Media on A Well-Lit-Path

The Map of the World - II

Thu, 19 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The lines connecting this landmark to that begin to fill in. I am the spider who, having cast a first thread into the wind, having that thread carried by the wind to a neighboring tree limb or ledge, adds with patience effort those radial spokes that construct his web. Then the outward spiral begins, and the zig-zag connection of this strand to that. Welcome to my lair! (don’t get stuck)

Canção Amiga

Sun, 15 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The year is 1990, and I am standing in a field in Glencoe, Minnesota. The horizon is wide here; the trees that rush from the east to greet the Mighty Mississippi seem hesitant to venture far from her safe waters, into the wide, wide prairies, and huddle here and there around farmsteads, brought two or three generations ago by the sodbusters who begged shelter from the merciless Alberta winds, even partially, even for a moment, that sped unimpeded from the Rockies to the Great Lakes.

A song for sailing

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

Multi-instrumentalists Round Mountain deserve more visibility. What fine music, with references and calls out to all parts of the world. It is amazing how much two brothers can do with what they inherently possess.

This track from their album The Goat has as many faces of travel in it as do my next few days – acknowledging their authorship and musicianship, here’s St. Joseph, for your listening enjoyment:

St. Joseph - Robbie and Char Rothschild

Looking for Angels

Mon, 05 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

An indeterminate date before the turn of the millennium: we both live on our own by now, but find ourselves together that night (a holiday? a vacation from school?) in the basement of my parents’ last family-sized house: the one down the hill from the church, whose grand oaks shaded the back lot until wilt took every one; across the road from a square mile of meadow and marsh, where we would walk our errant husky, waiting an hour until she was ready to return home; a modern design for the pastor and the nurse, dark brown panels accented beautifully (almost nordically) by three graceful birch near the front door.

Os sinos da manhã

Mon, 05 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

What is the source of songs? I would think it arrives from somewhere deep within, and is related to your birth, your education, your mother tongue. In short: your music begins with your roots. I would think that.

But then, a song like this arrives. We lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, far from the Midwestern farms and towns and kindnesses and communities, and further from the complicated, vital Brazilian noises from the south of that country. Isabela was just of school age, Nicolas a few years her senior. We walked to their classes each morning.

Eastern Window

Wed, 21 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Every day I want to write a poem to you but every day I swallow my song

then every day a small bird rests and every day a shaft of sunlight brightens him why not be alive? and right now? every day he takes a little breath there at the height of the eastern window and every day my song is in his voice and your voice is in my song

collision

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

There are points in the career of an artist, whatever his or her art, where the collision of beautiful forces – the fluency of artistic technique, the fullness of life experience, the vibrancy of physical form, and the collaboration with artistic equals – like the splitting of atoms, crash together to release pure and nearly-perfect light.

It is the brilliance of beginnings. No: it is the brilliance of what follows just after, when the uncertainty of a beginning falls away, and there is a comfortable happiness and ease in creating something together. As an audience for that art, you hope that as your favorite performers mature their skill increases, their stamina holds out, and beauty continues to flow from their hands or mouths or minds: like Joni Mitchell or Paul Simon; like the best works of Woody Allen; like Bob Dylan or Georgia O’Keefe, like the dancers and composers and writers and painters that have decorated your generation.

the day I went away

Fri, 24 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Caetano Veloso is one of the founders of the Tropicália movement in 70s Brazil, a great songwriter, an amazing voice, a remarkable and unique spirit. This early song shares traces of the rural roots of that country, and for me at least reflects the generational and geographic distances between the small-town “campo” families and their urban and world-hungry children.

Elis Regina was the most-loved Brazilian singer prior to her death by unnatural and self-induced causes. Check out her cover of Aguas de março by Tom Jobim, available on YouTube.

Canción de la soledad

Thu, 21 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Casi no hay quién pasa por áqui en el sábado solitario sábado de las ausencias

cuyos ángeles, de bocas cerradas posan detrás de las ventanas del piso más cercana al cielo.

Es el sábado de tu silencio. Sin tu voz, tus palabras se manifiestan hasta en las llamadas de los pájaros

para las cuales no tengo respuesta sino aproximarme más aun a la tierra: yo no sé del lenguaje de las alas.

Earth to earth

Mon, 28 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Some of the hardest physical work in recent memory is 72 hours on the Improv dance floor.

Also, the most rewarding. I haven’t built a house, or surveyed for a map, or planted a garden. But by listening listening listening I’ve followed the sprite of movement, and on her scent traced the outline of home; through repetition memorized (in the body’s threads and cords) the navigation lines I might follow to get there; and inadvertently collected in these outstretched arms so many wild foods along the way – fruit of this adventure – that I am fed.

The Book of Love

Thu, 03 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

- Thought 1 -

Spring has come as a surprise, as winter was a surprise, and the rains of the past few days have cured the branches of their buds, the leaves unfurling themselves, gladly, green skin to the warm sun that followed when the clouds fled.

Leaves whispers to me: the garden is late. I could turn the soil… but then, it would be an empty bed. With you, it would be a harvest plan. I could sow seeds… but then, only plants would come up. If you were here, there’d be fruit instead.

Choro Bandido

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

What was the greatest gift I received, through my years living in Brazil? Was it perspective on our own nation, and my place in it? Was it the sights and sounds and flavors of the Other, of another portion of our planet, one physically quite as large as the continental United States? Was it the friendships, the loves, my children born there (as if to two mothers), the great efforts, the greater successes, the greatness of the failures?

Ocean's Edge

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Ocean’s Edge - Mark Schultz

The city spread below me jeweled by the night its soft stars lit-a-million among the sleeping and awake coursed on broadening avenues like a watershed of light that pulsed and pooled and called all divers in

I descended from the western hills leaning as I traveled toward that ocean’s edge then waded into the huddled multitude dry from my mountain-far retreat

What would I find? Not wind - not silence of the mind but a certain spinning revelry a dance of hopes and veiled unveiled desire

The Line of the Tide

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Isabela has always been early.

At our favorite Italian restaurant, on the main road between Menino Deus and Cidade Baixo – the former, a lower-middle-class neighborhood where we had first lived when we arrived in the city; the latter, an area of town which was like urban foothills to the buzzing downtown peaks – Júlia and I had conspired to have a Last Dinner, a little planned celebration before the next morning’s planned arrival, via c-section, of our daughter.

fronteira

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Entre eu e eu há fronteiras que apenas o tempo cruza

e tu lado de lá esperando alguém.

Te vejo banhada na nudez da manhã escondida por fumaça por desejo revelada teu botão querendo desabrochar sem terra.

Entre tu e tu a fronteira que se cruza por abraçar a dor:

assim banhado pelo sal das lágrimas o raís abre vão na terra fecunda penetra o escuro úmido para acabar com sede.

My Mother Believes in Me

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

My mother believes in me so the odds bow more to my favor. She guards a heart she carries through life like a basket filling with flowers she doesn’t know are hers.

Love also believes in me. She holds the opening key to my houses and turns in at my door and sits on my bed and waits for my fear to grow tired. If I touched her like an heirloom glass… or as I lift bread from the oven… or as rain covers the ocean… but I have cursed my hands with the ten doubts of the Christians and often they are coarse as sand or still as basalt. Though when she sees me, she smiles.

Keep Your Heart Clean

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

If there is the sound of a bell ringing in a church
	two neighborhoods distant
even if the god of that church does not smile
	upon you
even if the bell is tolling the slow breath of a life
	being rung away
take that one pure draught into yourself
	like a sweet liquor
and keep your heart clean; the truth of bells
	will not be argued
and even the air hanging heavy with soot
	should never harm your love
nor the blankness between buildings, or stories
	of dangerous youth
or wars fought and bled dry sometime
	before your birth
what are those to draw a bleak line
	through your health?
Keep your hearts clean, so no words
	may drown them
keep them clean, almost white, bend
	in fierce weather, fly before a gale
wear the wings of angels if you need to
	stand among the clouds if you need to
let everywhere hear the sound, however small
	of your life’s ringing
	Keep Your Heart Clean - Mark Schultz

a snowflake

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000


a snowflake fell through light as light as breath depends on this our sky our night	light as the sound as a breath is caught suspended by a thread from the vault of our sky	the world waited as I waited as I watched watched as the light crystal descended from the end of our night	and the world shook! as the flake as slight as thought alit lit up vanished into heat in the light in the palm of my hand

A Snowflake - Mark Schultz

life is simple

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I would have told the secrets of my life long ago but there were none: life is simple like a house of four walls and only one door through which you enter and leave. That house braced against erosion that house weighing its foundation a long way from the sea; the house that wishes to be dismantled wishes to burn down in the night or find blood on the floor; wishes a man would enter and sleep and another man, quite different, wake and depart.

evening prayer

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Some years ago – after the months in Indonesia, after working with the small publishing house, after co-managing the restaurant; before Brazil, before children, before hi-tech consulting – I helped start a small organic vegetable farm in Glencoe, Minnesota. It was the most trying and most wonderful experience. Hours of labor in the prairie sun that at once broke my body and built it up, found me falling into bed as though stunned, waking refreshed as though called out by the fields and the birds. Distant from neighbors and from community, close to life and spirit.

Orpheus

Sat, 05 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

That’s why I sang these songs: the art of writing down my name might call up hers or, reaching the true cause of me (a reason? a meaning?), might find a home, or build one that is why I sang

In evening when light fades you feel it, or in the night where nothing shines but stars that gleam from the far end of the thinnest thread: those strands that catch the corner of your eye and rouse your sounds, widen your smile so song is woven on the melody of her curve, harmony in the curl and moisture of her lips; that is where I sang; and where our voices met we settled in, the sunlight came so every seed we planted surged and opened leaves in sweet upswelling fountain-spilling flowers, fruit, future as though I sang them into life

To Bring You Home

Sat, 08 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Then there was a little light, burned away what remained of the night colored the fields - the clarity of air - my world, unveiled then there was a sound, I turned around, there was someone coming my way…

there was, there was there was, there was

Then there was a name came so lightly to the tongue then there was a face couldn’t be erased when the day was done then there was a touch - it doesn’t take much to bring you home

my reflection in the photograph

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Several years ago I was “improving” my photo collection, which had become a wobbling tower of Kodachrome, balanced precariously and in no particular order in a hidden corner of my closet. Every time I saw it, I felt a vague intolerance; and each time I saw it, I felt that intolerance grow, until finally the intolerance was itself intolerable, and I furiously shoveled the concealing junk out of the way, and hooked those boxes and stacks out into the middle of my bedroom floor.

Rue

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

I turned to face the evening she was there her arms a circle cool November: mist the light, a fallen curtain and her hair a silken flicker turned to mask her face

all given, all received in evening’s arms we fell, we turned the shawl November’s mist to circled warmth the lightest curtain furled

til darkness fell on everything, and gave November back to us returned our names

a circle cannot end November can

Rue - Mark Schultz

certas canções

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Certas canções - Milton Nascimento

Certas canções que ouço cabem tão dentro de mim que perguntar carece como não fui eu que fiz?

Certa emoção me alcança corta-me a alma sem dor certas canções me chegam como se fosse o amor

Contos da água e do fogo cacos de vidas no chão cartas do sonho do povo é o coração do cantor

Vida e mais vida oferida chuva, outono, ou mar carvão e giz, abrigo gesto molhado no olhar

two true stories

Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Somewhere in between acquaintance and friend I asked why?, and she answered: I survived cancer.

It was some years ago, she said, a decade now without another challenge. I counted back: how young! And the thought dissolved - as some thoughts do - becoming a gentle interior rain, washing down to common ground, what is was lost, is loosing its grip, will be taken away. I was trying to remember where that exact feeling, or a feeling closely akin, had touched me before: it is aligned with beauty. It might have been the first curl and browning edge of a rose petal. It might be a spot on the stem. If there were no beauty, the sense would not be the same…

tangle

Sat, 20 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Tangle - Mark Schultz

If you could sing the wind, your voice should wear a sighing sound, as if from distant sources you had flown, and half-way through your flight your wings were weary but not yet done. Or a whistling of time through the sieve: divided into strands that strain then stream in parallel until they tangle, intertwine, and fuse together once again. What else would it seem? Is it winter round the windows moaning ancient love’s lament, a loss remembered making sadness modern, soon to be spent? Is it wind that carries moonlight lightly on its back, depositing in drops of dew the dawn that trees and flowers rush to drink?

Teacher's Back

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Under the cover of darkness, or in the blaze of mid-day, there are the brief encounters with the teacher: the real teacher. When we are young or when we are misinformed, the lessons are ignored or avoided. As though that final test could be dismissed, no thank you, I prefer not. It cannot be dismissed. Under the cover of darkness, when we are most exposed, or in the blaze of mid-day, when we least expect it, we are offered these little practice sessions. Just listen! It is Guará come back not to haunt, and neither to taunt, but to instruct.

A Word on the Wind

Thu, 24 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Tonight I was sitting in a pile of wood shavings, they fell like heavy flakes of snow as I carved away layers of beech, until I was adrift. A seated Buddha is concealed within what was originally a modest 6" block of roughcut. The Buddha’s always within… I know that… you just need the patience and the skill to find it.

Meanwhile, I almost lopped off the Buddha’s nose last week, having angled my gouge slightly too deeply along the grain, with the pressure of my desire to find Buddha, the fibers released all at once, and a large wedge of wood pulled up right at the middle way where his face might have been. Justin, a master carver and this group’s guide, said “Well… maybe the Buddha in there is smaller than you thought…”

Gota de luz

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Some words seem to be born of an inner and shared light…

For me they may arrive after the stillness of meditation; but just as often the softest and most human words are accompanied or are led by a melody. All creation is frequency, is a movement of waves, from the highest vibrations of quasars or atomic particles to the lowest throbbing of stars in their orbits.

Or, in our daily rounds, from the bluest light to the reddest, those frequencies of creation which our eyes perceive; from the whistle of a kettle or the hum of a bee to the drone of a bowed bass or the rumble of thunder, in frequencies which our ears perceive; to the cycles of ocean waves, whose interstices we hear as they crash to the sands, while their slow pulse, like the breath of the planet, moves through our bodies noticed, unnoticed; to the celestial hum of the earth spinning on its poles; to the year-long wave of a planet around its sun; to the millennial arc of a sun around our galaxy’s core, a music so slow that only the Spirit can listen, leaving ourselves to intuit from our cruder senses.

Journey Be Your Friend

Sun, 05 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Arrival follows departure and, unless you work tirelessly to avoid them, solitary travel invariably collects companions. One week at Verité Community in Auroville was in depth and breadth closer to a month, or months; so, since departure follows arrival, this leave-taking was sweeter and more heart-tugging than I would have expected from a visit of days. Imagine the hidden places our love lives, when we say goodbye to affections we nurtured for years?