The Hum of Life
The reverberations of love
jump across time and space
to another receptive heart
*
The reverberations of suffering
resound around the earth
picked up by open souls in prayer
*
The reverberations of Aum
most sacred of sounds
pulses through our minds in meditation
*
Love brings the possibility of loss
Suffering brings a totality of pain
Aum brings the reality of God within
Bedazzled
“Sound and light affect our consciousness, for we (like them) are composed of vibrations.”
Paramahansa Yogananda
Beware the enticements of worldliness
lest it lead you to the frazzle of despair.
Look behind the Light of nature,
and let the eyes be
bedazzled by the Beauty
of God hiding there.
The Silent Cathedral
Listen
to the silence
of the trees
they communicate
in ways
science knows not
yet
and
the fog and the snow and the mist
the incense
suffusing
the silent cathedral
An Apparition
Here one second,
the next, gone,
with traces only in our hearts.
The ephemeral nature
of all life.
Our loved ones,
people and creatures,
here with us
for a pause in eternity
and gone for seeming eons.
*
It is as the Hindus say
all “Maya,”
a dream of life,
an apparition,
some form of us
awakens one day
somewhere
we know not
when or where or how
right now.
The Spiders’ Secret
A chill wind blows the yellowing leaves off the trees. They drift down to the ground like giant snowflakes. The air is pregnant with the feel of the coming holidays. Fall has truly come, with the sudden drop in temperatures, a full 10-20 degrees cooler than a few weeks ago. This is the real Fall, no faltering Fall, but a Fall that will guide us appropriately into winter. November appears as a mirror image of March with its vibrant color of decay, while March is the decaying color of about-to-burst-forth Spring.
The birds are at the bird feeder all the time now. They are not stopped by our presence when we come to fill the feeder or blow leaves under it. Nothing stops them. They swoop around the feeder and the surrounding trees like Kamikaze pilots, darting here and there recklessly. The squirrels are in a frenzy as well, stock piling acorns and walnuts which they will retrieve without fail in a month or so in a snow-covered land.
To me, the trees are most beautiful at this time of year, when many of them are bare and a scattering of leaves remain on dark brown branches. The leaves that remain quiver daintily in their precarious positions on the tree limbs. Yet these are the survivors. The other leaves have fallen and gone the way all living things eventually go. Most trees have lost all their leaves and they stand in stark contrast against the blue sky, the stormy sky, the grey sky. But I find them most beautiful against the night sky, with arms reaching up to the darkness, trying to touch the stars twinkling between the branches, as moonlight dances on their limbs.
November holds the last glimmer of color. A carpet of yellow lines the woods now– and one can see inside the woods that are so dark and impenetrable in summer. Some forests have carpets of oak leaves– dark brown tan in color. Others are paved with variegated colors– vibrant crimsons against yellows and faded greens and tawny tans. The un-mown lawns are now taken over by the spiders covering the fields. At precious moments, one can see a world of webs that only appears in a certain slant of sunlight and reveal a silent take-over by the spiders in webs that sparkle secretly, mirroring the infinite web of creation.
The yellow, brown, and crimson leaves are complemented by the ubiquitous yellow, brown and crimson mums that appear on the roadside near mail boxes, on porches or along driveways. These tough little flowers withstand frosty chills and stand tall throughout most of November– hearty, generous souls, so giving in their colorful, velvety splendor.
Halloween pumpkins begin to sag a bit or shine with wetness as if encased in glass. They will soon be tossed– pine combs, wreaths and fir swags to take their places, and the season of lights will begin. Anticipation hangs in the air. Autumn seems the fastest season to come and go. I try treasuring each moment, but the minute/hours/days just sift through my fingers like so many grains of sand. Then Christmas/Hanukkah comes and fades in a flash and we are into the Nor’Easter blizzards of January. Another year is gone and a new one has come. Would that we could be in forever in the season of love, but it is also a season of loneliness and loss and darkness. It is good we are defenseless against time.
Now, at Thanksgiving, it is our time to give thanks. Inspired by the Native Americans, let us thank the earth. Let us give thanks to the trees for their constantly changing beauty, to the stars for their piercing presence in the night sky, to the leaves for their inspiring colors, to the sun for its life-giving power. Let us thank the Spring for its awakening hope, the Summer for its warm, thriving growth, the Fall for its beauteous bounty, to the Winter for a time of renewal. Let us thank the soon-to-come snow for its hushed, white silence that transforms our world, to all the animals for their pure souls, to our families and friends for their precious love, and, lastly, but mostly, to the Higher Power of our belief for the macrocosm of creation.
Happy Thanksgiving and may you each be blessed with the all-embracing, pervasive, pulsating Love in Nature.
Homefulness
Sheltered from the rain
our house in view
how lucky we
to have a home
a shelter
blues harmonica
sheets of rain
storm
blurring October
but focusing on gratitude
for a home to go to
when the rain lets up
a shelter
our nest
an illusion of security
I’ll welcome
in my world of delusions.
Whirling October
Fleet-footed October
with
leaves floating down
swirling
in
whirlwinds
while days dance away
as the last leaf-colored
butterflies
flutter by
before you know
turtles
will bury deep
for a long winter’s sleep
Just Renters
The house that we think of as “our” house does not belong to us. Not because we are still paying the mortgage on it. Not because it, like so many others, is in foreclosure. No, though it is still “our” house, we are just renters.
This becomes evident one morning while sitting in a moment of calm before the day has begun, watching the bird feeder which my husband is lovingly filling. He has dumped out the seeds too big to fit through the wire mesh of the feeder. About 10 little birds, sparrows and juncos and sometimes a dashing male cardinal, are feeding on the seeds on the leaf-covered ground. They are not scared off by the lone squirrel who comes to eat the peanuts from the mix. Larger birds flock to the now-full feeder. The largest birds, too big to land on the feeder, sometime take over the small bird territory, eating seeds on the ground.
Rain is falling as we prepare to go to work, cleaning up the kitchen and locking up the house. The birds fly around in my mind. So vulnerable they seem yet so brave, so tiny yet enormous in their freedom to take to the air. I want to hold them in my hand and stroke their soft, downy feathers, give them love. But truth is, this is purely a selfish wish on my part for they don’t need my love. They don’t really even need the bird seed my husband religiously puts in the feeder. There are bushes out back with berries which they love. It is we who need them, to make us feel happy, to make us feel loving, to make us feel alive and connected to something larger than ourselves.
As we pull out of the driveway I take another lingering look at the birds in the brightening light. And then it hits me. They get to stay there all day as we drive off through the rain to our respective jobs in the cement jungle of a nearby city. We drive past horses, grazing in a neighboring meadow. They get to stay home, too. Often I make an effort to remember the birds and the squirrels and the horses to bring calm to a fraught work day. Yet I usually get so caught up in my frenetic, little life that I forget to think of them. Or if I manage to conjure them up, the image of them in my mind is thin, pale and lacking in substance.
I imagine the animals laughing at us as we have to drive off to go to work. Our house belongs to THEM. Sometimes they even invade our living quarters. When we first bought the house, it had 50 or so little brown bats in the attic who would occasionally fly around the bedroom at night. One year we had a pair of squirrels. We even had the company of a milk snake one afternoon. And every fall as the weather turns frigid, the field mice run in.
A little more thought on the subject reveals to me that in actuality we own nothing. Not our house, our spouse, our children, our pets, nor even the body we inhabit. All of these things are on loan to us, rented to us if you will, by the Maker of the sun and the moon and the stars. Such a wealth of beauteous bounty is there for us, ours to enjoy for the mere act of attention. The trees, the summer breeze, the blanket of snow in winter, the flowers of summer, the butterflies, the deer who eat our lilies, the possums and ground-hogs, the ever-changing species of birds, the occasional coyote and the thousands, if not millions, of insects underfoot in a terrestrial universe. And the universe above our heads with the planets, the sun, the moon and its trillions, gazillions of stars and whispers of other universes beyond what we can see. And yet we are so caught up in the dramas of our mundane lives that we fail to duly honor the ever-present gifts except in periodic snatches, when we turn our attention outside ourselves and our little lives. We may pay a sum to rent a piece of the earth but that piece contains a seemingly infinite multitude of gifts given just for the taking. Or rather, I should say, for the renting.
My Former Life
In my former life I was a bee.
Why else would I keep sticking my nose
into the private, pollinated parts of flowers?
In my former life I was a turtle.
Why else would I hunch my shoulders
into a seeming shell, my back a carapace
to shield me from a sometimes dangerous world?
In my former life I loved thee.
How else could I account for my “knowing” you
from before the first time we met,
for “seeing” the you in your inner depths?
Some would say I risk damnation
for a belief in reincarnation.
Yet this answer satisfies me on so many levels
and requities my thirst, quieting my myriad of questions
that the old belief system did not.
Unpopular in the west,
woven into the fabric of life in the east
in which I clothe myself, sewn by a strong affinity,
a strange familiarity,
attraction mystifies.
Most of us cannot remember
the details of the other lives,
and are left with fractured fragments of the past
glistening like sea glass in our hands, on the seashores of our minds,
trying to piece together a picture
of a previous existence.
Love is timeless and mysterious
and though I dread the inevitable,
the loss of our life together
in this life,
I know we will be together again in the next and the next
ad infinitium
for something as sacrosanct as our love
is eternal.
Welcome to samples of my work in various art forms showcasing “Eye-locks and Other Fearsome Things.” “Eye-locks” is a Bipolar/Asperger’s memoir in narrative form that describes the triumph of love over mental illness.
The Consciousness Stream
Look carefully below
to see the stream flowing
in between the tangle of greens
and the landscape of rocks
*
Look carefully within
to hear the whispers of God
in between the jangle of loud thoughts
and the overgrowth of emotions
*
Heaven lies in the quiet
trickling like a stream
through the spaces of the silence
Web Wonder
“As the thread is hidden behind the beads of a necklace, and as the dreamer’s consciousness is secreted behind the garlands of dream images, so the Divine Coordinator remains unseen behind the dream lei of creation… It is God’s consciousness alone that sustains all the dream appearance of creation.”
~ PARAMAHANSA YOGANANDA
Flutterbies
Tread lightly
for the wings of angels
flutter by our souls
as we plod on
in our own worlds
often unawares
of the Heaven inside us
because of the Hell of our thoughts.
Barn Window Reflections
We live in a dream world the Hindus call “Maya”
All is illusory–
a cosmic dream from which we will awaken
when we die.
Just as a baby may think
it is the “end”
of life as he knew it
when he is being shuttled through the birth canal
while being born,
so, too, we may think it is the end
when we are dying
to this world of delusion.
But we will be born to something real,
something just beyond the veil of illusion
in which we are so enmeshed during this “life” as we know it.
“When we awaken in God we shall realize that mortal life is only a picture made of shadows and light, cast on a cosmic movie screen” ~ Paramahansa Yogananda
Dropping Dead
Jack Kornfield reads a poem on the finiteness of life while talking about meditation practice (3:26 min.)
“The Butterfly of the Soul”
“The butterfly of the soul must be freed to spread its wings of beautiful divine qualities… To the last day of your life, be positive; try to be cheerful.”
~ Paramahansa Yogananda
It’s All Relative
In the land of the giant Lily
the little ant is King! *
Man thinks himself giant, so important, even grandiose, at times,
when, in relation to the universe,
he is of microscopic stature,
less in size than the tiniest of insects
who live in a veritable macroscosm beneath our feet.
(Adapted from the proverb: ” In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”
Ode to a Lily
Oh gentle
Lily of the Valley,
bowed down in quiet prayer
to your Creator,
your humility,
your simplicity
is your beauty.
~
How like the trees art thou
who, unlike you,
reach skywards,
while you kneel
with sensuous spirituality
in deference to the Almighty.
~
Oh beauteous
Lily of the Valley,
would that we all were like thee
in thy hushed humility.
A Glimpse into the Infinite
How many bacteria are on the back of your hand?
How insects are in the universe beneath our feet
or above our heads?
How many grains of sand lie on the beaches of the earth?
How many waves float upon the earth’s seas?
How many bubbles rise up in all the water on our planet?
How many planets, stars and galaxies lie within the universe?
How many universes are suggested by the Multiverse theory?
What seems infinite is finite.
The paradox…
We have a perception of the Infinite though we ourselves are finite.
We have a conception of the Infinite through our perception of the finite.
The spark of the Infinite lies within our finite bodies.
It is called the Soul.
Full Moon Blues
Lunacy prevails
The foundations of daily life are crumbling
It is all “Maya”
a dream we are living thinking it is reality
We have no choice but to go on
All that matters is love
and God is Love.
Transformations
“As the solid substance we call ice appears from water, steam, or hydrogen-oxygen gas, so the solid earth with its oceans and vapors appears out of the universe of Cosmic Energy” ~ Paramahansa Yogananda
Layers of Light
Layers of light refers to the layers of light in nature, specifically in the natural landscape and that is what I have tried to capture in the above photograph. It is also what I try to capture over and over again in my paintings as in the one below.
But there are layers to our personalities, too. And, of late, I have been very disturbed by the many negative aspects of my own personality appearing before my eyes. Being disturbed by the negatives is a form of egoism but it can propel one towards change. It was a post by Bert at http://whoisbert.wordpress.com/2012/12/13/meditation-as-a-screen-saver/ that really helped me understand what I think is going on. Now I am not sure if I am correctly interpreting what he wrote but perhaps it was what I needed to hear and therefore, read into it. I have been meditating on and off for a long time and have been critical at the quality and quantity of my meditations. Bert seemed to be saying that meditation is a sort of purification process whereby we can examine our faults and do something to rectify them. So this was hopeful to me. First of all, it meant that perhaps my meditations were “working” after all, and, secondly, it meant that perhaps all the negative aspects of my personality I was seeing meant not that I am some sort of arch fiend, but, rather that I am undergoing a purification process, calling for me to change the many negatives I see. Meditation brings out the layers of our personalities that lie lurking in the dark so they can be exposed, thereby altering them in the process, as they are exposed to the Light.
All paintings for sale and photographs available in all sizes and formats.
MOONSIDE 
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