Hark

Awakened
        by a Crow
        Cawing in the morning light
I sit up
wresting myself from sleep
        so as to hear their message

        What is foretold
on this bright day becoming
                Light
                upon a smattering of leaves at the edges

                my first sight greeting me from the window

                Crickets
                herald the rest of the vibrant eulogy
                and Cicadas and Katydids soon follow
                for they know in death there is life

All going round
All what is
IS

And with that
I take my first step into the day
one step closer to death
and in that embrace
even more alive than before

With All
I AM.

Cacoethes and 'Roads Less Traveled'

A Bid of Welcome.

Water finds her path to the great body, the ocean, just as we are finding our path back to the Earth.

Many paths, many branches, in the lungs of the Earth.  We share the same breath.

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
(I had to memorize this poem with the whole class in 8th grade; it changed me,
guided me, and patted me on the back...)

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

A BitterSweet Tangle.

 ~

Seeing into the distance...a far-away vista of color and sun through the murky wood, then closer...

...it comes into view:  a centered spiral of hay for winter, stored sunshine.

~

For some the way is known.

~

Paths known. - a revisit.

Paths unknown - possibility for the 'morrow...

And in honor of a great author who died yesterday:

"It is good to have an end to journey toward, 

but it is the journey that matters in the end."

 - Ursula Le Guin

Black Cats, Super Novas, and Flux

The Road before me
tree-lined, meadow-flanked
and upheld by blue mountains
that shift and fade
to blue sky.

My Mind before me
expansive as sky
clouds roll by
I watch
Truth beheld intermingling,

twinkling like pinpoints
of starlight exposed.
Sky goes dark
then one can see 
what could not be seen in daylight.

It alludes, best seen
when not looking directly
simply being
shows it all,
gives it all.

Like the mountain I sit, though moving.

The Universe casts her spell 
upon me
Knows Herself through me
holds opposites at one time.

The convoluted truth touches our skin
but briefly 
and is gone.
Transfigured.
A black cat in the night
eyes twinkling.

Nature's Stunning Abstracts - Masterpiece "Paintings"

 

"Each man’s necessary path, though as obscure and apparently uneventful as that of a beetle in the grass, is the way to the deepest joys he is susceptible of; though he converses only with moles and fungi and disgraces his relatives, it is no matter if he knows what is steel to his flint."

  -Thoreau journal entry; excerpted in Thoreau and the Art of Life

 

 

"The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention."
 - Julia Margaret Cameron

 

 

“The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, 

for I have seen the shadow on the moon, 

and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church”

- Ferdinand Magellan

 

"Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand." 

-Thoreau journal entry; excerpted in Thoreau and the Art of Life

  

 

"Life is much too important to be taken seriously."

 - Oscar Wilde

  

"Between the banks of pain and pleasure the river of life flows."

 - Nisargadatta Maharaj

 

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious - 

the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science"

 - Albert Einstein from Living Philosophies

 

 

"One is never so strong as when one is broken."

 - Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

 

 

"Hand over the controls to the universe and go along for the ride. 

When you're a passenger, 

you can appreciate all the beautiful scenery that you might otherwise miss."

Author unknown

Woman

'And She Calls' (from the archives, 2007)

Woman.
You are so powerful.

Lesser men will try to smother that radiance,
squash it by a multitude of means.

Be ever vigilant
and take necessary actions to shine on.

It's been long enough.
The time is now. 

Ikigai

Ikigai is a Japanese word that translates roughly to "that which makes life worth living."
What is your Ikigai?  Creating is one of mine.  Collage is one of the ways I create.  I like that it uses waste materials - images from magazines that would get recycled - art from found materials.

Collage from the Archives, ATCs
Artist Trading Card Size:  2  1/2" x 3 1/2"

"Your life is your life, know it while you have it." - Charles Bukowski