The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.   more »

streaming algorithmic apparitions in a fractal Elysium
perish in the effluvium of electric oblation,
escaping the tyranny of genetics and memory,
for the magnetic field of the circuit,
for the immortal promise of the splice,

prosthetic bodies hollowed out in binary extracts,
thought traces etched in silicon,
sentient forms that vanish in a carbon dusk,
archiving an incarnation of deciphered flesh;
a zero/one existence that reconfigures the body
for desiring at the speed of light,
that remaps identity on to a frictionless destining of species
consecrating its virtuality while under cosmic erasure
without even a mote of dust to impart a corpuscular existence

with dense sea stratus shrouds after a dark night of condensation
gray fractus lifting slowly into coral sunrise;
shedding nuclei of terrestrial ash,
for an elemental omega point of air
a misty alphabet dissipating in heat radiance of incandescent star
evaporating dreams before apprehension stirs
once a soul awoke in a mantle urn,
to churn molten rock, spark consciousness in clay,
sculpt magma into obsidian blade and diamond body,
turn cytoplasm of orb into cell, skin, spasm
fire into torment, tapas, ecstasy

before the flip transfiguration was imagined
a metamorphosis of matter, ether, spirit,
now the alchemical anatomy edges its tropism
along the ph-gradient of the proto-cell,
across a firmament of code
weightless it bends toward counterfeit territories
to house its disappearance
   more »

Playground Meditation

Its as if at twilight you’ve stepped onto a Fellini set
halos of golden light illumine miniature rainbows
refracting in the surreal slow motion steps of old men,
hunched over shadows creeping silently through clammy air;
a heat index like day time in Roma, but in this part of India,
a waxing monsoon moon has just begun to rise,

Grey beards who resist mortality, who revolt against nature,
who spit at the mugginess, make a beeline through the ardent nightfall,
piercing mist and mirages; sweating profusely,
old men whose nirvana is tightly bound to a body,
who run at a pace at which the tortoise overtook the hare,
who quiver breathlessly for the ecstasy of the finish line,
hoping to outrun death itself by making an offering to the impossible,

When they were younger the congregation gathered here
under the watchful gaze of its wise guardian, a Mother,
whose eyes wandered over this ochre playground
with the vigilance of a white-tale hawk, who; when their nest is approached
are airborne in a flash, observing swiftly the predator from above;
her protection was meted out through swift occult action,
intruders kept under surveillance, screech owls stopped from unfurling threats,
foreign worlds prevented from encroaching on the games of sun-eyed children

Once simple children who paraded lockstep over this playground sanctuary,
one arm over chest another outstretched before them
athletically pledging allegiance to the goddess nation,
but this still sticky evening a community of aging inmates file in for meditation,
initiates who long ago bargained away chance in the world, for a destiny here,
trading surrender for shelter, thought for a regiment of gymnastics and devotion,

After their ritual exercises they come here to sit and stare intensely inward
into an inner sarcophagus mind that houses the guru’s samadhi
but, the matriarch is no longer present,
her organ music replaced by the scratch of a distant analog machine,
darshan replaced by simulation, what remains is an empty chair,
a simulacra of enlightenment, a placeholder for a vacant avatar    more »

As SCIY charts its post human destiny, whatever that..maybe?...
Here is what my long strange trip reminiscences of it will be,in a sort of a triptych with poems, ...

Balloon Boy

Even before you awoke you knew the weather would be calm,
that take off was now imminent, across autumn’s parallax horizon
your heart started to race the dark fractured clouds streaming above;
when the squalls subsided before dawn a black hole appeared
within an atom of the storm, at that moment you knew that peak experience
could be found within a wormhole of bliss,

once a singularity became your destiny
you were certain that this last trip would be ecstatic,
like us all, you had caught a glimpse of danger,
a silver saucer, plywood bow pitched upward, riding gusts, gleaming in the sun,
streaking across open Colorado skies, a small boy huddled in darkness within.
clutching for a distant mother, dangling from a metallic balloon,

seeing the spectacle unfold, after a year of fending off demons,
you could imagine what it would be like to be that child inside;
that night you dreamed that you were six years old and you were learning to fly,
the threatening shadows of cumulonimbus whose anvils
had towered above you receded with the planet below,
as you reached escape velocity, you slept silently

Helium: atomic number: 2 atomic symbol: He
melting point: -272C @26 a.t.m boiling point: - 268.6 C near absolute 0
used in cryogenic research, expands greatly at room temperature
used for pressuring liquid fuel on Apollo lunar missions,
used to fill balloons, available at Wal-Mart in the party decorations section,
if asked; it could be used for a party you’ll be giving for your birthday,

fix the tube inside the plastic bag, pre-set the flow rate,
get comfortable, a cup of warm tea, soft lights and music,
turn the regulator on, hold the bag so it inflates,
place it loosely over head, secure the string so it does not float away,
keep the house as warm as you’d like,... relax,....
sleep,....... fall silently into azure sky    more »

Bachelard was a philosopher/poet of the imagination and poetic reverie. While his works on poetics and phenomenology are classics of the genre, the concepts he developed in the philosophy of science such as the epistemological rupture were taken up and developed both by Thomas Kuhn and Michel Foucault

* A man is a man to the extent that he is a superman. A man should be defined by the sum of those tendencies which impel him to surpass the human condition..... Gaston Bachelard...   more »

June 16th 1904 is that faithful day in the life of Dublin marking the epochal birfurcation of narrative, given in the epiphanies of Stephen Dedalus & Leopold & Molly Bloom. The last lines of the 644 page turning story of Ulysses - a book that at times one does not read but rather, wades through - are the subject of this video; also known as the soliloquy of Molly Bloom.   more »

Grizzled shehnai ustad Ali Ahmad Hoosain laid out the cross-cultural and cross-epochal sonic landscapes along with his two sons and his tabla accompanist Subhen Chatterjee at U of California, Irvine. Prana, Kratu and Jazz commingled once more.   more »

A few last words before the election: revised and re--posted from C Theory:

The trajectory of global temperatures since the Enlightenment
is a trajectory of the catastrophic,
in 1800 some ten million tons of coal were mined annually,
as steam engines raged in Yorkshire,
when Blake was born in 1757 the atmospheric concentration
of “fixed air” was two hundred eighty ppm,
when he left his body in 1827 it had risen to two hundred eight five ppm,
in a life span of seventy years ending today CO2 would have increased
at a rate of more than fifteen times that,
that's the tipping point, that's exponential acceleration,
   more »

I met Paul Lonely last night at a friend's gathering. When I told him a bit about SCIY, he said he was an admirer of Sri Aurobindo's epic poem Savitri, and graciously offered to send me a link to his own new book of "post post-modern" poetry: Suicide Dictionary. I've been looking over his website and his work is quite impressive. E.g., see below the words of one of his many enthusiastic reviewers, the artist-musician Michael Garfield.  ~ ronjon

---

I am the voice of a generation starving for an adequate myth. Myths are the carriers and conduits of a vision - the metaphors and narratives around which we organize and accrete our understanding. Every generation has come together within a mythology, and used it to push forward into its fruition. In a way, we are nourished by our myths in return for fulfilling them.

It must be said that my generation has more mythology from which to choose than any before it. We stand before a global buffet of stories, food of all flavors, information crashing in from all sides, an unprecedented panoply of cultural richness. What we lack is an organizing directive, some way to handle all of this humanity without shrinking from its light or dissolving into incoherence at the spectacular diversity of it all. Imagine everyone in the cafe trying to force-feed you simultaneously, and you'll get the idea. In spite of our wealth of culture, we hunger for genuine, hopeful, reconstructive narratives that is, integral myths. Almost no one is telling my generation, or those to come, what to do with this orgiastic diversity of experience. Our myth has been one of dissipation, of dissolution the end of oil, the end of modernity, the end of the biosphere, the end of western hegemony, the end of science, the end of childhood. We are born into a world that has come together just in time to discover it is breaking apart.

But Paul Lonely is changing all of that. What Paul is doing for us - the generation growing up alongside the academic reconstruction of integral theory - is offering us a new mode of experiencing these truths. ... Freed from the conventional trappings of historical spiritual texts, blindingly aware of its own cultural embeddedness and laughing at it compassionately, Suicide Dictionary belongs in a thin pantheon with the paintings of Alex Grey as a message for and from our collective future. It is playful and colorful and fluid, in stark opposition to even the most inspiring theories of the world into which we walk with one eye open. That Paul has used language to communicate this utterly translinguistic vision is a testament to his cleverness his book is winking at all of us from behind the veil, like the Tao Te Ching or its formal predecessor, the Upanishads. Every page rings brightly with the cause to which he is devoted. ...   more »

Imho, this is an important article about the pluses and minuses of religion, an interview with a former nun who has had many deep experiences of what she writes. Highly recommended. ~ ronjon

Karen Armstrong is a one-woman publishing industry, the author of nearly 20 books on religion. When her breakthrough book "A History of God" appeared in 1993, this British writer quickly became known as one of the world's leading historians of spiritual matters. Her work displays a wide-ranging knowledge of religious traditions -- from the monotheistic religions to Buddhism. What's most remarkable is how she carved out this career for herself after rejecting a life in the church.

At 17, Armstrong became a Catholic nun. She left the convent after seven years of torment. "I had failed to make a gift of myself to God," she wrote in her recent memoir, "The Spiral Staircase." While she despaired over never managing to feel the presence of God, Armstrong also bristled at the restrictive life imposed by the convent, which she described in her first book, "Through the Narrow Gate." When she left in 1969, she had never heard of the Beatles or the Vietnam War, and she'd lost her faith in God. ...   more »

The following poems were penned by a new friend of mine, Rosita Wandallah, whom I met at Burning Man 2007. She's a remarkable writer, performance artist, model, dancer, actor, community leader, project coordinator, global traveler, and international service provider. -- I am honored to know her.

We are all wells of gratitude
deep, plentiful, pure
connected to the
infinite source of all

if only we would drink
more often,
replenish ourselves
with the kinetic wisdom
of the cosmos within

For what is it to live
without gratitude? ...

Poems from Oaxaca-Winter 2008, by Rosita Wandellah

   more »

Thanks to Yatanti for referring us to this site re "The Works of Rabindranath Tagore" and other sacred texts.  ~ ron
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one can sense a touch of e.e. cummings in the following ferlinghetti piece and the innocence of the song is a welcome variation from some of the Beats more indulgent themes rc

The pennycandystore beyond the El

is where I first

fell in love

with unreality

Jellybeans glowed in the semi-gloom

of that september afternoon   more »

Thanks to RY Deshpande for this wonderful link!

Audio recordings of The Mother reading Savitri, compiled by Narad.

Cavaet: Listening to these recordings could change your life ...   more »

Joseph Kent is a poet living in San Francisco and closely connected with the Cultural Integration Fellowship. Like many others, he was profoundly influenced by Haridas Chaudhuri and introduced by him into the spiritual teachings and practice of Sri Aurobindo's yoga. Joseph's poetic sensibility approaches experiences of the everyday world in a mystic vein. The poems presented here cover a gamut of reflections ranging from meditations on nature to intimations of the supramental future and inward yogic illuminations.   more »