Language of the heart / Not only above us but all around our beautiful earth / Night falling from the sky (one of Bob's koans)

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Many of Bob Dylan's songs remind me of the quilts that were made during the days of the Underground Railroad, in that within the song I find messages that have guided me toward freedom.

Look out across the fields, see me returning
Smoke is in your eye, you draw a smile
From the fireplace where my letters to you are burning
You’ve had time to think about it for a while

Well, I’ve walked two hundred miles, now look me over
It’s the end of the chase and the moon is high
It won’t matter who loves who
You’ll love me or I’ll love you
When the night comes falling from the sky

I can see through your walls and I know you’re hurting
Sorrow covers you up like a cape
Only yesterday I know that you’ve been flirting
With disaster that you managed to escape

I can’t provide for you no easy answers
Who are you that I should have to lie?
You’ll know all about it, love
It’ll fit you like a glove
When the night comes falling from the sky

I can hear your trembling heart beat like a river
You must have been protecting someone last time I called.
I’ve never asked you for nothing you couldn’t deliver
I’ve never asked you to set yourself up for a fall

I saw thousands who could have overcome the darkness
For the love of a lousy buck, I’ve watched them die
Stick around, baby, we’re not through
Don’t look for me, I’ll see you
When the night comes falling from the sky

In your teardrops, I can see my own reflection
It was on the northern border of Texas where I crossed the line
I don’t want to be a fool starving for affection
I don’t want to drown in someone else’s wine

For all eternity I think I will remember
That icy wind that’s howling in your eye
You will seek me and you’ll find me
In the wasteland of your mind
When the night comes falling from the sky

Well, I sent you my feelings in a letter
But you were gambling for support
This time tomorrow I’ll know you better
When my memory is not so short

This time I’m asking for freedom
Freedom from a world which you deny
And you’ll give it to me now
I’ll take it anyhow
When the night comes falling from the sky

Copyright © 1985 by Special Rider Music

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Light 

Tall Tales / Stories That Could Be True / "... the circus is in town ...) / All the light

We phantoms are assembled at the end of the Rolling Thunder tour.

We started out trying to recover America.

We discovered a certain amount of truth about ourselves.

Old friends who thought their loves had been lost were able to get together and, uh, face each other eye to eye and sing over an electrical microphone to please the desires of myriad young yearners who had been seeking some kind of union and community and saw therein an image of that community.

…

You who saw it all or saw flashes or fragments, take from us some example, try and get yourselves together, clean up your act, find your community, pick up on some kind of redemption of your own consciousness, become more mindful of your own friends, your own work, your own proper meditation, your own proper art, your own beauty. Go out and make it for your own eternity.

(am's note: Allen Ginsberg is shown speaking these words at the end of the film.  He then bows in the Buddhist manner)

Click to read this:

Dylan is confronting us with the difference between the stated idea of America and the present reality of it, in the process asking why, after 200 years, we still haven’t gotten our shit together. The question stands.

(am's note:  Now, in 2019, it's 243 years since 1776. My income doesn't allow for me to subscribe to Netflix.  I am grateful to a friend who made it possible for me to watch "Rolling Thunder Revue:  A Bob Dylan Story")

A Ritual to Read to Each Other

BY William E. Stafford

If you don't know the kind of person I am

and I don't know the kind of person you are

a pattern that others made may prevail in the world

and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,

a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break

sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood

storming out to play through the broken dike.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,

but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty

to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,

a remote important region in all who talk:

though we could fool each other, we should consider—

lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;

the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —

should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

A view of our beautiful earth and our beautiful sky from my porch, and then there is:

"All The Light We Cannot See." 

"... the long light after time."

Neil Gaiman reads Ursula K. Le Guin's ode to timelessness to his 100-year-old cousin from Maria Popova on Vimeo.

HOW IT SEEMS TO ME
by Ursula K. Le Guin

In the vast abyss before time, self
is not, and soul commingles
with mist, and rock, and light. In time,
soul brings the misty self to be.
Then slow time hardens self to stone
while ever lightening the soul,
till soul can loose its hold of self
and both are free and can return
to vastness and dissolve in light,
the long light after time.