Lay down these words
        Before your mind like rocks.
                  placed solid, by hands
        In choice of place, set
        Before the body of the mind
                  in space and time:
        Solidity of bark, leaf or wall
                  riprap of things:
        Cobble of milky way,
                  straying planets,
        These poems, people,
                  lost ponies with
        Dragging saddles --
                  and rocky sure-foot trails.
        The worlds like an endless 
                  four-dimensional
        Game of Go.
                  ants and pebbles
        In the thin loam, each rock a word
                  a creek-washed stone
        Granite: ingrained
                  with torment of fire and weight
        Crystal and sediment linked hot
                  all change, in thoughts,
        As well as things.

Even though I don't agree fully with what Wendell Berry says, I thought the following few questions and answers were somehow relevant to me.

Fisher-Smith: Many people who would agree with you in principle don't have the benefit of what you were born into, this ancestral relationship with a place. They find themselves living far from where their ancestors are buried, in unfamiliar land that they didn't grow up with, and don't know much about. How would you advise them to begin deepening their relationship with place?

Berry: Well, I think that I would give the same advice as Gary Snyder. Stop somewhere! Because you can't recover what's lost. There's no going back to get it. You just have to start again, and I think what people have to experience--have to let themselves experience--is the knowledge and understanding and even happiness that come with long association with people and places and kinds of work.

Of course, along with those enrichments there are griefs and worries too. As you learn what's involved in a place, or in a personal relationship, or a kind of work, you come to understand the dangers, the shortcomings, the damages that already have been inflicted, and so on. And if you stay in a place and make connections, make relationships, you experience losses that are difficult to bear.

What we're really talking about is faith, the faith being that if you make a commitment, and hang on until death, there are rewards. The rewards come. Nobody has ever said that this was easy to do, but I think that everybody who has done it has done it out of this faith that there are rewards. My experience suggests very powerfully to me that there are rewards.

Fisher-Smith: The phrase you just used, "make a commitment and hang on until death," reminds me of marriage. Something like half of all American marriages will fail, and forty percent of all adults are single now. That's a larger proportion than any time in this century. Is there a relationship between the present failure rate in marriages and families, and the failure to form a sustainable human relationship with the land?

Berry: As I see it, there is. People pursue perfection, and I suppose that's a thing that humans have a duty to do, in a way. But there's a tendency now to misunderstand this obligation to pursue perfection as a right to be perfect, to have perfection given to you. And so people enter into their relationships with one another and with their places with the idea that they have a right to expect those places and those people and those connections to be perfect, and then when imperfection appears, as it inevitably does, they feel that they have a right to be offended, and they don't see the arrogance and the condescension in that.

It's not up to the other people and the places and the relationships to be perfect. It's up to every participant to make the relationship and the place and the other person as perfect as possible. We don't have a right to give up on our choices and our places and, indeed, our cultural inheritance because it's not perfect. We don't deserve that they should be perfect. We have an obligation to make them perfect, if we can.

Fisher-Smith: Is this expectation of perfection in one's marital partner and in one's land, a form of narcissism?

Berry: Well, you expect the thing you have to be a perfect replica of the thing you desire. I suppose there's some narcissism in that. It also is condescending and arrogant.

Fisher-Smith: ...and childlike, in a way?

Berry: Very childlike, and it results in childish disappointment and frustration. The other thing is much more difficult because to submit to the job of making perfect a relationship or place or another person means that you must submit to correction yourself. You must submit to the agony of being made perfect yourself, and that's terrifying and extremely difficult. It means you have to face failure over and over again--to realize that you never will really succeed, but this is the necessary work of the world.

Fisher-Smith: Which is?

Berry: To take what we've got and make it better.

Click for full Interview

On the way back from the house, just a few minutes ago, I saw down the street as in I practiced seeing. Today is a beautiful day, slightly cloudy with a nice breeze. And the garden patches in front of the homes down the street had a whole lot of flowers blooming. Given that so much beauty exsists, it's hard to give up on life.

That apart later this evening I will be seeing Jennifer Nettles Band again. She is a talented song writer but then a lot of folks wouldn't get to hear her music thanks to the music industry's prelidiction to bubble gum chewing lip syncing Britney Spearish unifrom fantasies. I know, I know those of you that know me already must be saying, there goes his usual rant on "meaningful" music again.

Actually I suspect that there is this super generic pop lyric machine somewhere out there in California. This machine (which I think) would be modeled like a slot machine out of Vegas, will take a nickle ( oh yeah music is cheap baby) and scream "Bingo Jackpot" and give the seeker a "hit" lyric such as:

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah (mummmm yeah yeah oh yeah I am ****ing baby...f**k me )

I think I did it again I made you believe we're more than just friends (refer to the above two out of a porn movie lines... jeez after that how can we be just friends!) Oh baby It might seem like a crush But it doesn't mean that I'm serious 'Cause to lose all my senses That is just so typically me Oh baby, baby (The machine had taken an acid trip and was confessing its sins the next day)

Lyric: "Oops... I did it again" - Britney Spears

Yes, if anyone who is reading this owns a "BS" CD ( just noticed how the abbreviated name is BS, great Bull Shit!) I didn't mean to offend thy, for you are free to spend your substitue your currency to enrich Miss BS.

However to offer an interesting lyrical contrast I present a lyric from JNB:

It's been five long weeks since I've been able to kiss your face And that always makes me question if this bullshit is worth it in the first place 'Cause I have to know the story of your bones And I long to rove the map of your skin And I'm tired of us both feeling loved yet alone I want to feel where you've hurt, I want to taste where you've been

But what will they say Will they still come and hear me when they know I love you this way As I read you with my mouth and my finger tips Like berries you color my hands, like wine you stain my lips

Lyric: "Story of Your Bones" - JNB.

Now go figure why such songs don't go multi platinum? Yes maybe the fact that Jennifer doesn't care to undress a la BS is an issue. What is that (B)shit about wearing a mirco undies type costume inside another and ripping the outer one off, is it music or some strip show? And ofcourse there is the vulnerable school girl look in the music videos. Excuse me but what are we selling here, music or Japanese school girl porn?

When Gandhi was fighting for Indian Independence, folks burnt cloth from Lancester mills in public squares. Something like that is long due in the music industry. I would like to throw my bottle of gasoline on such a dump of BS music.

With that I end this rant. Yes, JNB's site has a few Mp3s so check them out.