Blue Moon Rumpus


What's the use of all this spiritual practice if we can't let the wild rumpus start?

Most intense full moon, gleaming not only above, but within every cell of my body. 3 AM, sleep impossible. Love becomes fierce to thicken the plot.

At my window, cedar branches washed in milky blue streams. Countless particles and anti-particles burst from the vacuum, yet the void remains still and empty. Streaks of cream, threads of what pours into itself. Who struck this awful gong of silence? It is like the eve of a great battle, and I, wandering among the tents of my soldiers to hear their sweet slumber. I am ready.

Anyone who says it's all love, is correct. Anyone who says it's all a cosmic struggle, between armies of darkness and light, is correct. The fool who pretends there is a difference clings to a broken rope in a sea of anger, and calls his clinging "peace."

The darkness and the light are alike to Thee. Selah. Love becomes fierce to thicken the plot.


Gird up your loins, ready yourself for the good fight. Wild Things are everywhere, wrathful deities of the blue moon: Hayagriva, Mahakala, Vajrabhairava, all faces of your own heart. Slay them, Manjushri. Hug them, Max. Kiss the demon, and see which of you first turns into an angel.

Love loves to roughhouse. Every child knows what fun it is! Jesus cast the money changers from the temple, exuberant. Now we have to do it too. Therefor, fight, O Arjuna. Atma neither slays nor is slain. Know That by which all this is pervaded to be indestructible.

Be a bad little girl. Be a brat like Kali Artemis. The politics of cosmic dancing is not for the weary, but for lovers with swords of seeing, helmeted in rainbows, bending and stringing the opposites for the arrows of delight. If we do not sever the heads of Penelope's suitors, we never reach the marriage bed. It was carved from the rooted tree that connects us to the center of the earth.

The time is neither early nor late, it is now. Time for those who are awake to do battle with lies, and stop pretending there is any difference between warrior and paramour.

It's a play of light and shadow, a theater of moonbeams, trembling in terrible stillness. Don't imagine that this tranquil empty Autumn sky is not also a fury of stars, and gods contending. Game on, silence. Now let the wild rumpus start.
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Illustration and quote, 'Let the wild rumpus start,' from Maurice Sendak's 'Where the Wild Things Are.'

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