These fingers that would like to grow things…

I remember once, peeling a grapefruit and finding at it’s core, it’s very center, a growing seedling. That fragile sprout looking for light and life. I remember an overwhelming feeling of joy dance through my whole being. What a gift! Very carefully, separating it from the pith and the flesh of the fruit, I planted it in a tiny little pot. After a week or so, it had sprung a couple of tiny leaves. I would leave it out in the sun during the day and bring it in at night. One day, while we were out, it rained and drowned the roots of that poor seedling. I tried everything I could to bring it back but nothing worked. It was so devastating! Took me a good long while to get over it, the regret and the loss.

I have always wanted a garden, a wild one! Flowers, trees, grasses, growing willy nilly. Clumps of flowers hanging off heavy limbs, ripe fruits strewn across mossy paths and tangled roots, scents of rosemary, thyme, sage rising through the mid afternoon air as you brush past them. Birds, bees, rabbits, deer, squirrels, caterpillars, cats and dogs lying lazy in the sun, heavy with sleep and contentment….

Mysterious, lush, green, alive.

But alas, I have a brown thumb. I also lack the patience it requires, and the presence of mind it requires, to grow things. To care for them. I am too careless and absent minded. Nonetheless, this feeling, this desire to grow things has been brewing in me and getting stronger by the day. So I am giving it a go.

Starting small with hot peppers, sweet basil and cilantro.

The floors are too cold. So they are sitting up on the footstool. Yup. Totally mollycoddling.

Under the light. Grow baby grow.

Do wish me luck! I am going to need it.

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These things that come from silence.

Liquid gazes; tall grasses; white domes on dark green velvet; pouting mouths abloom; rustling, restless underbrush; furry, quivering tails and heads to match; tag across branches and trunks; a mad crush of wild flowers; mysterious, slithering tail ends that disappear under leaves and twigs; a far away tinkling of water; twittering conversations; floppy ears; nibbling mouths; pelting rain; golden light; the poetry that comes of these things…..

These thoughts that are held in silence. Honest, heartfelt. I have always shared from this space. From this truth. From what my own silence and stillness bring to light. Otherwise, I choose to stay silent rather than be false or forced.

These past couple of years have been so very noisy. I have allowed this noise to overwhelm the silence, to crowd the space I need to be creative, to be observant. Outrage has become the default state of being. I have stopped listening for my silence.

I have a need to change that. And conversely, the one thing that will help me, is being here. Once again looking for and finding beauty to share. And also to take comfort in what all of you have to share through your thoughts, photographs, art, poetry, because there is a lot of comfort in that. So, thank you! For listening and sharing.

And here’s to finding silence and all the loveliness held within it.

Little things.

I want to tell you of little things.

Simple things.

For example, that book on my bedside table, Van Gogh: Letters from Province,

and how my heart trips a little every time I glance at it, which is often, and how incredible it is that this world has known a Van Gogh.

Don’t you just want to disappear into that texture for a while? I know I do.

Night bloom

Acrylics on Canvas

10″ X 10″

Available. Please do leave a comment if interested.

Thank you!

Unexpectedly in the light.

There is always something growing, something pushing through the earth’s bind. Pockets of microcosms. ‘…more things in heaven and earth..’, ya? Infinite and infinitely more.

There is a tree trunk in our yard that is lush with these uber little beings growing in the dead of winter. A strange and fascinating landscape.

(The optimal zoom on my phone camera has rendered the images slightly blurry.)

Something dies, something else takes its place. Round and round and round. How wonderful it all is. This place, this land, teeming, diminishing, growing again, thrilling with life and activity. Quietly going about it’s ways, weeding, weeding, weeding, and nurturing, building, supplying, calmly following it’s path and it’s edict.

How sane and level it all is. How wild. How matter of fact and absolutely magical.

How does one not fall on one’s knees in awe. Again and again and again. And yet, it is not enough. This awe pales in comparison to what really goes through our minds, bodies, hearts, isn’t it? That electrifying resonance, Alive!

We are so severely limited by our vocabulary. The limit of our thoughts and emotions that does not allow us to go beyond a certain point. But then why must I question it? Why put words to something that must be felt, lived.

I think this body, though inarticulate, knows. This body that wants to dig deep into the dirt and disappear into the sap of a tree.

What is it like to be a part of this earth in that most fundamental of ways? To grip it, to know it to the marrow, without question, without hesitation. To simply know. Be. Live, in the truest sense of that word. Lords of the earth and sky. No, not lords. Partners then. So integral that there is no tree, no earth, just one pulsing life.

What is that like? HA! This immutable need to put words to things that must by nature be lived, known, despite our selves.

 

Attempting Ulysses.

HA!

The sun, the sun! And I am already in a grounded place! Ummm…warm roots…

Yup! That Ulysses! Me! HA!

The Odyssey, Illiad, Dante’s Inferno, Ulysses…I have ever and always sighed over these. Wanting to read them but knowing they are WAY beyond my ken. No, I am not down playing myself, just being honest.

I am an easy reader. I love stories! I feel books deeply but do not read between the lines. I am not at all curious about what the author is trying to say with each word and line, if at all. My heart lies with the characters, their development, their relationship to each other, the prose, the way the sentences run over hill and dale, up and down, up and down, smooth, and the way those lives rise up and live beside you, weaving their tale with yours, inseparable for those few moments. That is really all I seek from a book.

But….

Maybe it’s the right time, maybe I am in that right place, however that may be, I have cracked the pages of Ulysses.

And let me tell you, it’s a ride! ha ha

It’s a shout, it’s a declaration, it’s rain drops…tup..tup..tup..tup…on the rooftop, each drop separate from the other and yet, as a whole, what a lovely din! The words fall on my ears, separate and inseparable. In the 10 pages I have read so far, I haven’t understood a single reference, and yet, and yet, the language, the flow, the energy, it’s a flinging of arms, arched and wide, into the open sky, it’s a shout into the hurling wind, it’s a dance!

And whether I understand this book or not, I know in my heart I am going to read it once, and then perhaps, for the sake of the dance alone perhaps, one more time.

Dew

Imagine what it must be like,
to wait in the dark, silently,
all night,
now under the moonlight,
now under the stars,
so that come dawn,
before the palest of sheens
has broken the sky,
you can hold out your face, your limbs,
your thrilled and eager body,
for these liquid globes of light,
these cold cold thirst quenchers.

I held
my palm
under
this soft
fur
and tapping
gently
on it’s stem,
gathered
the dew
and partook
eagerly
of this morning
feast.
My thirst
quenched,
my soul
restored,
I waded my way
slowly, fully,
into
the rest
of the day.

Holding on.

I am struggling…
to hold on to my sagacity,
to what I call my kind side,
never thought that would be a challenge.
I find more expletives in my mind now
than I have ever done before.
Thank God, they still haven’t taken to spilling
over my lips.
I couldn’t abide that. I don’t like swearing.

I mourn, each day I mourn,
for lives, for causes, for lost time…
Can you feel the earth heave in pain?
Forget making sense of all that is going on out there,
I simply do not have the capacity for it.
I will lose what softness is left to me.
Sounds selfish, I know, I am sorry,
but my family lives there, in that softness,
and the tiny share of goodness that is alloted me.

The trees live there, and the flowers,
the bees, and the birds, let’s not forget the squirrels
whom I adore, and the silent deer that
glide so gracefully, silently through the yard,
keeping to the shadows and their contemplative silence.

The hugs live there, too,
the ones that you wait for all day,
the after work ones, and the after school ones,
slightly tired, yet happy to be home ones.
I live for those hugs. Don’t we all?
And the conversations at the dinner table?
The catching up, what did you do? And you?
Where are we growing and loving and being…

Were we kind today, were we mindful..
this is where I want to begin each day
and to end it.
This is what I must guard, and hold on to
if I am to survive and make and create and live.
This is what I can give my child, to give to all the lives
he will touch.

This is my mantra, my elixir, my breath…
and in the wake of this hurtling planet,
I am going to hold on tight to this plan, to this idea,
to this love, like a child holding on to it’s mother’s skirts
and hope that it is enough,
this holding on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

September Light

Everyday the sunrise and the sunset,

and these blessed, blessed eyes!

I love the reflections of the lights on the hood of the car!

New friends!

 

In the middle of a copse, in the center of a corn field, there was a wedding. The September sun poured through the trees, bathing the sparkling, flushed bride and groom, and the beaming guests with it’s amber light. The pooches, ring bearer and flower girl wearing a tutu, looked adorable and behaved so well. Nary a bark between them. We sat on bales of hay, with sunflowers and pumpkins decorating the aisle. The ceremony was sweet, simple, heartfelt. A truly beautiful wedding!

The reception was held in a barn studded with starry lights, with sunflower fields on one end and these new friends on the other.

At the sight of us, they came strolling up to see what was up.

Pausing to converse between themselves, slightly unsure of the strangers.

How those ears twitched, and rolled, and that long nose huffed, and puffed!

And then there were these sweet beauties. What a riot!

When they lean into you so, with their golden, inquisitive faces, you do not walk away. You stop, and you stare into their sweet, friendly faces, and wonder at the wonder of it all, and the beauty of the world, and how fortunate we are to be given the chance to see it, feel it, to make it our own even if for a fleeting moment. You carry them in the cockles of your heart over the next day, and the next, and the next until they become a part of you, and you see life through their light.

Saved the best for last. Big rolling eyes, an inquisitive nose and an apple fallen on the ground: a recipe for a very happy heart. Mine, of course!