Papierwhale

Sarah Michelle Gellar-love you.

2012-02-08T08:02:00.000-08:00

Play

2012-02-03T13:40:00.000-08:00

Play re-found amongst the ash

Dora was a writer of plays at the prestigous New York Rep Company. She had a light office, painted calico white, with a mirror, which she could decorate as she wished A hamper was delivered every week with fresh fruit and delightful delicacies. Often the smell of shampoo wafted in through the window from the next door hair salon which she relished. These days she could sit and stare out of the skylight and the watch the clouds-it was all part of her work! But some days her work seemed to lack potency. She liked that word, potency, she felt it inside: reminiscent of strength, clarity, movement, self defined timing. Different form the wet rag feeling.

And she felt it was an ingredient to put into more of her plays. She wanted clearer, brighter pieces to be performed. She wanted words spoken to the heart, she wanted cheers and clapping. It hurt a bit to think of past failures, her scripts that found their way into the rubbish pile. But they were delicate and rounded in their own way. And she would consult with her actors of course in the company.

Dora felt suddenly bright at the prospect and in the silence things began gathering. One drop of potency from the aquamarine glass bottle. The dropper glubbed out a tear of strength.

...The army ready for battle, the bee swarm purposefully ready to meet their flowers, ballet dancers beginning their piece with vision and bounce. Someone knocked on the door and Dora answered gently.

CED, April '08

This is something I wrote nearly 4 years ago. I just dug it out again.

The honour of hope

2012-02-03T13:13:00.000-08:00

To all hopeful things, there is still something shouting 'this is what you really wanted!'

Morning Poem

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead ---
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging ---

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted ---

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

from Dream Work (1986) by Mary Oliver
© Mary Oliver

Wordsworth

2012-02-03T13:09:00.000-08:00

I WANDERED lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
1804.

2012-01-01T17:22:00.000-08:00

Are you in or are you out?

2011-02-01T09:12:00.001-08:00

I have this bad habit of hesitation. I write things and then I take them away,as if I am trying to work something out. Is this my place? I am yet to decide.

Kisses

2011-01-19T08:21:00.000-08:00

From a letter of Lewis Carroll's to a young admirer

I am so sorry, and so ashamed! Do you know, I didn't even know of your existence! And it was such a surprise to hear that you had sent me your love! I felt just as if Nobody had suddenly run into the room, and given me a kiss! (That's the thing which happens to me, most days, just now.) If I only I had known you were existing, I would have sent you heaps of love, long ago. And, now I come to think about it, I ought to have sent you the love without being so particular about whether you existed or not. In some ways, you know, people that don't exist, are much nicer than people who do. For instance, people that don't exist are never cross: and they never contradict you: and they never tread on your toes! Oh, they're so much nicer than people who do exist! However, never mind; you can't help existing, you know....

Heart songs

2011-01-17T10:25:00.000-08:00

A good friend said to me so delicately and beautifully recently 'I am pretty sure we are led by the heart'...that gives me succour and warmth as I review my movements and non-movements; when I don't feel like doing something although another part says 'you must, you should' or when I love something in another and wish it were part of me too or when I go to judge (that is not part of me, not part of them).

The conflicts of two differing reactions, they can (they can!) come together within me. My heart is trying to work its way out.xXx

It just struck me

2011-01-14T13:08:00.000-08:00

"It never crossed my mind for a long time a letter might not come. I believed in it coming just like I believed the sun would rise in the morning. I just put off my hope from day to day, and there was the goldenrod out around the mailbox and the children gone back to school, and the leaves turning, and I was wearing a sweater when I went to wait. One day walking back with the hydro bill stuck in my hand, that was all, looking across at the fairgrounds with the full-blown milkweed and dark teasels, so much like fall, it just struck me: No letter was ever going to come. It was an impossible idea to get used to. No, not impossible. If I thought about Chris's face when he said he was going to write to me, it was impossible, but if I forgot that and thought about the actual tin mailbox, empty, it was plain and true. I kept on going to meet the mail, but my heart was heavy now like a lump of lead. I only smiled because I thought of the mailman counting on it, and he didn't have an easy life, with the winter driving ahead.

Till it came to me one day there were women doing this with their lives, all over. There were women just waiting and waiting by mailboxes for one letter or another. I imagined me making this journey day after day and year after year, and my hair starting to go gray, and I thought, I was never made to go on like that. So I stopped meeting the mail. If there were women all through life waiting, and women busy and not waiting, I knew which I had to be. Even though there might be things the second kind of women have to pass up and never know about, it still is better."--From Something I've Been Meaning To Tell You: Thirteen Stories

A taste of Eminem

2011-01-14T09:29:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uelHwf8o7_U&feature=related

Love the Way You Lie
This song is pretty hardcore....the last year or so or perhaps beyond that has felt hardcore, or perhaps many moons before that- not feeling I had a place..yadah, yadah. But I know if I take it back to myself I will find the answers and beable to trust in myself and my strength and find a perfect belonging. Idealistic? Hell yeah. Optimistic? Always. Realistic..I am working on it.

I take this song as the way we outfox ourselves as to what we truly deserve. xXx

Every morning

2011-01-08T13:54:00.000-08:00

Morning Poem

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead ---
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging ---

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted ---

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

from Dream Work (1986) by Mary Oliver
© Mary Oliver

Revolutions

2011-01-01T04:15:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking (not always so good) about the hazards of writing things down, as Faulkner thinks about (do we always find something to confirm our current view of our heart? what a mysteriosu business), in a critical version of 'Sound and the Fury'. That writing is a hazardous business, particularly on the 'net where there is not always a place to see how it touches others, and also as the subtance is lost to you forever then. I am often conscious that in writing something it loses something for us each to use for ourselves.

So this year my resolution is write less and therefore devolving myself of something and do something different. To live and experience it in my heart first.

Annoyance and the greatness on the other side.

2010-12-26T14:37:00.000-08:00

...putting something down, opposition is something I have been wondering about lately. Mostly it makes me feel in despair and no good. However, I wonder whether indeed it is a very natural process. It means that something internal has to go on, it is a signal, it is a place for new work. often what is being put down, in the next dawn will arise out of the ashes if we blow it like kindling. It will become a beauty.

It is not something to be flown from: it can show what we want and the lengths we are prepared to go for it. It is the fire.

Obviously, it helps if there is a nourishing and waiting kindness and a place to be taken back with tenderness and freshness and all the amazing things of the internal process. (For me I must know that a certain poetry is holding it all together, or I will leave and give up). But opposition is probably because there is something very good on the other side, and we know it and it is just a matter of time. It is a signal of 'not yet' but it will flower.

Sometimes I annoy and bore myself (interpersed with wonders) , particularly lately. I hope that is a good sign.

I just looked back at a post from December 2007. I love such echoes.

"And did you feel it in your heart, how it pertained to everything? And have you too, figured out what beauty is for? "

What divine-sent words...when angst is prevalent, it is hard to see how there is beauty and a reason, but if we are willing to let life do 'the work'... of self-reflection and challengement and asking for support to be "seen straight" by someone post-grief, then perhaps we will once again see the swan flying across the pond, and smile a deep sigh...into the space that has been carved out by that very same angst and pain-the knivings, the ledges-that space now that can carry all things for love.

2010-12-26T13:07:00.000-08:00

Sleeping in the Forest

I thought the earth remembered me,

she took me back so tenderly,

arranging her dark skirts, her pockets

full of lichens and seeds.

I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,

nothing between me and the white fire of the stars

but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths

among the branches of the perfect trees.

All night I heard the small kingdoms

breathing around me, the insects,

and the birds who do their work in the darkness.

All night I rose and fell, as if in water,

grappling with a luminous doom. By morning

I had vanished at least a dozen times

into something better.

from Sleeping In The Forest by Mary Oliver

© Mary Oliver

The Velveteen Rabbit

2010-12-25T15:20:00.000-08:00

This is very good

A philosophical and moral (but very painful opposition) is solved....and lightness and belonging found

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.

The Boy's Uncle made me Real," he said. "That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."

The Rabbit sighed. He thought it would be a long time before this magic called Real happened to him. He longed to become Real, to know what it felt like; and yet the idea of growing shabby and losing his eyes and whiskers was rather sad. He wished that he could become it without these uncomfortable things happening to him.

On believing

"Give me my Bunny!" he said. "You mustn't say that. He isn't a toy. He's REAL!"

When the little Rabbit heard that he was happy, for he knew that what the Skin Horse had said was true at last. The nursery magic had happened to him, and he was a toy no longer. He was Real. The Boy himself had said it.

That night he was almost too happy to sleep, and so much love stirred in his little sawdust heart that it almost burst. And into his boot-button eyes, that had long ago lost their polish, there came a look of wisdom and beauty, so that even Nana noticed it next morning when she picked him up, and said, "I declare if that old Bunny hasn't got quite a knowing expression!"

That was a wonderful Summer!

Happy Christmas oh whispering woods

2010-12-25T10:59:00.001-08:00

Carols at Kings always warms the heart at Christmas. Although, I do not always be religious through the year, at Christmas I really appreciate the magic. This was somthing that caught my eye. Think of hearing it on the night before Christmas, that heavy-laden, treacle night, full of untolds.

Jesus walked through whispering wood:
'I am pale blossom, I am blood berry,
I am rough bark, I am sharp thorn.
This is the place where you will be born.'

Jesus went down to the skirl of the sea:
'I am long reach, I am fierce comber,
I am keen saltspray, I am spring tide.'
He pushed the cup of the sea aside

And heard the sky which breathed-and-blew:
'I am the firmament, I am shape-changer,
I cradle and carry and kiss and roar,
I am infinite roof and floor.'

All day he walked, he walked all night,
Then Jesus came to the heart at dawn.
'Here and now,' said the heart-in-waiting,
'This is the place where you must be born.'

By Kevin Crossley-Holland,

resolutions and revolutions

2010-12-23T14:17:00.001-08:00

Things I have memorably said to friends recently, and so could become my own resolutions. I am trying to take my own medicine.

Go see the city!
Take care out there.
You might surprise us.
Don't work too hard.

Magic is in the air people.

Letter to a Young Poet by Rilke

2010-12-23T12:00:00.000-08:00

Lots of words and things but worth perservering with.

And the expenditure of energy seems to you so great only because you overvalue victory; it is not the "great thing" that you think you have achieved, although you are right about your feeling; the great thing is that there was already something there which you could replace that deception with, something true and real.

Without this even your victory would have been just a moral reaction of no great significance; but in fact it has become a part of your life. Your life, dear Mr. Kappus, which I think of with so many good wishes. Do you remember how that life yearned out of childhood toward the "great thing"? I see that it is now yearning forth beyond the great thing toward the greater one. That is why it does not cease to be difficult, but that is also why it will not cease to grow.

And on sickness/wellness

So you mustn't be frightened, dear Mr. Kappus, if a sadness rises in front of you, larger than any you have ever seen; if an anxiety, like light and cloud-shadows, moves over your hands and over everything you do. You must realize that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don't know what work these conditions are doing inside you?

Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better. In you, dear Mr. Kappus, so much is happening now; you must be patient like someone who is sick, and confident like someone who is recovering; for perhaps you are both. And more: you are also the doctor, who has to watch over himself. But in every sickness there are many days when the doctor can do nothing but wait. And that is what you, insofar as you are your own doctor, must now do, more than anything else.

Actually...

2010-12-23T11:41:00.000-08:00

I think I realise why I like Round Robins, for reflections, for round-ups...it is the pure poetry of it. W.H. Auden writes:

Whatever its actual content and overt interest, every poem is rooted in imaginative awe.

Poetry can do a hundred and one things, delight, sadden, disturb, amuse, instruct - it may express every possible shade of emotion, and describe every conceivable kind of event, but there is only one thing that all poetry must do; it must praise all it can for being and for happening.

Perfume

2010-12-22T14:20:00.000-08:00

One of Pablo Neruda's poems is 'Tonight I could Write the saddest lines' ...wow.
I don't really have anything to be sad about tonight, infact I am quite happy..warm house, good food. But still an ache about my face. grieving who knows what. Love is the best. because it also contains what is not. And that can be put in the pocket and re-found oft in a different form (again a grief to the fixed ways of mind). And in that we can find our wings. But first I must clear the cupboard of my heart. And then the joy that I loved (and the way that I loved), whatever its limits, laid down in me.

Love - Pablo Neruda

Because of you, in gardens of blossoming flowers I ache from the
perfumes of spring.

I cut it for ease, but I am not sure this does it justice..

And from the movie 'Music and Lyrics' (a link I posted way back)

I've been living with a shadow overhead
I've been sleeping with a cloud above my bed
I've been lonely for so long
Trapped in the past, I just can't seem to move on

I've been hiding all my hopes and dreams away
Just in case I ever need em again someday
I've been setting aside time
To clear a little space in the corners of my mind

All I want to do is find a way back into love
I can't make it through without a way back into love
Oh oh oh

I've been watching but the stars refuse to shine
I've been searching but I just don't see the signs
I know that it's out there
There's got to be something for my soul somewhere

I've been looking for someone to shed some light
Not somebody just to get me through the night

I could use some direction
And I'm open to your suggestions

All I want to do is find a way back into love
I can't make it through without a way back into love
And if I open my heart again
I guess I'm hoping you'll be there for me in the end
oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

There are moments when I don't know if it's real
Or if anybody feels the way I feel
I need inspiration
Not just another negotiation

All I want to do is find a way back into love
I can't make it through without a way back into love
And if I open my heart to you
I'm hoping you'll show me what to do
And if you help me to start again
You know that I'll be there for you in the end
oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

Safe spaces, holiday homes.

2010-12-21T09:51:00.000-08:00

I am aware particulalry at the moment about wanting safe spaces...how when I begin to open up to my heart, all the old (elf?) things re-emerge...the humilation, the hesitancy, the sometime mis-timed cruelty, the pain of not being seen.

My flatmate often says I am making nests in my room (of clothes, of things). Perhaps I am just looking for home (for him?).

So how to find a safe space? It is a topsy turvy idea really, because you have to find it in yourself: through trusting yourself and hoping in others. And people let you down, as humans do. So then the safety is letting that happen and not turning it into a grievance, necessarily. Life can become too accusatory. I become accusatory too often. I do not cut slack sometimes. (I have found it in others so I know the other side exists. That is a place to rest and aspire to).

Safety can be found in letting the grief emerge slowly and for someone to help see the beauty of all that. That will be my safe space I know it. And it has happened so many times in my life already, so it is not as if I am even having to look for something that hasn't happened. It is just a case of letting go enough. Of trusting the gifts I wish to give to others and not punish myself or them. It is enough.

And in reality, it is my own world: to hear the songs in the hollow of my chest, to feel the warmth for me, just for me!

Way back into love

2010-12-20T14:49:00.000-08:00

See this clip on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR4f8XYluJ4&feature=related

A year to remember

2010-12-20T04:01:00.000-08:00

Looking through Train (Musical)Windows: a Year to Remember

The beautiful and sometimes painful struggle I have between putting something out in the public domain or not, the hesitations, the I’ll keep it to myself or I’ll put it out there. What is important that I connect to it as fully as I wish for myself. And then I can share my life with another.

Honeyfied Christmas

2010-12-20T02:07:00.000-08:00

"Words somehow flock together like swallows on the trees. Somehow words know each other like swarming honey bees" Jose Jorge Letria.

Would it were!

Friendships, presents, creativity, activities, work, movements, loves, lost loves. It all belongs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeHsIzaXjCE&feature=related

How to be with my own heart

2010-12-19T05:04:00.000-08:00

Don't rush through the journey, impatient only for its end. The adventure is your soul's story.

Enjoy it, fall into it.

I am conscious that I do jump into things and then the inevitable crash as grief does its work. But now I know this is how it can be. That to stay with my own heart is the way. And to be with others as much as my heart will allow to and feel the stones I have thrown out (perhaps from a premature grievance) melting between us. The 'shoulds' are waiting, melting. I go to ask or answer or do or action or answer a demand. But the mists are there. And so I wait. And so a purer thing is encountered.

On another thread, my Mum said a lovely thing to me the other day. Whilst on holiday she had lost her voice. "I saved my voice all day so that I could speak to you" she said.

Love, this Christmas.

I still believe

2010-12-18T15:35:00.000-08:00

Pablo Neruda (a god!) writes of a memory:

"This is the great lesson I learnt in my childhood, in the backyard of a lonely house. Maybe it was nothing but a game two boys played who didn't know each other and wanted to pass to the other some good things of life. Yet maybe this small and mysterious exchange of gifts remained inside me also, deep and indestructible, giving my poetry light"

Slow burn

2010-12-14T16:11:00.000-08:00

An expansion of the poen 'Ithaca' by C. Cavafy

pray that the road is long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge...

Too often seekers decry the road, its bumps and turns, impatient for the destination.

To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.

But the stops along the journey are not roadblocks, they are stepping stones. Actually, even that's not true. Seen clearly, the journey and the destination are a single continuum. The river pours into the sea, and they are one. Seated on the slow-moving river, we already touch the sea.

...and purchase fine merchandise,
mother-of-pearl and coral, amber, and ebony,
and sensual perfumes of all kinds,
as many sensual perfumes as you can...

Cavafy suggests that worldly experience, the senses, a certain amount of materialism, these too are part of the journey. The physical world is the realm through which the soul journeys. Encountering marvels and terrors the soul strengthens and comes to know itself. Knowing itself in victory and adversity, the soul is finally ready to return. But to navigate through such bewildering, overwhelming experiences, the destination must never be forgotten:

Always keep Ithaca on your mind.

Don't rush through the journey, impatient only for its end. The adventure is your soul's story.

Wise as you have become, with so much experience,
you must already have understood what these Ithacas mean.

The wisdom you attain with each step reveals the destination's true meaning.

And it is just as true to say that the destination's gift is contained in the journey itself:

Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.

Things of losing

2010-12-14T15:57:00.000-08:00

I am always looking for a way to get rid of this darn grievefulness.
But then I thought tonight....

The things we lose. They are Everything. The things we gain after losing them fully….life.

On the verge of some great truth

2010-12-12T16:00:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I am amazed at the accuracy of the unconscious and also the surprise. How I think and hesitate so as not to write something done, but looking back it is on the button.

I am thinking about love. How I deny myself the real deal because of whatever...some disappointments early on perhaps and the pain forthwith. This has reoccured. I have had waves over the years of shutdown. I have hurt others.

This year has been one where my heart has been most open to the sadness. I hope for much more to come.

I also think about South America, about zebras, about fire breathing dragons. About waiting. About being encountered and encountering, about cooperation.

Experiencing the pain has cracked me open to other great things. I have found nourishment on the other side. I have found peace.Gifts, all. On the verge of some great truth.

Resolutions

2010-12-10T16:58:00.001-08:00

New Years Resolutions

1. To worry less
2. To be more of a social beauty
3. To get a new job
4. To trust myself more
5. To cry alot over films
6. To eat lovely food in comfort
7. To find some lovely new clothes that I wear just for me
8. To renew
9. To embrace presents I am given
10.To see what I love in others in myself

where is my sacred space? sometimes it runs away

2010-12-10T16:18:00.000-08:00

Much more work remained. That didn't matter. I had found my sacred space."Dirt," Pat said. "Every day, I get to touch the dirt."I smiled and wiped the tears from my face as fireflies twinkled in the darkness, brilliant, unexpected, transforming darkness into light.

Performance class....confidence growing!

2010-12-10T14:54:00.001-08:00

Fabulous Performance Class by Catherine Davis

Five students met on a mid-week evening for a jolly and learning time. For one night only, we were joined by guest star Rosie, a lovely canine friend who sat our feet as we sang or sat very politely on the sofa, keeping us all warm. Delightful, please visit again!

But back to the humans... Again a smorgasbord of talent, from early starters to those traversing the public performance and kingdom of bands (and the joys and complications both there-in).

So we were treated to a duo of delicate and emotive hand-written songs with a great voice to match, a ‘Summertime’ rendition of resonance, a spontaneous choir formation where some supportive voices did just the trick although a warm syrupy voice could also manage just fine. Then a gift of some early Dowland and arias (which at the moment, the names slip my mind, but were performed with dignity) and a Streisand/Cohen/Scarborough Fair mash-up too to end.

I certainly came away feeling a bit better and contemplating whether maybe a lovely big mirror and fairy lights would transfer to my own flat for that performance class buzz.

But I think it belongs just there at Victoria Mansions. A secret of talent that we can keep to ourselves for just a little while longer.

A space for me

2010-12-06T10:10:00.000-08:00

A space for me, without pressure of right and wrong, yes please.

There is a place beyond pressures! It is a lovely place.

How the cavity walls got lost and forgotten before (and why there is hope for us)

2010-11-27T04:58:00.000-08:00

Ps. Sometimes things are received in the way that I needed them to be

Dealing

2010-11-27T04:27:00.000-08:00

Dealing with my feelings of

…..that to express something, it loses what I wanted from it. That moment when you realise it and you feel like the whole world.And then you lose it..dismay, disappointment, pain, nothingness.. And so I hide, and so I over-express and hurt myself further. And so I help in ways that are not really the way.

xx

Little Miss Little Miss Can't Be Wrong

2010-11-27T04:13:00.000-08:00

Remembrance

That moment when you hold the new [soul] baby in your hands, that is what is to be remembered, that is the beauty over dinner, when we danced, when we listened to that song… to keep in the heart-whatever happens after.

I hesitate, for to even to try (and as I write it here), it feels like the baby is slipping from my fingers. However, for you I will express it, for us.

And I will use these experiences for the next time. We will remember.

PS. I have re-found the joy of radio.

Curling

2010-11-23T09:50:00.000-08:00

Imagine for a moment that a package comes in the mail. And imagine that inside this package are tokens of something—or of many things—that you have lost. Fragments perhaps of something that has broken. And imagine now that you can do anything with this package that you like. You can open the package—or not. You can carry it somewhere and place it there. You can use it as a door stop—or a paper weight—or an extra table. You can mail the package to someone and ask them to hold it for a while.

I felt dark honey curling within. At times my pain slays me. But today….

The package came, it was left outside my door.

I picked it up and it felt light. It was true what they said, fragments were what we could only expect and hold onto.

Or were they.?. As I un-wrapped the paper, shards fell out, raining onto the floor with pin prick accuracy. I yelped with surprise and disappointment.

And what I was surprised at, was the thing under those shards. A pulsing enhancing substance, all wriggly but quite content to be what it was. Stretching out, bright.

A beautiful truth that could not be disputed. Like a birthday delight. Like when you just have to sit and enjoy those birthday candles. Like when you feel like a ballet dancer, free dance pulsing through.

I had found my one thing to be part of.
I was home.
I asked you to hold it for a while.

Nov 2010

Honey at the Table

2010-11-21T15:54:00.001-08:00

Honey At The Table

It fills you with the soft
essence of vanished flowers, it becomes
a trickle sharp as a hair that you follow
from the honey pot over the table

and out the door and over the ground,
and all the while it thickens,

grows deeper and wilder, edged
with pine boughs and wet boulders,
pawprints of bobcat and bear, until

deep in the forest you
shuffle up some tree, you rip the bark,

you float into and swallow the dripping combs,
bits of the tree, crushed bees - - - a taste
composed of everything lost, in which everything lost is found.

Mary Oliver

Falling apart

2010-11-19T15:27:00.000-08:00

Falling apart

At times I loved through the glass darkly.

One lady said to me recently as I poured out my soul "I am glad you were able to put into words feelings that you needed to at the moment you felt them". That clasped my heart with therapeutic something-ness. For my heart had been broken that no-one wanted to hear the whole story, even in its fragmented parts. I was on the run, trying to find a place.

I was a crumbling person while all around seemed to rise with their ambition and security, a life around them-cars, houses, jobs. I disintegrated into dust, every word lost, while sending those linked to me into a great spin and more daggers, friends, I am sorry to say. They feared the waters as did I. Although empathy as a pulse. I am sure of only that.

My space for me and delight had been stamped on by a nasty part of ‘you are not me’ although it seemed to like me, but suddenly turned its head, spitting poison, not letting my juice in after such a promising start. A healing place had been taken. That is when the torrent came, as I realised just what I had given away, and so freely and for what prize.

At times

2010-11-08T07:57:00.000-08:00

Click to enlarge

Imagine for a moment that a package comes in the mail. And imagine that inside this package are tokens of something—or of many things—that you have lost. Fragments perhaps of something that has broken. And imagine now that you can do anything with this package that you like. You can open the package—or not. You can carry it somewhere and place it there. You can use it as a door stop—or a paper weight—or an extra table. You can mail the package to someone and ask them to hold it for a while.

I picked up the delicate leaves of the parcel and...I stopped. I thought about using it as a table, a doorstop, an object d'art- letting the cool air in. But I wanted to clear my heart first, to have that fresh air in my nose before I looked at its delicious contents. I was done with firefighting and being on the hop, cursing myself, headaches galore. I sat down and stretched out happily. And then it was time.

I opened it carefully and there was the most beautiful mirror, enchanted I would say, though you may not believe me. It made me feel just right, fresh, just like the glimpse of contentment I had found before, but lost, like leaves crumbling in their dryness. Nothing was wrong then with this mirror, in its form or furstrations, although it was not for vanity that I took around with me at all times for a while. But just because it was part of me. I felt dark honey curling within.

A tear appeared for this package had been waited for in pain and yet it felt like it could have been at no other time. This was the only moment this movement could happen, this kicking the stone. I could feel the flow of the action within, it was not just a concept anymore or a moment for panic or metallic doors descending. I sighed the last pain out of my body and saw what was in front of me was very good. Not in the living up to standards way, but in the way you know that sun on your face is good. I relaxed into my body for good and knew the just right beautiful person to send the package onto.

So gently did I alight

2010-11-08T07:50:00.000-08:00

A poem about embracing it all...

That's my window. This minute
So gently did I alight
From sleep--was still floating in it.
Where has my life its limit
And where begins the night?

I could fancy all things around me
Were nothing but I as yet;
Like a crystal's depth, profoundly
Mute, translucent, unlit.

I have space to spare inside me
For the stars, too: so full of room
Feels my heart; so lightly
Would it let go of him, whom

For all I know I have started
To love, it may be to hold.
Strange, as if never charted,
Stares my fortune untold.

Why is it I am bedded
Beneath this infinitude,
Fragrant like a meadow,
Hither and thither moved,

Calling out, yet fearing
Someone might hear the cry,
Destined to disappearing
Within another I.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Friends save us quite exquisitely

2010-11-07T11:07:00.000-08:00

Dear all

Ever the drama queen I had a thought today.

Things feel on a threshold. Things are changing, but all for the better, however it may feel at times.

I have been to the depths of the hellmouth.. I say this not with flippance or triumph or to induce guilt or to cause pain. All the messages I have given over the years have been to communicate something, as we are all trying to do I suppose.

It has been painful, sometimes to the edges of doom. But it has all been beautiful. And I say to my friends (internally and externally)...Whatever you need to do, I can handle it, anything I promise, to the depths of pain.That is my promise as a friend.

I think things are going to be difficult in times to come, but 2011 is going to be something very special, for everyone, a turnaround on anything that has felt difficult to break through.

If I am wrong, you can strike me down, but I will still come back up like some kind of Weeble and I will still call you all beautiful and have the worth of the world. Because its the truth.

I haven;t been sleeping well lately but I think that is to change once I settle down....Through my sleepless nights I have realised that we can all hold each other in the most extreme circumstances and in the most amazing circumstances. Friends save us.

I love alot and I know such expressions can cause upset (because we don't always believe it) but tears, upset and honesty can bring heaven from any shutdown. Any sickness or rift, is merely a battle to be solved
. Truly. It might hurt and burn to hear this, but it is the only way to freedom. For some reason I think it is vital we all know it ;-) Maybe we already know it, but I need to express it and take the flack for it, because it is my truth.

Catherine xxx

Circles and belonging

2010-11-06T15:29:00.000-07:00

A lovely arrangement

Windmills of Your Mind
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlLOiNx-oFg&feature=fvst

Not missing anything, now is perfect (and in beautiful, precious stereo!)

2010-11-06T14:16:00.001-07:00

I could stay awake just to hear you breathing
Watch you smile while you are sleeping
Far away and dreaming
I could spend my life in this sweet surrender
I could stay lost in this moment forever
Well, every moment spent with you
Is a moment I treasure

I don't wanna close my eyes
I don't wanna fall asleep
'Cause I'd miss you, babe
And I don't wanna miss a thing
'Cause even when I dream of you
The sweetest dream will never do
I'd still miss you, babe
And I don't wanna miss a thing

Lying close to you
Feeling your heart beating
And I'm wondering what you're dreaming
Wondering if it's me you're seeing
Then I kiss your eyes and thank God we're together
And I just wanna stay with you
In this moment forever, forever and ever

I don't wanna close my eyes
I don't wanna fall asleep
'Cause I'd miss you, babe
And I don't wanna miss a thing
'Cause even when I dream of you
The sweetest dream will never do
I'd still miss you, babe
And I don't wanna miss a thing

I don't wanna miss one smile
I don't wanna miss one kiss
Well, I just wanna be with you
Right here with you, just like this
I just wanna hold you close
Feel your heart so close to mine
And stay here in this moment
For all the rest of time

Don't wanna close my eyes
Don't wanna fall asleep
'Cause I'd miss you, babe
And I don't wanna miss a thing
'Cause even when I dream of you
The sweetest dream will never do
'Cause I'd still miss you, babe
And I don't wanna miss a thing

I don't wanna close my eyes
I don't wanna fall asleep
'Cause I'd miss you, babe
And I don't wanna miss a thing
'Cause even when I dream of you
The sweetest dream will never do
I'd still miss you, babe
And I don't wanna miss a thing

Don't wanna close my eyes
Don't wanna fall asleep, yeah
I don't wanna miss a thing

Everyone deserves for their deepest roots to be seen and to get over that lost love

2010-11-06T04:40:00.000-07:00

The photograph reflects,
Every streetlight a reminder
Nightswimming deserves a quiet night, deserves a quiet night

R>E>M

Quiet not in the languid, repressed, anguished way that I think is often labelled and people feel threatened, but the quiet freedom that needs no more than this...knows its total frehness and needs only this moment, ungoverned. Not a world where the wheels turn, cogs whirring, never able to get off the wheel, scared and no seeming place to belong (eek) but where it feels like the whole is breathing together and indeed that i am breathing in harmony, without pain, free.
PS> I think that I have found the bottom of my heart. And there is no pain there, no siree.

Romance poetry just for me (..you can have a bit too if you like)

2010-11-06T04:24:00.000-07:00

One man in a thousand, Solomon says,
Will stick more close than a brother.
And it's worth while seeking him half your days
If you find him before the other.
..the thousandth man will stand by your side
To the gallows-foot - and after!

Rudyard Kipling

I So Liked Spring

I so liked Spring
last year
Because you were here;-
The thrushes too-
Because it was these you so liked to hear-
I so liked you.

This year's a different thing-
I'll not think of you
But I'll like the Spring because it is simply spring
As the thrushes do.

Charlotte Mew

Sequels we didn't get to see

2010-11-05T06:04:00.000-07:00

We ask why...why no followup on such classics. But E.T. mark 2 would have just have been wrong. Stand alone and poignant. Captured imagination for a moment, any more would have just not have worked.

http://uk.movies.yahoo.com/blog/article/62766/sequels-we-didnt-get-to-see.html

Collapsing towards freedom

2010-10-26T08:47:00.000-07:00

I had a lover once,
I had a lover twice,
easily three times I loved.
And in between
my heart reconstructed itself perfectly
like a worm.
And my dreams also reconstructed themselves.

After a time, I realized I was living
a completely idiotic life.
Idiotic, wasted-
And sometime later, you and I
began to correspond, inventing
an entirely new form.

Deep intimacy over great distance!
Keats to Fanny Brawne, Dante to Beatrice.

One cannot invent
a new form
in an old character. The letters I sent remained
immaculately ironic, aloof
yet forthright.
Meanwhile, I was writing
different letters in my head,
some of which became poems.

So much genuine feeling!
So many fierce declarations
of passionate longing!

I loved once, I loved twice,
and suddenly
the form collapsed: I was unable to sustain ignorance.

How sad to have lost you, to have lost
any chance of actually knowing you
or remembering you over time as a real person, as someone I could have grown
deeply attached to, maybe
the brother I never had.

And how sad to think
of dying before finding out
anything. And to realize how ignorant we all are most of the time,
seeing-things
only from the one vantage, like a sniper.

And there were so many things
I never got to tell you about myself,
things which might have swayed you.
And the photo I never sent, taken
the night I looked almost splendid.

I wanted you to fall in love. But the arrow
kept hitting the mirror and coming back.
And the letters kept dividing themselves
with neither half totally true.

And sadly, you never figured out
any of this, though you always wrote back so promptly,
always the same elusive letter.

I loved once,
I loved twice,
and even though in our case
things never got off the ground
it was a good thing to have tried.
And I still have the letters of course.
Sometimes I will take a few years’ worth
to reread in the garden,
with a glass of iced tea.

And I feel, sometimes, part of something
very great, wholly profound and sweeping.

I loved once, I loved twice,
easily three times I loved.

from The American Poetry Review Jan/Feb 2001

~

Suitcase

2010-10-20T15:04:00.000-07:00

A luscious episode of 'Mad Men', which I watch only now.... and then there was 'The Suitcase'. I like the exploration between Peggy and Don and the realisations they make, the devastation and the light hope, the next idea brewing for the next advert, with subtexts underneath. I like their clipped tones and their difficult lives.

My favourite bit was when they go to a cheap looking restaurant after working late on Peggy's birthday and after much tumult and Peggy says 'I can't tell the difference between a good idea and an awful one much any more' to which Don answers 'well.. they are very close but the best idea always wins. And always you will be banging your head and then it happens. And then its done'. Love the things not said, what is trying to be worked out in this ep. Does that sound prententious?

Moon is low tonight

2010-10-20T13:49:00.000-07:00

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night
The photograph on the dashboard, taken years ago,
Turned around backwards so the windshield shows
Every streetlight reveals the picture in reverse
Still, it's so much clearer
I forgot my shirt at the water's edge
The moon is low tonight

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night
I'm not sure all these people understand
It's not like years ago,
The fear of getting caught,
Of recklessness and water
They cannot see me naked
These things, they go away,
Replaced by everyday

Nightswimming, remembering that night
September's coming soon
I'm pining for the moon
And what if there were two
Side by side in orbit
Around the fairest sun?
That bright, tight forever drum
Could not describe nightswimming

You, I thought I knew you
You, I cannot judge
You, I thought you knew me,
This one laughing quietly underneath my breath
Nightswimming

The photograph reflects,
Every streetlight a reminder
Nightswimming deserves a quiet night, deserves a quiet night

These comforts are joy

2010-10-07T09:03:00.000-07:00

Home
Dennis O'Driscoll

when all is said and done
what counts is having someone
you can phone at five to ask

for the immersion heater
to be switched to ‘bath’
and the pizza taken from the deepfreeze

Happy Poetry 2010!

beautiful Purpose

2010-10-06T12:46:00.000-07:00

Just before Christmas I think it was, someone told me, (who I trust not just to be saying it for their own good or to make me feel better necessarily)...'next year you will have space to find who you are'.

She could see the thing that was going on beyond whatever 'debris' I had in front of my eyes. That is reassuring, that things people say do have some substance to them and that at some point we can say 'that makes sense, what they said had a point (although I also had a point too)' and a kind of power breaks open.

Sometimes I am not sure, other times I am truly revelling, feeling safe in the connection, that what comes out of our mouths has a purpose. Bellisimo.

Oxidise

2010-10-06T12:34:00.000-07:00

"The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours."

- Alan Bennett's the History Boys.

Mr Rochester

2010-10-03T14:56:00.001-07:00

I once met a friend of a friend who I called the Mr Rochester girl...a literature and English teacher, I was intrigued by her. Here is a lovely quote and reminds me of in fact the power when you at last do not feel conquered, even for a moment you forget yourself and feel free.

"I am influenced -- conquered; and the influence is sweeter than I can express; and the conquest I undergo has a witchery beyond any triumph I can win."
Mr. Rochester, Jane Eyre.

Being careful/things I might tell

2010-07-15T15:24:00.000-07:00

This may all be a load of baloney, but it helped focus me one summer night.

1) Look at the images

2) Be careful of what comes to mind, but also know that sometimes you have no choice but to just be yourself, it is almost like it is drawn out of you

3) Look under your bed for monsters

4) Any portal holes you open will possibly be jumped upon and

closed off quickly, that is OK

5) Remember to breathe deeply

6) Realise that we all going through something pretty similar some of the time

7) Enjoy the up times and things you are attracted to, but don’t let them become all, have some time out too, just being

8) Wear a parachute for the down times and don’t blame yourself, know it is normal in such a world

9) Remember important things, conversations, things that touched you before: they will save your liveliness and usefulness

10) Don’t be offended if you are not appreciated all the time. Appreciate that you are here at this time and place, in this family and have met these friends and seen these places. Appreciate that story. Appreciate that your memoirs might not be written but that you are here, still hoping, still tasting new things, still hoping to make good of old things and mistakes.

Play re-found amongst the ash

2010-04-16T13:49:00.000-07:00

Dora was a writer of plays at the prestigous New York Rep Company. She had a light office, painted calico white, with a mirror, which she could decorate as she wished A hamper was delivered every week with fresh fruit and delightful delicacies. Often the smell of shampoo wafted in through the window from the next door hair salon which she relished. These days she could sit and stare out of the skylight and the watch the clouds-it was all part of her work! But some days her work seemed to lack potency. She liked that word, she felt it inside: reminiscent of strength, clarity, movement, self defined timing. Different form the wet rag feeling.

And she felt it was an ingredient to put into more of her plays. She wanted clearer, brighter pieces to be performed. She wanted talk of hymns sang around totem poles and show panthers striding across the stage. It hurt a bit to think of past failures but they were delicate and rounded in their own way. And she would consult with her actors of course. Dora felt bright at the prospect and in the silence things began 'gathering'. One drop of potency from the aquamarine glass bottle. The dropper glubbed out a tear of strength.

The army ready for battle, the bee swarm ready to meet their purposeful flowers, ballet dancers beginning their piece with vision. Someone knocked on the door and Dora answered gently. Laser-loved.

CED, April '08

This is something I wrote 2 years ago. I just dug it out again.

2010-04-04T14:46:00.001-07:00

Slowly, slowly my mind is becoming more silent, loving silence more, not filling it with 'why don't you' and 'you should'. I may slowly disappear from this space and be found in the hands of a new love.

Music] takes us out of the actual and whispers to us dim secrets that startle our wonder as to who we are, and for what, whence, and whereto." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

You only have to love what the soft animal of your body loves

2010-03-23T16:53:00.001-07:00

So I am getting better at this

Natural Exchange

2010-03-23T16:46:00.001-07:00

I am utterly convinced that if A's hat blows off while he is sauntering down the street, it is the charming duty of B to pick it up and hand it to A without examining A's face or combing it for gratitude!

J.D. Salinger, Hapworth 16, 1924

More and more I treasure these moments when something is given for trust, for the relationship, out of no need for feedback. Just because.

After that

2010-03-21T16:46:00.000-07:00

All that lies between you and me is pain, reader,
After that,
After we have sat with each other, open hearted,
We will know, forever,
Safety and integrity, a loving, creative relationship that doesn't run away.
But burns with loss,
And goes faster for its generosity,
And shelters its illness,
And sees the syrup darkness between us,
And sighs with light.
You push me away right now,
But that is simply pain.
I smile,
For I know the cosmos tricks.
There are other substitutes in this world,
But there is no substitute for you,
Except in the stars,
And for now,
For now, I content myself with that.

Rules for peace

2010-03-20T14:27:00.000-07:00

We need to fragment
We need to know each other

Twinkle

2010-03-20T05:44:00.001-07:00

What if we all came from the same garden, cosmic star
And were all thrown out into the dark
Apocalypse?
But we must wade our way
Back through dark horror
To find light
And rare commonality
The fear is all part of it
It reminds us of where we used to be
It calls us

Something that I can't quite define

I long for you

How you read this, hear this will depend on where we were placed in relation to each other
On that original star
So I grieve for our distance, but it is ours to share
I no longer want the loneliness
We see closer

I am enough

2010-03-15T16:15:00.001-07:00

The Garden

Thousands and thousands of years
Would not be enough
To tell of
That small second of eternity
When you held me
When I held you
One morning
In winter's light
In Montsouris Park
In Paris
On earth
This earth
That is a star

Jacques Prevert

Saturn Returns:let him in,then the pain will end

2010-03-14T10:07:00.001-07:00

The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers
M Scott Peck

Hold Life

2010-02-28T12:57:00.000-08:00

This makes me think of a new mother with her baby and commiting to the baby that whatever happens, she will digest experience and re-commit to their love. Everyday. We have to do this to ourselves and for ourselves and to all the dear ones, all that life throws at us. It is worth it.

But I guess, the thing is to love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it and everything you've held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the silt of it. When grief sits with you, its tropical heat thickening the air, heavy as water more fit for gills than lungs; when grief weighs you like your own flesh only more of it, an obesity of grief, you think, How can a body withstand this? Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes, I will take you. I will love you again.

The Courage to Heal by Ellen Bass

That's my window

2010-02-27T16:39:00.000-08:00

That's my window. This minute
So gently did I alight
From sleep--was still floating in it.
Where has my life its limit
And where begins the night?

I could fancy all things around me
Were nothing but I as yet;
Like a crystal's depth, profoundly
Mute, translucent, unlit.

I have space to spare inside me
For the stars, too: so full of room
Feels my heart; so lightly
Would it let go of him, whom

For all I know I have started
To love, it may be to hold.
Strange, as if never charted,
Stares my fortune untold.

Why is it I am bedded
Beneath this infinitude,
Fragrant like a meadow,
Hither and thither moved,

Calling out, yet fearing
Someone might hear the cry,
Destined to disappearing
Within another I.

Rainer Maria Rilke

New moment

2010-02-24T06:25:00.000-08:00

It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The artist shakes up the familiar scene, and as if by magic we see new meaning in it. Anais Nin

I love that feeling when you see all around with new eyes. Sometimes in my therapy it can happen with rapid and wonderful often-ness. I am trying it out in everyday life too.

Open question

2010-02-24T03:06:00.000-08:00

from Ane Rice's Vampire Lestat

"To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner. -Marius

We are fresh out of insecurity today, madam

2010-02-22T11:22:00.000-08:00

I have been musing on eggs and Easter and spring. It is my favourite season. Eggs symbolise health and fragility and wellness around all concerns, although they can also symbolise entrapment. The buds have been trapped in the earth, little knowing what their fate is.

Then one day something inexplicable pushes them up out of the ground into a new strange thing called light and fresh air. They look about them in wonder and then stand for all to see, proud in their nature and temporality, their colours and their place in the scheme of things. Flowers don't feel insecure. I think that is why people love them so much. It is a place to aim for. A natural state. Fresh air to guide the steps.

Underrated

2010-02-21T05:39:00.000-08:00

Pain is such an underrated thing. It cleans out, it teaches, it sets limits, it directs,it shows what is precious, it shapes.

It is not a nice experience, it hurts, it stings, it brings you to your knees. But life is not nice, we were not made to be nice. We were made to be all we can be. So pain is ultimately kind. And on the other side there are glimpses of beauty and great love and fine-ness and embodiment of glorious things. Kind of heaven, but you have to go through hell first. That is the mess of life, but I am not sure now that I would want it any other way.

One-ness: the big romance

2010-02-20T15:00:00.001-08:00

I am reading 'No More Silly Love Songs: A realists guide to love'. It shows love as messy and irrational and difficult to find a reason for it and its purpose. A lot like people in general then! But if it is messy then it can also be creative, transformative, a great learning experience, a place to find out who you are. It is definitely not a vehicle to find approval for who you thought you were. It can be material to find the underlying current, the peace that passeth all understanding. Or just to surrender to the unanswerable riddle and let it do its work. It is going to anyway, whether I bid it or not.

I was thinking today that perhaps the only thing we can be sure of is this moment and all we can be certain of in this moment is that the physical outside part completely reflects our insides and our insides completely reflect the outsides in all its networks and layers and levels. Perhaps the only thing to be certain of is that we are all one.

An eternal network where I say a word inside (but it must ring true) and it appears outside or I see something outside and I can find it in me too, right in my body, like part of my body and my cells. No blame, only 'this' that has emerged between us. I don't know if this is exciting, but I know that it is stable. I think it is a different kind of excitement, like you find that you are actually living the life of your dream. It kind of creeps up on you. I am being written by a divine author and all I can do is surrender to being written, by love. The best option is to at least let myself know this and open up to the ride. It is better than fuzzy vision and refusing to see the words. The best option is to settle down and dive into a good book. The action of trying to do that, the courage to focus on love(even if then it gets a little confusing...it will focus again), is the gift. At the end we will have that.

We must cultivate our gardens

2010-02-18T04:54:00.000-08:00

Voltaire wrote at the end of Candide, in the title character’s rejoinder to Dr. Pangloss’s proclamation that “all events are linked up in this best of all possible worlds”:

“’Tis well said,” replied Candide, “but we must cultivate our gardens.”

Make it be spring

2010-02-15T06:12:00.001-08:00

February
by Margaret Atwood

Winter. Time to eat fat
and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,
a black fur sausage with yellow
Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries
to get onto my head. It’s his
way of telling whether or not I’m dead.
If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I am
He’ll think of something. He settles
on my chest, breathing his breath
of burped-up meat and musty sofas,
purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,
not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,
declaring war. It’s all about sex and territory,
which are what will finish us off
in the long run. Some cat owners around here
should snip a few testicles. If we wise
hominids were sensible, we’d do that too,
or eat our young, like sharks.
But it’s love that does us in. Over and over
again, He shoots, he scores! and famine
crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing
eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits
thirty below, and pollution pours
out of our chimneys to keep us warm.
February, month of despair,
with a skewered heart in the centre.
I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries
with a splash of vinegar.
Cat, enough of your greedy whining
and your small pink bumhole.
Off my face! You’re the life principle,
more or less, so get going
on a little optimism around here.
Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.

Margaret Atwood

Same page

2010-02-07T14:33:00.001-08:00

Pain consumes
The body fighting against the urge to flow
I feel raindrops
Cleaning out the paddock
And the mist moves away forever
Are we on the same page, finally?
Ready to read and reach out to each other? And not to overstretch each other?
Is there a different support
Than this cracked up prop of pretence?
Did the morning bring a dawn?
Did the rain sleet in through the windows and wash our faces?

CED Feb '10

Fair and bright

2010-02-06T17:34:00.000-08:00

"I want a brighter word than bright. I want a fairer word than fair. I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days--three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain."

John Keats

I was wallpaper

2010-01-31T14:29:00.000-08:00

BEANE: You know, there's a theory going around.

MOLLY: People will talk.

BEANE: They're saying I made you up.

MOLLY: Is that right?

BEANE: That I created you. You're a figment of my imagination.

MOLLY: Is that what they're saying?

BEANE: yeah.

MOLLY: What do you think?

BEANE: I think they have it backwards.

MOLLY: How do you mean.

BEANE: I think you created me.

Pause.

I used to be flat and quiet. I was wallpaper. I stayed very still. I met you and I became real. I ate and drank, I left footprints. I had Volume. When I entered a room there were more people there.

Beat.

John Kolvenbach

Sparklehorse

2010-01-28T16:48:00.001-08:00

I’m erased. I’m gone. I’m nothing. And then the world is free to flow into me like water into an empty bowl…. And… I see. I hear. But not with eyes and ears. I’m not outside my world anymore, and I’m not really inside it either. The thing is, there’s no difference between me and the universe. The boundary is gone. I am it and it is me. I am a stone, a cactus thorn. I am rain. I like that most of all, being rain.

-Stargirl, Jerry Spinelli

The day I totally fell in love with poetry

2010-01-17T00:35:00.000-08:00

Poetry

And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.

Pablo Neruda

Returning

2010-01-15T03:50:00.001-08:00

I am doing more sifting through old posts! I found this numinous little beauty to cradle in my hands. On Sunday 30th November, I wrote the following:

Imagine for a moment that a package comes in the mail. And imagine that inside this package are tokens of something—or of many things—that you have lost. Fragments perhaps of something that has broken. And imagine now that you can do anything with this package that you like. You can open the package—or not. You can carry it somewhere and place it there. You can use it as a door stop—or a paper weight—or an extra table. You can mail the package to someone and ask them to hold it for a while.

I receive a package. It is small and fits into the palm of my hand. I look at it with tears in my eyes, although I am not sure quite why. I sit with the weight for a while: I watch TV with it sitting there, I read my book, still feeling the anticipation. I even make myself a splendid dinner of Spanish omelette and crack open some wine, sipping slowly, letting the ether break into my veins. Then I settle down to unwrap. Now is the moment.

It is wrapped in delicate white paper. Like onion skin. I read a poem about that once.

I feel its weight and lightness all at once. Space tingles.

As I fold back the folds, it makes a noise. A fragile but communicative ‘croak’. And sitting there is a frog: luminous and reminiscent for my four year old buried self. The world unfolds at my feet. I am awestruck but mobilised. I dance around the room like a girl unchained and given her fairytale. The frog jumps out of the paper and settles in the palm of my hand. Moist and fine. It has overcome its own pain of glass, of glass slippers and mis-matched shoes. It tells me stories of my joys, of beautiful sorrows, of witty adventures.

I have received a package indeed. And I will not send it back.

Last minute light

2010-01-15T03:43:00.000-08:00

Again, I llok over my past posts. I see how much I have changed. Christmas 2007, the words were all there. But now they are part of me. I have experienced the grace of 'last minute' light. That recognition of what I really meant, and what it means for us all.

The real gift

2010-01-15T03:37:00.000-08:00

Back in 2007 I wrote the entry below. I have just come back to it. The pitching uncomfortably sounds painful.

But what stands out is the following:

Suddenly any memory of whatever I might have learned about the albatross seemed irrelevant. It was enough to have seen it at that moment, and I was left enchanted sense that I had received a gift.

Just being is a gift...we need do no more than that. We are acceptable just for that mere fact.

This an extract from a book I gave to my Dad for Christmas: 'The Bedside Book of Birds' by Graeme Gibson. Amidst the anxiety, sadness and everyday 'you musts' there can be a moment of grace, sometimes that lasts a lifetime, which shows there is more to life than what we expect?

"Years ago, I found myself sheltering by the wheelhouse on the Cachalote, a 52 foot motorsailor cruising in the Galapagos...Everything was grey and black, and the ship was pitching uncomfortably. I hadn't expected to see my first albatross until later, on Hood Island, where they nest. But in an abrupt clearing of the mist and driving rain, there it was, drifting low over the ragged sea. Enormous and powerful, effortless in sleep, it crossed our wake and then was gone in another squall. While some would say this was merely lucky, others might call it grace.

Suddenly any memory of whatever I might have learned about the albatross seemed irrelevant. It was enough to have seen it at that moment, and I was left enchanted sense that I had received a gift"

Toast

2010-01-13T16:24:00.001-08:00

Darling by Naomi Shibab Nye

1.

I break this toast for the ghost of bread in Lebanon.
The split stone the toppled doorway.

Someone’s kettle has been crushed.
Someone’s sister has a gash above her right eye.

And now our tea has trouble being sweet.
A strawberry softens, turns musty,

overnight each apple grows a bruise.
I tie both shoes on Lebanon’s feet.

All day the sky in Texas that has seen no rain since June
is raining Lebanese mountains, Lebanese trees.

What if the air grew damp with the names of mothers?
The clear-belled voices of first graders

pinned to the map of Lebanon like a shield?
When I visited the camp of the opposition

near the lonely Golan, looking northward toward
Syria and Lebanon, a vine was springing pinkly from a tin can

and a woman with generous hips like my mother’s
said, "Follow me."

2.

Someone was there. Someone not there now
was standing. In the wrong place
with a small moon-shaped scar on his cheek
and a boy by the hand.
Who had just drunk water, sharing the glass.
Not thinking about it deeply
though they might have, had they known.
Someone grown, and someone not grown.
Who imagined they had different amounts of time left.
This guessing-game ends with our hands in the air,
becoming air.
One who was there is not there, for no reason.
Two who were there.

It was almost too big to see.

3.

Our friend from Turkey says language is so delicate
he likens it to a darling.

We will take this word in our arms.
It will be small and breathing.
We will not wish to scare it.
Pressing lips to the edge of each syllable.
Nothing else will save us now.
The word "together" wants to live in every house.

Silence

2010-01-04T02:45:00.001-08:00

I have been doing a bit of investigation about silence. Whether it is good or bad or whether it just is. Many would say silence is bliss, but then there can also be a deafening silence. I suppose it depends on what power you need at the time. I suppose it is part of the mix of life. As long as it doesn't overtake. Silence is golden in the right measure.

Here is a poem by Pablo Neruda

I like for you to be still
It is as though you are absent
And you hear me from far away
And my voice does not touch you
It seems as though your eyes had flown away
And it seems that a kiss had sealed your mouth
As all things are filled with my soul
You emerge from the things
Filled with my soul
You are like my soul
A butterfly of dream
And you are like the word: Melancholy

I like for you to be still
And you seem far away
It sounds as though you are lamenting
A butterfly cooing like a dove
And you hear me from far away
And my voice does not reach you
Let me come to be still in your silence
And let me talk to you with your silence
That is bright as a lamp
Simple, as a ring
You are like the night
With its stillness and constellations
Your silence is that of a star
As remote and candid

I like for you to be still
It is as though you are absent
Distant and full of sorrow
So you would've died
One word then, One smile is enough
And I'm happy;
Happy that it's not true

Walking

2009-12-29T13:00:00.000-08:00

A truly good book is something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild-flower discovered on the prairies of the West or in the jungles of the East. Genius is a light which makes the darkness visible, like the lightning's flash, which perchance shatters the temple of knowledge itself,—and not a taper lighted at the hearth-stone of the race, which pales before the light of common day.

Thoreau, Walking

Peace and the moment

2009-05-12T06:23:00.000-07:00

I came to you one rainless August night.
You taught me how to live without the rain.
You are thirst and thirst is all I know.
You are sand, wind, sun, and burning sky,
The hottest blue. You blow a breeze and brand
Your breath into my mouth. You reach—then bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
You wrap your name tight around my ribs
And keep me warm. I was born for you.
Above, below, by you, by you surrounded.
I wake to you at dawn. Never break your
Knot. Reach, rise, blow, Sálvame, mi dios,
Trágame, mi tierra. Salva, traga, Break me,
I am bread. I will be the water for your thirst.

-Benjamin Alire Saenz

Today I am thinking about all the things I can perceive as there and doing just what they should be, no judgment needed-my health, my exchanges, my timings, my reactions, my job, my family, my physical body, my home, my friends, my spaces, my place, my pains, my joys...as a website said "the list is as infinite as you are". They are all the same and yet divinely different. Both real and a dream.

Feast

2009-05-08T06:55:00.000-07:00

I have been struck by the poem today by 'Feast on Your Life' by Derek Walcott and what feasting on one's life and that freshness. That doesn't even cover it but it doesn't matter.

Sing back your heart
Play back your heart
Silence back your heart
Speak back your heart
Work back your heart
Run back your heart
Runaway from your heart
In this now it doesn’t matter
What matters is your heart

One thing

2009-05-05T09:19:00.000-07:00

You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
- John O'Donohue, Anam Cara

We walked through night - til night became a poem.
Unknown

Taking temperatures or being open to simple play (flow) or being Happy as Larry

2009-04-25T09:32:00.000-07:00

Taking Temperatures

For 2 hours 15 minutes
We met, we sat
You were me
As I am and can be
Taking temperatures for each other, silently
Happy as Larry
That is all we need
No place we'd rather be

CED April '09

Myth decoded

2009-04-22T12:56:00.001-07:00

Myth of Innocence

One summer she goes into the field as usual
stopping for a bit at the pool where she often
looks at herself, to see
if she detects any changes. She sees
the same person, the horrible mantle
of daughterliness still clinging to her.
The sun seems, in the water, very close.
That's my uncle spying again, she thinks—
everything in nature is in some way her relative.
I am never alone, she thinks,
turning the thought into a prayer.
Then death appears, like the answer to a prayer.

No one understands anymore
how beautiful he was. But Persephone remembers.
Also that he embraced her, right there,
with her uncle watching. She remembers
sunlight flashing on his bare arms.

This is the last moment she remembers clearly.
Then the dark god bore her away.

She also remembers, less clearly,
the chilling insight that from this moment
she couldn't live without him again.

The girl who disappears from the pool
will never return. A woman will return,
looking for the girl she was.

She stands by the pool saying, from time to time,
I was abducted, but it sounds
wrong to her, nothing like what she felt.
Then she says, I was not abducted.
Then she says, I offered myself, I wanted
to escape my body. Even, sometimes,
I willed this. But ignorance

cannot will knowledge. Ignorance
wills something imagined, which it believes exists.

All the different nouns—
she says them in rotation.
Death, husband, god, stranger.
Everything sounds so simple, so conventional.
I must have been, she thinks, a simple girl.

She can't remember herself as that person
but she keeps thinking the pool will remember
and explain to her the meaning of her prayer
so she can understand
whether it was answered or not.

Louise Gluck

Lovely

2009-04-21T04:30:00.001-07:00

This sounds lovely, if I apply the ideas to other relationships too!

"Dove Spa is an exciting and innovative concept in beauty therapy, which lets women experience treatments that they really want. In premium spas and salons, Dove Spa offers an honest and personal approach to health and beauty, which cuts through many of the illusions and myths that surround beauty and skincare today. At Dove Spa, their commitment is to creating a positive beauty experience whether it is a quick lunch-hour appointment or a full day of bespoke pampering - every treatment is designed specifically for individual needs, with value for money and trust in mind"

Your interval

2009-04-17T14:45:00.000-07:00

On visiting the 'Tate Modern' recently, I was lucky enough to afford the catalogue and subject index of Roni Horn's exhibition 'Roni Horn aka Roni Horn'.

I love the subject index-it is like an encyclopedia of the pieces and is full with artistic stuff. It is slightly mad, but also beautiful.

One thing caught my eye. While reflecting on how authentic writing can be (because time has passed), she states that "you are my interval/delay that enables and alters me. You identify me for the moment" What an awesome way of looking at being a witness to art. And to people too perhaps.

Picture: KElly Vicanco

Little light

2009-04-15T08:31:00.001-07:00

Thy light alone - Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream. Shelley

What can this be applied to? Anything if I want it to. Maybe my shadow side for starters for maximum resources. And to go back to the 'reader wanted' I posted last month...well I guess I must find it in myself first. I need to believe in my own dreams. Clear a space and they will come.

"understands the fullness, who drinks long and deep, who shares tumbledown dreams, trees and their shadows, air as new as spring lambs and apple blossom, senses silence in a searching eye, who knows life is played on pan-pipes" David Taub

The tree

2009-04-13T02:50:00.001-07:00

Ezra Pound - The Tree

I stood still and was a tree amid the wood,
Knowing the truth of things unseen before;
Of Daphne and the laurel bow
And that god-feasting couple old
that grew elm-oak amid the wold.
'Twas not until the gods had been
Kindly entreated, and been brought within
Unto the hearth of their heart's home
That they might do this wonder thing;
Nathless I have been a tree amid the wood
And many a new thing understood
That was rank folly to my head before.

A beetle's path

2009-04-12T10:28:00.000-07:00

Alone in the cave with windows,
Picking the scab of recognition,
Until the blood gushes,
With water .
“Mix me a Martini Dry, if you will”,
I smile at him,
He mixes most elegantly, that boy,
That is quite likely why I ask.

And now that I can ask for help,
I crouch down,
He beams: I have stopped scratching the wound,
For me and man.
Meanwhile, I am intent on something,
Meanwhile a beetle’s path or a layer of dust-
A ritual I am searching for, that is like,
A rushing geyser,
A sprawling forest,
A cloud.

And then I find the bolt, the leveller, the containing band-.
No mould but Shapeshifter, deepened has played his old earth games.
Now he delicately balances the olive,
Traces the path silently,
Knowing what depends on it,
Is life to come.

CED '09

Honey: lost and found

2009-04-07T15:02:00.000-07:00

Is this what was lost?

Honey At The Table

It fills you with the soft
essence of vanished flowers, it becomes
a trickle sharp as a hair that you follow
from the honey pot over the table

and out the door and over the ground,
and all the while it thickens,

grows deeper and wilder, edged
with pine boughs and wet boulders,
pawprints of bobcat and bear, until

deep in the forest you
shuffle up some tree, you rip the bark,

you float into and swallow the dripping combs,
bits of the tree, crushed bees - - - a taste
composed of everything lost, in which everything lost is found.

Mary Oliver

The garden of secrets

2009-04-07T01:58:00.000-07:00

You do not need to be good, you only need to love what you love...Is this what aggression is about?
She put her hands under the leaves and began to push and pull them aside. Thick as the ivy hung, it was nearly all a loose and swinging curtain, though some had swept over wood and iron. Mary's heart began to thump and her hands to shake a little in her delight and excitement. The robin kept singing and twittering away and tilting his head on one side, as if he were as excited as she was. What was this under her hands which was square and made of iron and which her fingers found a hole in?

It was the lock of the door which had been closed ten years and she put her hand in her pocket, drew out the key and found it fitted the key hole. She put the key in and turned it. It took two hands to do it, but it did turn.
And then she took a long breath and looked behind her up the long walk to see if anyone was coming. No one was coming. No one ever did come it seemed, and she took another long breath, because she could not help it, and she held back the swinging curtain of ivy and pushed back the door which opened slowly-slowly.
Then she slipped through it, and shut it behind her, and stood with her back against it, looking about her and breathing quite fast with excitement, and wonder, and delight.
She was standing inside the secret garden."

The Age of Silence

2009-04-04T10:04:00.000-07:00

I saw this excerpt in a bookshop today. I didn't buy the book as I am trying not to possess things so much. I'd prefer a gesture or two.

The Age of Silence

The first language humans had was gestures. There was nothing primitive about this language that flowed from people’s hands, nothing that we say now that could not be said in the endless array of movements possible with the fine bones of the fingers and wrists. The gestures were complex and subtle, involving a delicacy of motion that has since been lost completely.

During the Age of Silence, people communicated more, not less. Basic survival demanded that the hands were almost never still, and so it was only during sleep (and sometimes not even then) that people were not saying something or other. No distinction was made between the gestures of language and the gestures of life. The labor of building a house, say, or preparing a meal was no less an expression than making the sign for ‘I love you’ or ‘I feel serious’. When a hand was used to shield one’s face when firghtened by a loud noise something was being said, and when fingers were used to pick up what someone else had dropped something was being said; and even when the hands were at rest, that, too, was saying something. Naturally, there were misunderstandings. There were times when a finger might have been lifted to scratch a nose, and if casual eye contact was made with one’s lover just then, the lover might accidentally take it to be the gesture, not at all dissimilar, for ‘Now I realize I was wrong to love you’. These mistakes were heartbreaking. And yet, because people knew how easily they could happen, because they didn’t go around with the illusion that they understood perfectly the things other people said, they were used to interrupting each other to ask if they’d understood correctly. Sometimes these misunderstandings were even desirable, since they gave people a reason to say, ‘Forgive me, I was only scratching my nose. Of course I know I’ve always been right to love you’. Because of the frequency of these mistakes, over time the gesture for asking for forgiveness evolved into the simplest form. Just to open your palm was to say : Forgive me.

Nicole Krauss

Picture: Nikki McClure

Prayers

2009-04-01T14:16:00.000-07:00

These would be good to have, but as you will be done:

Things That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified
Imaginary Soup
A Place Where Everyone Can Come and Play, Even If They Think They Are 'past it'
A Clear Rich Voice and Confidence To Share With The Masses
True Love Without Worries And Painful Twists
Just Simple Being Contentment Without An Object To Have To Justify It Or Affirm Anything

Picture: Kelly Vivanco

Joy is sorrow unmasked

2009-04-01T07:52:00.000-07:00

Joy and Sorrow

Then a woman said, "Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow."

And he answered:

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.

And how else can it be?

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Is not the cup that hold your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?

And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."

But I say unto you, they are inseparable.

Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.

Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.

When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.

- Khalil Gibran

Framing

2009-03-28T11:14:00.000-07:00

I am going to do some more writing to connect myself to my body. Prose seems to do that for me, especially if there is an exercise to start me off, to frame things.
Here is a piece about integrating more of ourselves, by Nicole Krauss

If at large gatherings or parties, or around people with whom you feel distant, your hands sometimes hang awkwardly at the ends of your arms--if you find yourself at a loss for what to do with them, overcome with sadness that comes when you recognize the foreignness of your own body--it's because your hands remember a time when the division between mind and body, brain and heart, what's inside and what's outside, was so much less. It's not that we've forgotten the language of gestures entirely. The habit of moving our hands while we speak is left over from it. Clapping, pointing, giving the thumbs-up: all artifacts of ancient gestures. Holding hands, for example, is a way to remember how it feels to say nothing together. And at night, when it's too dark to see, we find it necessary to gesture on each other's bodies to make ourselves understood.