Thursday, July 10, 2008

TAKE WHAT YOU HAVE GATHERED FROM COINCIDENCE

I've been without an Internet connection since June 26. I made a deliberate decision to take a vacation from email, blogging, and internet searches when my modem stopped working. My internet provider gave me several options, including free dial-up. I chose to wait 10 days for a free replacement modem to arrive and to decline the dial-up option. That modem arrived yesterday.

A technician spent an hour with me on the phone, trying to reestablish an internet connection. He was unable to do that and determined, as I had suggested early in the phone call, that the replacement modem was defective. This morning I decided to use the free dial-up connection while I wait for another free replacement modem. I had not bothered to set up the dial-up before now because my recollection was that dial-up is impossibly slow. I'm not going to try to download any pictures until I have a DSL connection again.

The vacation from the Internet has been good for me. The weather has been beautiful, and I've been in good spirits for the most part.

This morning, after checking through and beginning to respond to my backlog of email, I received an email from a friend who sent this timely poem:


Don't worry about saving these songs!
And if one of our instruments breaks,
it doesn't matter.

We have fallen into the place
where everything is music.

The strumming and the flute notes
rise into the atmosphere,
and even if the whole world's harp
should burn up, there will still be
hidden instruments playing.

So the candle flickers and goes out.
We have a piece of flint, and a spark.

This singing art is sea foam.
The graceful movements come from a pearl
somewhere on the ocean floor.

Poems reach up like spindrift and the edge
of driftwood along the beach, wanting!

They derive
from a slow and powerful root
that we can't see.

Stop the words now.
Open the window in the center of your chest,
and let the spirits fly in and out.

(Jalaluddin Rumi)


A few hours after reading that poem, I opened my copy of MEDITATIONS OF JOHN MUIR: NATURE'S TEMPLE, compiled and edited by Chris Highland. Chapter 18 is called "All the Air Is Music." It consists of a paragraph about a brave little water ouzel, taken from the writings of John Muir. At the bottom of the page it says:

"We have fallen into the place where everything is music.' -- Rumi

7 comments:

Zhoen said...

Strike another match lets start anew.

Loren said...

Nice to see you back,am.

I'd started to worry since you stopped posting rather abruptly.

I guess I'd have worried more if I'd sent an email and still hadn't gotten a reply.

Dale said...

There you are! Glad you had a good break.

R.L. Bourges said...

ah, that is gorgeous.

(good luck with technology)

robin andrea said...

What a beautiful poem. I love your re-entry to the blog world with these words. Open the windows in our chests. What an image. It makes my heart leap gladly. Happy to have you back. We lived without dsl for two weeks. Had dial-up in the morning with our tea and toast.

Anonymous said...

some things mean morning. good to have you back.

kjm

The Solitary Walker said...

That is such a lovely poem, am. Strangley enough, I lost loads of digital photos somehow when I updated recently to a new computer. Foolishly I didn't have back-ups. However, just like music, images are everywhere and don't necessarily have to be recorded and hoarded. A holiday's a good thing and it's also nice to came home!