Join us for the first BOOK RELEASE of The School of 3 Lights

To My Companion: within the room within the room, Sarah H. Paulson, 2021
(excerpt below)

An Evening of Poetry and Dessert with Laura C. Stelmok and Sarah H. Paulson
“Two women gazing into each other’s eyes, Calling the Rain!”
Readings from the annual 6 week winter artist residency, “Calling the Rain”

When: Wednesday July 21, 2021 6:30-8:00 pm
Where: Sheepscot Hollow (live) and on ZOOM! (virtual)
28 Nilsen Lane, Whitefield, ME, 04353

Please email us if you would like the Zoom information.

Cover Art by Laura C. Stelmok
Released July 1, 2021
The 3 Lights Press

$12.00 + Shipping and Handling
To Purchase the new book CLICK HERE

7.

A poem left its scent on my fingertip and I obeyed.
I opened the land within myself
to elaborate on the meaning of word,
and I came upon an island within my chest.
It had been covered, this ancient and alive body of land.
It recognized me when I parted myself to see it.
The tides were awake; they knew my face.
I climbed upon her closest rock
and discovered that she knew my weight.
I found my footing and proceeded to climb,
higher and higher.
This island was of the north.
I needed only to follow the land.

After hours of exploration, I came upon a book,
the words which won’t reveal themselves to me now.
I reached in my pocket and discovered a pen.
Asking for direction, I retraced the pen’s movements.
I learned that language arrives through dance,
inseparable as mediums (dance and language).
My memory was wiped clean,
and my past no longer pulled me.

I put the pen down on the book
thinking someone else might need it to write,
but the pen got up and inserted itself back into my pocket.
The book opened itself to this page and folded down
its own corner.
Here and onward were empty,
but across the top of this page read:

Your contribution will be overshadowed by fate.
Begin here now.

There are nights when the poems come
and nights when they lay dry,
disinterested in the beauty they might prepare.
It is the seeker’s job to follow the words as they arrive,
not determine their arrival.

The ancient texts were written like rainwater
being collected by the thirsty.
There would be days that called for a hundred buckets
and weeks that would call for none.
If the bead of dew happened upon you,
you would join in communion,
holy worship through companionship and word,
silent for most of the working hours.
Thirsty you would come and thirstier you would leave,
your body wanting something more than it has known.

The subtlety of direct correspondence is that it must pass
through your heart and change you in the process.
You are not saying the words,
but you are receiving them like landmarks in time.

The wind passes through the tree branches,
sometimes rustling the leaves,
and sometimes leaving the branches bare,
and sometimes whispering a song unlikely to occur at any
other time.

If I give you a secret, will you promise not to discard it?
Yes.

You are in anticipation of the drowning man’s words.
Remain marked.
He will need a voice when the time comes,
when the longing is so great.
Until then, remain in practice;
the book will prepare you.
Listen as you do, even when listening has reached its end.

You’ve been captured by the ego’s demise,
the very request you made last night.
The nature of your muse is to ask,
and typically, you are taken seriously.

Settle down. Feel the words as they come.
Don’t jump ahead or behind or even underneath.
The practice in presence, however momentary,
trains you in this relationship between pen and ink,
between inbreath and outbreath.

Change your understanding of what focus is.
The life of the artist is spent in prayer,
in speech and in silence, in production and dormancy.

Every door has another door.
Every word another word within.
You will find desolation there,
and heartache, and forgetfulness.
You will find sorrow and unexplainable overwhelm.

You will seek cover,
but once you enter you best not turn back,
if you are welcomed in.
If you leave too soon you risk stealing the word,
not by intention but because words are revealed,
and you are welcomed into deeper states or different states.
In these states, you are changed,
altered to be the language that was given to you.
If you depart too early, you do not respect the realms
and you are unchanged in the rightful way.

Free will is different in Hurqalya.
Free will is different in the Blue Room.
Free will is your greatest obstacle when freedom leads.
The silent sighs of the sages who have come before us
tell us this truth.

Do not lose your pen as you lose your self.
Holy, holy is the failure.

Sarah H. Paulson, Calling the Rain, a winter residency, 2020