Danny James

”Ye province of revolutions lure; preserving heights where ecstasy brews,
Of relic agreements furious homecoming, riding hymns of deep-set change,
Savage and sweeping the entire.
Instincts bowed to primal charms palpable loom.”

As though with impatience pregnant at the oppression, the sun rushed from a corner early and determined, finding differently few or none with which to compete for a place overhead. The sky was again its own and so ascended, shone bold and brilliant, furnishing the hill-face with aspects of a double occupancy, that every rock, brush, and marking, by light grand and unguarded were now endowed with a companion in its own shade. And how they approach unsought, as a-walking do thoughts, the finer corollaries of pardoned observation. Tuning to this auspicious transmission, a clever reckoning happened into the meadows of free thought, placidly and perfect like a far-come Monarch butterfly pervading beyond the babel of hominine format, draping a hush over static and putting peace in the province.
Came thus; that, by not repressing a single Atom of our individual strangeness for any one in this World, can we raise, not the least our essential befitting selves but too, our worth the while fellows in this marvel-brimmed World to a more robust and appropriate elevation, to melodic sameness. Each but by earnestly being, is to all as giving sunshine.

With these heartening concepts behind me, my brow wearing rays warm and radiant that gladdened all the trails ahead, I expected to delight in many a walk across the region, or willing, one alone and stretching out unto the bend of sunset, — such I would choose, unhurried and pointed nowhere in particular save whims soft instruct:

Calm ye going, traveler. Who hurry need, unoften arrive in full.

A generous and attractive span here breathes, and away from tiresome obligations at home, the hours abundant and drawn, I saw no logical reason to rush upon my haven in the stacks, but instead, like better to savour the notion.  To be exempt of qualifying or preparedness, and for the meantime, to harken the rolling milieu.

Fair environs blur,
Puzzled Nature steps aside.
Her decorous items never were,
In the strivers narrowed eye.

The modern tramp I’ve noted, high and low enjoys an unduly comfortable passage, taking whence one hastens as much in luggage and familiar ideas as can carried be, lest should any measure of itinerary come upon suspense. How far does one really go, that brings as much in homely poise? — How deep, with expectations?
One fellow, like many others with whom I’d exchanged interests addressing personal history and methods of migration, had before his present embark, adapted for every detail and apparently necessary habit would gentle his way. He has since stumbled amiss and folded up his bliss by threat of likely disruptions, among them poor weather and slow transportations! Each calamity is the first and personal; instead of disclosing, confusing alternate and equal routes. Of certitude, they say it fools itself certainly, and proportionately. It is as though none are aware of how operates the world, and find only what can be procured from it before considering all that is given freely and abundant.

Perhaps then, it is revelations tension expressed on their faces, and I notice inasmuch I’ve been possessed before. Arriving at the current bursting Utopia to find after all, not displeasure’s ease, nor passions paid as ’twere imagined but instead, the very same disparaged self as departed first. And discovering too late, how little of anything a relocation actually better makes, can exhaust finally the enduring truant into a sullen pause; whose great peace and stability has been always tied to commotive mobility, which when seized, puts solidarity to dismantlement, upon stood an identity now thoroughly reaped.
I have witnessed, slump ye suffered, stunned into an unexcitable stare for days, sometimes many weeks when, were it not for a wounded intellect would you have the vigour to rejoice on the sun-loved promenade you have missed for so long.

Ah, it swells an effect ample and dear, the plainest sense, the simplest brand of travel to me. Quiets and readies unlike any, and retains the while whom cooperates knows, a present levity withal.

I’ve seen too some things; wondrously unexplainable things;

I have nameless shores breached,
Span of a thousand chasms leaped
Of skies edge within fractions reached,
and sun, so much golden overcome heaped.

These subtleties, actualities of magic are, and it cannot past pitch of belief be, that it were an investment somewhere I am maintained so as to see; as they are and not as I would them be. I am glad, a whole and reticent gladness that I scaled yonder hem where once, it seemed for the fog there was nothing left to discover after. And I wish, with all of me that bears any particle of capacity for wishing; would rise, whomever it is within thy ownership the skill of crafting miracles, — whom holds the tools for spinning wild invocations into chemical matter and form, that embellish the sphere on which we make our wander-some way;

Wield thy artistry, is my request.

Let them see.

Eke out thy lights last, ye guiding beacon to oceans lost; reviver of memories done, deliver most necessarily now. We take up the pace and order in our heads, and are many scrambling, yet from hereafter high vistas I have seen, there is room at the end, — as well soundest recess. Though each their own speed and line adopt we all arrive eventually the same beach that greets all the tides and seas of our lifetime.
Yield the map, and fix no plan to the ripening. Oft where no path goes, the way bestows, and by ways rough bolstered are the better attributes of human nature. Beware some safety, that it blocks the impressions and perils that advise we are weakest where we hold to our strengths. Be trained in transition; for spontaneity prepare, and with these qualities the human experience cannot but pour reward. Go then into the world. Go where a different Sun rains on a scenery you never could conceive. Where smiles in vain are brighter than yours, because there indeed are places where people with far less than you or I, would not for anything that can we offer trade places. Invite the ruin of verity. Be cleft, and decimated utterly, and when you can be tipped out no further, turn around and start over. Another pass will unfurl a new world still. How appealing then, would seem the coastline of your Ithaca. After its dazzling Shoal-breaks negotiating, delighting in the first touch of sand at your feet, — how it blends the mud we bring.

Do you see wanderer? Everything comes round. We travel wide in circles, going ever nowhere but home again.

However I entreat the conversation and positively take part, frequently I go away from it with less enthusiasm to ration for intercourse along the trail than before. I don’t much understand the prevalent manner of excursion, nor can I relate with whom espouse the mode, seems stale and cowardly wanton to me. While Nature fair is renewal and simplicity, and man is kin to Nature, so am I these things, or trying, therefore providing well for my family, as provides for me.

So long as you do not interfere will they come, the rightful thoughts you should be having. That might have gone ahead in dreamy reconnaissance, and from them urged must create than rather be escaped, the new and uncomfortable world as celestial currents foretells. To my surprise just as my study to people were drawn away from the hills, so did I direct my first walk today to the town and its inhabitants I first hoped to avoid, where I found immediately, archetypes of the kindly traveller-being I should like to become, thriving, where I was expecting if any, few. As cheerfully destitute and mingling by compare as to show mine a quest lavish and conceited, and that I had not barely begun to frivol away the details that hold a man back from an honestly civilised life.

What is a traveler without some discrimination to be washed of after all?

Afternoon – Few are the days remaining the sun and I will each other salute from our points. Every breath dares curfew, blowing past the lips like do children from the porch laughing into the prairie twilight. Regrettably, we young begin collecting reasonableness and going indoors at the setting of sun, resigned early and fearful of the fates. I am persuaded that, the moment in my boyhood when I walked away from my friends in the garden and quit being surprised by treasures unearthed in Summer dirt, did I permit the gradual deterioration of a certain and necessary joy, and paid severely for the privilege of true impoverishment. In adolescence, my hopes were societal, far out of proportion to either’s reparation, and at 31 they are the hills to which I retreat and commune with solitude, gathering health where no society dwells, and redeeming innocence in wildness.

O I must where I will and my intuition tells me, make haste thither. There can be little of consequence where I stake my peace now, but verily awaits a grave result whom does not heed his deeper call, rippling small erasure the world over beginning with his own.

All the principle materials that interlace the fabric of exquisite days are accomplished presently, and eternally. The treetops, elated and fussing observed first, a marvellous stirring descended. In all things a dilating intrigue penetrated. My rivers hummed with its felicity, the chorus of ancient tides returning. Pines and Cedars bend in wise homage, much as avidly the green-apple shoots and blades at their base rave and flutter, like excited streamers in a hurricane. A rolling rumour of a wild arousal moves across the land, as touches blessing; a sunk religious recognition swelling underfoot. The deeper this sweet Nirvana allows mine infringe, growing in confidence and open a wellbeing everlasting springs. Tremendous spiritual values were evidently at gamble.

Abashed of the richness, I wanted briefly a harbour from it and so, into a pocket stole, — foliated thick with bristling flags of jade, a portal beheld, to a strange dimension of dusty venation winding skyward to the measured centre of New Zealand. Probing the design of this protected underbelly, where, though few lances of sun beam insert that reach the floor, — subsists a subtle and flourished unity, though separate seeming from the outer state, as unsparing its own sense of glee for living, or relevance to the Whole. When most you think yourself absorbed to amends for the testimony, having accrued ample curious blisses; peels back the roof, shade recedes at once and explodes the sky with sunshine and effulgence suffuse as astounds the blinking eye.

And how gloriously uncomplicated is living!

I saw the day stretch far into a living light, and I fell, optimistic into a long ease, setting my cares upon a cloud, and reclining in the grass to watch them drift serene along the choir of pacific zephyrs. The air is mild as any I have breathed. A blazing gold ignites the miles many distant of crowding highlands refreshingly green as will fantasy conjure, and furrows looping that vanish under valleys bear a remarkably magnetic configuration of sound and colour diverse and piercing as keeps the plenty pilgrim curved in contemplations who enter.

My faith, I place in the well-aimed potency of humankind, therefore Nature. A universal advantage realised, when the individual acquires an understanding of their own logical intuitions, untroubled of desire and opinion, and makes it an  enduring function, to carry out that responsibility of adherence, for the crescent of one’s life. I soar within evidenced constraints, in which have I a salvation, and enough for life on Earth. In spite of this, I saw a bother of sorts today, the explanation thereof, situate in domains exceeding my interpretative reach. From a straw pile I removed an ashen cast stone glaringly contrast, approximately palm sized. Heaving it mightily into an ambit under spell of brash impulse, I marked its imperial ascension unto the orbits whither angels tread, to abruptly melt from sight and be escaped of this world, into another. I could fix no location to its descent against the azure, or detect the slightest decibel of audible evidence of impact. It was certain irregularity, and I stood a moment mystified hosting and dismissing a number of humorous justifications within the timeframe of a blink. I was too immersed still in a gentle sedation by exhaustive contentment and volumes of mending mountain air, to traverse the labyrinth of clarity’s grail. There is to be found as well, recall, a wealth of lucidity, in not needing to know some things.
The most preferred of my inspirited erroneous conclusions, opposed to putting my mood to solemnity, retained me awhile in a storm-less verve; imagining it was my much missed friend, hid in the perennial shade of his mortal due, had a divine hand in the stones eclipse, reaching out remote of his bounds for that prohibited prize, as he was wont to do and surely would, if were he still. Defiant and impressive as a day break star, and equitably short-lived as only one falls.
When at myself a loss, and ventured after the fringe of an interval into the quiet grove of idle reverie, I sometimes visit with thee, in the dale of memories past. My approach at times hesitated, examining his mood in secret by cloak of Evergreen, suspecting out of his eye a moments hint of distress. Relief, lo! I am confessed, and it flees, where sadness goes when friends convene; or I was not so well concealed as I thought, I never know. For he greets me always convivial, my friend, loathed that I should ever leave uncheered.

There are conditions and occurrences that won’t wishing repair, or mountains mend. At times neither will the hills return, or skies give back, and faithless is he who interprets anything but perfection, from the chaos of natural ordinance.

Inventing and misperceiving coincidence… perchance merely I was looking the other way; missed frequent, looking for something sensational.

The insight we need, is but wrest from time and labour exchanged, and rarely at an age or mood of our choosing. It is ever biding the seasons circuit in the high ridges your toiled return. Wherein thy callow exuberance from the swale saw mockery in the shadow of great spires, climb thee now, unsupported and intent on prudent resource, and a part in the sun. When you will appear at last, bearing face to the heavens, a firm step and tried constitution, and the dependable properties as one fit to be called a good man resolved to service, will it then acquaint thee; an outlook revering, and to be revered.

I took my departure from the woods, along the way luxuriating in the little enchantments of Maitai’s animated riverbanks towards the street of Nile, which name I liked very much. Fine wisps of cloud fanned precisely from a pivot after this realm, and smeared into arcs with the roll of Earth. With happy sighs did cordial winds still comb, and dressed the spritely daydream, a coronal glow. Timber tops remarked the electricity in softened theatrics, teasing out light in shards, and I became conscious here hangs year-round, a vivid chemistry of Spring-like energy. No cricket or bird withheld its song, and if it did it was absent from this place, where Daffodils and dust rain horizontally and gleaming in the sun, collect on the roadside like frost and cotton. Thinking to the these parachuting wishes wasted, I passing observed a black stone, obvious as charcoal in the snow, that concerted in appearances of that I had earlier lost. But for eyelids fallen heavy with sleep-lust, had I sense to entertain imagination further, I might have believed about it some fanciful things.

Nelson, New Zealand 2013