The Silver Sands of St. Augustine

Some Daily Meditations

2012-01-24T08:35:00.000-05:00

Only with winter patience can we bring the deep desired, long-awaited spring.
—Anne Morrow Lindbergh

I look in the mirror through the eyes of the child that was me.
—Judy Collins

The child within each of us is fragile, but very much alive, and she interprets our experiences before we are even conscious of them. It is our child who may fear new places, unfamiliar people, strange situations. Our child needs nurturing, the kind she may not have received in the past. We can take her hand, coax her along, let her know she won't be abandoned. No new place, unfamiliar person, or strange situation need overwhelm her.

It's quite amazing the strength that comes to us when we nurture ourselves, when we acknowledge the scared child within and hold her, making her secure. We face nothing alone. Together, we can face anything.

I will take care of my child today and won't abandon her to face, alone, any of the experiences the day may bring.

Each Day a New Beginning, Karen Casey

Clearing the Slate

One of the greatest gifts we can give is an open, loving heart. And holding on to negative feelings from past relationships is our greatest barrier to that gift.

Most of us have had relationships that have ended. When we examine these relationships, we need to clear the emotional slate. Are we holding on to anger or resentments? Are we still feeling victimized? Are we living with the self-defeating beliefs that may be attached to these relationships - Women can't be trusted.... Bosses use people.... There is no such thing as a good relationship....

Let go of all that may be blocking your relationships today. With great certainty, we can know that old feelings and self-defeating beliefs will block us today from giving and getting the love we desire. We can clear the slate of the past. It begins with awareness, honesty, and openness. The process is complete when we reach a state of acceptance and peace toward all from our past.

Today, I will begin the process of letting go of all self-defeating feelings and beliefs connected to past relationships. I will clear my slate so I am free to love and be loved.

The Language of Letting Go, Melodie Beattie

Meditation for the Day

I know that the vision and power that I receive from God are limitless, as far as spiritual things are concerned. But in temporal and material things, I must submit to limitations. I know that I cannot see the road ahead. I must go just one step at a time, because God does not grant me a longer view. I am in uncharted waters, limited by my temporal and spatial life, but unlimited in my spiritual life.

Prayer for the Day

I pray that, in spite of my material limitations, I may follow God's way. I pray that I may learn that trying to do His will is perfect freedom.

Compassion and Warmheartedness

2011-12-16T09:59:00.001-05:00

The first beneficiary of compassion is always oneself. When compassion, or warmheartedness, arises in us and our focus shifts away from our own narrow self-interest, it is as if we open an inner door. It reduces fear, boosts confidence and brings us inner strength. By reducing distrust, it opens us to others and brings us a sense of connection to others, and sense of purpose and meaning in life.
--The Dalai Lama

2011-12-15T12:54:00.000-05:00

So much of life in its meshes!
She called in her soul to come and see.
--Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

Mad Men Illustrations

2011-12-12T19:01:00.000-05:00

Waiting with bated breath for the next season

{Images From Mad Men Vector Art}

Hello Kitty Pocket Pies

2011-12-12T17:14:00.000-05:00

Via DropDeadKawaii via I Heart Baking: Killingly Cute Sweet Deliciousness.

Holiday Partay

2011-12-10T23:56:00.002-05:00

She Must Learn to Speak

2011-12-10T19:16:00.000-05:00

She must learn to speak
starting with I
starting with We
starting as the infant does
with her own true hunger
and pleasure
and rage.
—Marge Piercy

To Do Nothing is Failure

2011-12-09T10:13:00.000-05:00

To do nothing is failure. To try, and in the trying you make some mistakes and then you make some positive changes as a result of those mistakes, is to learn and to grow and to blossom.
—Darlene Larson Jenks

Life is a process, one that is continuously changing. And with each change, we are offered unexpected opportunities for growth. Change is what fosters our development. It encourages us to risk new behavior and may even result in some mistakes. Fortunately, no mistakes can seriously hinder us. In fact, most mistakes give us an additional opportunity to learn.

Where we stand today is far removed from our position last year, or even last week. Each and every moment offers us new input that influences any decision from this moment forward. The process that we're participating in guarantees our growth as long as we remain conscious of our opportunities and willingly respond to them. We can be glad that the life process is, in fact, never static. always moving, always inviting us to participate fully.

I will have the courage to make a mistake today. It's a promise of growth.

{Text from Each Day a New Beginning | Image from Rainbow Sky}

Faith is the Thread

2011-12-09T10:08:00.000-05:00

Faith is the seamstress
who mends our torn belief
who sews the hem of childhood trust
and clips the threads of grief.
—Joan Walsh Anglund

A seamstress takes large pieces of material and cuts them to size. Then, with the help of needle and thread and buttons, she goes to work to create a finished piece. Sometimes, in the beginning, it is hard to imagine a finished product. But the seamstress believes it is possible and goes to work on it.

Faith is like a seamstress. Faith is what can pull all the unfinished pieces of life into some sort of order. Faith is what lets us know we are all right even when life doesn't seem to make sense. We all need the faith to believe our skills and dreams, and even our heartaches can be sewn into a shape that is beautiful and useful.

Our faith is the seamstress who guides the needle, mends the tears, and helps create a shape and meaning to our lives.

{Words from Today's Gift | Image from Happily Ever After Starts Here}

Amazon.com: Sweet Rosebud Ballet Flats Black: Shoes

2011-12-08T11:41:00.001-05:00

Amazon.com: Sweet Rosebud Ballet Flats Black: Shoes (clipped to polyvore.com)

Holiday Party Outfit

2011-12-07T14:04:00.002-05:00

Holiday Party Outfit by amalivia featuring beading jewelry

Vivienne Westwood Anglomania asymmetrical hem dress
$647 - my-wardrobe.com

Lace pumps
$33 - windsorstore.com

Wilbur Gussie clutch hand bag
£304 - austique.co.uk

Ranjana Khan beading jewelry
$257 - boutique1.com

Wet Seal mesh jewelry
$8.50 - wetseal.com

The Five Noble Precepts of Buddhism (or How to Be Good)

2011-12-05T13:03:00.001-05:00

I have been meditating and studying Zen Master Tich Naht Hanh and his Buddhist practice for awhile now--a combination of Zen meets Tibet meets the West. I want a record and a reminder of these five Noble Precepts and aspire toward this perfection. Especially in these hard times and this starry season when souls are weary and the winter wind blows cold through the tree. (Become Aware. Vow. Determine. Know. Understand.)

The Five Noble Precepts of Buddhism from Tich Naht Hanh

The First Precept
Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I vow to cultivate compassion and learn ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants and minerals. I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not condone any act of killing in the world, in my thinking, and in my way of life.

The Second Precept
Aware of the suffering caused by exploitation, social injustice, stealing and oppression, I vow to cultivate loving kindness and learn ways to work for the well-being of people, animals, plants and minerals. I vow to practice generosity by sharing my time, energy and material resources with those who are in real need. I am determined not to steal or possess anything that should belong to others. I will respect the property of others, but I will prevent others from profiting from human suffering or the suffering of other species on Earth.

The Third Precept
Aware of the suffering caused by sexual misconduct, I vow to cultivate responsibility and learn ways to protect the safety and integrity of individuals, couples, family and society. I am determined not to engage in sexual relations without love and a long-term commitment. To preserve the happiness of myself and others, I determined to respect my commitments and the commitments of others. I will do everything in my power to protect children from sexual abuse and to prevent couples and families from being broken by sexual misconduct.

The Fourth Precept
Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful speech and the inability to listen to others, I vow to cultivate loving speech and deep listening in order to bring joy and happiness to others and relieve others of their suffering. Knowing that words can create happiness or suffering, I vow to learn to speak truthfully, with words that inspire self-confidence, joy and hope. I am determined not to spread news that I do not know to be true and not to criticize or condemn things of which I am not sure. I will refrain from uttering words that can cause division or discord, or that can cause the family or community to break. I will make all efforts to reconcile and resolve all conflicts, however small.

The Fifth Precept
Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful consumption, I vow to cultivate good health, both physical and mental, for myself, my family, and my society by practicing mindful eating, drinking and consuming. I vow to ingest only items that preserve peace, well-being, and joy in my body, my consciousness, and in the collective body and consciousness of my my family and society. I am determined not to use alcohol or any other intoxicant or to ingest food or other items that contain toxins, such as certain TV programs, magazines, books, films, or conversations. I am aware that to damage my my body or my my consciousness with these poisons is to betray my ancestors, my parents, my society, and future generations. I will work to transform violence, fear, and confusion in myself and in society by practicing a diet for myself and society. I understand that a proper diet is crucial for self-transformation and for the transformation of society.

May you find refuge in the Buddha. May the Buddha find refuge in you.

Eating Horse. Eating Cow. Eating Chicken. Eating Pig. Eating Turkey. Eating Crow.

2011-11-30T15:57:00.003-05:00

Well, a lot of people around me who are meat-eaters are seriously disturbed about the horse meat situation. How is eating a horse any worse than eating a factory farmed creature? It's not. It's only familiarity. We wouldn't eat a cat or a dog or a horse because we've learned to live with these creatures as companions. We find it repellent and upsetting. I am heartened that this upset has set some people questioning what they eat and why. Factory farms are cruel. And recent. And responsible for about 98% of the harmful methane gas destroying our ozone layer. I believe we should eat what our bodies require. But to gain your sustenance from the insufferable suffering of another animal? That's why I don't eat meat. So. Let's see. Why should horses and cats and dogs be immune when we feast upon everything else?

"All Creatures Great and Small
Both Man and Bird and Beast
Our Lord, Thy God, He Made
And Loveth All."

Liz Lemonisms

2011-10-04T09:39:00.004-05:00

Thx Thx Thx

2011-09-27T11:11:00.000-05:00

I am going to buy this book, Thx Thx Thx: Thank Goodness for Everything. I am going to give it to everyone I love! For instant gratification, there's also the blog.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Thank you, Leah!

CrazyHotClothes

2011-09-14T11:35:00.000-05:00

Just go to the Dainty Squid to enter

I Know Not When, Mad Men

2011-09-06T14:18:00.000-05:00

But the Sunday will come, I think not until 2012, likely a year from now?! that Mad Men will return to the airwaves. The gorgeous Banana Republic Mad Men line is quickly selling out, as it is a limited edition. Those dresses were made for me!

And I just found these posters for the upcoming season, which are almost as delicious as the Banana Republic clothes.

Also, I "Mad-Menned" myself again.

I so wish for its return.

Over. Lay. S.

2011-08-31T15:02:00.000-05:00

I will make thing as pretty like these things from Making It Lovely with these things called Overlay's. You just lay them over whatever you like and have lots of lovely patterns from which to choose and lots of lovely places upon which to lay. Them.

The Seashell

2011-08-29T15:54:00.000-05:00

Summer is ending. In Florida, that will mean October, for all intents and purposes. Nonetheless, I wrote a piece on bringing back the ocean to you wherever you are, by putting a seashell to your ear. Check it out right here on Art of Living. I also read at an open mic poetry event on Saturday. And I'll be reading at a bona fide event in a couple of weeks. I feel more alive than I have in years. Thank you, words.

Miles Apart, 3191 to Be Exact

2011-08-24T10:12:00.002-05:00

I've admired these photos, these ladies, these books and their stories for years. I'm in an eye-candy kind of mood. Here's a bit about them, in their own words, from their own blog, 3191 Miles Apart:

Welcome to the new 3191 Miles Apart! Here we post weekly thoughts and images about simple living and our current inspirations. You will find pieces on food and drink, our homes and everyday lives, our neighborhoods, our inspirations and our travels. We post on Fridays (or on the weekend if we’re running behind) and do not discuss our ideas at all beforehand. Happily, we will also be continuing our tradition, now in its fourth year, of diptychs. Each week we will take photographs on Sundays to be paired together here; as ever, MAV is always on the left, Stephanie on the right. We will title this new project, appropriately, A Year of Sundays.

We discovered each other online in 2005, and quickly developed a friendship based on a shared love of art and craft, simple things and a well-lived domestic life. On January 1, 2007, we began our first year-long project together, posting diptychs—a photo from each of our mornings—at our blog, 3191: A Year of Mornings. We enjoyed the experience so much that we followed that project with a year of evenings using the same format. We were thrilled when Princeton Architectural Press published our mornings project in book form in the fall of 2008. That book, titled A Year of Mornings: 3191 Miles Apart, is now the only place you can view the mornings diptychs.

A Year of Mornings. Buy it.

They also have a book about evenings.

A Year of Evenings. Buy It.

Color and form are my catalysts these days. They awaken inner, hidden resources. Set my head on fire, to paraphrase Emily Dickinson incredibly loosely. So. 3191 Miles Apart. And all their glory. Enjoy. And set your hair on fire. No. Don't do that. Just revel.

You will miss summer when it's gone. Looking at these photos is like slaking your heart's thirst. So divine.

Reform

2011-08-22T12:17:00.000-05:00

This image compendium called Reform is gorgeous, dynamic, diverse, provocative and inspiring. I kept looking and looking and looking and couldn't stop so I decided to share some of my favorites avec vous. Monday neuron-firing stimulus, engage.

I'm Back! And I'm Superbad! Watch Me!

2011-08-19T08:50:00.000-05:00

Hello, old lover, old fried. I've neglected you, my lovely little journal, a place I feel more comfortable writing words. So? What have I been up to lately? Lots. But let me share with you all about the writing front. I've been having a lot of fun with my two Tumblr sites: Fuck Yeah Mary Oliver, a site dedicated to one of my favorite poets; and my own eponymous collection of images and some words and music called We Shall Not Cease from Exploration. I've also been documenting my desires on Pinterest, which is really fun. Let me know if you'd like an invite! This is the best place to look when you want to buy me a gift. To wit:

I wrote a piece called Speak, Memory that I'm pretty proud of for the wonderful Art of Living Guide: A Practical Guide to Being Alive. I am excited to be periodically providing work to the wonderful people who run it.

And my favorite pieces from the Synconation music site I'm proud to be a part of include a retrospective of women in music in 2010, titled The Ladies Who Ruled the Tower of Song in 2010 (Part One and Part Two and Part Three and Part 4!), record reviews of the latest works from Belle & Sebastian, R.E.M . and Lucinda Williams as well as some fun Top 5 missives, including ones about the eighties and poetry and protest. I've rested up on this amazing site for awhile, but be sure to check it out and read all the well-written, insightful work on Synconation. Because it shall be big. And you can say you knew it when.

In celebration of our reunion, I just want to share one of my favorite sentiments, courtesy of Walt Whitman. Let us all follow this cry for arms, for self, for soul, for an authentic life:

"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and the sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and the crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants...have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with the powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."

xoxo Ama

Myself, My Tattoo.

2011-06-15T13:14:00.002-05:00

From The Cat That Walked By Him (Her) Self of The Just So Stories Collection (Story and Drawing by Rudyard Kipling)

On the back of my neck, between the shoulder blades? Not sure. But if ever, this will be it.

Why? This is me.

Then the Man threw his two boots and his little stone axe (that makes three) at the Cat, and the Cat ran out of the Cave and the Dog chased him up a tree; and from that day to this, Best Beloved, three proper Men out of five will always throw things at a Cat whenever they meet him, and all proper Dogs will chase him up a tree. But the Cat keeps his side of the bargain too. He will kill mice and he will be kind to Babies when he is in the house, just as long as they do not pull his tail too hard. But when he has done that, and between times, and when the moon gets up and night comes, he is the Cat that walks by himself, and all places are alike to him. Then he goes out to the Wet Wild Woods or up the Wet Wild Trees or on the Wet Wild Roofs, waving his wild tail and walking by his wild lone.

Keep Your Heart Away from This

2011-06-10T07:51:00.002-05:00

Shiny Happy Prints

2011-06-09T16:15:00.000-05:00

Inspired by Decor8's final Pinteresting Quotes Column, I wanted to share the lovelies she found. Plus a few of my own. I imagine every inch of wall space in my beautiful brand-new place covered with such beautiful, shiny, happy colors and sentiments.

1.) Be Awesome by LuciusArt
2.) Hope Shines from Because It's Awesome
3.) Small Things from Because It's Awesome
4.) Love is the Answer from Because It's Awesome
5.) Everything Happens for A Reason from The Love Shop
6.) I Believe in Pink by ElissaHudson
7.) To Live... from Image Spark
8.) Today is a New Day from The Love Shop
9.) Best Day Ever from The Love Shop
10.) In Spite of Everything from RedBrickWall

xo. Ama

Had to Be There

2011-06-07T14:04:00.004-05:00

Just a reminder of how awesome these things and people are:

a.) Kelly Hogan
b.) Justin Davis Hughes
c.) Ballard Lessemen
d.) William Joyner
e.) Chris Lopez
f.) Chris Verene
g.) Jeffrey Wiggins
d.) The Rock*A*Teens

If you were lucky enough to live in Atlanta between 1994 and 2001 and saw a show or two, you know you were seeing something truly golden--the kind of thing that can't stay. They even have an album called Golden Time. Now that my insane infatuation with the band leader has passed, I appreciate them even more. Long live Rock*A*Teens. If you've never heard of them, do yourself a favor and pick up any of their albums. I regret not having mine around anymore. Here's a little biopic of them.

Let Love Be at The End

2011-05-02T11:58:00.000-05:00

On September 11, 2001, my heart did not know what to do. After the shock, in Ms. magazine, I found it, a poem, when the war started, when our country unified then ripped apart, when the United States felt the quake of violence and yes, terror, known so well to most other countries, this poem brought me some peace. I want to say the peace has come with the fall of a frightening man, but for me, my heart is still aswirl in a sea of unrest. I know nothing but these words by Lucille Clifton, but I don't feel uplifted. This is just a wish.

LET THERE BE NEW FLOWERING

let there be new flowering
in the fields let the fields
turn mellow for the men
let the men keep tender
through the time let the time
be wrested from the war
let the war be won
let love be
at the end

{images by niko from visualmerc}

We Need More Poetry--W.S. Merwin

2011-04-14T14:45:00.000-05:00

"...poetry is what gives meaning to existence." -- V.V. Raman

W.S. Merwin has been publishing poetry since 1952. Tuesday, I picked up his 2009 Pulitzer Prize book of poems called The Shadow of Sirius, read the poem on the back cover, and wondered how I'd ever lived without his words.

Just This

When I think of the patience I have had
back in the dark before I remember
or knew it was night until the light came
all at once at the speed it was born to
with all the time in the world to fly through
not concerned about ever arriving
and then the gathering of the first stars
unhurried in their flowering spaces
and far into the story the planets
cooling slowly and the ages of rain
then the seas starting to bear memory
the gaze of the first cell at its waking
how did this haste begin this little time
at any time this reading by lightning
scarcely a word this nothing this heaven

Cats.

2011-04-14T14:20:00.000-05:00

I Love Them.

Just Started Reading The Great Gatsby Again

2011-04-08T16:33:00.000-05:00

It's such a slender thing, that book, but the world in it is infinite. These are my initials. The beginnings of my names. And I am reaching. Toward. What. Distant. God. Trying hard to believe.

What I'm Writing About

2011-03-22T17:43:00.000-05:00

Have been so happy to be writing for a couple of very different and wonderful blogs. Check out my piece on Lucinda Williams on Synconation and have a read of Speak, Memory (With Apologies to Nabokov) on The Art of Living Guide. Love, Ama

We Need More Poetry. This is Anne Sexton.

2011-02-25T16:43:00.001-05:00

Anne Sexton is more than her suicide. She died the day I came into the world, and ever since I read "Her Kind," which mystified me at the time, I wanted to know more. So her words became a green and growing thing for me, a place of danger and fear and sadness and morbidity--beautiful places all, because of her words--sinuous, a strange tangle that somehow makes sense to the heart. I've read all her collections, keep the beautiful full collection close at hand, have read her daughter's biography. Her New England. Her beauty. Her fraught love for family--for her children, her beloved nana--those are my favorite poems of hers. She wrote her poems to keep the doctor informed, to keep him away. And in her confessionals came the kind of tenderness that holds, holds with a light grasp, the terrifying beauty of love. She is more. More than that single August day in 1974. She is the light I sometimes see by, one that shines on a glistening lake, a lake lapping at a boat. In the moonlight. On the way to Mercy Street, her old home.

45 Mercy Street

In my dream,

drilling into the marrow

of my entire bone,

my real dream,

I'm walking up and down Beacon Hill

searching for a street sign -

namely MERCY STREET.

Not there.

I try the Back Bay.

Not there.

And yet I know the number.

45 Mercy Street.

I know the stained-glass window

of the foyer,

the three flights of the house

with its parquet floors.

I know the furniture and

mother, grandmother, great-grandmother,

the servants.

I know the cupboard of Spode

the boat of ice, solid silver,

where the butter sits in neat squares

like strange giant's teeth

on the big mahogany table.

I know it well.

Not there.

Where did you go?

45 Mercy Street,

with great-grandmother

kneeling in her whale-bone corset

and praying gently but fiercely

to the wash basin,

at five A.M.

at noon

dozing in her wiggy rocker,

grandfather taking a nap in the pantry,

grandmother pushing the bell for the downstairs maid,

and Nana rocking Mother with an oversized flower

on her forehead to cover the curl

of when she was good and when she was...

And where she was begat

and in a generation

the third she will beget,

me,

with the stranger's seed blooming

into the flower called Horrid.

I walk in a yellow dress

and a white pocketbook stuffed with cigarettes,

enough pills, my wallet, my keys,

and being twenty-eight, or is it forty-five?

I walk. I walk.

I hold matches at street signs

for it is dark,

as dark as the leathery dead

and I have lost my green Ford,

my house in the suburbs,

two little kids

sucked up like pollen by the bee in me

and a husband

who has wiped off his eyes

in order not to see my inside out

and I am walking and looking

and this is no dream

just my oily life

where the people are alibis

and the street is unfindable for an

entire lifetime.

Pull the shades down -

I don't care!

Bolt the door, mercy,

erase the number,

rip down the street sign,

what can it matter,

what can it matter to this cheapskate

who wants to own the past

that went out on a dead ship

and left me only with paper?

Not there.

I open my pocketbook,

as women do,

and fish swim back and forth

between the dollars and the lipstick.

I pick them out,

one by one

and throw them at the street signs,

and shoot my pocketbook

into the Charles River.

Next I pull the dream off

and slam into the cement wall

of the clumsy calendar

I live in,

my life,

and its hauled up

notebooks.

Music Swims Back to Me

Wait Mister. Which way is home?
They turned the light out
and the dark is moving in the corner.
There are no sign posts in this room,
four ladies, over eighty,
in diapers every one of them.
La la la, Oh music swims back to me
and I can feel the tune they played
the night they left me
in this private institution on a hill.

Imagine it. A radio playing
and everyone here was crazy.
I liked it and danced in a circle.
Music pours over the sense
and in a funny way
music sees more than I.
I mean it remembers better;
remembers the first night here.
It was the strangled cold of November;
even the stars were strapped in the sky
and that moon too bright
forking through the bars to stick me
with a singing in the head.
I have forgotten all the rest.

They lock me in this chair at eight a.m.
and there are no signs to tell the way,
just the radio beating to itself
and the song that remembers
more than I. Oh, la la la,
this music swims back to me.
The night I came I danced a circle
and was not afraid.
Mister?

Admonitions to A Special Person

Watch out for power,

for its avalanche can bury you,

snow, snow, snow, smothering your mountain.

Watch out for hate,

it can open its mouth and you'll fling yourself out

to eat off your leg, an instant leper.

Watch out for friends,

because when you betray them,

as you will,

they will bury their heads in the toilet

and flush themselves away.

Watch out for intellect,

because it knows so much it knows nothing

and leaves you hanging upside down,

mouthing knowledge as your heart

falls out of your mouth.

Watch out for games, the actor's part,

the speech planned, known, given,

for they will give you away

and you will stand like a naked little boy,

pissing on your own child-bed.

Watch out for love

(unless it is true,

and every part of you says yes including the toes) ,

it will wrap you up like a mummy,

and your scream won't be heard

and none of your running will end.

Love? Be it man. Be it woman.

It must be a wave you want to glide in on,

give your body to it, give your laugh to it,

give, when the gravelly sand takes you,

your tears to the land. To love another is something

like prayer and can't be planned, you just fall

into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief.

Special person,

if I were you I'd pay no attention

to admonitions from me,

made somewhat out of your words

and somewhat out of mine.

A collaboration.

I do not believe a word I have said,

except some, except I think of you like a young tree

with pasted-on leaves and know you'll root

and the real green thing will come.

Let go. Let go.

Oh special person,

possible leaves,

this typewriter likes you on the way to them,

but wants to break crystal glasses

in celebration,

for you,

when the dark crust is thrown off

and you float all around

like a happened balloon.

Little Girl, My String Bean, My Lovely Woman

My daughter, at eleven
(almost twelve), is like a garden.

Oh, darling! Born in that sweet birthday suit
and having owned it and known it for so long,
now you must watch high noon enter -
noon, that ghost hour.
Oh, funny little girl – this one under a blueberry sky,
this one! How can I say that I've known
just what you know and just where you are?

It's not a strange place, this odd home
where your face sits in my hand
so full of distance,
so full of its immediate fever.
The summer has seized you,
as when, last month in Amalfi, I saw
lemons as large as your desk-side globe -
that miniature map of the world -
and I could mention, too,
the market stalls of mushrooms
and garlic buds all engorged.
Or I think even of the orchard next door,
where the berries are done
and the apples are beginning to swell.
And once, with our first backyard,
I remember I planted an acre of yellow beans
we couldn't eat.

Oh, little girl,
my stringbean,
how do you grow?
You grow this way.
You are too many to eat.

I hear
as in a dream
the conversation of the old wives
speaking of womanhood.
I remember that I heard nothing myself.
I was alone.
I waited like a target.

Let high noon enter –
the hour of the ghosts.
Once the Romans believed
that noon was the ghost hour,
and I can believe it, too,
under that startling sun,
and someday they will come to you,
someday, men bare to the waist, young Romans
at noon where they belong,
with ladders and hammers
while no one sleeps.

But before they enter
I will have said,
Your bones are lovely,
and before their strange hands
there was always this hand that formed.

Oh, darling, let your body in,
let it tie you in,
in comfort.
What I want to say, Linda,
is that women are born twice.

If I could have watched you grow
as a magical mother might,
if I could have seen through my magical transparent belly,
there would have been such a ripening within:
your embryo,
the seed taking on its own,
life clapping the bedpost,
bones from the pond,
thumbs and two mysterious eyes,
the awfully human head,
the heart jumping like a puppy,
the important lungs,
the becoming -
while it becomes!
as it does now,
a world of its own,
a delicate place.

I say hello
to such shakes and knockings and high jinks,
such music, such sprouts,
such dancing-mad-bears of music,
such necessary sugar,
such goings-on!

Oh, little girl,
my stringbean,
how do you grow?
You grow this way.
You are too many to eat.

What I want to say, Linda,
is that there is nothing in your body that lies.
All that is new is telling the truth.
I'm here, that somebody else,
an old tree in the background.

Darling,
stand still at your door,
sure of yourself, a white stone, a good stone -
as exceptional as laughter
you will strike fire,
that new thing!

Young

A thousand doors ago
when I was a lonely kid
in a big house with four
garages and it was summer
as long as I could remember,
I lay on the lawn at night,
clover wrinkling over me,
the wise stars bedding over me,
my mother's window a funnel
of yellow heat running out,
my father's window, half shut,
an eye where sleepers pass,
and the boards of the house
were smooth and white as wax
and probably a million leaves
sailed on their strange stalks
as the crickets ticked together
and I, in my brand new body,
which was not a woman's yet,
told the stars my questions
and thought God could really see
the heat and the painted light,
elbows, knees, dreams, goodnight.

Peter Gabriel Wrote a Song About Her:

Words support like bone.

We Need More Poetry. This is Mark Doty.

2011-02-24T14:59:00.018-05:00

Magical Mark Doty at Frank O'Hara's Grave

Once upon a sad and strange time, Mark Doty got a new dog for his dying partner. This poem rents my heart and is utterly divine. Buy a book of his poems. You need it.

The Famous Beau with Arden in 1996

"New Dog"

Jimi and Tony
can't keep Dino,
their cocker spaniel;
Tony's too sick,
the daily walks
more pressure
than pleasure,
one more obligation
that can't be met.

And though we already
have a dog, Wally
wants to adopt,
wants something small
and golden to sleep
next to him and
lick his face.
He's paralyzed now
from the waist down,

whatever's ruining him
moving upward, and
we don't know
how much longer
he'll be able to pet
a dog. How many men
want another attachment,
just as they're
leaving the world?

Wally sits up nights
and says, I'd like
some lizards, a talking bird,
some fish. A little rat.

So after I drive
to Jimi and Tony's
in the Village and they
meet me at the door and say,
We can't go through with it,

we can't give up our dog,
I drive to the shelter
-- just to look -- and there
is Beau: bounding and
practically boundless,
one brass concatenation
of tongue and tail,
unmediated energy,
too big, wild,

perfect. He not only
licks Wally's face
but bathes every
irreplaceable inch
of his head, and though
Wally can no longer
feed himself he can lift
his hand, and bring it
to rest on the rough gilt

flanks when they are,
for a moment, still.
I have never seen a touch
so deliberate.
It isn't about grasping;
the hand itself seems
almost blurred now,
softened, though
tentative only

because so much will
must be summoned,
such attention brought
to the work -- which is all
he is now, this gesture
toward the restless splendor,
the unruly, the golden,
the animal, the new.

With Ned, The New Dog

"Beau: Golden Retrievals"

Fetch? Balls and sticks capture my attention
seconds at a time. Catch? I don't think so.
Bunny, tumbling leaf, a squirrel who's—oh
joy—actually scared. Sniff the wind, then

I'm off again, muck, pond, ditch, residue
of any thrillingly dead thing. And you?
Either you're sunk in the past, half our walk,
thinking of what you never can bring back,

or else you're off in some fog concerning
—tomorrow, is that what you call it? My work:
to unsnare time's warp (and woof), retrieving,
my haze-headed friend, you. This shining bark,

a Zen master's bronzy gong, calls you here,
entirely, now: bow-wow, bow-wow, bow-wow.

(All Images from Mark Doty's site). The last poem's my favorite.

Banjo or Freakout: I Choose Freakout

2011-02-24T14:27:00.006-05:00

My friend Angela sent me this. The song is beautiful, and the video absolute perfection. It's three o'clock, I'm 15 and hanging out alone after school. Bring on the nostalgic ache.

I Don't Weep. Do You?

2011-02-23T12:56:00.004-05:00

I came to loving Bukowski later in life. I was sick of so many boys lauding him, boys drawn to his crudity but not to his gentleness. He had a gift and he was touched, but miserable. His heart was something I had to find later, in my own time. No beer-swirly 24-year-old could ever talk me into loving Bukowski. But this poem did.

Bukowski on The French Television Program "Apostrophes" Circa 1978.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?

From The Last Night of The Earth Poems, Circa 1992

Love After Love

2011-02-16T15:10:00.000-05:00

Just heard this poem in my ears and have to put it here, right here, to remember, again.

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
— Derek Walcott

Cool, Cool, Cool Stuff

2011-02-01T10:40:00.001-05:00

Wonderful graphic design, sketches and charts from the artist behind Grayhood. Fun and talented. I just wanted to share. First, we've been provided a way to break it down when it comes to the desires and parlance of The Ramones and The Misfits.


Very Awesome Pie Chart

And this little dress is the cutest receipt I've ever seen.

Very Sexy Receipt

That is all. Have a good Tuesday!

I Want to Live in This Virtual Store

2011-01-31T14:57:00.002-05:00

{The Beauty and Comfort of Please Be Still, Let it Hold You Tenderleh}

Read.

2011-01-31T10:42:00.000-05:00

{From this lovely site: http://www.todayandtomorrow.net/2011/01/18/book-of-art/}

Waiting for the Sun

2011-01-31T10:08:00.000-05:00

Because it's been a long, cold lonely winter. It feels like years since you've been here.

{Photo from Oh Snap!}

Pop, Rock and Lock

2011-01-13T11:43:00.000-05:00

Pink, Bunny Rabbits, and Florence.

I wrote my second piece on music ladies of 2010. This time it's about dance music and indie rock. Read it on Synconation. I'm having fun now.

The Madonna-Cyndi Lauper Theory

2010-12-29T16:00:00.000-05:00

Read about it on Synconation, where I get to write about music again.

Synconation: Old-Fashioned Music Bloggery

2010-11-11T21:22:00.000-05:00

Records and Players=Swoon.

WILD FLAG

I'm very excited to be a part of what our editor is calling a brand-new music blog that will make each contributor (myself included) LEGENDS. We can have audacious hope, can't we? Mainly, it's a labor of love put together by a bunch of wonderful writers who are incurable romantics when it comes to music. Diverse, funny, touching, and fun, Synconation is definitely a place you can visit to learn about great music new and old, complete with live reviews, top-5s, songs of the day, featured articles and song battles. I'm honored and excited to be a part of it. My first piece will run November 12. It's about this great new band, WILD FLAG. I'd love it if you checked it out.

BFFs Give a Shout Out to Our New Mama

2010-11-11T21:12:00.000-05:00

Karen, Kelly Rae, and Ama

We've been friends for almost twenty years, and our dear Kelly Rae recently gave birth to her first baby--Baby True. Karen and I guest posted on her blog, sending her our love and stories and wishes. Here's mine. Here's Karen's. We love you, Kelly.

Oh Pack Up All My Care and Woe

2010-10-03T18:14:00.000-05:00


Here I Go, Swinging Low/Bye, Bye Blackbird...Bye, Bye.

Decided? Not sure. But I want to tell those blackbirds bye-bye. These last months, especially August, my birthday month, I can jokingly say, have provided me with some priceless writing material. However, right now, the material doesn't seem worth the cost of the moment--which is blackbirds flying riot in my heart. They want out? I'm again unsure. They peck and flurry and fly at the blue-red muscle and haven't escaped. Maybe they like it in there, the racing. Pump, pump, pump. Punch, punch, punch with soft small heads, almost like baby kicks, almost like babies, unsure if they want to burst into the air of this grey, sunshiny, complicated, impermanent world of sun and sky, rock and stone, harmony and discord, trees of sorrow and a sunrise's uncomplicated hope. I guess, right now, I'm not too certain either, that I want them out, entirely. Oh, but my heart seems to scar, first from bloody punctures. It seems to open to veins traveling this way and that, across muscle, bone, nerves, spine. A little too much room for the allowance for this fist-sized source of lifeblood to burst entirely apart. So. I'm looking for the courage, to, as that gorgeous song says so joyously..."Oh pack up all my care and woe/Here I go/Swinging Low/Bye, By Blackbird/Bye Bye..."

{Blackbirds}

Blog Swap With Leigh--A Retrospective

2010-10-03T17:58:00.000-05:00

I kept Leigh's two posts up...the original and the revised (which included the conclusion of an actual lost tooth and Leigh's first adventure as Tooth Fairy") since her gorgeous, loving essays each provoked such sweet comments. That was fun. Thank you, Leigh!

{Photo Source: We Heart It }

Motherhood and Toothfairies

2010-09-29T10:43:00.000-05:00

This is my first-ever blog-switch/guest post thing, and I'm excited. I try to be vigilant, but my posts tend to come in fits and starts, dependent on the ebbs of influence and energy. I'd like to introduce you to Leigh of Leigh vs Laundry, an old friend from our mid-twenties Atlanta madness, who I happily rediscovered in blog-land, and quickly became an avid follower of her poignant and very funny, insightful blog. I'm honored that this blogging vet agreed to switch blog-posts-for-the-day with me. Please visit her and follow. You'll fall in love, I promise.

Thoughts on Motherhood: Remembering

When Ama asked me to write a guide for all the hopeful ladies out there that want to be mamas one day, I knew exactly what I wanted to write about. Here is my number one piece of advice, try to remember what it felt like to be kid. I have the innate ability to do just that. My earliest memories go back to being two years old. I don't just remember events that occurred at that time but I remember how I felt when they happened. This gives me a leg up on the whole motherhood thing.

As I watch my children go through rights of passage, I am taken back to the very moment that I experienced the same thing.. This makes me either a more compassionate mother or an out of control narcissist, I haven't decided yet. Either way, it reignites a sense of wonder within me to see them feel the same way that I felt.

Griffin is afraid of the dark and it takes me back to a single moment that happened almost everyday of my childhood. I would run with fear into the dark bathroom, slap on the light, and then frantically slam back the shower curtain to make sure that no monsters were waiting there to eat me. Now as Griffin comes to me with a scared face, I remember how real that feeling felt. I give him all kinds of tactics to avoid the dark or skills to train his eye to decipher between a monster and a shadow. The two are closely related, as we all know.

Beyond the satisfaction I get from passing on such important survival skills, motherhood also provides a glorious paradox for me. It's amazing to experience childhood as the parent. For example, Griffin just lost his first loose tooth. We loved having conversations about all the different ways that we could pull it out. My favorite suggestion of his was to attach his tooth to an electric toy train with a string. I'm considering buying a train set to be our official tooth puller.

I'm not just excited about the milestone of him losing his first tooth but I am thrilled that I have been promoted to the tooth fairy. I was a staunch believer in the tooth fairy as a little girl, holding onto my belief embarrassingly long. So, I was excited to sneak into his room the other night as I gingerly snatched his little tooth and quickly left a dollar. I remember the excitement of waking up to find that money beneath my pillow. I was able to revel in that thrill from the other side. I get to experience childhood all over again from the parent's perspective. It's so fulfilling because all of the same feeling are evoked.

There is healing in motherhood. Sometimes when I rock my children, I feel as though I am rocking myself too. Tapping into that unconditional love that only a mama can give and I suppose that as I love my children and celebrate those wonderful rights of passage, that I am giving something back to the little girl that lives in me. I'm lucky to remember how that girl felt and to feel her giggling some place deep within me when I laugh with my children. She cries when they cry, she learns as they learn, and she grows with every step that they take.

So I say to you Ama and all the other hopeful mamas out there, locate that little girl and start looking at the world though her eyes. Dust off your memories and let them simmer in your heart so that when your future child is here, your inner child will be poised to experience childhood all over again as a mother.

Welcome Leigh vs. Laundry

2010-09-29T07:00:00.001-05:00

This is my first-ever blog-switch/guest post thing, and I'm excited. I try to be vigilant, but my posts tend to come in fits and starts, dependent on the ebbs of influence and energy.

I'd like to introduce you to Leigh of Leigh vs Laundry, an old friend from our mid-twenties Atlanta madness, who I happily rediscovered in blog-land, and quickly became an avid follower of her poignant and very funny, insightful blog. I'm honored that this blogging vet agreed to switch blog-posts-for-the-day with me. Please visit her and follow. You'll fall in love, I promise.

Leigh's Advice to All Us Mama-Wannabes

When Ama asked me to write a guide for all the hopeful ladies out there that want to be mamas one day, I knew exactly what I wanted to write about. Here is my number one piece of advice, try to remember what it felt like to be kid. I have the innate ability to do just that. My earliest memories go back to being two years old. I don't just remember events that occurred at that time but I remember how I felt when they happened. This gives me a leg up on the whole motherhood thing.

As I watch my children go through rites of passage, I am taken back to the very moment that I experienced the same thing. This makes me either a more compassionate mother or an out-of-control narcissist, I haven't decided yet. Either way, it reignites a sense of wonder within me to see them feel the same way that I felt.

Griffin is afraid of the dark and it takes me back to a single moment that happened almost every day of my childhood. I would run with fear into the dark bathroom, slap on the light, and then frantically slam back the shower curtain to make sure that no monsters were waiting there to eat me. Now as Griffin comes to me with a scared face, I remember how real that feeling felt. I give him all kinds of tactics to avoid the dark or skills to train his eye to decipher between a monster and a shadow. The two are closely related, as we all know.

Beyond the satisfaction I get from passing on such important survival skills, motherhood also provides a glorious paradox for me. It's amazing to experience childhood as the parent. For example, Griffin has his first loose tooth. We love having conversations about all the different ways that we could pull it out. My favorite suggestion of his is to attach his tooth to an electric toy train with a string. I'm considering buying a train set to be our official tooth puller.

I'm not just excited about the milestone of him losing his first tooth but I am thrilled that I am about to be promoted to the tooth fairy. I was a staunch believer in the tooth fairy as a little girl, holding onto my belief embarrassingly long. So, I look forward to sneaking into his room at night and spreading my pretend fairy dust as I snatch his little tooth and leave a dollar. I remember the thrill of waking up to find that money beneath my pillow. I now can't wait to feel that thrill from the other side. I get to experience childhood all over again from the parent's perspective. It's so fulfilling because all of the same feeling are evoked.

There is healing in motherhood. Sometimes when I rock my children, I feel as though I am rocking myself too. Tapping into that unconditional love that only a mama can give and I suppose that as I love my children and celebrate those wonderful rites of passage, that I am giving something back to the little girl that lives in me. I'm lucky to remember how that girl felt and to feel her giggling some place deep within me when I laugh with my children. She cries when they cry, she learns as they learn, and she grows with every step that they take.

So I say to you, Ama, and all the other hopeful mamas out there, locate that little girl and start looking at the world though her eyes. Dust off your memories and let them simmer in your heart so that when your future child is here, your inner child will be poised to experience childhood all over again as a mother.

An Exercise in Forgiveness

2010-09-09T08:18:00.000-05:00

Streets of New York by Justin Lee

On September 11, let’s gather for a big forgiveness exercise. Let’s forgive all of the characters and their underlings in our history who we know as haters of humanity. Let us forgive Lucifer and his crew that we may be released from the dark lie that has confused and enslaved all humanity.

Let’s gather in our hearts for 11 minutes of focused intention at 11:11 AM and at 11:11 PM on this day wherever you are. Take a few minutes to get comfortable, prepare yourself to be part of a big beautiful demonstration in FORGIVENESS. For the sake of LOVE!

Feel free to share this opportunity as your heart leads. Let's gather our friends and family to participate in an exercise of FORGIVENESS that encompasses the whole history of humanity and all of the vast array of personalities, forces, and purposes involved.

Visit An Exercise in Forgiveness to join.

The Word Made Flesh

2010-09-08T12:57:00.005-05:00

This book looks amazing and comes out October 12, 2010. I may have to finally get a tattoo. After all, says the Buddha, "Nothing is Permanent.

Charles Bukowski

ee cummings

{bluebird in my heart tattoo :: not even the rain tattoo}

The Art of Living Guide--Come Visit!

2010-09-07T14:18:00.002-05:00

Upon Awakening on a Weekday Morning at Three-Years-Old - The Art of Living

Wouldn't It Be a Lovely Headline?

2010-08-30T20:16:00.000-05:00

Life is Beautiful...
On the New York Times...

--Rufus Wainwright

{Film Poster :: Foot :: Paper ::Lady Bug :: Billie Holiday}

Making Love Visible

2010-08-26T09:25:00.000-05:00

... I cannot see The love you offer. —Emily Dickinson
How can we make love visible; how can we give it eyes? We can make love a present, wrap it carefully as if it were a beautiful thing.

We can make love a favor nobody foresaw; we can fill a cup, prepare a meal, run an errand with our love. We can make love out of real words - in a letter, a note, a simple unrhymed poem. And we can make our love visible with our eyes by making our eyes meet those of the people we love.

When we turn a feeling like love into an act, we share it with those around us, and they are encouraged to return the favor, and in this way, the world's storehouse of love increases. From Today's Gift on Hazelden.

{Image Credit: You've Won My Heart; Never Give Up}

Double-Sunrise Shell {A Tree Grows in Brooklyn}

2010-08-25T02:06:00.001-05:00

{With Apologies to Anne Lindbergh, Betty Smith, T.S. Eliot, Leonard Cohen and Chris Lopez}

For Karen and Ralph on Their Wedding Day
August 22, 2010 ~ Full Moon Resort | Catskills | New York

One does not often come across such a perfect double-sunrise shell. Both halves of this delicate bivalve are exactly matched. Each side, like the wing of a butterfly, is marked with the same pattern; translucent rosy rays that fan out from the golden hinge binding the two together. I hold two sunrises between my thumb and forefinger. Smooth, whole, unblemished shell, I wonder how its fragile perfection survived the breakers on the beach. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

:
Brought in by the waters of the sea, she is, quite simply, bright and dark and deep, borne from Italy to land-locked states to the Atlantic Ocean and now to the green-laden, tree-lined streets of Brooklyn--warm as the waters of her childhood summers, she is equally powerful, equally generous, equally beautiful. Forever presenting new things to be known, she swims and swims through the waters that carry her. Eternally bouyant. Eternally bright. Always moving.

::
What is love? It is this. Mermaids calling. A siren song unheard. Waves pushing those Prufrock waters white and black. When the singing comes, answer it. It's not as common as you might think. You have to know where to look. It is unusual. A gift from the unfathomable sea. You have to know how to call. It is hard work to sing out, swimming along the seawaves white and brown, to arise in the listener the idea that yes, I am singing to you.

:::
But when the call is heard, a double-sunrise shell, delicate, curious, freely given, loosens itself from the waves, rests waiting on golden sand, given to you by a kind stranger who expects nothing in return. One does not often come across such a perfect double-sunrise shell, both halves of the bivalve perfectly matched. This is love.

::::
He is earth, fresh air, soil beneath his feet--as rich and promising as a sunrise. The earth he sows is dark, like chocolate cake between the fingers and sweet--a thousand kisses deep. He is also light, like the air that grows nourishing sustenance from the soil--air light as an apple blossom's petal.

:::::
Her water pours into it all, so they grew and they grow--like The Giving Tree, the Joshua tree, live oak, magnolia, pear, orange, apple--and The Tree that Grows in Brooklyn--these two halves made of themselves, one.

::::::
So the love burst. So it pushed. Up through and into the sun, from water and earth and light. And it is simply, the light of a thousand suns.

:::::::
My wish for these precious two, my wish for you, is equally simple, equally dear, and comes from all the love in my powerful heart--a love as long as the clouds and the rains and the seas and terrains--simply, a sweet and happy life--just as it is today, right now, in the bow of the sun--among the people we impossibly, luckily, unimaginably, graciously, completely, and simply--love.

{Karen and Ralph (photo by Victor Aguilar); Double-Sunrise Shell; Swimming; Mermaid Girl by Esther Lester; Shells Given; Sunrise Boy, from Sore Thumb; Kissing from LoveTrains.Blogspot.com; Take me to Neverland}

K + R Wedding Part Une

2010-08-22T00:48:00.004-05:00

Film Nerds James and Mark

Mama Clare and Baby Ranier

James and Amre, Cutie Couple

Ralph, the Groom

Kat and Ama, BFFs of 16 Years

Karen, the Bride

Karen, Amre, James and Ralph

Me, Ama

A Companion Sweet

2010-08-11T21:20:00.001-05:00

She also followed me home.

Ralph Waldo Emersonisms

2010-08-10T10:57:00.078-05:00

{Sunshine | Give All to Love | There are No Days | Be Silly

| Do Not Go || Happiness is a Perfume | Be Yourself | Laugh Much}

A Summer Poem

2010-08-10T10:17:00.002-05:00

Judges in Summer

by Barry Spacks

Sometimes people who judge and judge

turn lovely in summer, with gin & tonics.

They shop at little roadside stands;

brood in a trance over silks of corn.

Lounging around, still starched from swimming,

they speak mild words in the evening air

and leave the work of keeping up standards

to bickering children, questions of worth

to the waves. In town, in handkerchief dresses,

rumpled white suits, they smile, they visit—

they water the garden; hum with the cat.

In shirt and jeans they climb the rocks

with wine in a thermos, a bag of bread

to throw to those ravenous muscles the gulls—

and there they offer a round of applause

(of the gentle sort once used watching tennis)

to see the fat sun dip away

through its showy orange time.

"Judges in Summer" by Barry Spacks, from Spacks Street: New and Selected Poems.

{Girls on a River Deck | Girl Near Jettied Ocean}

The Sudden Illumination

2010-07-16T14:53:00.000-05:00

(My Grandparents Kaler, 1920s)

The moments of happiness--not the sense of well-being

Fruition, fulfilment, security or affection,

Or even a good dinner, but the sudden illumination--

We had the experience but missed the meaning,

And approach to the meaning restores the experience

In a different form, beyond any meaning

We can assign to happiness

{From T.S. Eliot's The Dry Salvages}

Love Bites

2010-06-23T12:45:00.002-05:00

Fantasy love is better

than real love. -- Andy Warhol

Love is nothing but luck and timing. -- Laura Esquivel

(Isabella Rosselini) | (Fuck Time) | (Marilyn by Richard Avedon) | (Water)

Truth v Fiction

2010-06-07T23:48:00.001-05:00

Some would say that truth is just a lack of imagination.

It Could Be Anybody

2010-06-04T22:37:00.001-05:00

{Too Many. From here.}

Love.

2010-05-28T16:48:00.002-05:00

Bright Happy Colors

2010-05-25T16:05:00.002-05:00

Just these happy colors from Design*Sponge.

More Frailer than the Flowers, These Precious Hours

2010-05-16T19:16:00.000-05:00

Play this at my wedding. Play this at my funeral. Play this when the world feels like a shark's bite.

2010-05-10T12:24:00.003-05:00

{Photo from this amazingly talented + adorable girl }

Never Too Late

2010-04-22T19:39:00.001-05:00

One of my favorite sentiments.

Post Secret

2010-04-21T10:08:00.014-05:00

{The ones I loved best,were never the ones I was with.}

(I am Here) I am There

2010-04-21T00:47:00.003-05:00

I am not particularly religious. But I am human. An animal, to quote David Byrne, looking for a home. Sometimes I find that home--in many ways, most exclusively--in love--which is, by nature, inclusive, always. Isn't that nice? So this is not, to me, a Christian poem exclusively. I find it to be a love poem (and I think all poems are love poems).

It was among my dearly departed Gran'ma Jeanne's well-preserved mementos. It hangs by a clothespin on a line of fishing wire between my living room's two front, green-curtained windows--the curtains left open all day for my cat Bella's curious, possibly lonely stares out into the world. There's a picture of Smudge, my grandmother's childhood cat, a picture of my grandma at age 9, a picture of my Grandma Jerry enjoying a cup of coffee, leaning over the top of a car, outside, during a camping trip.

There's a lovely card stating "love always wins," from a dear artist friend. Pictures of angels and fairies. Other bright-colored things. But for the first time, late this evening, finally alone, at the end of this long, wonderful day in April, I read this piece, "I am There," for the first time. I love it because it meant much to my Gran'ma Jeanne. She saw life this way. She was connected, deeply, to this dirty and beautiful earthly domain. She was connected fearlessly to heaven and mystery and a perfect beyond. And I wanted to remember it, share it. So I'm writing it here. Seemingly contrived as it may be, I found the sentiment, and the words, very moving. And I felt my ancestors in my bones, felt my beloved grandmother in my spirit and my soul and my heart, comforted by the vastness and sweetness of this world and this life and whatever it is we don't see, something sweet, something benevolent, always cradling us, always loving us, always in us. Always. Without further rumination--for I tend to go on and on with words--here 'tis.

I Am There

Do you need Me?
I am there.
You cannot see Me, yet I am the light you see by.
You cannot hear Me, yet I speak through your voice.
You cannot feel Me, yet I am the power at work in your hands.
I am at work, though you do not understand My ways.
I am at work, though you do not recognize My works.
I am not strange visions. I am not mysteries.
Only in absolute stillness, beyond self, can you know Me as I am,
and then but as a feeling and a faith.
Yet I am there. Yet I hear. Yet I answer.
When you need me, I am there.
Even when you deny me, I am there.
Even when you are most alone, I am there.
Even in your fears, I am there.
Even in your pain, I am there.
I am there when you pray and when you do not pray.
I am in you, and you are in Me.
Only in your mind can you feel separate from Me,
for only in your mind are the mists of "yours" and "mine."
Yet only with your mind can you know Me and experience Me.
Empty your heart of empty fears.
When you get yourself out of the way, I am there.
You can of yourself do nothing, but I can do all.
And I am in all.
Though you may not see the good, good is there, for I am there.
I am there because I have to be, because I am.
Only in Me does the world have meaning; only out of Me
does the world take form; only because of Me does the world go forward.
I am the law on which the movement of the stars and the
growth of living cells are founded.
I am the love that is the law's fulfilling. I am assurance.
I am peace. I am oneness. I am the law that you can live by. I
am the love that you can cling to. I am your assurance. I am
your peace. I am one with you. I am.
Though you fail to find Me, I do not fail you.
Though your faith in Me is unsure, My faith in you never
wavers, because I know you, because I love you.
Beloved, I am there.
--James Dillet Freeman

Mister Freeman was lauded as "the poet laureate of Unity, " lived from 1923 to 2003, and...Jim's 1947 poem I Am There went to the moon with Colonel James B. Irwin on Apollo 15. Irwin left a microfilm copy of the poem on the moon. Cool.

Lately

2010-04-16T21:52:00.005-05:00

Friday afternoon in April. These are a few things I'm liking or doing or wanting to do lately.

Super-cool modernist doll house bookshelf via the NYT.
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They're streaming their brand-new album because it leaked, perhaps.
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It felt good to donate to this beautiful, long fight (fought by Jen Lemen -- to learn how more about this story and how you can do one small thing to send your love into the world, visit Jen Lemen's link above) toward the glorious, almost there mother-and-child reunion all the way from Africa to the West Coast of the United States. Photo of Odette's daughters Grace + Lilian by Stephanie Roberts.
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I cannot wait to read this book, How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly by one of my favorite of favorite authors, Connie May Fowler. Seeing her read and getting my book and the book for a friend signed at The Book Mark in Atlantic Beach, FL tomorrow from 7 to 9 p.m. Read this review from Joseph Books Blog, republished courtesy of the New York Review of Books.
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Looking forward to a new bra fitting at Intimacy tomorrow, too. My girls have shrunk, and I need a couple of beautiful new bras to lift me up and lighten my, er, load, and my heart.
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The end. Hope to be posting more frequently for the few of you so sweet enough to follow this little journal of mine. Spring is here, and I feel like I have light in my hands.
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Be Kind

2010-03-31T21:24:00.001-05:00

{Via Fffffound}

Sing Halleluhah. C'mon Get Happy.

2010-03-27T12:20:00.001-05:00

{Via We Heart It}

Karen (My Babygirl) & Ralph (Good Boy) on Getting Engages!

2010-03-27T02:02:00.002-05:00

This rules the school. I stole it from Kitty Kat's blog who found it on their wedding site. I need to check that more often! This is awesome. I love the both of these so very much, and have been besties with Karen since we were 18. I am so happy for her...and Ralph, what can I say, he's the luckiest guy in the world.

But It Won't Last Forever

2010-03-17T21:44:00.003-05:00

weheartit

Will we ever be whole again? Will we be all right? The weather was grey, grey, grey all day, and rainy, but the leaves of the trees were green, birds sang, water sluiced off tiny blades of green, green grass. Ides of March two days ago. Saint Patrick's Day today. Today, I miss my Irish grandmothers. No one loved St. Paddy's Day more than they. Except maybe my oldest brother. Anyway. Blues have hit on this green day, and it doesn't feel like Spring. It's another one of those in-between times. One of those times when everything feels wrong. But I've finally learned that the black clouds will pass. After the rain.

You're a Genius All the Time

2010-03-12T23:04:00.002-05:00

It's Jack Kerouac's birthday today.

One of the best parts of my day was getting this message from my old friend Karl, so moving to me that I must post it here on my little virtual scrapbook, for mine eyes, and anyone else who cares to see. Plus, wanna get the book. From Karl: Some of my favorites from Kerouac's 30 Essentials in Belief & Technique in Modern Prose:

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
5. Something that you feel will find its own form...
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language &knowledge
29. You're a Genius all the time

Now the Full Version:

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with yr wife
5. Something that your feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from the bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement of yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the hold contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Dont think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr monrning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In Praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazzier the better
29. You're a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored Angeled in Heaven
as ever,
Jack
[By Jack Kerouac, exerpted precisely as published [sic] from a letter to Don Allen 1958]

So now, I can't get that great 10,000 Maniacs song out of my head, a song a discovered about the same time I read On the Road. Favorite line? "Hey Jack, now for the tricky part/When you were the brightest star/Who were the shadows?/Of the San Francisco beat boys you were the favorite/Now they sit and rattle their bones/And think of their bloodstone days..."

You went away without saying goodbye.

Want.

2010-02-25T14:26:00.001-05:00

Thanks to a little break, my friend introduced me to the amazing Natalie Dee. I want her t-shirts and the t-shirts made by her friendz or just her and Drew Dee. They are awesome. And can be found here.

Deep, Inner Silence

2010-02-16T11:37:00.002-05:00

In the rush of work and worry, the deep, inner silence
is necessary to keep me on an even keel. I must learn
to take the calm with me into the most hurried days.
~ Anonymous

Be still. And listen to the stillness within.
~Darlene Larren Jenks

{Feather Girl via Small Magazine * Hidden Light Photo by Mike of Button Moon}

In Memorium & Gratitude ~ Gorgeous Poet Lucille Clifton

2010-02-14T21:14:00.004-05:00

Ms. Clifton died Saturday, February 13 at the age of 73. Her work, her work, her work. It has left a mark on me. And I am grateful for what she's given me, and the world. May she haunt us joyfully. This work below, is hers.

Dream of Foxes

fox

who
can blame her for hunkering
into the doorwells at night,
the only blaze in the dark
the brush of her hopeful tail,
the only starlight
her little bared teeth?
and when she is not satisfied
who can blame her for refusing to leave,
Master Of The Hunt, why am i
not feeding, not being fed?

the coming of fox

one evening i return
to a red fox
haunched by my door.

i am afraid

although she knows
no enemy comes here.

next night again
then next then next
she sits in her safe shadow
silent as my skin bleeds
into long bright flags
of fur.

dear fox

it is not my habit
to squat in the hungry desert
fingering stones, begging them
to heal, not me but the dry morninngs
and bitter nights.
it is not your habit
to watch, none of this
is ours, sister fox.
tell yourself that anytime now
we will rise and walk away
from somebody else's life.
any time.

leaving fox

so many fuckless days and nights
only the solitary fox
watching my window light
barks her compassion.
i move away from her eyes.
from the pitying brush
of her tail
to a new place and check
for signs. so far
i am the only animal.
i will keep the door unlocked
until something human comes.

one year later

what if,
then,
entering my room,
brushing against the shadows,
lapping them into rust,
her soft paw extended,
she had called me out?
what if,
then,
i had reared up baying,
and followed her off
into vixen country?
what then of the moon,
the room, the bed, the poetry
of regret?

a dream of foxes

in the dream of foxes
there is a field
and a procession of women
clean as good children
no hollow in the world
surrounded by dogs
no fur clumped bloody
on the ground
only a lovely time
of honest women stepping
without fear or guilt or shame
safe through the generous fields.

fox photograph by Leland Rucker

Wuv. Twu Wuv.

2010-02-12T16:25:00.001-05:00

Happy V-Day.

Dance Music.

2010-02-10T21:12:00.003-05:00

Spent three almost three days writing about the city of San Luis Obispo.Couldn't get this song out of my head.

Dance Music from Sunset Tree, by The Mountain Goats,

All right.
I'm on Johnson Avenue
in San Luis Obispo.
I'm five years old or six
maybe.

And indications that there's
something wrong with our new house
trip down the wire twice daily.

I'm in the living room watching
the Watergate hearings while
my stepfather yells at my mother.
He throws a glass
straight at her head
and I dash upstairs to take cover...
Listen close to the little record player on the floor
So this is what the volume knobs for.

I listen to Dance Music. Dance Music...

Who Knows What Treasures Lie Beneath?

2010-02-05T22:35:00.003-05:00

Be still, my heart. Though the books are better (heh-heh), these Penguin Classic Postcards are a dream come true, and all in one little box! Thank you Cup of Jo and Design Crush! My Friday is now complete.

It's a Small World, and You've Grown

2010-02-05T21:47:00.007-05:00

Not every night. Not at the wrong time. Not in the wrong way, the longing, regretful way, but some nights, especially late winter nights, if you're in the right state of mind, and the starlings have been flying lightly in great waves of movement from one bare tree to the next against the gray sky and blustering wind and falling rain--and that sight tugs your heart not with sorrow but with swelling love--it's okay, just for a little while, to revist the past, when love is only there, thankfulness is there, and your head is straight and you know you were right to leave. That the gracelessness of your years from then to now were necessary, and it's okay to be alone. The light is warm inside. And those songs are yours again, both of yours, and forgiveness comes closer, feels complete. I learned from him many things, many painful things, learned the breadth and depth can be stretched deeper and wider, ever wider, ever deeper. And that love is just not enough. And that love comes again, and its expansion is a much harder but more rewarding thing, is deeper and wider than anything at all. So, tonight, this music is mine, is another place, another time--and like the song from that time says, I can say to myself, "You are alone. It's a small world, and you've grown."

Split Open in Winter -- A Dispatch from Some Summer Nights

2010-01-27T23:16:00.006-05:00

What is light?
What is light within?
What is light within light?
Stillness becoming alive,
Yet Still?

A lively understandable spirit
once entertained you.
It will come again.
Be still.
Wait.

Theodore Roethke,"The Lost Son," from Words for the Wind

What's been split open--this warm summer night--white curtains blowing in the thick Florida breeze -- is a bone China tea cup, a swift fall from the too tall steps, the ivy growing in the cracks, a tipping point, a toe caught -- the knee bruised and bleeding just a bit. The sun falling as the palms sway, to and fro, toward the ocean and back again. And again.

What is it about summers that always remind me of sweet scraped up tiny knees -- the green too green everywhere, the light going on and on well into the night we used to find ourselves in, when blackness fell too soon, and the cold led us indoors, more so than the darkness than the metallic chill of air, but nonetheless, there plates to be set, dinner to come, night after night, at 6:30, when the lamp light began to glow more brightly, the old red blanket thrown neatly across the old plaid davenport -- a length of comfort coveted for sprawling upon after and before the hand-painted floral plates were covered with lasagna, with greens, with scalloped potatoes, hearts of palm and buttered French bread, the clanging clatter of silver forks soon thrown into the sink.

Miles Davis laments, the light in the kitchen a soft, sweet glow like a candle flame -- and Grandma getting the dishes done, and the glow of television, and the waves of voices full of home, and the hot shower after the beach, and the sand in my small bathing suit, and my skin warm from the sun, and the taste of salt in the air, chlorine in my hair--and the lights all on, rooms occupied with laughter and music -- and the interminable stretch of empty days, and the school year dreaded like a bone dry skeleton of crisp white paper and boys and girls in expensive clothes. And the mockingbird singing in the middle of the night, the morning's teeth lit and waiting.
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Sky: Girl in Room: Swimming Pool

MaryLouLord

2010-01-27T17:24:00.001-05:00

Some Jingle Jangle Morning. Sweet Nostalgia. Had the Best 7-Inch Version of This.

Haiti

2010-01-17T23:27:00.019-05:00

I don't want to forget these words, so I'm posting them in my online scrapbook. Images and words and voices still inarticulate when it comes to conveying Haiti, its history, and the effects of its devastating earthquake Tuesday. But, these, from today's NYT's article on faith by Deborah Sontag, help me wrap my heart around it a bit. Because I can't give a lot of money nor travel to Haiti, I can only send my prayers, the ones in this secret heart, alone, when my mind is silent, and I feel waves connecting from my insignificant self in Florida--safe, well-fed, sheltered, and not thirsty--to a country of strangeness and beauty and color and faith and frightening wars, suffering people, corrupt governments, slavery, an imagined place to me--I feel my heart transport as I breathe deeply and say the words love to you, love to you, love to you, and see water, bright colors, a land blown in half, but people holding on to one another to survive, people holding on to what distant god...here is an excerpt from Sontag's article:

Sounding a similar note, a self-appointed preacher at Champ de Mars stood on a crate during the makeshift prayer service and proclaimed that the earthquake was punishment for a long list of sins that he enumerated in a singsong.

“We have to kneel down and ask forgiveness from God,” he said.

Vladimir Arisson brushed the self-appointed preacher away with rolled eyes. Mr. Arisson stood propping up his severely wounded girlfriend, Darphcat Charles, whose head was wrapped in bloody gauze, her eyes bruised and her face swollen, infected and grimacing. “My position is God bless, and send us, please, oh Lord, a doctor to plug the hole in my beloved’s head.”

Another man attending the evangelical service introduced his wife, who is eight months pregnant and sat on the pavement blank-faced. “A concrete block fell on her stomach, and we don’t know if the baby is still alive,” said the man, Ricot Calixte, 28. “Prayer can help, I think. As I still breathe, I have faith.”
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Photo By Michael Appleton for The New York Times

Everyone Does This -- Oh, Rumi

2010-01-12T22:24:00.027-05:00

Today, I inflicted myself, purposefully, compulsively, with personal memories and projections and assumptions, of a love lost, and the spiral-like destructive fantasy that I have nothing and that other, that lost love, has everything.
Thanks to the words below, along with the listening, the open ear and heart of a friend, I felt whole again, well again, better again, reminded again, of how far I have come since then. How I have risen, cliche as it may sound, like a phoenix from the flame, from a shadowy underworld into a world of imperfect light. So tonight, this cold, cold night of clear starry skies, I may sleep enfolded, and dream the dreams of a princess, rescued from the cold and ice of frozen sirens, from the charming piper headed toward darkened alleyways, from the handsome king offering me sweet fruit for a price.
These words were the opening, the opened heart was the unfolding. This was my night's magic spell, unfurled from these words of Rumi:

I am part of the load
Not rightly balanced
I drop off in the grass,
like the old Cave-sleepers, to browse
wherever I fall.

For hundreds of thousands of years I have been dust-grains
floating and flying in the will of the air,
often forgetting ever being
in that state, but in sleep
I migrate back. I spring loose
from the four-branched, time -and-space cross,
this waiting room.

I walk into a huge pasture
I nurse the milk of millennia

Everyone does this in different ways.
Knowing that conscious decisions
and personal memory
are much too small a place to live,
every human being streams at night
into the loving nowhere, or during the day,
in some absorbing work.
And this one:

A Tender Agony of Parting

A craftsman pulled a reed
from the reedbed, cut holes in it, and
called it a human being.

Since then, it has been wailing
a tender agony of parting,
never mentioning the skill
that gave it life as a flute.
Life, indeed, is beautiful.
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Image 1: We Heart It; Image 2: We Heart It; Image 3: We Heart It ; Image 4: We Heart It; Image 5: We Heart It; Image 6: We Heart It; Image 7: We Heart It

This Emotional Life on PBS

2010-01-11T23:01:00.002-05:00

Totally fascinating. Watching the next one tommorow.

The show started January 4. Find out more right here.

A Million Empty Branches

2010-01-07T13:24:00.008-05:00

From Billy Collins' new collection, The Trouble with Poetry & Other Poems. Read these lines outside in the cold last night. Those lines you read and memorize immediately, imprinting them on your heart. Symphonies built on carefully choreographed, carefully chosen words. Austerity is the heart of poetry. The last stanza from the poem "I Ask You," a perfect winter poem, hit me right in that place of the heart you reserve solely for God:

So forgive me
if I lower my head and listen
to the short bass candle as he takes a solo
while my heart
thrums under my shirt--
frog at the edge of a pond--
and my thoughts fly off to a province
composed of one enormous sky
and about a million empty branches.

We Heart It

Kitteh Bed from an Old Suitcase

2010-01-04T23:59:00.007-05:00

I just found this on the lovely blog A Brooklyn Limestone which I just discovered via The Times London's 50 of the World's Best Design Blogs list. I think I have to make one for my kitteh. Of course, once I build it, she shall not come. Nonetheless, I love the idea, and the discovery of so many inspiring blogs. xo Ama

Peace Unto You and Yours This Season + All The New Year Long

2009-12-24T23:39:00.005-05:00

"Peace is the first thing the angels sang. Peace is the mark of the sons of God. Peace is the nurse of love. Peace is the mother of unity. Peace is the rest of blessed souls. Peace is the dwelling place of eternity." - Leo the Great

Gift from the Sea

2009-12-17T19:56:00.009-05:00

Oh, how the years pass--so quickly. The days, the weeks, the months, the hours. How did I get here? In Jacksonville, Florida, outside of an office, the roar of the highway sounds like ocean waves--the rush you hear when you put a big sea shell to your ear.
When I was small, I would listen--the shell would cover my tiny ear, and some adult or other would say, Listen. You can hear the ocean in this shell. No matter where you are--far away from here, from the sea and the water and the waves--just listen. Close your eyes and listen. And you'll be right back here, on this white sand, in the salty water, with this bright sun dappled by passing clouds--they seem to move so much faster here under this big sky, don't they, with the hours rolling forward and back, forward and back over and over and over.
Time seems to stop here, doesn't it? It's so quiet here, isn't it? No matter the noise, the dogs barking and the radio playing, the people talking. The ocean has a stillness to it-- a quietness to it--just like the snow. The snow you'll see later, if you move away from here. You'll see the white as it covers everything--rolling hills and buildings and trees--everything.

You might, warm inside, watching the quiet from your window--I know you can't imagine it now and the hours are so long and bright now they seem to go on forever but let me tell you, one day you will be on your own, in a home of your own, all the totems of your life surrounding you--and you'll have a quiet chair, windows, live on a lovely street of strangers, and the cold may come, the snow may fall, and the window will be open just a bit to let the air in.
You may have a family, friends, or just a cat--but the air will come in before breakfast and the light will be so bright against the white and you'll look out in wonder at the days past, the hours, the years.

Maybe you'll put this shell to your ear--pull it from your shelf covered with all the books you've experienced and the letters you've kept and the words you've said. After all that, just a little bit of a lifetime or maybe more, you'll put this shell to you ear, a soft vacuum of sound will rush and you'll feel the sun and the clouds and the waves and the blue blue sky--but mostly, you'll hear the sound, over and over of salty waves crashing and retreating again and again and again and again.
Isn't it amazing how the hours rush by, you'll think, the years. Just put the shell to your ear. Aren't you glad I showed you this? All your little world carried, this day carried, my voice carried, inside the spiral stairs of this little shell, this small little gift from the sea.
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We Heart It (1) We Heart It (2) We Heart It (3) We Heart It (4)

I Think You're Just What I Needed

2009-12-15T22:54:00.009-05:00

My friend Kelly has praised Brene Brown, Phd., for years. After a day of self-inflicted heartbreak (swung into a full-force brick of depression and spiritual suffering) over the simple fact that I'm not perfect, I finally found these badges of courage. And now I can go to sleep.

You can go get yours here. I think I've found a new mantra.

Inappropriate Hope

2009-12-08T23:51:00.006-05:00

A thin yellow light spread out and all the sorrows which sat in her seemed suddenly to lift up and fly off and were replaced by the most inappropriate hope.
{Susan Minot from the Must-Read Novel Evening...Image via WeHeartIt.}

Hello, Monday} You Ain't So Bad.

2009-12-07T14:23:00.004-05:00

Because, work conversation brought me to this picture of Robert Downey, Junior in the Italian Vanity Fair, and it has kept me happy all day long.

Awesomeness on a Friday

2009-12-04T13:47:00.002-05:00

{You're Not Dead Yet: Rumplo ; I Has an Awesum via I Can Has Cheezburger ; Write a Poem Everyday: Reserrection Firm ;You Are My Sunshine: Rockett St. George ; It's Okay: By Anthony Burrill via I Suwanee via Somo Galery UK ; All Other Images via We Heart It. If You Know Their Original Sources, Please Let Me Know So I Can Give Credit to the Awesome.}

The Sweet In Between

2009-12-03T21:18:00.002-05:00

{Just one last post on my grandma Jeannie. Promise to pick up the pace and lighten the mood asap. For now, here's what I wrote on the plane to OKC.}

It began the moment my dad carried his heavy face to my house, pulled out that daiphragam-deep voice from his heart and shakily, with a heavy nervousness, said that our precious Jeannie suffered a swift, massive stroke--a stroke like a bolt of lightning, like a freight train.

She was gone, vented, on a morphine drip, sweet body breathing by machine. I screamed. Then we held each other, held ourselves in check, cried, cleaned ourselves up, and walked to the Cathedral Basilica downtown. We walked straight down the center aisle, crossed ourselves in the name of the father, the son, and the holy ghost, turned to the right, made our donations, lit two two healing novenas, and knelt in front of the Virgin Mary. Daddy did his Hail Marys, his Catholic recitations. I did my own prayers for her freedom, for her peace, her joy, her release.

Tears abundant. Tears already a thousand falling.

We took a trip to the sweet comforts of Plaza Verde, a French atelier next door to the Cathedral. French perfume, cologne, lotions, soaps. Shaving creams, shaving supplies, silver razors, chess sets, fine old knives, sweet smelling soaps, French linens and tablecloths, Japanese teas and incense, heavy pens of glass, and India ink. A respite of beauty, of pushing at bay, away, the idea of our adored Jeannie vented, spirit flown, on a morphine drip in an Oklahoma City hospital bed.

Precious body there, good sweet spirit flown fast and high and gone--the silver chord cut, severed, and that pure good soul free, gone--filling up her best beloveds on this earth, meeting her sweetheart once again, her sister Martha, her brother Jim, her Daddy, her Mom.

I pray now for her peace, for her freedom, for her joy--to send her with love, no self-pity, no regrets--into her heaven, for that is surely where she shall be--here, unseen, the same as she ever was--out of sight, right around the corner, filling my body body and my cells with a love unlike anything my earth-bound mind can fathom.

Nothing has changed. Everything has changed.

The sweet in between, the quiet escape of that gloomy Sunday when we got the news--where we filled the day up with distraction--French food, French perfume, a cocoon of television, the warmth of lamplight and disbelief, the hope for a miracle of her return.

All that will have to wait for a later date.

The sweet in between time of disbelief is fading. Soon this plane will land in Oklahoma City, where I will not find you waiting. Soon the viewing. Soon the wake. Soon the funeral mass. Soon the burial. Soon, the sweet in between time will end.

And all of your brood will gather--shuffling, unbelieving, shocked, shattered, our moorings lost at sea. And you will hold us inside and out, with the light of a thousand suns, filling us, carrying us, laughing in our ears, your wonderful voice in our minds now, in our dreams now--always, always, always--but especially when we, as your Joseph Michael said, when we need you most.

And we will always, till after our bones are long since turned to ash--need you.

May you laugh. May your sweet Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and God himself hold you and your sweetheart ever in the palm of his hand. I'll leave the rest up to you. I think you'll do just fine--with that wink and smile all of heaven will be as in love with you as PJ--but he's the one who'll get to hold you all through eternity's long nights, and give you sweet kisses under the stars, and gaze adoringly at you on the rolling green hills, amid the breezes sweet like jasmine, beside a crystal blue lake glimmering and shining. On and on and on.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

{All Images Found on We Heart It, Save The First Two, Which I Took on My Phone.}

In Memorium: Jeanne Reynolds, 1926-2009

2009-11-08T04:00:00.005-05:00

All Is Well

2009-11-02T10:06:00.005-05:00

Dearest Gran'ma Jeanne Maxine:
I hold a vigil inside my head,
though you aren't yet not quite dead.
Nothing has changed.

Everything has changed.

Death is nothing at all--Henry Scott Holland

Death is nothing at all,
I have only slipped into the next room
I am I and you are you
Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.

Call me by my old familiar name,

Speak to me in the easy way which you always used

Put no difference in your tone,

Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow

Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together.

Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.

Let my name be ever the household world that it always was,

Let it be spoken without effect, without the trace of shadow on it.

Life means all that it ever meant.

It it the same as it ever was, there is unbroken continuity.

Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?

I am waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near,

Just around the corner.

All is well.

Two Cats + A Poem

2009-10-25T14:35:00.004-05:00

Two Cats by Katha Pollit

It's better to be a cat than to be a human.
Not because of their much-noted grace and beauty—
their beauty wins them no added pleasure, grace is
only a cat's way

of getting without fuss from one place to another—
but because they see things as they are. Cats never mistake a
saucer of milk for a declaration of passion
or the crook of your knees for

a permanent address. Observing two cats on a sunporch,
you might think of them as a pair of Florentine bravoes
awaiting through slitted eyes the least lapse of attention—
then slash! the stiletto

or alternately as a long-married couple, who hardly
notice each other but find it somehow a comfort
sharing the couch, the evening news, the cocoa.
Both these ideas

are wrong. Two cats together are like two strangers
cast up by different storms on the same desert island
who manage to guard, despite the utter absence
of privacy, chocolate,

useful domestic articles, reading material,
their separate solitudes. They would not dream of
telling each other their dreams, or the plots of old movies,

or inventing a bookfulof coconut recipes. Where we would long ago have
frantically shredded our underwear into signalf
lags and be dancing obscenely about on the shore in
a desperate frenzy,

they merely shift on their haunches, calm as two stoics
weighing the probable odds of the soul's immortality,
as if to say, if a ship should happen along we'll
be rescued. If not, not.
"Two Cats" by Katha Pollitt, from The Mind-Body Problem. From Writer's Almanac.
~~~~~~~~~~~
{Image Sources from Top: Do You Think I'm Pretty; Places/Objects; Girl and Cats; Orange Scottish Folds; Sleeping Cuddly Kittens; Orange Tabby Kittens; Tortoise Cats; Tail in Tail; Heart Cats; Tongue and Pillow; Kangaroo Paw; Cats in the Bath; Sun-ua Beautiful Kittens Playing via Sun-ua Beautiful Images; Kittens on a Stroll; Happy Couple; I Made You a Book But I Eated It; Indiferencia; You Sexy Asshole}

There is Beauty Everywhere. Equal Rights Now.

2009-10-22T11:49:00.005-05:00

Found on the blog of my dear Maya, this video of Philip Spooner, a WWII vet speaking out for EQUAL RIGHTS FOR EVERYONE made me weep with hope. Oh, if we all had the heart of this man. Equal Fucking Rights Now. This bigotry shit is so redonk.