Susie, most beautiful flower in my garden
“Là où l’on aime il ne fait jamais nuit.”
Proverbe Africain
This page has been created with the contributions of the many dear friends around the world. We thank them all. Further contributions always welcome at: marc.bouriche@wanadoo.fr .
Susie & Marc
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“Because he could not be everywhere God created mothers.”
Jewish proverb
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“The clandestine passenger exited his hide-out. Well known and unknown he was at first an intruder sowing anguish and grief. We are now looking for the passage to make him messenger heralding the new era to come. The current step is to knit the web of signs to enrol him as accomplice, drop all prejudices until he unveils his true identity, neither known nor unknown.”
“Contemplating solitude, and the landscape of friends takes different colours, nuances. Although it vibrates more vividly, the materiality of spoken words appears at times superfluous, almost bulky.
The mere vision of moments with them truly seen, truly experienced suffice to my peace, to my joy. The mere certainty of the place we have in their heart is a tremendous confort, a luxury, and we feel it beyond time and space, and it is plentiful.”
“That can only be for a higher truth. To bear it however, higher strength has to come forth to toil the heart for the radiance of higher love.”
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UP DATES:
Le jour blesse la mer qui se calme et gémit et le silence obscur qui frémit en toi-même
Mais le ressac éclate au reproche du vent tandis que nul n’entend les cris de ta poitrine.
Seule une vague dort au tréfonds de l’abîme qui rêve d’apaiser à jamais la tempête.
Qui saura l’écouter, cette soeur de l’oubli, et lira sa chanson dédiée à l’écume?
Et quel fou tenterait d’apprivoiser ces flots, tous ces mots de lumière enchaînés dans le sang,
Sinon celui qui veille au coeur de ton sommeil et qui ferme les yeux pour baliser la nuit?
Louis Guillaume
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A gift from Ellen Trezevant:
Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,
what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.
In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.
And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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In this valley, love is represented by fire, and reason by smoke. When love comes, reason disappears.
Reason cannot live with the folly of love; love has nothing to do with human reason.
If you possessed inner sight,the atoms of the visible world would be manifested to you.
But if you look at things with the eye of ordinary reason you will never understand how necessary it is to love.
Only a man who has been tested and is free can feel this. He who understands this journey should have a thousand hearts so that he can sacrifice one at every moment.
~Attâr
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They meet forever, contemplate each other, and never merge…
Honoring each other’s unique, unalterable nature is the only option,
… the ocean and the land.
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Photo: Alexandra Inch
February 22d - March 22d 2012
A month escaped the jail of time. He sails the open sea to the deep bays of memory, ardent nuggets that a breath revives when frost threatens the heart. He sails the open sea under the improbable sky of permanence, its metamorphoses. He sails the open sea to his last anchorage when earth and ocean embrace passionately, appeased. He rejoices the memorable journey, laden with quivering scents.
“Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.”
Joseph Campbell
Pastel by Claire Michelet
Beauty, goodness and truth do not free us from the task of attending the material world, they help us to transfigure it.
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22 Février - 22 Mars 2012:
Un mois s’est échappé du temps. Il court la mer vers les anses profondes de la mémoire, pépites incandescentes qu’un souffle ranime quand menacent les frimas.
Il court la mer sous le ciel improbable de la durée, de ses métamorphoses.
Il court la mer vers son dernier mouillage quand s’enlacent apaisés la terre et l’océan en une étreinte passionnée.
Il est heureux du beau voyage, tout chargé de senteurs frémissantes.
Oceans
“I have a feeling that my boat,
has struck, down there in the depths,
against a great thing. . .
–nothing happens?
Or has everything happened,
and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?”
—Juan Ramon Jimenez
Celebrating Susie’s birthday, February 28th
Dimly on the horizon, another land… the light to sip through the vapors of land.
All day the stars watch from long ago
my mother said I am going now
when you are alone you will be all right
whether or not you know you will know
look at the old house in the dawn rain
all the flowers are forms of water
the sun reminds them through a white cloud
touches the patchwork spread on the hill
the washed colors of the afterlife
that lived there long before you were born
see how they wake without a question
even though the whole world is burning.
- W.S. Merwin
You gotta have heart, miles & miles & miles of heart, When the odds are saying you will never win, That is when the grin should start.
Happy Valentine’s day from Susie.
Snow in Maisons-Laffitte
A narrow path, a thread easy to miss, the burning snow is as cold as warming… and it is still the snow.
http://www.youtube.com/v/ARIhvSbZGkE&feature=related
A video of Christiane Singer telling the story of the old Rabbi… hold your breath…
Carteret January 2012
Marcia’s Birthday in Normandy
Marpa is always part of the Voyage
“Gratitude as a mountain to climb is mere fantasy. It is a shining sun. Scattering the clouds of the mind is royal avenue.”
“The urgency of ploughing the lands of the visible is a risk for the companions by distracting their attention from the sacred meadows of the invisible.
Walking the path is always walking the narrow crest, between two abysses. It is not without risks. We have paid, however, to know that taking no risks is far more dangerous.
(Susie at dawn across the Atlantique)
The most astounding discovery of the voyage is that we are not alone in the venture. The invisible is an excellent care-taker, provided we remain open to him. Then we are all free in the wake of destiny if we contemplate it joyfully (ie: without regrets nor vain hopes).”
“When the butterfly landed on her lips, a smile arose under my eyes.”
Le vent poursuit sa course en sifflant dans les cimes, l`ocean gronde encore en roulant ses ecumes.
Will be sending you butterfly kisses and they will land on your nose and eyelashes…ever so lightly.
Jennifer & Menahem
“An opportunity to visit anew one’s innocence.”
“The incredible and burning gift of the high sea, away from all known shores, the stars and meteors as sole companions and guidance.”
Ton coeur saigne! Offre cette coupe à la lumière de ton sourire au lieu de te lamenter comme une harpe sur ta blessure!
HAFEZ
In this battle we do not hold
a shield in front of us.
No. Who but these musicians
could stand the heat that melts the sun?
Rumi
“When a dear companion gets wounded on the pilgrimage, he becomes at once our teacher - specializing in simplicity - , at the same cadence we are elevated to the rank of dedicated servant - specializing in smiling presence.”
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Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling,
Give me the juicy autumnal fruit ripe and red from the orchard,
Give me a field where the unmow’d grass grows,
Give me an arbor, give me the trellis’d grape,
Give me nights perfectly quiet as on high plateaus west of Mississippi, and I looking up at the stars,
Give me odorous at sunrise the garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturb’d,
Give me for marriage a sweet-breath’d woman of whom I should never tire,
Give me a perfect child, give me away aside from the noise of the world a rural domestic life,
Give me to warble spontaneous songs recluse by myself, for my own ears only,
Give me solitude, give me Nature, give me again O Nature your primal sanities!
WW
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Have you got a brook in your little heart, where bashful flowers blow, and blushing birds go down to drink, and shadows tremble so, and nobody knows, so still it flows, that any brook is there, and yet your little draught of life is drunken there.
Emily Dickinson
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“I think I could turn and live with the animals, they are so placid and self contained;
Photo Alexandra Inch
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition;
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins;
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God;
Not one is dissatisfied-not one is demented with the mania of owning things;
Not one kneels to another, nor his kind that lived thousands of years ago;
Not one is responsible or industrious over the whole earth.”
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“A man and a woman sit near each other, and they do not long
at this moment to be older, or younger, nor born
in any other nation, or time, or place.
They are content to be where they are, talking or not talking.
Their breaths together feed someone whom we do not know.
The man sees the way his fingers move;
he sees her hands close around a book she hands to him.
They obey a third body they have in common.
They have made a promise to love that body.
Age may come, parting may come, death will come.
A man and woman sit near each other;
as they breathe they feed someone we do not know,
someone we know of, whom we have never seen.”
— Robert Bly, The Third Body
NOT KNOWING
how would it be to allow for knowing
and not knowing:
allowing room
for the mystery
of creating
to be able to wonder
softly
without needing to understand everything
to trust in the process
to trust in love
to trust in the mystery and wonder
of the universe
that beats softly wildly
true
all round about us,
that is hidden
in the mists
in the clouds and the rain
in the wind blowing and the rain lashing down on your window,
reminding you
poetically
prosaically
that this is where you are,
on the island,
at the edge,
in a place of finding
and refinding,
and remembering
to remember
the feel of the mist, wind and rain.
—John O’Donohue
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.
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“As you proceed through life, following your own path, birds will shit on you. Don’t bother to brush it off.
Getting a comedic view of your situation gives you spiritual distance. Having a sense of humor saves you.”
“How to get rid of ego as dictator and turn it into messenger and servant and scout, to be in your service, is the trick.”
“You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.”
“Follow your inner heart and the world moves in and helps.”
“..enlarge the pupil of the eye, so that the body with its attendant personality will no longer obstruct the view. Immortality is then experienced as a present fact..
“God is the experience of looking at a tree and saying, ‘Ah!’
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The Moment
The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,
is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can’t breathe.
No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.
—Margaret Atwood
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I believe in pink.
I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner.
I believe in kissing.
Kissing a lot.
I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong.
I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls.
(Susie around Cape Horn)
I believe that tomorrow is another day.
And I believe in miracles.
Audrey Hepburn
Edgar Saillen (Susie’s art teacher)
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Autumn Evening in a Mountain Retreat
After the rain,
the empty mountain
at dusk
is full of autumn air.
A bright moon
shines between the pines;
The clear spring water
glides over the rocks.
Bamboo leaves rustling —
the washer-girls bound home.
Water lilies swaying —
a fisher-boat goes down.
Never mind that
spring plants are no longer green.
I am here to stay
my noble friends!
Wang Wei
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Assurance
You will never be alone, you hear so deep
a sound when autumn comes. Yellow
pulls across the hills and thrums,
or in the silence after lightning before it says
its names — and then the clouds’ wide-mouthed
apologies.
You were aimed from birth:
you will never be alone. Rain
will come, a gutter filled, an Amazon,
long aisles — you never heard so deep a sound,
moss on rock, and years. You turn your head —
that’s what the silence meant: you’re not alone.
The whole wide world pours down.— William Stafford
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Whoever finds love
Whoever finds love beneath hurt and grief
disappears into emptiness
with a thousand new disguises
What is the soul
What is the soul I cannot stop asking
if I could taste one sip of an answer
I could break out of this prison for drunks
I didn’t come here of my own accord
and I can’t leave that way
whoever brought me here
will have to take me homeRumi
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FIFTEENTH ANNIVERSARY AT MONHOUDOU
“If you tire, give me both burdens, and rest the chuff of your hand on my hip,
And in due time you shall repay the same service to me,
For after we start we never lie by again.” W Whitman
“You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of
your life.”
“ Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout, and laughingly
dash with your hair. “
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So much more than we ever knew,
So much more were we born to do.
Should you draw back the curtain,
This I am certain.
You’ll be impressed with you.
On a clear day
Rise and look around you
And you’ll see who you are.
On a clear day
How it will astound you
That the glow of your being outshines ev’ry star.
You’ll feel part of ev’ry mountain sea and shore.
You can hear, from far and near,
A world you’ve never heard before.
And on a clear day…
On that clear day…
You can see forever and ever more!
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Cher Marc,
Pour la plus belle des fleurs de votre jardin, quelques images choisies
de ce qui réjouit toujours mon coeur et que je voulais partager avec
Vous.
Mes orchidées,la route qui mène à notre maison. Elle est bordée
de champs de riz, avec à sa droite,la vue sur les montagnes, la
naissance de la chaine de l’himalaya, à sa gauche, un temple
curieusement rose, mais qui ajoute un certain charme au tout.
Magnifique
vallée que je ne me lasse pas de contempler…
Très affectueusement
Catherine
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THE CIRCLE GAME
Yesterday a child came out to wonder
Caught a dragonfly inside a jar
Fearful when the sky was full of thunder
And tearful at the falling of a star
And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We’re captive on the carousel of time
We can’t return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game
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If life is a river and your heart is a boat
And just like a water baby, baby born to float
And if life is a wild wind that blows way on high
Then your heart is Amelia dying to fly
Heaven knows no frontiers
… And I’ve seen heaven in your eyes… Then your heart is a pure flame of man’s constant night
In your eyes faint as the singing of a lark
That somehow this black night
Feels warmer for the spark
Warmer for the spark
To hold us ’til the day when fear will lose its grip
And heaven has its way
And heaven has its way
When all will harmonise
And know what’s in our hearts
The dream will realise
Heaven knows no frontiers
And I’ve seen heaven in your eyes
Heaven knows no frontiers
And I’ve seen heaven in your eyes…
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Dés que je fus arrivé à la route, ce fut un éblouissement. Là ou je n’avais vu, avec ma grand-mère, au mois d’août, que les feuilles et comme l’emplacement des pommiers, a perte de vue ils étaient en floraison, d’un luxe inouï, les pieds dans la boue et en toilette de bal, ne prenant pas de précautions pour ne pas gâter le plus merveilleux satin rose qu’on eut jamais vu et que faisait briller le soleil;
l’horizon lointain de la mer fournissait aux pommiers comme un arrière-plan d’estampe japonaise; si je levais la tête pour regarder le ciel entre les fleurs, qui faisaient paraître son bleu rasséréné, presque violent elles semblaient s’écarter pour montrer la profondeur de ce paradis. Sous cet azur, une brise légère mais froide faisait trembler légèrement les bouquets rougissants. Des mésanges bleues venaient se poser sur les branches et sautaient entre les fleurs, indulgent, comme si c’eut été un amateur d’exotisme et de couleurs qui avait artificiellement créé cette beauté vivante.
Mais elle touchait jusqu’aux larmes parce que, si loin, qu’elle allât dans ses effets d’art raffiné, on sentait qu’elle était naturelle, que ces pommiers étaient la en pleine champagne, comme des paysans sur une grande route de France. Puis aux rayons du soleil succédèrent subitement ceux de la pluie; ils zébrèrent tout l’horizon, enserrèrent la file des pommiers dans leur réseau gris. Mais ceux-ci continuaient a dresser leur beauté fleurie et rose, dans le vent devenu glacial sous l’averse qui tombait : c’était une journée de printemps.
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Somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond…
Somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond any experience, your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which I cannot touch because they are too near;
Your slightest look easily will enclose me though I have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as spring opens (touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose;
Or if your wish be to close me, I and my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly, as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending; nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility: whose texture compels me with the color of its countries, rendering death and forever with each breathing;
(I do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.
EE Cummings (1894-1962)
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“The breezes taste
Of apple peel.
The air is full
Of smells to feel-
Ripe fruit, old footballs,
Burning brush,
New books, erasers,
Chalk, and such.
The bee, his hive,
Well-honeyed hum,
And Mother cuts
Chrysanthemums.
Like plates washed clean
With suds, the days
Are polished with
A morning haze.”
- John Updike, September
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From the static I resort to the dynamic, from the dynamic I resort to the static.
Shaking off harmful acts like a horse shakes off his coat, shaking off the body
As the moon frees itself from the mouth of Rahu, I, with disciplined mind, reach
The eternal Brahman-world, aye, I obtain the eternal Brahman-world.
Chandogya Upanisad 8.13.1
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Le peintre assis devant sa toile
A-t-il jamais peint ce qu’il voit
Ce qu’il voit son histoire voile
Et ses ténèbres sont étoiles
Comme chanter change la voix
(Aragon)
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A gift from Graziella & Donato:
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“Today a new sun rises for me,
Everything lives, everything is animated,
Everything speaks to me of my passion,
Everything invites me to cherish it.”
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A Hidden Place
Each of us has a hidden place Somewhere deep within ourselves; A place where we go to get away, To think things through, To be alone, to be ourselves. This unique place, where we confront our deepest feelings, Becomes a storehouse of all our hopes, All our needs, all our dreams, And even our unspoken fears. It encompasses the essence of who we are and what we want to be. But now and then, whether by chance or design, Someone discovers a way into that place we thought was ours alone. And we allow that person to see, to feel and to share All the reason, all the uncertainty And all the emotion we’ve stored up there. That person adds new perspective to our hidden realm, Then quietly settles down in his own corner of our special place, Where a bit of himself will stay forever. And we call that person a friend.
Carol Elaine Faivre-Scott
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Dearest Susie,
I share with you this beautiful passage from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice:
Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patens of bright gold.
There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still choiring to the young-eyed cherubins.
Such harmony is in immortal souls.
I sit with you, as we did on so many sailing trips, and gaze at heaven . . .
Much love,
Michael
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Ce ne sont pas des souvenirs
qui, en moi, t’entretiennent;
tu n’es pas non plus mienne
par la force d’un beau désir.
Ce qui te rend présente,
c’est le détour ardent
qu’une tendresse lente
décrit dans mon propre sang……
R. M. Rilke
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I have perceived that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,
To pass among them, or touch any one,
or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment—what is this, then?
I do not ask any more delight—I swim in it, as in a sea.
There is something in staying close to men and women, and looking on them,
and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well;
All things please the soul—but these please the soul well.
Walt Whitman
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|
I wandered lonely as a cloud |
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed–and gazed–but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
The Swan
Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?
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The Peace of Wild Things
When despair grows in me and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting for their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Wendell Berry
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|
The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections; |
|
| They scorn the best I can do to relate them. | |
| I am enamour’d of growing out-doors, | |
| Of men that live among cattle, or taste of the ocean or woods, | |
| Of the builders and steerers of ships, and the wielders of axes and mauls, and the drivers of horses; | |
| I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out. | |
| What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me; | |
| Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns; | |
| Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me; | |
| Not asking the sky to come down to my good will; | |
| Scattering it freely forever. Song of Myself WW
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|
Let There Be Peace on Earth
Let there be peace on earth And let it begin with me Let there be peace on earth The peace that was meant to be With God as our Father Brothers all are we Let me walk with my brother In Perfect Harmony
Let Peace Begin with me Let this be the moment now With every breath I take Let this be my solemn vow To take each moment and live each moment In peace eternally Let there be peace on earth And let it begin With Me.
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“There is dew
on these poems in the morning,
and at night a cool breeze may rise from them.
In the winter they are blankets,
in the summer a place to swim.
I like talking to you like this.
Have you moved a step closer?
Soon we may be
kissing.
Kabir
“Give us gladness that connects
with the Friend, a taste of the quick.
Do not measure it out with a cup.
I am a fish.
You cannot touch me, but your light
fills the ocean where I live.”
Rumi
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I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.
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