths
Poem cajole the sunstreaked
Sisyphus who yearns for the eagle
To come and tear his own feet
Away their course, calloused
Paddock bare of groundcover
Green thyme and purple sage
A billowed cloak takes the wind
And folds the minute in two
The decade in ten, nigh!
The clock counts again the bed’s
Deterring deign, a dazzled star
Sent careening to the nether
Ground of being, I care for you
And kiss your tress, smooth
Your folds of ball gown wrinkling
Prow of destine, I bow to you
Unthinking, for the thought would not
Dare to dissolve before the face
Feral queen of sumpt and sour
The reaches cannot touch you
As you bend away in the moment

Companion Missive #13 - DIFFERENTIAL REVERENCE (8/3/2023)

Listen to the Recitation:

TEARS WATER SEEDS
We plant without realizing
Grief weaves a new world
Stretched thin to spread out
As the furthest reaches
Touch the nearest root
Sending living breath into soil
The electric pulse, vibrant
Cored apple coiling about
The heart tree, sky-high
Branching between worlds
A limping horse soars
With each new October bloom
From a heated earth,
Something crying comes forth
And lets what was sown
Some time ago, now
Sprout, and grow, and show

Companion Missive #12 - (UN)CONSCIOUS HEART (7/16/2023)

Listen to the Recitation:

DEBASEMENT
The ground has fallen out
From under us, a way further down
To what lies beneath the basement:
Something very dark, bottomless
Void place — suspended falling
No wind, no frame of reference
Nothing in reach, size becomes moot
Temperature, texture, tone —
Escaping beyond; all these self-proclaimed
Arahants, demeaning their devotees
A respected elder says, do not follow bliss;
Pursue suffering. As much suffering as possible!
Their comrades nod solemnly, moaning
In agreement, or — is it acquiescence
Which debases us so, that the fire seems dim
Within. The fire is not dim, nor can it dim;
You need not stoke it, but see it
Live in remembrance of the flame
Which lit up the world
And enveloped the darkness of that place
Until the fire united with it
And gave birth to you.