A Way to the World

7/21/2019 A Way to the World

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A Way to the World

William Stafford and vocational affinity


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A Way to the World

Willam Stafford and vocational affinity

Randy Higgins


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Prelude

The earth will be going on a long timeBefore it finally freezes;Men will be on it; they will take names,Give their deeds reasons.We will be here onlyAs chemical constituents -A small franchise indeed.Right now we have lives,Corpuscles, ambitions, caresses,Like everybody had once -All the bright neige d'antan people,"Blithe Helen, white Iope, and the rest,"All the uneasy, remembered dead.

Here at the year's end, and the feastof birth, let us bring to each otherThe gifts brought once west through deserts -The precious metal of our mingled hair,The frankincense of enraptured arms and legs,The myrrth of desperate, invinicible kisses -Let us celebrate the dailyRecurrent nativity of love,The endless epiphany of our fluent selves,While the earth rolls away under usInto unknown snows and summers,Into untraveled spaces of the stars.

Lute Music, Kenneth Rextroth


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Part I . Find a Way

The Unlimited is the first-principle of things that are. which the coming-to-be of things take place, and it is threturn when they perish, by moral necessity.

Fragment of Anaximander, Philip Wheelwright, tra


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Begin in the middleibraries Labyrinths Journey

The methodical task of writing distracts me from the present state

of men. The certitude that everything has been written negates usor turns into phantoms. I know of distrcits in which the youngmen prostate themselves before books and kiss their pages in abarbarous manner, but they do not know how to decipher a singleletter. Epidemics, heretical conflicts, peregrinations which leadinevitably into banditry, have decimated the population. I believeI have mentioned the suicides, more and more frequent with theyears. Perhaps my old age and fearelessness decive me, but I suspectthat the human species - the unique species - is about to beextinquished, but the Library will endure: illum inated, solidarity,infinite, perfectly motionless.

I have just written the word "infinite." I have not interpolated thisadjective out of rhetorical habit; I say that it is not illogical to thinkthat the world is infinite. Those who judge it to be limited postulatethat in remote places the corridors and stairways and hexagons canconceivably come to an end - which is absurd. Those who imagine itto be without limit forget that the possible number of books does have a

limit. I venture to suggest this solution to the ancient problem: TheLibrary is unlimited and cyclical. If an eternal traveler were to crossit in any direction, after centuries he would see that the same volumeswere repeated in the same disorder (which, thus repeated, would bean order: the Order). My solitude is gladdened by this elegant hope.

And Minos duly paid his vows to Jove,

A hundread bulls, on landing and in the palaceHung up the spoils of war, but in his householdShame had grown big, and the hybrid monster-offspringRevealed his queen's adultery, and MinosContrived to hide his specimen in a maze,A labyrinth built by Daedalus, and artistFamous in building, who could set in stoneConfusion and conflict, and deceive the eyeWith devioius aisles and passages. As MaeanderPlays in the Phrygian fields, a doubtbul river,Flowing and looping back and sends its watersEither to source or sea, so DaedalusMade those innumerable windings wander,And hardly found his own way out again,Through the deceptive twistings of that prison.Here Minos shut the Minotaur, and fed himTwice, each nine years on tribute claimed from Athens,Blood of that city's youth. But the third tribute

Ended the rite forever, AriadneFor Thesus's sake, supplied the clue, the threadOf gold to unwind the maze which no one everhad entered and left, and Thesus too her with him,Speaking his sails for Dia, and there he left herhis loving aid, and that she be shiningIn the immortal stars, he took the chapletShe wore, and sent it spinning high, its jewelsStill visible, a heavenly constellationBetween the Kneeler and the Serpent-Holder.

Midway in the Journey of our life I found myself in a dark wood, for

the straight way was lost. Ah, how hard it is to tell what that woodwas, wild, rugged, harsh; the very thought of it renews the fear! It isso bitter that death is hardly more so. But to treat the good that Ifound it, I will tell of the other things I saw there.

I cannot rightly saw how I entered it. I was so ful l of sleep at themoment I left the true way; but when I r eached the foot of a hill, Ilooked up and saw it's shoulders alr eady clad in the rays of the planetthat leads men to aright by every path.

Then the fear was somewhat quieted that had continued in the lake ofmy heart through the night I had passed so piteously. And as he whowith laboring breath has escaped from the deep to the shore turns tolook back on the dangerous waters, so my mind which was still fleeingturned back to gaze upon pass that never left anyone alive.

... Abandon every hope, you who enter.

These words of obscure color I s aw over a portal; whereupon I said"Master, their meaning is hard for me." And he to me, as one whounderstands, "Here must all fear be left behind: here let all cowardicebe dead. We have com e to the place where I have told you you will seethe wretched people who have lost the good of intellect." And then heplaced his hand on mine, with a cheerful look from which I took comfortlook from which I took comfort, he led me among the secret things.

T he Li br ar y o f B ab el , Jor ge Lu is Bo rg es , A nd re w H ur le y, tr an s. M et am or ph os es , O vi d, R ol fe Hu mp hr ie s, tr an s. T he Di vi ne Co me dy , D ant e, Ch ar le s S . S in glet on , t ra ns .

Reading the classics again, Sometimes I find heroes,Old sages I dare not emulate, but who stood strong in aI too will not choose the easy way.

Lu Chi's, Wen Fu: The Art of Writing, Sam Hamill,


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Vocation Writing, The Discovery of a Daily Experience Finding What the World is Trying to Be, interview

The Dream the world is having about itself

includes a trace on the plains of the Oregon trail,a groove in the grass my father showed us allone day while meadowlarks were trying to tellsomething better about to happen.

I deamed of the trace to the mountains, over the hills,and there a girl who belonged whereever she was.But then my mother called us back to the car:she was afraid; she always blamed the place,the time, anything my fa ther planned.

Now both of my parents, the long line through the plain,the meadowlarks, the sky, the world's wh ole dreamremain, and I hear him say while I stand between the two,helpless, both of them part of me:"Your job is to find what the world is trying to be."

It is a whisper. You turn somewhere,

hall, street, some great event: the starsof the lights hold; your next step waits youand the firm world waits - butthere is a whisper. You always live so,a being that recieves, or partly receives, orfails to receive each moment's touch.

You see the people around you - the honorsthey bear - a crutch, a cane, eye patch,or the subtler ones, that fixed look, a turnaside, or even the brave bearing: all declareour kind, who serve on the human front and earnwhatever disguise will take them home (I sawFrank last week with his crutch de guerre.)

When the world is like this - and it is -whispers, honors or penalties discuised - no wonderart thrives like a pulse wherever civilized people,

or any people, live long enough in a place tobuild, and remember, and anticipate; for we aresuch beings as interact elaborately with whatsurrounds us. The limited actual world we successivelyovercome by fictions and by the mind's inventionsthat cannot be arbitrary (and hence do reflect the actual) , but c anexcape the actual (and hence may become art.)

I was very struck by the final line of "Vocation," the conlcuding

poem in your prizewinnig volume Traveling Trhough the Dark:"Your job is to try to find what the world is trying to be." Yourfather's advice in the poem seems as good a way as any of describingwhat you seem to be doing in the book.

Steven Pinsker

Well, the word "vocation" means a calling. It sees writing as anexploration, a discovery of process. I don't see writing as ancommunication of something already discovered as "truths" alreadyknown. Rather, I see writing as a job of experiment. It's like anydiscovery job: you don't know what's going to happen until you tryit. All life is like that. You don't make life be what you you'vedecided it ought to be. You find out what life is trying to be. AndI'm glad that you feel the book's line is picking up extra benefits. Icertainly had the feeling of going out at the end of TravelingThrough the Dark, of leaving things on an open-ended note.

William Stafford

Middle Work: Writing the Australian Crawl

When we take up an obscure dream, our first tas k is nounderstand and interpret, but to establish the context wminute care. By this I do not mean unlimited free-assobut a careful illumination of interconnected associationobjectively grouped around particular images.

The Practice of Psychotherapy, C. G. Jung

Writing the Australian Crawl, William Stafford


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Vocatus Argue Non Vocatus Vita Are you Mr. William Stafford?

1

Before life there was a world?When we take our life away, will fearbe anywhere - the cold? the wind? those noisesdarkness tries? We'll take fearwith us. It rides the vast nightcarried in our breast. Then, everywhere -nothing? - the way it was again?

2Across a desert, beyond stormsand waiting, air began to make a wing,first leather stretched on boneextended outward, shadow - quiet,then whispering feathers lapped againsteach other, and last the air itself,life taken back, a knife of nothing.

3.

There was a call one night, and a callback. It made a song. Allthe birds waited - the sound they tried fornow over, and the turning of the worldgoing on in silence. Behind what happensthere is that stillness, the wings that wait,the things to try, the wondering, the music.

God guided by hand

and it wrote"Forget my name."

World, please note -a life went by, justa life, no claims,

A stutter in the millionsof stars that pass,a voice that lulled -

A glanceand a worldand a hand.

"Are you Mr. William Stafford?'

"Yes, but . . . "

Well, it was yesterday.Sunlight used to follow my hand.And that's when the strange siren-like sound floodedover the horizon and rushed through the streets of our town.That's when sunlight came from behinda rock and began to follow my hand.

"It's for the best, my mother said - "Nothing canever be wrong for anyone truly good."So later the sun settled back and the sound

faded and was gone. All along the streets everyhouse waited, white, blue, gray: treeswere still trying to arch as far as they could.

You can't tell when strange things with meaningwill happen. I'm (still) here writing it down

just the way it was. "You don't have toprove anything," my mother said. "Just be readyfor what god sends." I listened and put my handout in the sun again. It was all easy.

Well, it was yesterday. And the sun came,whyit came.

Last Work: The Way It Is

Unless you are deeply integrated in your vocation, you able to sustain it. Only the vocation itself will be able tthrough the afflictions which will come. Your sk ills canas they have nothing to do with your vocation, which ca different source.

Birth of a Poet, William Everson

The Way It Is, William Stafford


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Part II. Follow the Way

All mass movements, slip with the greatest ease down aplane made up of large numbers. ...Resistence to the orgmass can be effected only by the man who is as well orgahis individuality as the mass itself.

The Undiscovered Self, C. G. Jung


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21 March 1961 22 March 1961 23 & 24 March 1961

Ritual of PassageThat women reading a newspaper

folds it in her handclenching the shredded dayapart, and in her head,the way her husband heldan axe handle that timeand looked old as he sprung,and cruel, an old man to her, foreign -the last day she was young.

Living by a while in the breastin the midst of the sleeping spinWhat has lost us will findus again, coming along through a dreamor staing back from a slide.

written on the reverse side

At the LectureThought lead nowhere, straight like the roads to hellor a dream the world was having about itself.

Curl your arm around your head,inside like you is around and in.the world, a head begins to think.Awful dreams are the storms there on.Storms, a dream the world has, thenwisdom below the rivers find

few spent people down the distant turn.Storm dreams world havecurl high, lull: you wait;sleep here long, then come world storm.

Big we will have all we dreamrest curl your head on your bent arm:the storm dream the world has curlshigh, lulls. Holds still, sleep longin the world storm.We watch, hold, care for all you told.Lie still, sleep long in the world storm.Rest your head on your bent arm;

let the storm curl high, lull

Heaven too, can hide.

This dream the world is having about itselfincludes the trace on the plains of the Oregon Trail,a groove in the grass my father showed us allone day while meadowlarks wre trying to tellsomething better about to happen. Over the hillI dreamed the trace to the mountains and there a girlwho belonged wherever she was. My mother calledus back to the car: afraid, wrong, but part of me,And I never have found what the world is trying to be.

Though the day. Between the two I'd stand helpless, both ofthem a part of me, and I never have etc.

Always blamed the place, the time, the plan, everything:but even as father turnedeven, my father turned and took my hand.Both of my parents, the long thru the grass,the meadowlarks, the sky, the world's whole dream

Daily writing : rise, recieve, record.

To listen to the recital of birth of the world is to becomecontemporary of the creative act par excellence, the cosmWhat is important is that man has felt the need to repcosmogony in his constructions, whatever be their natureproduction made him contemporary with the mythicof the beginning of the world and that he felt the need tto that movement, as often as possible, in order to regen

The Myth of Eternal Return, Mircea Eliade

Daily Writings, 1961, March 19 - 24, William Stafford Archives


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Draft Copy Documentary Copy Published Poem

Vocation: Writer

This dream the world is having about itselfincludes a trace on the plains of the Oregon trail,a groove in the grass my father showed us allone day while meadowlarks were tyring to tellsomething better about to happen.

I dreamed the trace to the mountains, over the hills,and there a girl who belonged whereever she was.But then my mother called us back to the car;and she was afraid; she always blamed the place,the time, everything my father planned.

He turned, he took my hand through the day to her.Now both of my parents, the long line through the grass,the meadowlarks, the sky, the world's wh ole dreamremain, and I hear him say while between the two I stand,Helpless, both of them part of me.

"Your job is to find what the world is trying to be."

Vocation

The dream the world is having about itselfincludes a trace on the plains of the Oregon trail,a groove in the grass my father showed us allone day while meadowlarks were trying to tellsomething better about to happen.

I dreamed the trace to the mountains, over the hills,and there a girl who belonged wherever she was.But then my mother called us back to the car:she was afraid; she always blamed the place,the time, anything my father planned.

Now both of my parent, the long line though the plain,the meadowlarks, the sky, the world's whole dreamremain, and I hear them say w hile I stand between the two,helpless, both of them part of me.

"Your job is to find what the world is trying to be."

Published in Poetry in October 1961, accepted on the firstsubmitted, published six months after first written

First published in book 1962 Traveling through the dark

again in

1977 Stories that could be true1978 Writing the Australian Crawl,and the posthoumus 1999 The Way it is.

Editing Poems: revise in order to retain the rec ieved

The formation of loci is the greatest importance, for thecan be used again and again for rembembering differenimages which we have placed on them for remembering

fade and are effaced when we make no further use of thremain in the memory and can be used again by placinimages for another set of material. The loci are like waremain when what is written on them has been effacedto be written on again.

The Art of Memory, Frances A. Yates

Draft Copy, Vocation, William Stafford Archives Document Copy, Vocation, William Stafford Archives Traveling Through the Dark, William Stafford


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Front Cover Proposed additional poems Table of Contents

On 25 October 1960, the year ofWest of Your City'sappearance,Stafford submitted to the University of Indiana Press a newmanuscript of sixty-one poem arranged in three sections, calledHow To Cross a Valley.

One 27 December 1960, Stafford responded to a request fromHarper & Row with another collection of poems calledACollection of Poems.

Between November 1962 and February 1962, Stafford combined thetwo collections into one called Traveling through the Dark. Harper& Row agreed to publish stating, "they were serious to take one a poetwho what been widely published in all the approved periodicals and isgaining gratifying recognition here and there. His strong sense ofbelongings to a particular countryside, his precise unaffected, unforcedlanguage make his poetry pleasing in the way Frost is pleasing."

On 22 February 1962, Stafford including six poems written since thebeginning of negotiations with Harper,Vocationwas one of them.

On April 3, 1962, H arper's responded saying there was only roomfor three of the six poems and because of the book design, they wouldbe placed at the end of each section. Stafford agreed with the positioningof these poems, which alter the final tone of ea ch section, most notablythe last, whereVocationprovides a tender, forward-looking conclusionto the book - "Your job is to find what the w orld is tyring to be."

Traveling Through the Dark, was awarded the National BookAward. The judges were Rolfe Humphries, Henry Rago and ReedWhittemore. The field of finalist was strong: Besides Stafford, thejudges considered books by Robert Creeley, Donald F. Drummond,Robert Frost, Kenneth Koch, Howard Nemerov, Winfield T. Scott,Anne Sexton and William Carlos Williams.

The judge's citation in praise of Traveling Through the Dark reads:"William Stafford's poem's are clean, direct, and whole. Th ey are bothtough and gentle; their music also the value of silence."

The prize was awarded March 12, 1963, in a newly built TimesSquare hotel designed by Morris Lapidus. Following a keynote speechby J. Robert Oppenheimer, Stafford accepted the award for poetry withthe concluding remarks - "Out of the wilderness of possiblity comes avine without a name."

After the ceremony, Stafford returned home. He french-folded theover-sized award and filed it away.

Published Books: share what is received.

Craftsmanship should apply to all of life, and since its cis the work itself - the very opposite of the purpose Amercorporate consumerism - those genuinely committed tomonastic option need to stay out of the public eye; to dowork quietly, and deliberately avoid media attention.

The Twlight of American Culture, Morris Berman

Put Together, Traveling Through the Dark, William Stafford Archives

From, William Stafford Studies Number 1, William Stafford andHis First Publishers:The Making ofWest of Your City and TravelingThrough the Dark, Vincent Wixon & Paul Merchant


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Part III. Endure the Way

When evening comes, I return to my home, and I go inand on the threshold, I take off my everyday clothes, wcovered with mud and mire, and I put on regal a nd cudressed in a more appropriate ma nner I enter into the aof ancient men and are welcomed by them kindly, and the food that alone is mine, and for which I was born; anot ashamed to speak to them, to ask them the reasons fand they, in their humanity, answer me; and for four hboredom, I dismiss every affliction, I no longer fear povtremble at the thought of death: I become completely pa

Letter to Francesco Vettori in Rome, Niccolo Machiav


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The Soul selects her own Society -Then - shuts the Door -To her divine Majority -Present no more -

Unmoved - she notes the Chariots - pausing -At her low Gate -Unmoved - an Emperor be kneelingUpon her Mat -

I've known her - from an ample nation -Choose One -Then - close the Valves of her attention -Like Stone -

Emily Dickinson, 1862

Embrace affectionate affinityrossing Kansas The Rescued Year Back Home

Document Copy, Crossing Kansas, William Stafford Archives Document Copy, The Rescued Year, William Stafford Archives Document Copy, Coming Home, William Stafford Archives


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A poem is a poet's melancholy at his lack of priority. Tto have begotten oneself is not the cause of the poem, forarise out of the illusion of freedom, out of a sense of priopossible. But the poem - unlike the mind in creation - thing, and as such is an ach eived anxiety.

The Anxiety of Influence, Harold Bloom

Manage anexity of fflictionable of Contents Prologue Walking the Wilderness

Put Together, The Rescued Year, William Stafford Archives


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As images of "human nature" become more problematincreasing need is felt to pay closer yet more imaginativto social routines and catastrophes which reveal (and wman's nature in this time of civil unrest and ideologica... It is a quality of mind that seems most dramaticallyunderstanding of the intimate realities of ourselves andwith larger social realities.

The Sociological Imaginaion, C. Wright Mills

Actively resolve affliction8 September 1961 18 September 1961 23 & 24 September 1961

Daily Writings, 1961, September 18 - 24, William Stafford Archives

true as they are far:and weeds in the vacant lots

were to me what they are:Headlines are killing the world.After the biggest warsomething that men forgotwill tenderly

for something all men forgetwaits here, mild or curled,to save us or just to lastwhen headlines have killed the world.while headlines kill the worldspeaks of a part to lastWe know the neglected rivers.

waits, mild or curled,greater then important by our neglectstill, great, importantwhile, etc.

There is too much caution required of a human being.

Our place deserves regardfor being noncommittal it might:lines like tree trunks deserve it.sun will make it all shaggy by Augustbut we recognize a steady being.

I inadvertently brought a few importantpeople here. The place did not respond,That I could see. A boss ordered:the birds did not hear him. Onlya certain language appeals to the airthe way sunshine does. And whatwill grow in a certain air.

We shouldnt have been human beings, Im sorry.

Shen the snake decided to go straight he didnt get anywhere.

What cant be avoided must be endured.

Most people say stories embody ideas, religious, and otherthought patterns already formed, but actually welearn religions and ideas from stories.


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Whitsunday, 1961

I don't know Who - or what - put the question. I don't know when

it was put. I don't even remember answering but at the moment Idid answer Yes to Someone - or Something - and from that hour Iwas certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my lifein self-surrender, had a goal.

From that moment I have known what it means "not to look back,"and "to take no thought for the morrow." Led by the Ariadne'sthread of my answer through the labyrinth of Life. I came to a timeand a place where I realized that the Way leads to a triumph whichis catastrophe, and to a catastrophe which is a triumph, that theprice for committing one's life would be reproach, and that theonly elevation possible to man lies in the depths of humiliation.After that, the word "courage" lost its meaning, since then nothingcould be taken from me.

As I continued along the Way, I learned, step by step, word by word,that behind every saying in the Gospels stands one man and oneman's experience. Als o behind the prayer that the cup might pass

from him and his promise to drink it. Also behind each of the wordsfrom the Cross.

The Inner Legislation

...The person revealed is one who steadily held to a search inward

that could justify and reinforce the burden of his outward life. Thebook demonstrates how the rigors of practical affairs are met byequally rigorous - and in fact perhaps exactly complementary -couterparts in mental and emotional experience. H ammarskjold'sbook provides evidence for a great interplay between overt decisionand the shimmer of meaning s back of public action. he has provideda document rich in poetry and comment, and invaluable as markingexistence of that often invisible and u nacknowledged innerlegislation which enriches the life of rulers of this world.

... Something has been made of the distance this book preservesbetween its author and the events of his life. True, no "world events"are named in the book. Further, the jottings usually disguise thewriter by saying "he," or "you," but not "I." The displacement,however is not for disguise, but because for the the inner self identityis perceived as an aggregate growing from a dialogue. The totalcharacter in the book is consistent, and he has sequential dreams:in the dreams he says "I walked" etc. A nd the text speaks of "my bad

dream," "my dreams." To the writer of this book, who had foundhis way far inside intentions and judgements, Dag Hammarskjoldwas he, and you, and I: his survey rquired a point of view inside aperiphery, multiple sighings toward completeness.

The Concealment: Ishi, The Last Wild Indian

A rock, a leaf, mud, even the grass

Ishi the shadow man had to put back where it was,In order to live he had to hide that he did.His deep canyon he kept unmarked for the world,and only his face became line, because no one saw itand it therefore didn't make any difference.

If he appeared, he died: and he was the last. Erasedfootprints, berries that purify the breath, ritualsbefore dawn with water - even the dogs roamed a l andunspoiled by Ishi, who used to own it, with his auntand uncle, whose old limbs bound in willow bark finallystopped and were hidden under the rocks, in sweet leaves.

We ought to help change that kind of premature suicide,the existence gradually mottled away till the heartbeatblends and the messages all go one way from the worldand disappear inward: Ishi lived. It was all rightfor him to make a track. In California now where his opposites

unmistakably dwell we wander thier streets.

And sometimes whisper his name"Ishi"

Mystical contemplation has not always resulted in a fliworld in the sense of an avoidance of eery contact with tmilieu. O n the contrary, the mystic may also require ofmaintenance of his state of grace against every pressure mundane order, as an index of the enduring charecter state of grace. In that case, even the mystic's position winstituional framework of the world becomes a vocationleading in an altogether different direction from any voproduced by inner-worldly asceticism.

On Charisma and Institution Building, Max Weber

Assert to eliminate the afflictive cause

Markings, Dag Hammarskjold The Inner Legislation, William StaffordThe Concealment: Ishi, The Last Wild Indian, William St afford


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Part IV. Share the Way

The pursuit of the modern poet is to the same end as thChristian mystic like Meister Eckhart: pure representavision unconditioned by the particularity of experience,removed from willfulness and the search for relation, kwith utility. But whereas the older poet, even when extMeister Eckhart, knew and acknowldeged mediaiton, either does not acknowledge or does not know a mediatorphic journey. He passes through experience by meansunmediated vision. Nature, the body, and human conthat is the only text.

The Unmediated Vision, Geoffrey H. Hartman


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Is this Feeling About the West Real?hen I met my musehite Pigeons

What's that -the trumpet call, the haunting cry of

aching land -a wild goose passing?From down the violet sky -the looming winter sky now edging frozen land -come circling homeWhite pigeons.

This is the aching land,the bleak and desolate.This is the plainsOn this blank loneliness in the huddled clumpa house, a bar, and fences.A boy, foreshortened, small, wind-buffeted,his pigeons watched come home.Herd sky, hard earth.Soft pigeons.Grafeful pigeons, rustling, sleepy cluttering.SoftSoft pigeons.

What's that -the trumpet, the haunting cry of aching landa wold goose passing?From down what violet sky-the looming winter night now edging frozen land -White pigeons?

I glanced at her and took my glassesoff - they were still singing. They buzzed

like a locust on the coffee table and thenceased. Her voice belled forth, and thesunlight bent. I f elt the ceiling arch, andknew the nails up there took a new gripon whatever they touched. "I am yo ur ownway of looking at things." She said "Whenyou allow me to live with you, everyglance at the world around will bea sort of salvation." And I took her hand.

All their lvies out here some people knowThey live in a hemisphere beyond what Columbus discovered.

These people look out and wonder: Is it magic? Is itthe oceans of air off the Pacific? you can'twalk through it without wrapping a newpiece of time around you, a readiness for a meadowlarkthat brinkmanship a dawn can carry for l ucky peopleall through the day.

But if you don't get it, this bonus, you cango home full of denial, and live out your years.Great waves can pass unnoticed outside your door;stars can pound siliently on the roof: your teakettleand cosy life inside can deny everthing outside -whole mountain ranges, history, the holocaust,sainthood, Crazy Horse.

Listen - something else hovers out here, notcolor, not outlines or depth when airrelieves distance by hazing far mountains,but some total feeling or other worldalmost coming forward, like when a bell soundsand then leaves a whole countryside waiting.

Conclude

It is the special fate of modern man that he has a "choicvisions. The paradox is that although each requires cocommitment for complete validity, we can today generawhich we see that not one of them is the sole vision. Wto be naive but undogmatic. That is, we must take thecomes and trust ourselves to it, naively, as reality. Yet wan openness to experience such that the dark shadows dvision are the mute, stubborn messengers waiting to lealight and new vision.

...We must not ignore the fact that in this last analysis,to a specific orientation outweighs catholicity of imagersensitive and seasoned traveler, at ease in many places, have a home. Still, we can be intimate with those we vwe may be only travelers and guests in some domains, twho are truly at home. Home is always home for someis not Absolute Home in general. And reality is a favoroperations, a favored place from which to greet the worAbsolute Place in general. With all its discovery of relahas been fundamentally absolutist: we claim to toleratewe explain them, praise them, enjoy them; and gently, appreciatively, do we not, too often betray them?

The Self in Transformation, H erbert Fingarette

Soft Pigeons, Self-proclaimed first poem, Lawerence , Kansas, Spring, 1937 When I Met My Muse, An Oregon Message , 1987 Is This Feeling About the West Real?,The Menrow River Poems , 1995


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Ackowledgment

The Philosopher says "We should repay those who are gby being gracious to them in return," and this is done bymore than we have received. Therefore gratitude alwaas far as possible, to pay back something more.

Summa Theologica, Saint Thomas Aquinas


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A Way to the World

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