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Life throws darkness but Mending Lives ignites the light within. Listen to people willing to share their real-life stories of coping with significant loss. Through inspiring conversations and a touch of spirituality, we explore themes of resilience, adversity and grief.
Jane_Houng: [00:00:00] Hi, I'm Jane Hong, and this is Mending Lives, where I'm talking with people from a patchwork of places. Some have had their lives ripped apart by loss, some are in the business of repairing others brokenness, but we're all seeking to make this world more beautiful.
Tony Barnstone is an American poet, teacher, translator, critic, anthologist, and editor. He's published six books of award winning poetry, including Apocryphal. This latest offering brims with psalms, parables, testaments, sermons, and even sutras, illustrating his extraordinary eclectic mind, extensive knowledge, and pantheistic outlook.
He's also edited and co edited several world literature textbooks, including the literatures of Asia, and the literatures of the Middle East, and the literatures of [00:01:00] Asia, Africa, and Latin America, from antiquity to now. All published by Prentice Hall. Tony has lived in China, Africa, and Greece, but is currently Professor of English and Environmental Studies at Whittier College in California, where he founded a creative writing program, created the Newsome Awards in Poetry and Fiction, and founded an annual Whittier Writers Festival. Recently, he's been writing a libretto for an opera. I met Tony for the first time in Nepal at the New York Writers Workshop held last June. During our chat, I couldn't resist asking him for a tarot reading from a lavish deck he has spent 12 years producing with the artist Alexandra Eldridge. It's enticingly called the Radiant Tarot Pathway to Creativity, and I highly recommend [00:02:00] it.
Jane_Houng: So Tony, welcome to Mending Lives.
Tony Barnstone: Good to be here. Thank you for having me.
Jane_Houng: I know you've had a particularly busy schedule with the New York Writer Workshop and we're getting towards the end. So we're squeezing this in because so much of what you've said has really resonated with me and inspired me in ways which not interesting for the purposes of this podcast, and of course the focus is on you. One thing I I noted with interest in the biography, whatever you want to call it, that on Amazon, is that you said you had a particularly unusual childhood, a very artistic one. Maybe you could tell our listeners a bit about that.
Tony Barnstone: I come [00:03:00] from the branch of my family, or one branch of my family, that didn't go into business, didn't become lawyers or real estate developers. But, strangely enough, joined the cult of the arts, you might say, the religion of the arts. My father is a writer Poet, religious scholar translator, literary critic, and more with more than 80 published books. My sister is a writer and a poet and a professor. My brother is an architect and a sculptor. And I do many kinds of writing mainly poetry and multimedia work, working with artists and musicians.
Jane_Houng: My parents were both professional classical musicians. And my father was a clarinetist, my mother was a violinist . So my upbringing was full of music, dancing, laughter, very creative types. Not so much writerly, but I resonated with that. And I think I, the older I get the more I realize what an unusual upbringing I [00:04:00] had for that reason and I mean my family were based I was born in London but I went up to Manchester when my father got second clarinetist job with the Hallé orchestra. But from that time we were there.
Tony Barnstone: I taught for a year in China. I spent some time in Africa. My mother is Greek, so we go every summer to Greece, where we have family and a place to stay. And I think I move around more with my mind than my body, though. I've really been deeply immersed in world literature both the world spiritual literature tradition and religious tradition and the world literary tradition and Not just from a scholarly point of view, but I think maybe from the point of view of someone seeking something that maybe it's hard to find in our own set of Western traditions.
Jane_Houng: Which is please explain more
Tony Barnstone: One way of putting it is that although many religions have a spiritual side, a practice side, versus the more scholarly priest [00:05:00] craft the religion as theocracy and control and social prohibition and daily ritual, there's practice to, to, the Christian monk or the the whirling dervish in the Sufi tradition. I find in Buddhism sitting practice and the idea less in, later more in Theravada than in Mahayana Buddhism that you can turn into a Buddha in one lifetime. Because I don't have the patience to wait a million lifetimes, truly. But I like the idea of a a practice that you can use. And you see it in the texts themselves, right? That they are not just texts about how to sit and how to breathe, or paradoxes about how to use language and get beyond language. But really thought problems to try to later in Zen Buddhism, for example, to give you the Zen flask that shocks you out of a way of thinking and can push you into a, [00:06:00] I guess you could call it an enlightened mode of thinking. I don't at all call myself enlightened, but let's just say I aspire to Buddhist practice and and it gives me hope.
Jane_Houng: Hope for the future of mankind?
Tony Barnstone: No, I think we have no hope as a species. I think we are, unfortunately, too many of us and we've really made a terrible mess of the planet. Sadly, it's a depressing thought, but it's hard to, to say even here in beautiful Nepal, when you see entire riverbeds where you can't see the water for the plastic bottles and where you have the great Pacific gyre, which is an entire continent filled just with micro plastics. And and it makes you despair environmentally of, Of the world for our children. And no, I don't have a lot of hope for humanity in part because we knew this was coming and we did nothing about it because the people who rule us are not motivated by
Jane_Houng: Non materialistic reason.
Tony Barnstone: Yes. And they're not, they're nominated [00:07:00] by power and staying in power by any means possible. They're essentially like corporations whose one job in life is to stay profitable.
Jane_Houng: So how can we keep healthy and whole in this present situation? I know that's a sort of huge question. But going back to Zen Buddhism, what one thing I've found is that this idea that it's a, it could be a philosophy, and Of life, the kind of life where we are living sustainably for the sake of the planet and these major catastrophes that are almost certainly going to occur. Yeah, reaching out for the scriptures. And as finding a way for personal healing as a and for a way to actually purify our lives and make us more focused on what we can do as an individual to, to help mankind. Does that sound too [00:08:00] grandiose?
Tony Barnstone: One can say that really from Francis Bacon onward, there's been an ethical problem, which is how do you maintain the supposedly moral basis of culture in a when it becomes harder and harder to believe in traditional religion. Bacon still considered himself a Christian, although that might have been a mask he put on so he wouldn't end up like Galileo. Darwin even would pretended that his work was to fit within the idea, that notion that physics is and biology is about revealing the works of God. That by understanding the, The functioning of the universe we can in small steps step up the ladder to god by understanding the book of nature Which is written by god's hand that begins to break down with increasing secularization and what happens is that people turn to well podcasts about [00:09:00] healing or books of poetry or art and we have the idea secular humanist idea that well at least If we tell the right stories. At least we can try to maintain our humanity. At least we can try to maintain a an altruistic base that that may not be guaranteed by a godhead. In fact, altruism, very interestingly, is a term that was created by the founder of positivism Auguste Comte, the French philosopher, who basically turned the scientific approach to the world into a philosophy that by the 20th century was stating that only that which can be true, proven true or false in a binary fashion, as you would now say, is meaningful and any value statements that cannot be proved true or false is meaningless. And from that point of view, it's easy to take a step to saying true or false, power or lack of power, winning or losing, means it's fine to drop an atom bomb on a civilian [00:10:00] population. It's fine to, as they did in Tokyo, drop thousands and thousands of napalm bombs on a civilian population so that 100, 000 people burned to death alive. It's easier to take that step. Do you mind if I rant a little bit more?
Jane_Houng: You can. Are you going to lead on to Gaza?
Tony Barnstone: We could go there. But, I, what I was going to say was slightly different. It had to do with the American poet, William Carlos Williams, who was writing about the atom bomb in his poem, Asphodel, That Greeny Flower, and he says there, that look what passes for the news. Poetry also can give you the news. Yet people don't look for it there. I'm misquoting him. Yet men die in sorrow every day for lack of what is found there. Men and women, we would say. Pardon the bad quote because I misquoted him. But the point about that is his ideology is that of humanism. That the idea that you can maintain your humanity through culture. That at least if we try not to destroy things [00:11:00] as much as possible as we pass through the world, if we try to treat each other with grace, if we try to have empathy, that somehow or other that we can do less damage at least. Now here's the interesting thing. Please, go on. All of that, which, Alan Ginsberg, the great beat poet, in his poem Howl, called The Great Boatload of Romantic Bullshit.
Jane_Houng: I like it. I must read that one.
Tony Barnstone: That great boatload of romantic bullshit. Poetry can save us. Art can save us. Literature can save us. Spirituality can save us. That idea is actually rooted in neuroscience.
Jane_Houng: Can I quickly interject?
Tony Barnstone: Yes, please.
Jane_Houng: For me, suffering what I've had to suffer, it was poetry and music and spirituality that has helped me through more than anything. But let's go Follow your train of thought and about neuroscience because that was something you mentioned in the panel yesterday called meditation and imagination, and you were saying that more and more, the neuroscientific [00:12:00] developments are proving what meditation has helped people.
Tony Barnstone: Okay, so two things. First, that is true. When we are when our brains have predominantly alpha waves, which is to say alert, but slightly depressed or slightly relaxed.
Jane_Houng: Like in the shower.
Tony Barnstone: Yeah, hot tub shower, maybe with a little alcohol or when you're sle sleepy and on the verge of sleep in bed. That's the moment you're most likely to have the Eureka moment. When you're supposed to have that breakthrough. Which doesn't have to be, Now I know how to paint the Mona Lisa. Now I know how to, I've got my Nobel Prize winning novel out now. It can be something as simple as How to survive living another day after your divorce.
Jane_Houng: There you go. Let's get back to very practical humanistic terms. I do understand that maybe arguably you, only you know the answer. But I mean that this has been a very major setback in your life at some stage. [00:13:00] Why was that and what did you do to get through it?
Tony Barnstone: I've had a few, you might say, bad love breakups and other tragedies in my life as well. But a marriage in which we truly loved each other and were together as young people for 16 years. And yet, ultimately could not be good for each other by the end. And so we had to part as friends, but it was you probably know this. It wasn't just the pain of the present. It wasn't just the death of everything in the past, which now you had to look at through the lens of a wound, but the elimination of all possible futures. And how do you work through that? For me, I worked through it in various ways. And then with the later breakup as well I did not use antidepressants though. I was tempted to. I took, created a discipline of exercise and creativity and long walks, long meditative walks and [00:14:00] found I found it. I was able to work through those things, work through the pain while feeling it intensely. And I, as I said to you the other day I think that intelligence without pain is not wisdom.
Jane_Houng: Let's just repeat that. Intelligence without pain is not wisdom.
Tony Barnstone: Yeah.
Jane_Houng: So the things that we learn through suffering.
Tony Barnstone: Yeah. I didn't want to be wise. Fuck being wise. I was perfectly happy as a smart young guy writing his poems and being a professor and having a happy marriage. Sex and love and eating Chinese food for Christmas.
Jane_Houng: Oh, she was Chinese was she?
Tony Barnstone: No, but we didn't celebrate Christmas. Oh, okay Anyway yeah. No, I was I was perfectly happy with that. But pain gives you a longer perspective and maybe I should throw it back to you. Are you wise?
Jane_Houng: I think only outsiders can make a judgment about that.
Tony Barnstone: Yeah.
Jane_Houng: What do you think? We've been together for [00:15:00] about a week, Tony.
Tony Barnstone: You have the look in your eyes of someone's seen what the world can do and and it's hurt you. And yet you've dedicated your life to helping others as a way of turning all that pain into something graceful. So I'd call that wisdom.
Jane_Houng: You call that wisdom. It certainly helped me a lot along the way and I feel it will continue to do I think the conversation we had when I told you a few details about what happened to my daughter, you were also talking about tarot. And I shared with you that I had a very good friend who said, Hey, how about we do a tarot reading to see where you're going? And I found that very insightful. And how about this? Let's have a little bit of fun. I see that you've brought along the Radiant Tarot, which is something that you have worked on for, what, did you say [00:16:00] 10 years?
Tony Barnstone: Oh, I forget. I think it might have been 12 years with the artist. 16 years altogether, yeah.
Jane_Houng: Okay, a few questions before, maybe you can just give me a quick tarot reading.
Tony Barnstone: Oh, we can do that for sure, yeah. Would you like to do that?
Jane_Houng: Yeah, why not? But, you and tarot, okay, so you polymath you poet, you librettist, all these wonderful things that you do, but you've actually chosen to dedicate a significant amount of your time to creating this most beautiful package. Why? What can tarot teach us?
Tony Barnstone: It's a good question. More than I expected when I got into it. I would say that my particular approach to tarot, my tarot deck is called the Radiant Tarot, and the subtitle is Pathway to Creativity. And the artist I worked with is Alexandra Eldridge, a radiant artist herself, a translucent, amazing, transcendent, extraordinary artist of the spirit from Santa Fe, New [00:17:00] Mexico. The Radiant Tarot seeks to help us to create a radiant self, if that makes sense. And not just my tarot, but my my, when I found out in the process of researching and writing the guidebook that went along with it and helping to come up with the imagery that would go into the cards, is that it turns out that the tarot and the creative process are really the same. Although we don't realize this, right? So that the, the process of meditation incubation dreaming waiting for waiting for things to gel, and then the kind of flash and fiery inspiration, and then the, the cutting back and the shaping of the, of reason, and then the putting it out into the world and manifesting it. And promoting it and having a career. Those are the four suits of the tarot. Those are the,
Jane_Houng: so we've got the Pentacles. The cups.
Tony Barnstone: Yes.
Jane_Houng: What are the other two?
Tony Barnstone: Swords and wands. Cups are meditation. Wands are inspiration. Swords [00:18:00] are rationality and pentacles are a manifestation. And once you see that, you see also that okay, maybe every card has something to say about creativity as well. Now, here's the point. I want to bring this back to the point of the podcast. Creativity isn't just for fun. Apex Predators of the creative world, the , the Frida Col and the, the Pablo Picassos and the Ts, Elliots and whoever else, right? All the Nobel Prize winners and Shakespeare's and Gallops and
Jane_Houng: And Tony Barn Stones, . No, you don't, .
Tony Barnstone: It's not that. In the mid century the humanistic school of psychologists theorized that creativity allows you to achieve your complete self, your your truly whole self in a way that that builds upon Jung's ideas of the creative process of channeling cultures, archetypes from the ancient world and making them contemporary in such a way as they [00:19:00] can teach us how to be.
Jane_Houng: And this is this underlying thing about the creative consciousness and all the Jungian philosophy behind that, that we all.
Tony Barnstone: Absolutely, because the point for the humanistic philosophers is that we think of the apex predators of creativity, but the truth is that it's not just that vertical line, it's the horizontal axis in which most of us live creatively so that if you make up funny songs with your kids, or if you if you get together and play board games with your friends around a bottle of alcohol, if you do gardening, if you simply sit with a friend on her deathbed, and hold her hand, and comfort her these are creative acts, right? Although what you're creating may not be a painting, right? You're creating a moment of grace. You're creating a tomato. You're creating an evening that people will [00:20:00] remember. And seeing from that point of view, the tarot, as I see it, can lead you to creative insights that help you not just make a dance or make a poem, but make your life. Which is to say, use the power of the brain to reinvent yourself. When everything seems broken
Jane_Houng: Okay is this a good time for me to pick a card.
Tony Barnstone: Yes, I had chosen some but that was maybe cheating. But maybe we should just bring out the deck. What do you say?
Jane_Houng: You decide you're the expert.
Tony Barnstone: Shall we see what the tarot deck likes to? We have to shuffle it a minute actually I should have you shuffle it
Jane_Houng: Here I go. Here are my hands.
Tony Barnstone: Okay. Okay. Let's put it on the table and spread it out a little bit. Okay. Now, could you just hover your hands over the cards for a minute? Just when you feel [00:21:00] one calling to you, just pull it to the surface and put it on the table face down.
Jane_Houng: Okay,
Tony Barnstone: Good.
Jane_Houng: One.
Tony Barnstone: And then do another one when you're ready.
Jane_Houng: Two.
Tony Barnstone: And then a final one.
Jane_Houng: Three.
Tony Barnstone: Okay. Now, it really depends on what question you're asking at this point. Let's say you are a screenwriter. You're saying where does my screenplay start? Where does it go in the middle? What's the main conflict? And where does it end? What's the resolution? Let's say you're somebody who's dealing with a life problem. And you want to say here's my problems of the past. Here's the things I'm working with in the present. And here are challenges or resolutions in the future. Or you could say for example, I'm trying to create a character. Here's the person's past, present, and future. Or you could do many versions of this. What what's appealing to you?
Jane_Houng: I have to reveal here. Quick filtering. . I want it to be. I want it to be meaningful and [00:22:00] genuine. So let's say that I can develop into a spokesperson for women. In terms of bringing awareness of the harm that's caused when we are attacked by men.
Tony Barnstone: In that case, maybe the first card would be the, what's what, how do you think of the past? No, that's not how you see it. Tell me what you're thinking. Because we have, the three cards have three meanings.
Okay you're saying
Jane_Houng: I can't think about my past and how I performed in that respect in the past.
Tony Barnstone: Oh we could do I was thinking what's maybe what happened in the past that brought you here. What's what's standing in the way of, or or might help you on your way towards the outcome you want. And then some warnings and thoughts about the future. That's one way of doing it. It doesn't always have to be past, present, and future.
Jane_Houng: Oh, I see what you mean.
Tony Barnstone: Yeah.
Jane_Houng: Okay let's think of it as the past.
Tony Barnstone: Okay.
Jane_Houng: Okay?
Tony Barnstone: Sure.
Jane_Houng: Is that still going to work?
Tony Barnstone: Sure. Why not?
Jane_Houng: [00:23:00] Abracadabra.
Tony Barnstone: Abracadabra. What card is it? Oh, it is the Five of Pentacles. And here you see me cheating by looking at my own book because at one point or another I was wise
Jane_Houng: Wrote it down.
Tony Barnstone: Oh yeah, I did. Yeah,
Jane_Houng: I see five stars. I see a tree, a leafless tree. I see round shapes. There's something hopeful about that. But, what does it say?
Tony Barnstone: It's a hard card in some ways because it's a card of adversity. It portends poverty and loneliness. It's a it's a a card of hardship and poverty. But at the same time within every disaster are the seeds of revelation. And out of poverty comes wealth out of hardship comes recovery and
Jane_Houng: love that. I love the dialectic.
Tony Barnstone: Yeah. I suppose one, you might even say [00:24:00] that there's something to be said by leaning into the question of reduction. If things as in the case of your daughter have disappeared from your life, have been subtracted from your life in such a way as to leave a wound or an emptiness. Then the question you might ask yourself is what can I subtract from my life that I no longer need? And then once you say that, what can I grow in the space that's emptied out.
Jane_Houng: Hey Tony, I'm writing notes, you can see that. I'll definitely be listening to this podcast. Okay, what's the next one?
Tony Barnstone: The next one is the present . What might be getting in your way or might be helping you along the way towards achieving your goal.
Jane_Houng: Okay.
Tony Barnstone: Helping women who have been harmed.
Jane_Houng: Okay, I'm really looking forward to seeing this card. Oh,
Tony Barnstone: We're really in the pentacles. And we're at the six of pentacles.
Jane_Houng: More adversity. More. One more. There's a flower there.
Tony Barnstone: You can see
Jane_Houng: And it's blossoming.
Tony Barnstone: You can see it's a much happier card. This is called the bomb of [00:25:00] generosity. And it's really about giving back. It's really about saying that generosity civic engagement, reciprocity, whether it's financial, whether it's emotional. This is how we reconnect after we've been disconnected, say, by the previous card. Fives are always hard cards to, because they're always about conflict and loss and grief.
Jane_Houng: And what's a six then?
Tony Barnstone: The six is all about giving back. It's all about in fact, charity. It's the card of charity. If I could, if you ever had a good reading Let me let me read you something. This is from the book. This is the musing. Every card, I have the reading of the card, the meaning of the card, a creative exercise having to do with the card. Lovely. And then the musing. Here's the musing. Here's the problem with generosity. According to French philosopher Jacques Derrida, the only true gift is the one in which there's no reward for the giver. Gifts [00:26:00] given to those we are close to reward us with their appreciation. And gifts to those not in one circle, such as buildings at medical centers that bear the giver's name, still reward the giver and so are no gifts at all. Even anonymous gifts are not exempt according to this argument since they gratify us with the image that we are good and generous people. From this perspective, true altruism seems impossible, but the Six of Pentacles tells us that reciprocity doesn't pollute generosity, it is what makes giving intrinsically social. Generosity's greatest gift is that it strengthens relationships between self and others, building community. So
Jane_Houng: Lovely.
Tony Barnstone: Yeah,
Jane_Houng: It reminds me of the prophet by Cahil Gibran and he talks about if you give your money. It's nothing. It's when you give of yourself unconditionally something like that. I've missed misquoted but this lovely. [00:27:00] Okay, very useful. Thank you very much.
Tony Barnstone: Would you like to know the creative practice with this.
Jane_Houng: Oh, yes, please.
Tony Barnstone: It's basically create a charity
Jane_Houng: No
Tony Barnstone: It says you an economy based on the exchange of commodities that build wealth, that builds wealth for the seller. Okay. An economy can be based on the exchange of commodities that build wealth for the seller, but a society must be based on much more. In a community we exchange not just money but also love, Commitment, friendship, and mutual responsibility. In this practice, you will give yourself the gift of giving. Designate a container to be your giving jar. Use it as a piggy bank for pocket change and small bills. Once it builds, make it your holiday gift to a local food bank, or homeless shelter, or art in the school's program. Write a check for extra if you can. Suggest this to friends as well, and turn your community into a giving tree. I think it speaks to what you've done.
Jane_Houng: Interesting, isn't it? Because I have. It's a [00:28:00] fact. Okay, let's see the future. I can't wait, Tony.
Tony Barnstone: Which again, may be trouble coming your way or ways that may open up for you. Let's see what it is.
Jane_Houng: Just going to say a little prayer.
Tony Barnstone: Oh, it's a different one. And we have the two of cups. That's, I think, a very interesting one because it's the card of connection. It's about balance, harmony, sometimes conflict. There's an interesting thing, Plato in the Symposium talks about how we started out as beings that were both male and female, or male and male, or female and female, but all joined together two in one. So that we had eight arms and and so on, yeah, four arms, sorry, and four four legs, but eight limbs. And then we're, the Zeus split them in half and then for the rest of our life we've been seeking reconnection. Men with men, women with women, men with women, that's all the attempt to get back to that [00:29:00] original innate eros that draws us to the primeval state, as Plato writes. Without that kind of balance, the Two of Cups is one about conflict and opposition. Harry Nilsson, you know that song? No. One is the loneliest number that's ever been. Two is the loneliest number since the number one, right? It can be very lonely, but on the other hand if you understand that two ness is always going to be about separation and connection at the same time. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate. Then the twoness of self and other, self and society, self and lover, self and child becomes more like a dance. And so it really depends on how you approach your two ness. Do you see it as alienation, disconnection, war? Or do you see this dance connection and [00:30:00] separation as a way of joining?
Jane_Houng: And actually as a human being, I have to embrace both. Both those exist.
Tony Barnstone: Yeah. It may be, I know that your charity work gives back to you.
Jane_Houng: Enormously. Whenever I, in my, gloomiest moments. I just need to look at a few images of women, refugee women hanging up their clothes or a woman wearing this panic button that I've devised as a device to shock attackers and make them run away. Yep. It's it's very, sounds simple, but it is something very true and immediate about that response to, to grief.
Tony Barnstone: Now, a spiritual person would say, the gods just spoke through us. A non spiritual person would say, Tarot cards are doorways into the unconscious, and they help us see ourselves. We can also see it both ways. [00:31:00] Why does it have to be a binary? That's, in fact, what Two of Cups is telling us.
Jane_Houng: There we go. Hey, so what do you think the title of this podcast should be, Tony? We've ended up talking about Tarot and among so many other things. But I think, yeah. I'd like this to to be
Tony Barnstone: The Bomb of Generosity is the title of that card.
Jane_Houng: The Bomb of Generosity.
Tony Barnstone: Yeah.
Jane_Houng: There we go. All right. Tarot, to mend lives, give people ideas about What they can do. To make themselves more whole. It's powerful. This is my second reading only. And this has been a lot of fun. So thank you so much. Yeah. Maybe we should end with if you could kindly think of some poem or even some prose, whatever. Just from your works. Just to,
Tony Barnstone: To walk, to bring us out.
Jane_Houng: To bring us out.
Tony Barnstone: I have a few here. Why don't I see whether, which one's jumping out at me like a tarot card. How about that? This is really about, , it'll take a minute to read. [00:32:00]
Jane_Houng: Perfect.
Tony Barnstone: It's really about surviving grief and remembering how to live.
The epigraph comes from Psalm 30.
Weeping may last for the night, but a shout of joy comes in the morning.
And it's called Psalm of Snow.
I had forgotten how to say yes. That's the trick of heartbreak. It makes you forget yes. The voices in my head were not kind. So you took me to the woods. to empty out. My old shoulder was wired with pain, and there was a needle in my hip. But we lay on a wide, flat rock in the snow as the intoxicated sun licked our faces with breathing light, like a yellow dog, simple in its joy, licking our chins and lips and necks.[00:33:00]
And a long wind came from over the mountaintop and cooled our left sides. And the Sacramento River wept through us like time, and spoke its liquid, foolish syllables, senseless, sensual, almost sentient. And I lay with my head nested between your breasts and listened. Time to climb, you said, and I felt snow wing angelic as we snowshoed, leaving traces behind like snow rabbits with webbed feet, silver squirrels, prints on the glass of the world, a little evidence for angels to investigate after that death magic resolves us to nothing again.
I heard omens in the wind. Psalms in the bent warm sunlight that makes the snow mountains weep. Something was coming, something foreign as joy, a clue to how to live [00:34:00] once you're done with sorrow, a way of being in being, like the long breath exhaled, leaving a trace on the air before it resolves again to air, the frozen lake, ice. Fishers waiting for something great to rise, the mountaintop lifting its white head in trance and saying its one good word, snow.
Jane_Houng: The power of poetry. And from here we can see the Annapurna Range. Did you see it? Not from my window, I'm afraid, but I know you went out.
Tony Barnstone: We saw the The green mountains. If we came in the winter, we'd see the beautiful white snow range lit up like a yellow fire in the sunset. It would have been great. Another life.
Jane_Houng: But I see them in your poem. Thank you very much.
Tony Barnstone: Thank you. I love this conversation.
[00:35:00] Thanks again for listening to Mending Lives with me, Jane Houng. It was produced by Brian Hou. You can find relevant links to this show in the comments section. I would not, could not, be doing this without many people's support and encouragement. So until next time, goodbye.
Thanks again for listening to Mending Lives with me, Jane Hong. It was produced by Brian Ho. You can find relevant links to this show in the comments section. I would [00:36:00] not, could not, be doing this without many people's support and encouragement. So until next time, goodbye.