Pareidolia

Welp, it has been forever since I posted; can you tell I am building a house?  Lots of the things I used to do, and plan to get back to, have fallen to the wayside in order to focus on this massive project.  It's an interesting phase in life, a all-encompassing hiatus, sorta like getting a degree or having a newborn.

Nonetheless, I just had a much-needed vacation and went to Georgia for the American Herbalist Guild Symposium and also got to explore some of the surrounding mountains of the Chattahochee National Forest.  It's gorgeous down there!  The vibrant, yet gentle, light and color of the changing leaves soothed my soul.  I want to share a few of the highlights here; may they soothe you too.

First, a minute-long video for you to pause and take a deep breath and center yourself.
This was taken near a large waterfall which you will hear.  Just breathe as you watch; that is all you need to do.  Let the water wash away your tensions, your cares fall away with the leaves.

"Tension is who you think you should be.  

Relaxation is who you are." 

- Chinese Proverb

“You drown not by falling into a river, 

but by staying submerged in it.”

- Paulo Coelho

"I planted my self in the middle of a great many Glasses full of Dew, tied fast about me, upon which the Sun so violently darted his Rays, that the Heat, which attracted them, as it does the thickest Clouds, carried me up so high, that at length I found my self above the middle Region of the Air."
 - Cyrano de Bergerac

Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding 

that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. 

The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.” 

- Terry Tempest Williams

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, 

but in having new eyes."

 - Marcel Proust  

“A Woman in harmony with her spirit

is like a river flowing.

She goes where she will without pretense 

and arrives at her destination

prepared to be herself

and only herself ” - Maya Angelou

“The most common form of despair is not being who you are.” 

― Søren Kierkegaard

“Omnia mutantur, nihil interit”
(Everything changes, nothing perishes)
― Ovid, Metamorphoses  

“Trees are sanctuaries. 

Whoever knows how to speak to them, 

whoever knows how to listen to them, 

can learn the truth. 

They do not preach learning and precepts, 

they preach, 

undeterred by particulars, 

the ancient law of life.”
-Hermann Hesse, 'Wandering'

“Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.” 
― Charles Bukowski

“Whether you try too hard to fit in 

or you try too hard to stand out, 

it is of equal consequence: 

you exhaust your significance.” 

― Criss Jami

“your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.” 

― Charles Bukowski, "The Laughing Heart."  from 'Betting on the Muse'

Breathe, the path awaits your presence...

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

Hope for Morning

We hold fast
     to tenuous threads
as though to let loose
     would be to fall,
                    to fail,
                    to lose
     when in actuality
     the emptiness and lack
                   are all and everything needed
     in its nothingness
     there is nothing missing.

liminal, numinous, sentient
               it, us, I

all is      becoming
all is      complete
if only yet

I cloak myself 
     in this delirious madness
     and hope for morning.

 

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.

Revelations from a Beek

) ( Bee Geek ) ( 

The Reveal

“You carry Mother Earth within you. 

She is not outside of you. 

Mother Earth is not just your environment. 

In that insight of inter-being, 

it is possible to have real communication with the Earth, 

which is the highest form of prayer.”

 - Thich Naht Hanh

"There is a language older by far and deeper than words. 

It is the language of bodies, of body on body, 

wind on snow, rain on trees, wave on stone. 

It is the language of dream, gesture, symbol, memory..."

 - derrick jensen  

"But, child of dust, the fragrant flowers,
The bright blue sky and velvet sod,
Were strange conductors to the bowers
Thy daring footsteps must have trod." 

- Emily Bronte

Purple Deadnettle growing wild at the base of two of my hives:  Ariadne and Stella.  This is a flower that Honey Bees like (it creates red pollen!), but my Honey Bees are not on it, as they tend to prefer large nectar and pollen sources and will often stick to a species; the woodland trees around here provide a much greater "patch" of pollen to collect from.  The Carpenter Bees however, are all over it.  I have, on the other hand, heard of beekeepers, whose bees live near large fields rather than forests, bringing in loads of Purple Deadnettle pollen, and I've seen this flower blanket acres of fallow field.  An enchantment either way...  (plus YOU can eat them!)

These two pictures show resiliency...  you can see where, when the flower bud was just beginning and was small (just the tip), they got burnt by the cold snap we got after the super warm spell a couple weeks ago.  The flower kept growing anyway, pushed the damage out of the way, and got on with it.  The heart of the flower was still protected and unharmed.  This is a Saucercup Magnolia; it is featured in the first image above.

"Someday, after mastering the winds, 

the waves, the tides and gravity, 

we shall harness for God the energies of love, 

and then, 

for a second time in the history of the world, 

man will have discovered fire."

 - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

 

"Once you've seen it, you can't unsee it.

 And once you've seen it, 

 keeping quiet, saying nothing, 

becomes as political as speaking out."
- Arundhati Roy

~