THE DISCOVERY OF A SURPRISED BEAUTY
Sometimes, walking, you find things that are left by others -- discrete gestures to beauty. They are not intended for all, but for the few -- that might be looking. I leave things out -- a stack of bones, a scrap of old paper with a mapping stroke on it; words, in worlds, left somewhere to be discovered. A talisman, for someone to discover. Little discretions of beauty, I'd call them. Walking, out there, the windbound way, I found this -- just there, hidden, tucked into the edged bark, some...
PASSIONATE LOVE
It's something, love -- that's passionate. Passion, love -- the twain of exhilaration and magic, the enchantment of fascination. Spell on you. I contemplate that in the way of people that are magnetically connected to each other. You can see that, the rightful sparks that leap out, cross the table, across the reconnection of those that are being missed, now returned. Fire, warms. Sizzle. Smack. Lightning ranges - strikes the line. But working in the south, with friends and family -- there are...
WOWNESS | THE CONDITION OF WOW
Girvin image: a streetside wow, cast iron, the Pike Place Market, Seattle. I was writing a proposal and overview for a client yesterday. And I used the opening: Wow! That was the first word. I contemplated that, an opening -- wow! What is that? I was thinking about the sound of that word -- the wow, how it makes your face, mouth, pop and contort. Saying wow is a wowness. It made me contemplate the concept of wow. What is the meaning, the history -- wherefrom, wow? There isn't much behind it,...
WRITING THE HEART
Or righting, the heart -- well written. A decade ago, when my youngest brother was killed, the idea of working in, working round and walking into the grief was done with writing. That time, every day, the journal working into the impressions of my feeling -- and those around me. Today, walking I found this piece of old, handmade paper -- made and hung in a tree as a reminding of the practice that I hold dear. Write. As I move into decades of writing, I find myself (literally) in the...
COURAGE AND THE HEART
COURAGE AND THE HEART Thinking about the heart, talking to my mother -- we were talking about the idea of courage. There are people that seem to have extraordinary courage in facing the challenges that cloud around them -- yet somehow, they go ahead, step by step, striding forward. A friend of mine lost her husband of many years -- last week. Contemplating her, and others, it's the time of being alone -- still gathered round the ring of friends and family. Still, the buoyant strength will lie...
THE SIGN TO THE CENTER OF THE WORLD
THE SIGN TO THE CENTER OF THE WORLD I know this way, walking in a certain path, down a certain street -- following a line that's been scribed for 50 years -- that at just the right time, I will find a sign that reaches to the center of the world. It is just that point, a moment when the light aligns, and the mystery opens. Standing there, watching others, I notice that some see it. And others do not. Some are right there, getting ready to see that opening, while others -- they keep on walking...
THE BOOK OF THE ANGLES
I found a book, turning the pages there was a guide, and that was the collection of all the angles in the universe. As I turn the pages, the book opens out, and even in the dimensionality of the turning, the book becomes a sphere -- and the circle of the angles spreads out like a opening dandelion of the universe -- stellar, opening out into the space in front of me. Looking into the book, I think about the letter that lies in the center of the universe, the first stroke of everything. That...
WALKING THE SKY WAY
In Portland, last night, I could see the glimmer of the moon, fullish -- hidden in the mists of the late sky; there were no stars to be seen -- except straight up, in the darkest part of the arc of misted blackness. I was thinking about the moon, her symbolism and mystery -- the millions of years that she has told her tale, drawing the tides of the great seas in the pull of her power, as does she guide the tides of billions of others -- the physic, the psychic. There in the mist, fogged as a...
THE HEART OF IRON
As I walk the abandoned farm land of pressed grains, weeds and rushes, since there is a chill - I can hear the needles of cedar, pine, crackling like ice. And there, in the field, is a piece of rusted iron, found in the sea, but now resting in the scumbled soil, mixed with the minutiae of time passing. Other bits of metal, sand and shell, volcanic rock, tiny green things living -- that's just hanging on the frost of the morning. And invariably, even in the cold, some ancient insects or...
THE MEDITATION OF CHOPPING WOOD
To the wood, the physical practice of chopping wood is the distinction from the hard, and blood scenting brace of cold iron -- the blade of the ax -- to the splitting wet of the wood that is new, and just fallen. And older timbers, that have lain, warmed and dried over time -- the sound and meditation is about the nature of the arcing swing, and the split, just so. There are others woods that are fungi-tinted, and smell of the deepest forest -- cutting them, the blade slides into the wood, and...