Events on A Well-Lit-Path

la pau

Thu, 05 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I know my friends and neighbors to be peace-loving, cooperative citizens, and I know the long heritage of their culture enjoys many more days of enlightened rule than oppression. I know that the history of power in Madrid cannot very easily defend their own record in this regard, and that a disinterest in real discussion has led to this pass.

While I hope to read and understand better the Catalan motives for secession – more lofty than “mine is mine” finances, though probably that factors in as well – I prefer a diplomatic solution, brokered by disinterested third parties (should those exist), than a push toward bloodshed.

who's coming?

Wed, 04 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday’s general strike concluded without further agression – thank you to whomever had sense enough to cool the hotter heads in the room. Now begins the media battle, and probably some sort of legal battle.

To make sense of the right-wing response from Madrid (“Mine! Mine!”): at 20% of the Spanish GDP, Catalunya leaving the federation would be a bigger economic blow to the Iberian peninsula than if California, Oregon and Washington State joined to declare their independence, becoming some glistening, insane, ephemeral digitocracy, poised to shake into the sea with San Andreas’ next rumble. Catalunya has a history as an independent State, so a “bipartisan” Congress’ hard-line response would have the greater force of law.

Martial Law?

Tue, 03 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Since we have seen this same tired play performed over and over again throughout history, we actually don’t need to pick up the script to know what happens next.

Since an army has been sent, there will be violence.

The violence will not originate with the people who are gathering without arms. It will be provoked by the invading military, orchestrated, or barring success is creating a fight, invented.

The people who are marching will defend themselves as best they can from the aggression, which will then be labeled “insurrection” or “coup d’etat” (the latter has already been used).

democràcia!

Mon, 02 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

[audio mp3=“http://well-lit-path.thewaywest.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/October-2.mp3"][/audio]

pots and pans

Sun, 01 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

For the past week leading up to Catalunya’s self-declared referendum on independence – fervently contested as unconstitutional by the standing Spanish government in Madrid; equally or more fervently proposed as the only remaining action possible within an unjust and unresponsive regime – the people of the city have stood at 10 pm outside their apartments, on balconies or in windows or in the street, with large pots and pans and wooden mallets. For five minutes they struck those pans like bells, decentralized but united, is support of their right to decide.

days that frame an age

Mon, 08 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Four-and-one-half years ago I sat on a hill in southern Vermont with my daughter Bela. I had a check in my hand to the Phillips Exeter Academy, where she had been accepted with nearly a full-ride scholarship into their “Leader-Maker” high school program. A gateway to the best schools, PEA promised amazing education, discussion-based study, and intense, laser-focused learning.

She had pretty much decided, though there were some misgivings. Then she had a meeting with her favorite Montessori teacher, who heard “Philips Exeter”, and said “Have you ever thought of the Putney School? The environment there might fit you better.”

good-bye

Mon, 25 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I am not finding new music lately – the guitar gathered weather-checks and dust in Newburyport, while Cata and I made a home in Barcelona – but I am finding old emotions, well worn like a favorite coat (frayed hem, splitting seam, threadbare around the collar), that in the same moment keeps me warm and lets in the chill.

Friday I arrived at our annual dance weekend, and sat in a circle with a hundred friends, for the eighth or ninth or tenth time: here were the easy smiles, the welcoming hugs, and lives I have come to know through stories shared (or shared stories). Always comforting, a great community.

1 – Between

Sun, 25 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

- 5 -

And then the ramp was pulled up and the loading doors of the truck were closed; closed, too, the door of the storage unit, now emptied of its cargo; and years of living lurched away behind that burp of diesel, as though I had never owned it, and it had never laid claim to me.

I assume these trinkets and kitchen kitsch and bedroom comforts will join us again, that side of the Atlantic, but who knows? There are no guarantees, and all shapes and sizes of pirate. Maybe we can begin again… again. I half desire it.

Two

Sat, 24 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The broad sheet billows and embraces wind The wind escorts the voyage out to sea

The shoreline spies the receding craft: Why have you gone away from me?

The passengers seek the shrinking coast: Why have you gone away from me?

As the racing stars and their distant masses Faintly lighting the slumbering planet

Reflect the infinite choreography: Why have you gone away from me?

Porto Alegre, Brazil – December, 1990

4 – The Curvature of Hope

Fri, 23 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

As it leaves your hand, the trajectory of a skipping stone makes a shallow arc, a rising line that perfectly describes the curvature of hope. Gravity takes charge immediately you relinquish control, as you knew it would, as you have learned it does: instead of despair for what is certain, enjoyment comes in testing your command of grade-school ballistics, no attempt to defeat the pull of time but to dance with it, reach your hand beyond a hands’ reach with it, and help that stone be less of a stone for just a little while.

6 – Sliding into Home

Tue, 20 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The image of an 1800s ballplayer from the NAABP rounding the bags came to the “mind’s eye” last night. The throw is coming to the plate, horribly accurate, from way out in right field - that guy’s got an arm! - so the runner, well advanced down the third base line, hits the dirt to avoid the throw. There is a cloud of dust near home plate. It’s as close as it gets: did the catcher make the play? Did the runner score?

10 – Harvest

Fri, 16 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

There’s a feeling that accompanies the creative impulse, whether it is writing, or singing, or painting (if I painted, I imagine it would feel the same) or carving or cooking…

It seems as though it would be, or should be, an expressive sort of energy, an outflowing, but in fact I experience it as almost the opposite: a deep listening, an electric stillness: what will you whisper to me? You have to be very quiet to hear.

11 – Momentum

Thu, 15 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

There is a certain rapid-fire, reactionary mindset at play during times of great change. The intransigence of weight at velocity: the more mass in is motion, the less its ability to change direction.

(Aside. Since everything is in everything else, use anything as a metaphorical lens to make big things smaller, and small things bigger. When considering mass in motion, please apply this lens to our notional [sic] politics, corporate belligerence, world-as-our-battleground stance. Of course it will fall apart. It is a train that can’t escape the track, can’t escape its wreck, no matter how gradually its approach.)

12 - Minor Miracles

Thu, 15 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

12 Minor Miracles

The commuter train pulls away from the platform, and before we roll out under what will eventually be winter-leaden skies, we first creep along beneath highway overpass, suspension bridges, massive concrete tunnels-not-tunnels, that form a pragmatic monument to decades of construction.

(They are monument to equally massive amounts of collusion and kickback, of course: major works seem to be twin brother to power grabs and inelegant behavior.)

13 - Dragonskin

Tue, 13 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

You may have read the children’s story of a perfectly beastly boy who because disoriented, wandered into a cave, fell into an enchanted sleep, and turned into a dragon. An unpleasant combination of events.

Upon waking, he frightened himself nearly out of his wits: the left hand moved, a claw!, the right hand moved, another! So, he was surrounded by a boy-eating creature. He ran – scuttled in fact – out of the cave and to a pool of water, which reflected his true nature.

16 - The Freedom of Limitations

Sat, 10 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I think it was my son who recently asked: “How do you get enough food if you just bike to the grocery store? It must get pretty dull making double round-trips every time you need to eat…”

This was a reasonable assessment: the side-bags, when empty, flatten to almost nothing, like deflated balloons. And even filled, we are talking about two to three plastic grocery bags of goods. How long can that last you, before you’re on your bike again, chasing down the evening meal?

17 - Deconstruction

Fri, 09 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

It’s difficult to see how much the sense of self is tied to surroundings, until of course you begin the process of departure, whether it’s a trip, or travel, or a birth or a death. Family and friends most viscerally part of your stone and sinew; but structures and walkways, weather and seasons, even the most subtle of daily habits are all you, all me.

“The Moment Before Knowing” by Brooke @ DeviantArt.com

Tiger is Tiger

Wed, 28 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Muscular I took the tiger’s tail in hand As his stripe in terrible elegance flashed Into view, in the sun, in the tall, tall grass Me at my prime – just past my prime – and confident I owned the gift of taming still…

But still

Tiger is tiger, and man is man And man, I did the best deluded can ‘Til he ran away and away he ran. I looked around to reassure me, friends Had each eluded the talon’s tear

another loss

Sat, 14 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Last night the wind picked up and, as I gently dropped into sleep, it not so gently opened its mouth and blew and blew and blew through the branches-spread-wide summer forest dark.

This morning, the alarm woke me. Wait: was it the alarm? Dream-dazed. It sounded like an alarm. No, it wasn’t the alarm. It was further away, it was down the stairs, it was the phone ringing.

Sign; groan; whispered curse; first thoughts. Who calls at – what time was it – 7 a.m. on a Saturday? The phone stops ringing. The body relaxes. Long, slow breath, like a yawn but not a yawn. Imagine an hour’s more sleep.

Burial and baptism

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Two months since I last set word to the page. Life is not lived in words, but on the path where words are collected; where, if we speak of what we have seen, the story is written either in the heart and mind of the listener, or in the eye and inner sense of the reader. Sometimes I miss my time with the page, as the story is unfolding. There is a quietness you find in a record, as though counting and recounting your steps you are affirming “Yes, I have wandered here; I have wandered there.” In the telling there is acceptance of all that had gone before, the decisions made wise and unwise, the responses given well-considered or misspoken; whatever had been done was done with the best attempt that could be made at it. And the results…? We humans cast a hopeful eye to health that never ends, but historical forces and our own flagging powers teach us better. Today’s success must stand for everything: tomorrow’s challenge will face a new self, amen.

Earth-You-Sky

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Fri-Sun., Aug. 22-24 Journey as Destination Earth-You-Sky (B3B) Bring yoga and awareness practices out of the studio and into the woods for a third-eye-opening weekend in the Whites. Crawford Notch car-camp promises great food, good company, and intermediate hikes to surrounding peaks; higher altitudes mean good phys. cond. is important. Cost of $55 includes 2 nights, dinn & bfst. Info about JAD series or to reg. contact L Mark Schultz.