"Lifting a brush, a burin, a pen, or a stylus is like releasing a bite or lifting a claw."
                                                                                                                  -Gary Snyder
Cereal

down through a long line of shamans
All the words spilled out, dark leaves
on the forest floor. This place is like
A bowl of comprehension: a little milk,
A few buttons of banana, a spit
of strawberry, and I'm full.

Every object speaks when touched.
Every object shouts when struck.
The stag beetle hears the air
Caress the leaves.The chickadee
Notices the heat drop down onto
its black head. A scent collides
Somewhere in a horse's nose.
Only this pen can hear the nudge
As it slides into my shirt pocket.
Every object has its way of remembering.
Out of each form comes the memory,
Like a bee moving from one brushing to
Another, leaving something as it gathers
Itself. Finally the memory is gone.
And the object rests in that knowing.
Every object has its own silence.

During the descent we also lose the way others see us.This is not always a bad thing in the long run, but it is humiliating and painful.  The mask that we present to the world slips off and the face behind it becomes visible, with its expression of terror, greed, despair, dishonesty-whatever is usually kept in the cellar.  The moment of surrendering the old image -of life, of the self-is most painful.  At such a time we know that we must strike out on our own, but in our new solitude and shame sometimes we go under,  for a while, or forever. Nonetheless, the stripping away of the mask that links us to all that we are known to be and do is a necessary part of descent, one that eventually allows a fresh start.
                                                    -John Tarrant, excerpted from The Light Inside the Dark
                                                                                                
                                                                             

The body of Jesus, broken on the cross, offers an image of the primal matter.  It is the body of a criminal abandoned by his intimates, tortured and given a slow, shameful death.  Since the situation is beyond human repair, the corpse is taken down and given to the rock of the tomb where eternity may do what it will.  And women come to bathe and anoint the body: their care for the broken corpse softens the dark a little, and after three days of inert death, a door opens.  When the new time appears, we find that the dark does not disappear all at once and forever.  Compassion wakes us to our labors.  Like Dante with his guide, we leave Hell to enter Purgatory, the place where burdens are taken on for the sake of love.
                                                                                 -John Tarrant
                                                                                 The Light Inside the Dark