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.

words.

words.  seeming inviolable.  and at once perturbed.
a mist receding.
the darkness conjures and the light reflects.
but where did they go.  the tail spins off and I am lost again.
a myriad of destinations.  leading nowhere.
and straight home to me.

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.

The Yang within the Yin: Hear the Music

"Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on."
 - Mary Oliver

In this dark, inner time of the year, that coincides with this dark transitional period for our society, and this dark time for the entirety of the human race and world, as we know it, itself...
I want to remind you, as I remind myself...
that it's always darkest just before the dawn...the deepest Yin turns to Yang,
Spring always follows the darkest, coldest (warmest?) Winter...

Here is a video that shows the seed of Spring that is within the Winter; revel in the exuberance of new bees taking their first flight and know that we too shall fly.




If you haven't yet, plant some seeds of the new, the next,
for now is the time to nurture them in the dark of the earth...
so they may burst forth with strongly rooted growth when the time is right... 
Within Yin is the seed of Yang and within Yang is the seed of Yin.  Extremes turn into themselves.

"You should be angry. You must not be bitter.
Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host.
It doesn’t do anything to the object of its displeasure.
So use that anger. You write it. You paint it. You dance it.
You march it. You vote it. You do everything about it.
You talk it. Never stop talking it."   - Maya Angelou.

And as a reverse to these times, here is tomorrow's seed, the Yin within the Yang.

“I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing;
wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing;
there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”
  - T.S. Eliot

"And those who were seen dancing 

were thought to be insane by those 

who could not hear the music.”
  - Friedrich Nietzsche

~~~

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

Contemplating Collapse

'Contemplating Collapse, 2015, full collage

Upper left

Upper right

Bottom left

Bottom right

“The test of one’s decency is how much of a fight one can put up after one has stopped caring.”

 - Willa Cather

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