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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=476710" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>It Isn't As Far As You Might Think</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">It isn't as far as you might think <br>from this spiritual lost and found <br>coiled like a labyrinth of cul de sacs <br>or a snake of time spiralling down <br>the seven degenerative metals of man <br>through the rib gates in the belly of a dragon <br>that's flamed out like a red-tailed hawk riding <br>the last of its cooling thermals down with the sun, <br>not as far as you might think, according to the moss<br>that grows all over your north side <br>from this circuitous blossoming into knots <br>in the hardwood of a rootless tree <br>to the threshold of where your heart belongs.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Dig yourself out of that old National Geographic<br>like an explorer that never got to go<br>and unfold that free starmap someone included <br>like a flag of protocol awarded a dead celestial sailor<br>and start connecting the dots like ports of call <br>in the eyes on the dice of a long shot against the odds<br>that nobody believed could be made until you took it. <br>Where was it ever suggested that the return journey<br>would be any less dangerous than the first time <br>you left yourself like a stranger in the doorway <br>of this house of life, waving farewell in the rain <br>as you carefully put the chain back on the gate behind you? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The object of the grailquest isn't so much <br>a matter of finding it as it is learning how <br>to lose yourself wisely in the search. You can <br>orient your mindscape to the direction of your shining<br>like a circumpolar constellation, but to sip <br>from the Little Dipper isn't going to green<br>that dead branch of a divining rod in your hand. <br>The journey isn't lost upon you because <br>you're out there on the road alone <br>with nothing but departures behind you <br>and the only arrival on your horizon <br>more of the unknown without a return address. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">What if the stars you take your bearings from <br>set out to find the source of their shining <br>and turned their light back on themselves <br>like solar flares to see where they were going? Do you think <br>you could see them from here on this hillside, <br>to assign them names and myths of origin <br>they whisper to your eyes at night like fairytales<br>and lullabies to help you get to sleep<br>when you lay your head down like moonset<br>on the cold stone of the world by the roadside? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The moment you go looking for yourself <br>do you leave the part that's beating the bushes for you at home? <br>Have you ever checked out who's in the search party? <br>Go ask the diamond sages. They aren't the masters <br>of an enlightenment no one can attain. They sit <br>like stars in the throne rooms of dark matter, <br>lords of the darkness, confusion and chaos <br>that have mastered them spontaneously like ore <br>to the indirections of an undisciplined way of shining<br>so the dark mirror you wander in looking<br>for a lifemask you can recognize as a face of your own, <br>is brighter than the white one of insight <br>you've had so much trouble adjusting your eyes to <br>like a telescope to the weather of a habitable planet. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">No ray of the light you're looking for <br>ever started out with a sense of direction. <br>No star, no beacon, no lantern, no insight, <br>no firefly, lightning bolt or lighthouse<br>ever plotted a straight path through the abyss <br>that wasn't omnidirectionally bent<br>by the gravitational eyes of space it passed <br>on its journey to nowhere in particular <br>though it bumped into a few planets and wildflowers <br>along the way it was exactly meaningless to take.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">No one's ever really lost. They're just <br>not very adept at reading their own starmaps. <br>They look for what shines though the eyes of a crow <br>remembering how white its feathers were <br>before it found the continent it was sent out <br>before the dove to look for. And Noah cursed it black<br>for not coming back. Lost innocence longing for light. <br>Long wavelengths on the night sea of awareness <br>looking for land like particles and cornerstones<br>they can found their spiritual temples upon <br>like aviaries for the wrens and sparrows <br>buffeted back by the winds they're flying against<br>like the ashes of disinterred aspirations in their own face.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Lost in the woods, everyone looks at the constellations<br>like light in the windows of a distant farmhouse. <br>But no one ever consults all the darkness beyond <br>the blazing midways of the zodiac like deer paths <br>off the ecliptic or wolf packs above the timberlines <br>of their celestial equators. Aldebaran <br>is sixty-five lightyears from here as we're <br>eight light-minutes from the nearest sun. <br>But how far does a human who is the measure of all things, <br>have to go before he or she realizes the darkness <br>was always the truest sense of direction for anyone <br>trying to shine a light on where the light has gone<br>without them, so they can see in the dark<br>how their eyes emerge out of the search for themselves<br>and the night whispers like a homecoming embrace <br>in the ear of the prodigal do you finally recognize <br>who I am? Even when you most deeply eclipsed<br>the shining of the black mirror of awareness, <br>blinded by the candle of your own lantern <br>there's never been a son or daughter of a star <br>that was ever lost in me since the light began.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Patrick+White">Patrick White</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=476710" data-title="It Isn't As Far As You Might Think de Patrick White" data-description="It isn't as far as you might think 
from this spiritual lost and found 
coiled like a labyrinth of cul de sacs 
or a snake of time spiralling down 
the seven degenerative metals of man 
through the rib gates in the belly of a dragon 
that's flamed..."></div>
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