Old man, the village
shows its lights.
There is a dance.
A girl awaits.

==== 1965
__________
from within the village

I have heard
faint distant thunder
and turned once over in my sleep.

Old man, you knife.
You come
your hill, the log, the sun
and torment now my village life.

Old man, I’ve gained
the town
the light, the dance, the maid
but still would know the cutting blade of
Maya Maya Maya
Your chant, old man, once knelled
and I, old man, a bell sent ringing
from your chopping blows.

Night by the village gate.
I cannot see your hill,
But think a new one to the east,
where

===== 1977
_____________
journal notes:

There must be words
echoes
years
culminating into the mystery of tonight:
on this night of Aries: one half hour before the birth of my new year.

I know I have know this point as if from seed in darkness

Your voice, old man, borne within me

I watch and call this Act. I call this Act the Play.
I have only the language of the valley.
My tongue is tied to others.
I watch and call this entrapment,
I watch and call this escape
which are but dreams.

I call the play the passage
I call entrapment the womb
I call escape birth and rebirth

In this valley I now understand
In our crossing we carry each other.

In my father’s father
through father
through me
through my daughters
You come into being
and re-being.

So in this non-beginning time
we return to, as we are now, You,
but knowingly

I seek

===== undated, 1970s
__________________

the temple was open
yet I walked around it
and crossed the grounds
on my way to the world

the temple in my heart
yet I hurried past it in my mind

hungry and thirsty

is this fear?

Old man waiting in my heart
I beg please light the altar candles

===== 1978
_______________________
There are tears in my eyes.
There are years of dust.
The sea floods from me.
The sea floods from me.

===== 10-10-10
_____
tilden

today

with my walking stick and hat
I found the sun balanced on a hill

and a log
on which I sat and watched
as if once before

were we the same?
both of us
walking

until the sun
glaring the crest
burning our eyes
made us see

I have your walking stick and hat
or did you have mine?

=====
________
epilogue

The cosmos folds in upon itself

continually

===== 4-4-13
_____________________________
beyond the gate: journal notes

The painting is not about the old man and the sun.
It is about the young boy and the sun.

The boy is in the perspective of viewing the painting.
He sees an old man watching the sun set. He senses a fearful future
mirrored for himself. He smells death and time and alienation. He fears and loathes the old man because he knows the old man is he —
the boy himself. He knows he will become crazy if not constrained in/to
this life. He is not ready for the old man’s truth.

The old men is not concerned with any of this — he has merged with the light.

Now, years later, the painting begins to resolve. The boy’s fear of becoming the old man was really a young boy’s fear of becoming the sun.

Painted here in the duality of shadow and light.
— no different than maya—
the Light, unfolding as maya,
enfolds the boy and the old man
the viewer and the viewed
and indeed, the whole landscape.
To see, live, and express from the consciousness of being
— this is the path of light.