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.

Back and Forth - A Photo Journal of Reveries

Juxtaposition on today

"Magic is just science we don’t understand yet.

 - Arthur C. Clarke

Containing Keys

 In creative work — creative work of all kinds — those who are the world’s working artists 

are not trying to help the world go around, but forward. Which is something altogether different 

from the ordinary. Such work does not refute the ordinary. 

It is, simply, something else. 

Its labor requires a different outlook — a different set of priorities."

 - Mary Oliver

An invitation

...and a gazing within

“At worst, ​one is in motion; and at best, 

Reaching no absolute, in which to rest, 

One is always nearer by not keeping still.”

 - Thom Gunn 

.

 “You can recognize a pioneer by the arrows in his back.”

- ​Beverly Rubic

Layers

Ravenwind Botanica Coriander Oil Infusing

"​Close some doors. 

Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, 

but simply because they no longer lead somewhere.”

​ - ​Paulo Coelho

Art supplies/animal findings

"But when I lean over the chasm of myself - 
it seems my God is dark
and like a web: a hundred roots
silently drinking.
This is the ferment I grow out of.
More I don't know, because my branches 
rest in deep silence, stirred only by the wind."
  - Rainer Maria Rilke

Slow Food - Nourishing Body and Soul (organic potatoes and healthy fat)

“Of all evil I deem you capable:  therefore I want good from you. 

Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings 

who thought themselves good because they had no claws."

 - Friedrich Nietzsche

Calendula: Summer Bottled

The teacher who is indeed wise 

does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom 

but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind." 

 - Kahlil Gibran 

 - and Gone Again

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

Self Portrait

Slug Slime in Moss on Shed Window

~~~

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

Take and Eat of this Body: a collection of words and images

"If one doubts the walking of the mountains, 

one doesn't even yet know one's own walking."

- Dogen

'Primordial Herald'

"The further a society drifts from the truth, 

the more it will hate those that speak it."

 - George Orwell

The talkative Wren

"Everyone has talent.  What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads."

 - Erica Jong

'The Birth of Death' 

“For a long time I have kept silent, I have been quiet and held myself back. But now, like a woman in childbirth, I cry out, I gasp and pant. I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them.” - Isaiah 42:14-16

Firewood Rainbow

"I feel and think much as you do, 

care about many of the things you care about, 

although most people do not care about them. 

You are not alone."
- Kurt Vonnegut

'The Future's Provenance'

"It is ironic that, while concentrating 

on the defense of our country from enemies 

who would destroy it from without, 

we should be so heedless of those 

who would destroy it from within."

- Rachel Carson

 

​

Rippling Out Through Eons:  A Rock Found at Work

"Those who don't feel this Love pulling them like a river, 

those who don't drink dawn like a cup of spring water 

or take in sunset like supper, those who don't want to change, 

let them sleep." 

- Rumi

Cars that used to be - on their way to being something else...

“I’d rather be whole than good.”

 - Carl Jung

Solace and Growth

 “When despair for the world grows in me, and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be — I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought or grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.” – Wendell Berry

Sunshine through Muhlenbergia grass - in the Fall Garden.

"No greater thing is created suddenly, 

any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. 

If you tell me that you desire a fig, 

I answer you that there must be time. 

Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen."

 - Epictetus

What I made at last month's Monthly CraftNight.

     

"Create like a god, command like a king, work like a slave."

 - Constantin Brancusi

Birth of an Oak Tree.

"That which does not destroy us makes us stronger."

 - Friedrich Nietzsche

~

'Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out'

"Do not try to save the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create a clearing in the dense forest of your life
and wait there patiently,
until the song that is your life
falls into your own cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know how to give yourself
to this world
so worthy of rescue."

- Martha Postlewaite

'Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out' 2015