Light and presence. A couple of years back, in being with my parents at their home overlooking the waters of Lake Coeur d'Alene, I'd sat up, sometime around 5 am, out on their deck, looking into the trees, and painting the light as it came through the grand pines, that reach skyward. And from that, I'd redrawn these visualizing a kind of spirit of light, coming through the trees, flickering the glimmering of the morning bound, rippled and water shimmer, warm light refracting. I was there a...

come back to me Some things go out, go out -- and they are gone, they never come back. Like the little ships of paper in Bali, the papered lit and floating sky cylinders in memorial in Thailand, the fired and floating vik drums of Scandinavia, the floating pyres of India, set adrift on the shore of the Ganges. They go out, they don't come back. I believe, in way, that they do, they always come back -- what energy goes out, there, out there, at some point, it returns. And perhaps that return is...

Pattering patterning | this morning Decatur; last week, NYC ---- There's a pattering, the patterning of sound, this morning. I'm writing about sound, I suppose, because it's pure black, this morning. You can't see anything, out there -- it's all blackened sound. But all morning, since sometime past midnight, it's been raining. Here, that's meaningful. The island house is designed as a kind of echo chamber for sound. The overhanging galvanized structure captures sound from above, and scoops it...

Dense, the sound. I was so tired, this morning. I'd arisen at 3.30am --NYC. That, after 3 hours of sleep; I'd worked till midnight. Past then, I suppose, half past. Then I'd boarded in Newark, flying away before 7am, EST. I got into Seattle 5.5 hours later, taxied to Queen Anne, then bolted northbound. Island bound. When I arrived on the island, getting organized, setting myself up, there was a rough, dense, scratching sound -- a scruffing, roughing, scuffing sound. It was like there was...

I've been setting stones in balance for decades. I like the idea of setting stones as, just that, finding balance. You set them, they align, the gravity pulling them, the string reaches to the center of the earth. And sometimes, they stay in alignment. And sometimes they fall -- and you have to rebuild them, if that's what you'd like to do. Or you can leave it be, and contemplate what's been done, and what's changed. Things are built, find their balance, then fall. It's the way things go....

Jack Lenor Larsen at his apartment55 Park, NYC There are influencers in life -- people that connect with you, and connect you with others, that are profound change agents in your experience. I can recount a number of them -- people that generously did things for me, with me, that changed me forever. I walk back through four and more decades, in my mind, and think: who changed my life?Surely I'd count my parents as key inspirators. In no sequence, then...try this yourself. I remind my self of...

A meditation. All light, coming back to me, coming back to you. I've heard that the offering of light to one, becomes the offering of light to another; it reflects, refracts. Light comes to me; I refract that, in the prism of my being, and it becomes another; it's found by an other. In doing good things, things of light and beauty, these go one way, come back to others, come back in differing forms to me. Looking at the Moon, in contemplation, I'm thinking about that. The reflections. And I'm...

The Eagle, the Raven, the story... I suppose in a way that everything I write here is a story. One story becomes another. I used to preach to people about the nature of the journal and the journey, that is -- everything string of experiences is about a journey, the journal then becomes a kind of receptacle; it's the reliquary of experience. It's a collage. But now that I'm writing both to the weblog at Girvin.com, as well as the journal here, it's harder to work on the paper journal(s). And I...

1853 C. BRONT Villette xxiii, She stood, not dressed, but draped in pale... ---- I came back from NYC on Thursday. As usual, the flight was delayed, and I returned to my house sometime in the late evening, 11:15. I worked for a bit, getting myself set up for the next day, an early rising. I opened up the windows to air out the studio of the old school house on Queen Anne, where I live. And went to bed. At about 3.00 am, I rose to work again. A wind moved through the hilltop trees and you could...

David, thanks for your considerations, your reach -- and, to some of your co-respondents, I'm grateful to be included in your search. To the challenges that you face, I relate. I've seen these, sensed these travails in others. And each has borne the character of the challenge -- the chasm -- with either a leap, or a stride -- a running sprint. And it's what we have, these moments, so it's profound to be called to the action of knowing, abruptly, that it ends for all of us. So get out there and...