A metalworker at work by his street side workshop, Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India
Superb street photography…
A metalworker at work by his street side workshop, Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India
Nature’s Prayers
And again…
Still yourself
and fold your hands
humbly
stand in awe
radiate His light
with eyes upwards
towards
the telephone
to the sky
and comtemplate
the glory that is He
Starlight, Starbright
Another reblog…
Starlight through the skylight
Moonlight just above the roof
Fireflies flickering flames
Random to our eyes
In a dizzying mercurial display
Flitting to the tune
Of trilling frogs
And the flutter of batwings
I see goblins in the windows
Alone would be terrified
With you here beatified
By the beauty of the silence
Punctuated by the frogs
Spotlighted by the moon
And the sparkling stars
Whose dust makes up
These rented bodies we carry
While inside heartbeats
Tick away our lives
To the beat of a flashing firefly
Or a flickering star.
My Cathedral
Another reblog…
is my cathedral
A very diverse congregation…
From cows
to snails and turtles
to gazillions
of insects
Deer sometimes come round
Butterflies abound
Moths, too
Birds of every hue
All that’s missing is you
but you worship your own way
doing charity every day
more than I can say
Eyes to Eternity
Forgive me for reblogging this. I have zero creativity these days, fear of the pandemic and all, but I still have the feelings expressed here, if anything, even more intensely now in a marriage that is almost 32 years old. So I am posting this again..
At age 35 I found someone who was more afraid of closeness than I was. I understood him almost from day one. This understanding came out of years of therapy that followed my breakdown at age 28. Before the breakdown, I didn’t know that I was depressed. Before the breakdown, I didn’t know that my failed relationships were due to my fear of closeness. Before the breakdown, I didn’t know I was Bipolar. I learned a lot of things in therapy that helped to change the direction of my life.
And then one day Thomas walked into the library where I had been working for 10 years. He got a job as a library assistant. He was a graduate student and wanted to work part-time. I took the first steps towards asking him out because it was obvious he never would. I had learned a thing or two after a stint…
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Informal art show
An informal art show of photographs and photographs of original paintings before they go as a donation hopefully.
Sexagenarian Love
Waking to your touch
electric eels
massive
healing hands
without a glint
of sexuality
Waking to your smile
whispers sweetly
to my soul
like the first time
so long ago
on our first flight
together
when your arm
brushed against mine
and shook our worlds
out of their solitary
orbits and
sent us to the moon.
Your grey fluffy hair
sparkling silver threads
entices every time
I sniff your fragrance
and inhale the heavens
the warmth
of your cheeks
in our fleeting
embrace
I would it
would last forever
like our love
The smile lines etched
around your sky blues
alter the pulse
the course of my blood
and with each glance
reach for the stars
twinkling inside my head
The wrinkles in your cheeks
and your furrowed brow
pluck at the strings
inside my bosom
for I know the hard times
and worries that
engraved them on your face
On the doorway
to Orpheus
in pillowed embrace
your big hand
holds mine
and makes me
feel safe and loved
and little
as you drift off
leaving me wishing
for morning
to awaken once
more to you
fears tears
so long to wait
till morning
We are old
How did this happen?
and we are in love
more than ever
youthful passion gone
replaced by years of fidelity
affection, quarrels, laughing,
teasing, crying
always sharing, caring
yet attraction still stirs
and the years of together
have sewn our souls to one
Loss is inevitable
and unacceptable
In equal measure
The God I used to find
in nature
I now find in you
And the ecstasis
of gazing at the sky
now rests with the mystery
of you and the layers
of your personality
You CANNOT leave me
I won’t let you go
If you should leave
if I still breathe
take my breath away
I beg
of you
of God
take me with you
I cannot
breathe without
your breath
nor see
without your eyes
nor pulse
without your heart
I cannot
though I did before
I can no longer
I live
for through in
you
and you alone
in forever.
Ode to a One-Eyed Dog
You open our eyes to the Infinite
with your soft-brown, one-eyed stare,
your gentle, pink-tongued kisses
and your deep, dark, velvet ways.
You open our hearts to Eternal Love,
joining in our displays of affection,
cringing at discord in dire dejection,
Oh, Love-Dog with a failing heart!
You work your love-magic on all you meet
with a willful wag of your toy-like tail
Soothing us in sorrow and defeat
with the soulful “ear” of your only eye.
In your own pain, you comforted us.
Losing Dad, you licked Mom’s tears.
When Mom died you brought us back
from the shrieking world of grief and fears.
And you are getting old, as I lie sick in bed,
my nose nuzzling your greying head,
inhaling your sweet doggie scent,
I feel the fragile flutter of your tender heart.
Lulled by the hum of your delectable delight,
warmed by your love, touched by your joy,
filled with awe at each breath you take,
I see in you God’s mystery of life.
Divine Romance
Our third decade together. And the love grows deeper against a background of eventual, inevitable loss. A loss more unimaginable than one’s own demise.
I look deeply into your eyes, my eyes linger, falling into your blue orbs, while you, in turn, delight in my gaze, going far beyond the polite looks people use in everyday conversations. We pause too long. I fall into the abyss of your sky blues and feel reverence. Reverence for your happy spirit, infectious mood.
It is not the Eros of our first decade that waned in the second and all but disappeared in the third. Attraction, yes, but of a different nature. Attraction of the heart, the soul, the spirit. We bring each other to pure joy, bliss, a sharing of spirit. We give each other a taste of oneness with all.
Turtle Tears
It is before dawn on a moonlit night. The moon has swept the trees and grass in silver. I await the sun. The moon woke me to whisper about the silent beauty of the predawn hours. The yard is white magic and I imagine a monarch butterfly now sleeping, awaken to find a turtle so it can drink its tears. Monarch butterflies drink turtle tears. Why are the turtles crying? They cry for the ailing earth. They cry for those who suffer. They cry for the dying. They cry for those striving to become one with all. They cry for the sap in the trees flowing. They cry for the animals who are constantly on guard for their lives. They cry for the bird egg which will not ever hatch. They cry for the dying stars in an ever expanding universe. They cry for the unawareness of the high and mighty. Turtle tears are like diamonds sparkling in candlelight, like rain drops on a drooping Lily of the Valley. Come now to drink my tears, dear Monarch. Your beauty gladdens my heart. Your heart drops manna from the heavens into my soul. Come now, dear Monarch. Come lick the dew drops in my eyes.
Tears for America
Valarie Kaur of the Revolutionary Love Project talks for 7 and a half minutes about the rage and indignation we feel in the face of the domestic terrorism attack on the Capitol on Wednesday January 6th, 2021. She tells us how to channel the rage and indignation and powerlessness we feel. And she ends with a short Sikh prayer song.
Beings of Light
December is my favorite time of year. In this month of darkness, in this the darkest month, the light of the human spirit shines forth in a fullness shown by so many, in so many ways. As the days grow shorter, houses and trees are decorated, and snow falls. In the hushed silence of the nights, lights shine in windows, and the beauty is shared by all. For this season of giving brings the festivals of lights: Diwali, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa. Each tradition incorporates light in its ceremonies and decorations.
A neighbor friend of mine who lives down the road where we used to live, a donkey in his stable, reminds me of the story of another manger 2000 years ago. And seeing him snug in his stable with snow on the ground used to give me the illusion that all is right in the world. But all is not well. Not now, not then. Millions know no peace in any season. A world-wide pandemic rages. Politics that divide us runs rampant.
This year some have no food, no home. Others fret over how to pay bills. Yet even living in darkest of times we can see the light of the human spirit and celebrate the season of light in personal ways. For the human spirit is indomitable.
In December’s darkness we light lights. For we are beings of light. A light glows within each one of us. And, at the most basic level, we are beings of light because we are made from stardust. Perhaps that is why the stars hold such majesty for us– for we are made from star material.
Einstein said: “A human being is part of the whole, called by us the ‘Universe”– a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts, and feelings, as something separated from the rest– a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” We are all cut from the same cloth and our inner light unites us.
And in this holiday season we behold the night sky as shepherds did two thousand years ago on the birth of the holy infant, in a stable like the one down the road where my donkey friend lives. That night a star (maybe the congruence) lit the whole sky to guide the shepherds, and on these deep, long, silent nights as we light our houses, our candles, our trees, if we are blessed enough to have them, let us look inside ourselves and find the glow that may guide us to The Light.
Reaching for the Stars
“I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree… a tree that looks at God all day and lifts her leafy arms to pray.” The opening lines of the poem,“Trees,” by Joyce Kilmer. Indigenous peoples through the ages have talked of tree spirits and trees as wise ones. Trees are striking as they permanently lift their arms to the Heavens in seeming prayer, day and night in communication with the Creator, their outstretched arms reaching for the stars.
Reaching for the stars. The image calls to mind a dance of the Kalahari Bushmen who were featured in the movie “The Gods They Must be Crazy.” The Kalahari, the last men born of the Stone Age culture according to Laurens Van Der Post, have no sense of individuality and so share all they have. They have a dance of gratitude which Van Der Post describes in his book entitled “A Mantis Carol”: “I never see their dancing without feeling deeply moved and utterly irreverent and blasphemous because of our own incapacity for acknowledging what life will give if only we will let it in.” And then there is their dance of the “great hunger,” a dance that says we do not live by bread alone, a dance at life’s end fraught with longing, with arms outstretched taughtly towards the Heavens as they reach for the stars.
My grandfather reached for the stars. He came here, a 16-year-old peasant stonecutter from the mountains of Sicily, knowing no English. He wound up carving the Lincoln Gettysburg address at the Lincoln Memorial in DC. While working on the Gettysburg Address he studied English at night school. I remember him telling me how he was the laughing stock of his fellow stone cutters because, inspired by Lincoln’s words, he carved his initials at the top of the monument, “A.L.” for Anthony LaManna (and, of course, for Abraham Lincoln), followed by: “Attorney at Law.” Working his way through school, he actually did eventually become a VA lawyer. He reached for the stars and touched them without ever forgetting where he came from. And he was childlike as he took care of me, as we danced to records on the victrola or as he played the mandolin and sang to me. I always think of him with a tinge of sadness, for more than anyone, he taught me to reach for the stars.
Reach for the creator– that is what the trees say. At this time of year I yearn for the days of childhood in which God seemed close. This yearning fully ripens each year at Thanksgiving/Christmas/Hanukkah when the people brighten their houses with festive lights. It is a time of year in which we light up our hearts and look to the heavens and sing songs of love to a babe born not so very long ago, or in which we give thanks for the oil to light the lights of the temple for eight days. We are all really seeking the love that motivated the Kalahari Bushmen to do their dance. We are seeking a savior, and yearning for the Light in this overlit, commercialized, complicated world in which the inspiring simplicity of the Bushmen, the peasant, is rapidly disappearing. And the trees touch my heart in their upward reach for the Heavens. For at this time so many millions of them are sacrificed as they become our Christmas trees and Hanukkah bushes, to be discarded after the holidays are over.
May we enter this holy season with a simpler yearning, not for presents and parties and hoopla, but with our hearts full of gratitude, taking lessons from the trees, from the Kalahari Bushmen, from our ancestors, and seek Love, in whatever form it takes in our souls.
Notes from a Very Noisy Mind
Presence. Stay in present. Stop projecting into future. Stop the negative daydreams. Worse than nightmares. “What if”, “what if”,”what if” ad infinitum. Put ice yogurt on grocery list. Add potatoes.Introduction to Daaji
The most humble guru I have yet encountered and his meditations are the most relaxing. Heartfulness meditations.
The Spirit of Snow
The Spirit of snow
highlights the love of line
the loving grace of trees in winter
bare and spiritual
the horses a gift of color
in otherwise black and white
MOONSIDE 