Self, World, Life, and Soul

When Life evolves to that place
Where Self and Life interface,
With Soul and World perceived as one,
Time and Being become as one.

This sacred matrimony, once in place,
Bequeathed, holds to its patterns and its pace.
Novel things break in to have their way,
Forsake such bliss for fancies of the day;

Wild oats of Ego fly at the face
Of downtrodden youth, still yearning for its grace.
Greed and lust run naked in the street,
Till Life confronts the Soul it has to meet.

Nature waits out these wars against her will;
The springs of Life, from tears, again refill.



Copyright 2001-2015  L. S. Heatherly

New Years: Youth, Age, Life and Freedom

Man was born free and everywhere he is in shackles.
                                                                   --  Jean Jacques Rousseau
None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest
love not freedom, but licence.
                                                                     -- John Milton
What is the nature of natural, innate, human freedom-- authentic
to our natural, human species? This is almost never asked nor answered.
To know, to have consciousness of, free human life and world; go to places
where there is abundant free forms of other social mammals, preceeding us.
For, we emerged from these freedoms, with these, are a part of these;
or we are diminished and perish.

You can identify human freedom by the company it keeps-- by abundant
free plants and the animals that preceeded our emergence from free
plants and animals. We come from the slow natural selection of freedoms,
interactive with, and dependent upon, many other species. Their
life and freedoms are a part of our life and freedoms.
                                                                           
What is the nature of natural, innate free plants and animals?
These can be identified by the free, unadulterated lands and
waters they keep to. You will not find them and their communities
in the city's land and water-scapes! City-life is conquered and ruled
by a quasi, human organism, engaged in the pursuit of elitist power;
rather than Earth's ecological growth in interactive, freedoms of many
ecological species of life, of which, our human being, lives
and freedoms are part.
                                                                          --  L.S. Heatherly

To be truly free, it takes more determination, courage, introspection,
and restrant than to be in shackles.
                                                                        --   Pietro Belluscb

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men [often unknowingly]
dread it [the real thing].
                                                                --   George Bernard Shaw

Forty is the old age of youth; fifty is the youth of old age.
                                                                       --  Victor Hugo

To know how to grow old is the master-work of wisdom, and one
of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.
                                                                  --   Henry Frederic Amiell
Nothing is inherently and invincibly young except spirit.
                                                                    --   George Santayana
Behold! I do not give lectures on a little charity.
When I give, I give myself.
                                                                      --   Walt Whitman

That best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love.
                                                                  --  William Wordsworth



Copyright 2015  L.S. Heatherly

Yes Virginia! Youth, Age, Heart, Time and Home!

                         By  L. S. Heatherly

Going back, and getting down to Earth-- our life within Her Life!

Calendar time is not the fullest measure of how old we are.
This tells us our age as measured by the mostly life-less solar system's measure!

We live on Earth, within Her systems! Not within the life-less solar system.
Calendars don't tell us the measure of a particular human being's
Length of time within Earth's living human being!

A mere measure of youth and age as Earth-solar cycles!
The truest measure is human being's passage through life and love!

Our passage is within Earth-life's eco-organismic,  field of living beings--
Within a particular family, community and particular, human socio-culture.

Beyond the solar system's measure of our age--
How many trips around the Sun we have experienced--
We each have biological age, psychological, social, and spirit-ontological age.

Our bio age is how well our dying cells have been replaced with new cells.
Our psychological age is how well our mental and emotional needs have been fulfilled.
Our social age is how well our social, developmental needs have been fulfilled.
Our spiritual-ontological age is how well our heart-soul needs have been fulfilled.

People die from two primary deficiencies:
Of full, rich blood to the organs,
And of full, rich love to our eco-social, and  heart-soul relationships.

Our age-- of persons, and, of our human species,
Is a family-community, living Earth-love thing!
Ah, beyond history's serial, greedy flings!

Yes, Virginia, there is a true, human heart, age,
Time, being, place and home of which to sing!
Squandered, now,  we have little left of precious these.



Copyright 2014  L.S. Heatherly

Human Innocence in Storms of Culture

(an autobiographical tale)
    
Quenching wanderlust, ousting fear;
Where end of human road
Meets trail of rabbit and deer;
.

Re-bonded with what is real --
Human and Earth-life held dear;
.

Wilderness-cleansed, one maverick,
Receding to the City-herd's Lifeway--
Conflict, desecrate and disjoint--
Pulled off Black Canyon Highway
For twilight time at Sunset Point.
.

The local place of roadway lore
Held one young couple resting there;
As night was falling and foreboding in '64.
.

Strings of verbal beads, an exchanging,
And through conversation, a rearranging
Of what is, in the "what's happening?" of yore.
.

Hallowed babe asleep, safe and sound,
Back in the homemade wooden shell,
On old pickup bed: images on the edge of Modern hell.
Parents, out of luck, Phoenix bound.
.

Beads and shells, ways of Lifeway happenings
In one Time and Being , of debated yore.
Voiced softly, yet deeply pondered, aimed at ripenings.
And sent into a gathering, cultural dusk, one night in '64.
.

Potato chips, a 29 cent bag,
Freely shared with one maverick;
Mostly just air, reflecting a family's plight.
Yet, tomorrows breakfast shared, defies any night.
.

One old truck, one old car, three youths,
A white-man powwow, a ceremony of cloudy sensing,
In three (and all subconscious Youth), in the year of '64:
Sensing personal and cultural storms commencing.
.

Nothing else expected, a mark of human sanity:
Requesting nothing but the sharing of humanity.
.

The maverick makes a silent move; as the flow of words
Attains to soul-embraces, dying human light, itself, slips--
Below both Bradshaw Mountains and all human herds;
By slight of hand, a ten spot meets the last few chips.
.

Rolling up chips and air, with "goodbye and good luck!",
Back into a '53 Pontiac; but, Youth itself had struck
A Detoured Road from Life; yet, cleansed, might restore.
All steered a driven self, into the gathering storms of "64.
.

Aye, such gathering storms destroy and estrange.
Storms striking human norms, Youth, mavericks--
High pressure cold fronts of cultural 'climate change'.
All now, begging one question: a human storm forevermore.
.
.

Copyright 2010  L. S. Heatherly

Heart Of Gold

By L. S. Heatherly

The first hearing of Neil Young's "Heart of Gold" can be
a musical, even spiritual-ontological, milepost in one's life:
a flashback illumination, a residual trance of thought and emotion.

Being engulfed by golden purities of voice, lyrics,
and instruments, perfectly orchestrated into an arrangement,
is rarely captured by musical-song artists.

The beats and rhythms, the instruments and lyrics;
the arrangement unifying all into an inundating flow of
unclouded, human vision, closely effecting a
primordial experience, stirring one very essence of the
human condition, and recording the state of that vital
essence as experienced in our Age!

All this, in metered union with the golden voice
of one man, re-capturing the spirit of Youth afloat,
un-docked, flowing alone, in the growing, unbonded,
searching sea of love -- Modern un-mated adulthood.

Young's rendition of his "Heart of Gold"
returns any true listener, with his humanity still in gear,
to the very essence of one stage of human development,
so distinctively marking one socioculture,
ambiguously called, "civilization."

Through this masterpiece, we relive
the cutting sociocultural blades and binding chains,
imprisoning Youth itself in an un-natural and artificial dilemma.

We hear an artist gracefully, and beautifully, bearing witness:
to an alien, invasive, pseudo place, time and being of the human
condition, for which humanity's children and adults pay:
in the blood and traumas of their lives, families, cultures,
societies, ecosystems, spirits and souls.

To any naturalistic, philosophical soul
it rose to one song of humanity, a sad, forlorn complaint
about the complex obstacles and adulterations
eclipsing any natural, noble pathway of Life in our Time.

Damn! Truth be dug and told:
songster and philosopher
not only merged to score for music;
but scored for the human soul:
one small triumph for humanity!

In our Stormy Age of ego and personality,
true artists make Land,
and take one small step
onto the shores of human sunlight.

Copyright 2010, L. S. Heatherly