that mysterious

that mysterious

something that puts together

syllables and words

Mahasaraswati Day, Day of Total Knowledge. It's late January. In the early morning I creep into town on black ice to listen to a lady talk about Mahasaraswati, goddess of knowledge, science, arts and music. She says, "Maha means great, sara means pure silence of a still lake, swa means the Self, and ti means the dynamism of silence. Mahasaraswati is silence in motion, the flow of total knowledge."
          As she speaks I picture the painting of Mahasaraswati propped on a bookcase in my study, a spirit painting made by Mangku Liyer, a Balinese shaman-priest. Memory takes me back to the summer of 2001. I have just arrived in Bali, visiting my friend Robin Lim, and she takes me to an odalan celebrating the birthday of a temple in Nyuh Kuning, where Mangku Liyer is performing some of the ceremonies. Robin introduces me as a "mantra meditator" and he immediately invites me to visit him. 
          Some days later Robin takes me with her to his home in Ubud. She wants him to make a charm to protect her from a black witch. Mangku Liyer is sitting cross-legged on a mat outside his room. He is a tiny man with a big grin that reveals some missing teeth. After we visit for awhile, he shows me his spirit paintings. He says the images come to him in a vision and they have great spiritual powers.
          I am immediately drawn to one of Mahasaraswati. Unlike the Indian depictions I have seen of her wearing a white sari, she is dressed in Balinese temple attire and her peacock looks more like a turkey, but she has that same serene smile. I tell him that I write and paint, and he says it would be good for me to have this painting. Then he shows me another painting he thinks will help in my meditation practice. It is a strange figure of a man. After I gaze at it for a few moments, he asks me what I feel about it. 
          "The man has four legs," I reply, "so he is well grounded. His hands are pressed together in anjuli mudra, so he is full of devotion. His eyes are in his chest, so he sees with his heart, rather than his head. He has three flames in place of a head, representing the knower, the process of knowing and the known. His crown chakra is very well developed, and his physical body is surrounded by a wide aura of subtle energy."
          "Exactly," Mangku Liyer says, with an even bigger grin. He says the money for the paintings will allow his granddaughter to finish school, which makes me happy to know that the goddess of total knowledge is taking care of this girl's education. Mankgu Liyer arranges to have the paintings framed in carved wood and delivered to me in a cardboard case for carrying on the airplane, something I would never be allowed to do a few months later.
          Now the two paintings reside side by side in my home, their presence a reminder that the deepest knowledge comes from that silent place within.

blades of sunlight pierce

blades of sunlight pierce

dark pines, carving snow into

fantastic sculptures

Snow piled alongside the road winding up the hill from the river to Sensei's house has been sculpted by the slanting rays of the sun into fanciful shapes. This one looks like a grinning gremlin carrying a gnome with a peaked white cap on his shoulders.

A chameleon perched on top of a white rock.

A white bear clasping a pine branch.

A man in a snowsuit with a shovel on his shoulder stands beside his snow sculpture of an enormous white owl. 

An old woman feeding her dogs.

cloaked by freezing fog

cloaked by freezing fog

dark apparitions hover --

memory of trees

Opening the gate this morning, I am wrapped in a pale blue muffler of freezing fog. A pair of white tails bounds into the woods, vanishing in a heartbeat, slashes of bright white swallowed by fuliginous white. The frozen lake gets a second coat of freezing fog, flocking every branch and vine. The blurred forms of dark pines along the shore seem like the mere memory of trees, phantoms floating between white and white. 

lone sundog follows

lone sundog follows

its master, guarding the sun

from dark cloud demons

Whenever I see a combination of clouds and sunset, I race to the highest hill for the show. This evening the sky fills with inky feathers of cirrus uncinus clouds, blown into lovely curves by high winds. Just above the horizon the sun dips into a gap between two layers of ice-crystal clouds and the refracted light creates a single parhelia, a mock sun that looks like a piece of rainbow dipped in gold. On the same level as the sun, the sundog appears to be separated by a hand's width held at arm's length. Like a faithful dog, the sundog brings up the rear, guarding its master from dark cloud demons hovering above.

angels with fiberglass

angels with fiberglass

hair streaming in the wind high

above mortal heads

At noon a fleet of solemn cumulus barges sails slowly across the sky, followed by a sprightly chorus of cirrofibratus angels trailing their fiberglass hair in streamers as they zoom across the azure dome, driven by a force we earth-bound mortals cannot feel.

crepuscular rays

crepuscular rays

fanning through holes in blue clouds

touch snow-filled furrows

White sunbeams shining through holes in blue stratocumulus clouds fan out like reflections of the snow-filled furrows radiating from a line of bare black trees. It's all perspective. The rays of sunlight are actually equidistant but appear to diverge from behind the clouds, in the same way that the parallel furrows seem to widen as they get nearer. I am grateful for this illusion of expansion, so much more interesting than lines that never meet.

in a snowy pasture

in a snowy pasture

little black horse, two brown bulls

graze on clumps of grass

As soon as it gets light, the three companions emerge from a little red shed to forage until dark on clumps of grass poking up through patches of snow in the dappled pasture. When I approach from the road, the little black horse, standing knee deep in the snow, looks up first. Then the twin bulls stop grazing and turn their heads in my direction. They've grown quite a bit since last summer. The miniature horse looks just the same except for a thicker coat. As the three continue to gaze at me, I can't tell whether they're just curious or fearful. After a long moment of examination, the black horse walks rather quickly over to one of the brown bulls and stops near his protective flank. I leave my offering of three red apples just inside the fence and return the way I came.