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    Paddling Out The Stars
    Paddling Out The Stars
    Paddling Out The Stars
    Ebook202 pages1 hour

    Paddling Out The Stars

    By Gregory

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    About this ebook

    Paddling Out The Stars is a poetic, bi-level—left-brain/right-brain—mid-summer kayak-cruise on a semi-wilderness, Northern Ontario lake. Its basic framework is a factual, observational cruise around that lake beginning in the early evening of a clear, hot day, and continuing, with many stops—one long one at a small beach for a read-snooze-and-swim—that extends what was intended to be a short, evening cruise, deep into the ensuing night. The poet describes the lake and his kayak-cruise on it in close, left-brained detail; he as well describes the numerous birds and animals he encounters.
    However, lying lightly atop that factual, left-brained framework is an unfolding array of philosophical observations and ponderings of a mystical, spiritual, and holistic nature, particularly once darkness has enveloped the lake and the stars are being "paddled out." This kayak-cruise can be thoroughly left-brain enjoyed just for its observational, descriptive aspects, but it also provides much right-brain sustenance for any readers with right-brained inclinations who also like to "feed their Spirits" when they are reading.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGregory
    Release dateJun 3, 2018
    ISBN9780463438626
    Paddling Out The Stars
    Author

    Gregory

    Gregory is, foremost, a mystic and a shaman, and only secondarily a writer. In becoming a mystic and a shaman he has, in the parlance of Carlos Castaneda's shaman/teacher, Don Juan, he has lost his shields, has lost his normal human defences against the psychic, telepathic, and emotional emanations—positive and negative—of those with whom he interacts. Because of this, he lives in solitude and accordingly must remain anonymous. * * * * * Since the Internet has become, quite literally, an incomprehensibly vast and complex Indra's Web, not only of billions of computers and exabytes of electronic information, but an equally vast and complex Indra's Web of psychic, telepathic and emotional information, not all of it positive and healthy, and against which he lacks the shields to protect himself, Gregory spends very little time enmeshed in that Web and is not entangled in any social media sub-webs. * * * * * The Muse and Man Press logo installed here in lieu of a picture of Gregory, represents a vision manifested 40 years ago to Gregory by his Muse, the wise and knowledgeable, non-physical Being who inspires all his written works. It is a stylised representation of a large bird enfolding within its wings a smaller bird. Symbolically, on a basic level, this represents that non-physical Being embracing Gregory's spirit-being and inspiring his writing, while on a more expansive level, it represents a family of such Beings embracing Humanity and inspiring its spiritual evolution. The visionary inspiration for it was given in conjunction with the refrain from John Denver's song, The Wings That Fly Us Home: And the spirit fills the darkness of the heavens. It fills the endless yearning of the soul. It lives within a star too far to dream of. It lives within each part and is the whole: It's the fire and the wings that fly us home . . .

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      Book preview

      Paddling Out The Stars - Gregory

      Paddling Out The Stars

      by

      Gregory

      Copyright 2018 by:

      Gregory

      Published by

      Muse & Man Press

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      * * * * *

      Cover and publisher logo designed by

      Geoff Morton

      www.geoffmorton.ca

      Table Of Contents

      Prologue

      First Leg

      Second Leg

      Third Leg

      Fourth Leg

      Fifth Leg

      Sixth Leg

      Seventh Leg

      Epilogue

      About the Author

      Other titles by Gregory

      Prologue

      There was a child went forth every day,

      And the first object he looked upon, that object he became,

      And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part

      of the day,

      Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.

      —Walt Whitman

      Yet there is a way in which physical and mental events merge and influence each other. A change of world view can change the world viewed.

      —Joseph Chilton Pierce

      How do you know but every bird

      That wings the airy way

      Is an immense world of delight,

      Closed to your senses five?

      —William Blake

      A human being is part of the whole, called by us the Universe, a

      part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his

      thoughts, and feelings as something separated from the rest—a

      kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a

      kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and

      affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free

      ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion

      to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its

      beauty.

      —Albert Einstein

      Connecting means paying attention to what is going on around

      you and not screening everything out to such a degree that you

      miss the magic.

      —José Stevens

      Holy: venerated as, or as if, sacred. From Middle English, from

      Old English hālig; akin to Old English hāl –whole.

      —Merriam-Webster Dictionary

      First Leg

      It is late in the afternoon

      of a

      hot, blue-sky, Sol-blazing summer day,

      and as I am finishing up my day's work on a long poem

      I have been working on for months,

      and I can feel,

      rising

      from deep, deep within

      the glowing depths of my

      True Self, my Spirit,

      a pressing need to go for a kayak-cruise

      on the nearby semi-wilderness lake,

      and though the relentless heat of the day has

      enervated these old bones and their weary flesh,

      and I do not feel like braving the relentless attacks

      of Sol's phalanxes of hot, blazing beams, my

      True Self, my Spirit,

      persists in Its demands,

      and ever-wanting to stay on the good side of my

      True Self, my Spirit,

      I decide to comply,

      and after making a thermos of tea, some

      sandwiches, filling a half dozen bottles with water,

      I load my kayak onto my car and drive

      to the launch point on the western edge of

      the small beach on the southern shore

      of this vibrant, clear-watered,

      northern wilderness lake,

      and after unloading my kayak and dragging it

      across a swath of grass to the shore,

      I stop beside it and gaze out over the lake's

      delightful, sparkling, soft-wind-rippled expanse of

      brilliant, dark-blue beauty.

      And as is my custom,

      I conscientiously and intently take in

      the bright, broad, beautiful blue expanse of this

      Living Lake,

      while first saying hello to It as I give It a

      a subtle bow and a subtler,

      hands-clasped-at-heart Namaste,

      —since I am not living in India, where such a

      gesture would hardly be noticed, I make it subtle

      enough so as not to attract any undue attention

      from the crowd of bathers to my right—

      then asking its permission for my taking a cruise on

      its living waters, a query that I immediately

      sense is answered with the immediate,

      "Of course—it’s been a while! . . .

      Where have you been?"

      For if there is one thing I know with certainty,

      all bodies of water are living, supremely

      Conscious Beings,

      and nothing guarantees a good paddle

      in Their

      Living Beingness,

      like extending to them their due respect

      by first saying hello,

      then asking their permission to enter their Being,

      and after those necessary rituals are over,

      I gaze up in equal reverence at the vast dome of the

      pristine blue sky overhead, forcing myself

      to circle full-round in the cool, wet sand

      so I can take in,

      and be keenly aware of,

      its over-arching beauty and vastness,

      thinking, as I inevitably do,

      after performing this so essential ritual,

      about all the money and labor and resources

      expended by those institutional religions

      who have constructed enormous stone structures

      with massive domes designed to create

      vast and impressive spaces intended to fill

      the spirits and imaginations of their faithful

      with the requisite awe and wonder

      over the limitless glory and vast majesty

      of their Supreme Deity,

      all possible,

      because these somnambulant people have lost the

      natural, essentially-human ability

      to step outside

      at least once each day, look up,

      circle around, and

      gaze in conscientious, jaw-gaping wonder

      at the vast and awe-some dome of the sky overhead,

      —especially if they live on the prairies, as I once did,

      where it is easier to ignore a nail in your shoe than

      that vast, horizon-circling sky—

      which even on a heavy-clouded day,

      makes the largest, most-impressive,

      most-expensive, human-built

      cathedral-topping dome,

      look like the inside of a thimble,

      while the act of gazing up

      at the vast-beyond-fathoming dome

      of a clear, star-sparkling,

      night sky,

      especially when the

      Milky Way

      arcs gloriously and awe-somely across it,

      is to reduce even the most impressively massive of

      human-built domes, to something smaller and

      even less impressive than the husk

      of a millet seed.

      And though there are those who would

      counter with comments about

      the unparalleled mastery, complexity and beauty

      of the artwork on the inside surfaces of those

      questionably magnificent and sacred cathedral-domes,

      all I can say is that a habit of conscientious

      sky-gazing will yield panoramas of

      complexity and living beauty,

      that are not only dynamic, but

      often beyond breathtaking and awe-some,

      whether it be—

      the vast, high-drifting feathers of ice crystals

      constantly being shaped

      and re-shaped by stratospheric winds,

      officially named

      cirrus clouds,

      but called by many by their more poetic name of

      mares' tails;

      or—

      a bright, warm, sunny summer-afternoon sky

      full of those slow-drifting, constantly-changing,

      fluffy white cotton balls of

      cumulus clouds,

      sporting the quaint, Latin name of

      Cumulus humilis;

      or—

      one of those clear, sparkling, high-pressure days

      of any season when the air is dry and not

      a blemish mars the depthless blue

      of a sky that looks like some gargantuan chef,

      after washing his favorite,

      bright blue salad bowl,

      has placed it upside down over the world

      for it to dry, though sometimes,

      as an afternoon wanes and Sol's wearying

      stallions are legging it to their western horizon stable,

      the ghost-pale gibbous Luna can be seen,

      haunting the eastern reaches of that

      otherwise flawless expanse of

      the living blue Akasha;

      or—

      the massive, towering phalanxes

      of cumulonimbus clouds that often fill the sky on

      hot, muggy summer afternoons, and either blitz across

      it in a wild fury while flashing

      great arcs of lightning and booming out

      deafening blasts of thunder,

      or taking ponderous, day-long strolls, such that

      when tired Sol slow-slumps to his north-reaching,

      summer-horizon bed,

      he paints them in gaudy and glorious shades

      of gold and red and bright purple, or soft hues

      of rose and amethyst and indigo;

      or—

      on clear nights, the vast star-scape of the night sky

      being slowly and regally traversed by

      the full and bright-beaming

      Goddess Luna;

      or—

      on clear, gelid winter nights, sky panoramas gloriously alive

      with the multi-hued maidens of

      Aurora Borealis,

      dancing and cavorting in their filmy, iridescent,

      green and blue and sometimes red, costumes;

      or—

      a languid and lingering summer's eve, when

      Sol dips into his paint box and splashes,

      first, a splendid and varied array of bright

      reds and oranges across a vast and spreading array

      of altocumulus clouds lingering in the

      northwestern sky, then

      when He tires of those gaudy hues,

      he slowly repaints that vast, dynamic canvas with

      muted, swift-changing pastel shades of

      rose, amethyst, and indigo.

      And on thinking about the many, varied, stupendous,

      natural, and

      free-for-the-looking-right-out-your-door

      sky-scapes,

      the thought comes to me

      that aeons after—

      humankind has ingloriously exited from

      the stage of this planet, from this

      Living Goddess Gaia;

      that aeons after all its mighty,

      power-and-wealth-obsessed, religious institutions

      have long faded from cosmic memory,

      and all their mighty domes have collapsed

      back to the earth out of which they arose,

      relentless Time reducing them to naught

      but dirt-covered ruins overgrown with

      the eternally reincarnating grasses,

      wildflowers, shrubs, bushes, and trees,

      those glorious sky-panoramas and cloudscapes

      will continue to manifest in all

      their living, conscious splendor,

      not one bit perturbed or disappointed

      that not even a single pair of

      human eyes

      any longer exists to gaze at them in

      all their magnificence and glory . . .

      But enough of all this drear philosophizing!

      And with my hellos having been said

      to the

      Living Lake,

      and to the no less alive

      Sky,

      —I love

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