get a scent of the real orchard...

[thoreau]

We've all experienced along the path - a time in our lives when a great love becomes friendship. or an infatuation loses it's initial spark and becomes friendship. or when we've been "lovers" with someone for years - and we realize that it has become friendship. Last night in my research into Rumi - (for the next novel project) - i found this lovely passage:

Some speech clarifies , but with love silence is clearer
a pen scribbles along but when it tries to write love! it breaks.
if you want to expound on love, take your intellect out and let it lie down in the mud




As Shakespeare (no I'm not doing the meme) changed the verb to be forever, Rumi changed the noun friend (or "dost" in Farsi). A meeting takes place that translates inner life into outer and outer to inner. The sohhet of Freindship in Rumi's world is "the way messengers from the mystery talk to us." Call it Holy Spirit, Khidr, Buddha-mind, Friend, Beloved, or Lord, there is a shift from the romantic ache, which is a love full of dis-ease, to an encounter with "a person like the dawn", whose face loosens the knot of intellectual discourse. This Friendship breaks through the stalled limbo of desire to become a reckoning "that sights the mysteries of God." Love changes from the exciting synapse of relationship to a condition of being, what Rumi refers to as "the truest health."

The poem that really HIT me last night - as I was reading Rumi - making notes and such - - is illustrated at the right. I began to discover a whole series of poems and thoughts that Rumi wrote about letting go of his conceptions of romance and love - and seeking the friendship - with himself and others.

Here is another:

a man sits in the orchard, fruit trees full and the vines plump. He has his head in his hands and his eyes closed. His friend says 'Why stay stuck in a mystical meditation when the world is like this. so full of visible grace?' he replies 'the outer is an elaboration of the inner and I prefer the origin.'

Natural beauty is a tree limb reflected in the water of a creek, quivering there, but not there. A growing that moves in the soul is more real than tree limbs and reflections. We laugh and feel happy and sad over all this.

Try. instead? to get a scent of the real orchard. Taste the vineyard within the vineyard.

This hit me so strongly before bed that I dreamt of particularly the vineyard scene ALL NIGHT long almost involuntarily. I found myself in the Napa valley - sitting in the mud from the day's rain, dirty hands holding my face. I wasn't crying necessarily - but sitting face in my hands - underneath carefully cultivated wine grapevines. Without every seeing either of them - I ended up - at one point showering and having a cup of coffee in Robbie and Fish's kitchen. but then picked up my coffee cup - and walking out their back door right back into the wine vines - stretching rows as far as my mind's eye could see.

In my research for the next book - I've been waiting for the right jumping off point. the spot where it felt like I'd found something I could really develop upon.

This concept of tasting the vineyard WITHIN.... I'm totally digging. and still massaging and kneading. I was up at 5am - and then out with miss kate for a sunrise walk before the clouds came back in.

I wonder if the longing we often feel - and try to fulfill with this man or that social event - is actually a longing to be able to fulfill it ourselves - but that we are so afraid of solitude - of being alone on that path - that we keep never seeing the forest for the trees. when it's been right in front of us - the entire journey. Perhaps that is the key to the old saying - "it's not the destination that is important but the journey itself."


I know many will just scroll past me processing life into Velveeta (as I'm prone to do) - but this also ties back to a conversation I had recently with Brett (septimuswarren) who reminded me when I broke up with Jon (relationship 2.0 from 1995 to 2004 in Boise) that we'd discussed the role of solitude - and we'd both gone back and read some Thoreau and what he said about solitude. and this Rumi-concept - marries the idea of solitude to the fulfillment of a longing to find friendship with yourself. Not LOVE with yourself - the self help concept of "loving yourself" - but finding friendship with yourself. We all love to easily - we use the word way to easily and with no regard.

Particularly in light of meeting Mr. P recently - and having that become a friendship where I was searching for romance. (and thought I'd hit the jackpot for once) I have to admit I have struggled with that a little more than I have really admitted. Does meeting someone with bagillion things in common and someone who makes you laugh always have to lead to romance? certainly not. but - it really felt romantic for a month or so - and now - we're both working on making it comfortably not so romantic. Which is a good lesson for me - and a good opportunity for me to flex some new skills. Maybe I did win the jackpot - just not the kind I was hoping for.

I am not sure if any of this makes any sense at all - but I personally, am enjoying where all this is taking me.