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.
A Wee Life
Oh wee one
how I envy thee
trudging up and down
the raindrop slopes
of rain and nectar
safe within the confines
of radiant yellow
succulent pink
in a self-contained
world of beauty
however short-lived thy life.
The Shower of Yellow
The horses are in the home stretch with the school-imposed end of summer approaching, Labor Day weekend, a weekend I look forward to all summer long for love of Fall. It is not a good way to think– the way I do. Religious leaders preach living in the present. This very moment in time is all we have. Literally. I have yet to overcome my hyperactive mind and many bad ways of thinking. And this year for some reason I am feeling melancholic about the summer ending. Perhaps it is because I am sick with a fever and not sure where the hazy heat of the sun ends and the lazy heat of the fever begins. Perhaps it is because it is a perfect day. A breeze whispers through what I call (in my ignorance of its real name) the “penny tree.” When the wind blows, the pale green leaves look like so many pennies shimmering down from Heaven. The sun is so hot it tingles on the skin– yet it is not the strong sun of July that burns quickly. It is a far gentler sun. The angle of its diurnal slant is different. Summer is definitely slipping away.
The bees, wasps and yellow jackets are having a heyday in the Goldenrod, Joe Pye Weed and Purple Loosestrife. The marsh is thick with flying insects. My eyes capture swallow-tails. Happily the monarchs are still here. A turkey vulture circles overhead. He must have spotted death nearby. Earlier I saw two golden hawks fly, sunlit, into the back field. A wisp of a cloud floats by in an otherwise perfectly blue sky. This summer has flown by in the blink of an eye like a fritillary flits by the flowers in the marsh.
The smell of fresh-cut lawn is intoxicating to my raw senses. Soon the grass will cease to grow and the lush green will look washed out. All of its inhabitants in the metropolis beneath our feet will dig deep underground or turn off their bodily systems to “overwinter”– an amazing concept to a mammal. Some fill their bodies with a type of antifreeze. Nature never ceases to astound. This summer I have made my peace with the insects. Terrified of them as a child, I have come to love and respect them, indeed hold them in great awe for the feats they accomplish. Our accomplishments pale as humans, supposedly so superior.
No longer do I see turtles sunning on rocks, nor snakes coming out to bask in the heat of the road. Some species of birds have already left– unbeknownst to me. I just know that some I used to see are gone. The sweet bird song of the spring mating season is a fleeting memory. One lone humming-bird flies around the marsh intermittently, causing great excitement in the viewing audience.
It is the time to dead head the flowers of summer. It is the time of Black-Eyed Susans and Peonies and Sedum. And soon it will be the time of the Mums.
With each gust of wind yellow finger-like walnut leaves shower down on our heads– like large, oddly-shaped, yellow snowflakes– a foretaste of snowfalls to come. The sun’s shadows grow long as twilight nears. Soon the white cloud “lions and tigers and bears” will retire into the black cave of night. And the summer will die, and in dying, give birth to fall. The comfortable rhythm of the changing season beats in our sometimes unhearing hearts.
(Click http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/ellen-stockdale-wolfe.html for information on, and to purchase my Bipolar/Asperger’s memoir.)
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.
ApPAIRition
This is the keynote piece from my new series called “ApPAIRitions” in which I explore the relationships between different views of the world. I have 20 of them which I hope to display at some point. They are diptychs and there are few triptychs as well.
Heresay Hear Today
In
sin
u
ation
over
what
Katy
did
or
didn’t
do
to
Dahlia
is
here
say
prattle
of
goss
i
ping
blooms
filled
with
en
vy
The Stealth Kiss
Unseen by a background of fellow flowers
he rushed towards her purple petals
to plant the blossom of her bosom
with a kiss
when
blew a breeze
that steathily stole his kiss,
before she ever knew, sending it wafting
above the treetops to the forever fields of lost loves.
“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
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.
Transformations no. 2
“It is so interesting to see the marvelous evolution of complex matter from the singular consciousness of Spirit. How intricate it is, and yet so simple” ~ Paramahansa Yogananda
Snow-Doe
This “tres sensible,” furry doe appeared in our backyard one morning, showing no fear of us as we went about our activities. It pains me that Vassar College has hired hunters to feed deer, luring them to their death for mercenary gain in some non-sensical culling. As if hunting season weren’t bad enough. My heart sank for this fearless doe, unafraid of us. She must learn to be afraid of humans because humans are cold-hearted killers, hiding under the guise of sportsmanship and pest control. What kind of sport is this to entice deer to an area using food as bait and then, when trust is established, shooting them? It makes me ashamed of the human race. Issac Bashevis Singer, who fled the Nazis himself, and whose mother and brother were killed in the Camps, writes most eloquently on the subject in his ode to a mouse:
“What do they know—all these scholars, all these philosophers, all the leaders of the world—about such as you? They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka.”
The Trees of Winter
Every year what starts as a budding romance in autumn blossoms into a full-blown love affair in winter– my pitter-patter passion for trees. Trees that were drop-dead-gorgeous in their fall colors are now bare, with the exception of evergreens and a few stray deciduous trees that refuse to relinquish their leaves. Stripped down to their souls and the trees sing a siren song to the universe.
The tops of trees lift my spirit; brush-like they paint the sky with the baby pinks and blues of mornings, and the majestic magentas and violets of day’s end. Each tree has its signature shape against the sky, like a fingerprint or a snowflake– similar yet each unique. In their bare state, some treetops are shaped into fancy coiffures– others into wrought iron filigree. On distant mountains, against the snowy ground, still others assume the image of stubble on an old man’s unshaven face.
It is the colorful winter sky showing through, and showing off, the bare branches that woos me. The bare, curvaceous branches are stark, dark lines against the bright of day and the inky sky of night. These resplendent creatures are living lines that explode. Branches tangle like the lines in a Jackson Pollock painting. Others curve with the sensuous lines of a Brancusi sculpture. Buxom tree trunks stand strong surrounded by their dead blossoms and their burgeoning offspring like a Renaissance Madonna. In truth these trees are not like art at all. Rather art imitates them– their beauty provides the timeless inspiration for artists, writers and poets of all ages and styles.
Trees not only inspire, they are paragons of diversity. One look out of a car window while driving on the Taconic and one can see squat pines beside towering majestic firs, birches interspersed with maple and oak. And together the different brown and tan barks interspersed with evergreens create not only a mosaic of contrasting colors, but display an example to inspire humans to live together in peaceful unity.
These beneficent beings carry the heavy, dark grey clouds of winter. When it snows the tree trunks become canvases for the abstract patterns of windblown-snow, while the serpentine branches are outlined in white. In ice storms their branches become chandeliers, each with glassine ice crystals tinkling in the wind. In the melancholy of a winter rain, the branches become oiled skins of snakes weeping to the ground below. And finally, in the night sky, the branches hold the stars in their arms, those with leaves, in their hands, as they nurse the moon.
All trees, no matter what their species, age or height, stand tall in proud humility, their arms reaching up to the Heavens to our Creator in prayer– soft-spoken beings of peace and tranquility towering over us, while we, wee, little creatures race around distractedly in a dither below.
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.
La Bella Luna
Dedicated to my brother and his favorite, and now my favorite, musician, Cat Stevens/Jusuf, and his song “Moonshadow,” a gift to me from my brother after he passed. The song meant so much to him, and now, with him, to me.
Cow Communication
All limited edition original photographs available in different sizes and formats.
Iced Berries no. 2
All limited edition original photographs available in different sizes and formats.
Winter Tree Filigree
All limited edition original photographs available in different sizes and
formats.
MOONSIDE 
You must be logged in to post a comment.