Cambria Sunset

It has finally arrived.  The last day of 2011.  For some it has been anticipated like the end of a great bout with influenza.  For others, it will be sad to let go of a year.  It is always interesting to watch children as they deal with the ‘letting go’ of things and ideas.  Ideas are like actual living things to children.  And well, who are we kidding?  We love our ideas so much they are like home movies of our pets or children.   We replay them over and over until we make ourselves sick with the projections in our heads.  Letting go is hard but can be therapeutic and, even better, *should* be done regularly.  What are YOU holding onto so tightly that you cannot let go?  Let that be the ‘thing’ you kiss fondly and set down.  Let it go.  Trust me, these things that you let go do fly away and transform into beautiful angels for you.  Be warned though: Rilke was right, “Every angel is terrifying”.  The thing that saves you will at first shatter you, but then you will glow and sparkle as you have not before.

Be brave and bold dear friend, dear self.

~Happy New Year to all, may it bring you peace, prosperity and new visions!

http://www.tarotoftrees.com/

I found this tarot deck quite accidentally (one might say– randomly…). while looking for something specific on Etsy.  I am attracted to this deck for some known and not so known reasons.  If you have someone on your gift list that is hard to buy for and likes items of the metaphysical nature, this could be it.  Seriously.

Or maybe I should just put it on my Christmas list! 

Moby Dick

The Daze of Fall is upon me. We have decorated for fall/Halloween, we have all gotten sick with our first cold and/or allergies, and it is that time in which (at work) there is no downtime. It is football season, but this year not basketball season (sadly).

I have been thinking a lot about the passing of Steve Jobs and the (seemingly) randomness of life/world altering success. If you have never read MOBY DICK, it is worth at least for the chapter in which Melville lets us look into his thoughts and see how he viewed the world/universe of the 19th century (see the chapter called The Mat-Maker). I think he may well have been quite ahead of his time.

This is a picture of Fushimi and a postcard of a Japanese shinto shrine.  Proof for myself that I participated in the poetry postcard project.    I am on day 6 today…I have received three postcards to date.  I didn’t realize how much fun this would be…it is like I have long-lost family/friends sending me postcards from their adventures.

But that is the lure of social networking, isn’t it?  To belong.

Wish You Were Here!

I was feeling a bit spontaneous last week and I signed up for a poetry postcard festival in August at Concrete Wolf.  The deal is you get a list of names (randomly generated) of those who have signed up to receive postcards.  In order to receive a postcard with poetry on it, you must also write a poem on a postcard and send off one postcard per day for the month of August.  I thought this was pretty nifty as a summer project to kick start creativity.

What has surprised me the most so far is that I have a great postcard collection that has been sitting in dust for years.  I am thrilled to be actively doing something with them!

Below is a sample of two poems I am working on which are completely related to the picture on the postcard.  Many of the postcards I have collected are from Japan.  These were inspired by Haiku.  I am not a Haiku writer, but I couldn’t resist doing a couple for the postcards.  A short form works quite well with postcard size.

I.

Tiny jewel, you

are no Ligurian sea

But, I love you still.

II.

At the center of

Kiyumizu’s heart, I stand

holding one blossom.

From the Balcony (Royal Mayan)

Am I a slave to the randomness of this internet age? I can’t help myself, but over at Tumblr I love the random photos that roll on my dashboard. Of course, I helped guide the random selection with interests (art, photography, travel, places, medieval history, etc) and it is a visual polyphony of soma. Soothing to the soul. All of us are questing for just that thing to calm the senses and make us feel safe and ‘home’. Chocolate, beauty, and music:: the place where meaning is born today.

Transfiguration of Christ/Raphael

6:34pm PDT. I am still here. My boys are still here. Yet one more apocalypse that has not been met by Our Father and the Universe. That’s ok, there will be another shot at it next year.

I have to say, like most of my friends on FB, I chuckle at this latest ‘Rapture’ hysteria and post snarky comments about it. Can you imagine if Rapture headlines made the community news back in Salem, MA in the 1660s?  One word: Bedlam.  Think of the fun they would have had finding people to scapegoat for the failure of The Lord to have seized the prayerful and brought them to Heaven straightaway.

But seriously, if Revelations was right, and there really is going to be a rapture, we will never be able to predict when that will be.  It’s sheer hubris to believe you can predict/know the date all the ‘saved’ will ascend or when this world will end.  In fact, predicting is a paltry tool for religious leaders of old to scare the people into living a more wholesome life…ahem, we may be different now in 2010, but the same kinds of tactics are used to keep the people under control.

I don’t believe any of the Big Five religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) can know or describe the unknowable.  These lofty religions have made constructs for us to live our lives with less worry.  It’s comforting to have a structure for good/bad and life/death.  But we will never know the truth, until presumably, we pass on into the place past our lives.

This Rapturous Weekend I am inclined to bathe in the afternoon sunlight as it filters through the curtains, to eat strawberries until they stain my fingers, and giggle with my boys as though it might all be over in a moment.  But that’s just it.  We only have this moment.  If there is any message the Rapture waiters can provide, it might be that waiting is counterproductive.  Forget about The Rapture.  We will always live with uncertainty. Live now and love with abandon.

If you need help with the task above, read Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet.

Happy May 21st 2010!

Ok. So I haven’t written a poem a day despite my last post.  I have written several poems– but have not achieved the number needed to be half done with this NaPoWriMo extravaganza.  Life happens, as they say.

But poetry is one of the reasons life can be more manageable (even Stephen King has said as much).  Here is a shout out to the National Poetry Month efforts.  If you love the word, visit Poets.org for awesome resources and (of course) poetry.

A healthy love of chopping garlic, lacing olives into every meal.

Stealing shards of pottery from Roman palazzos and Greek Temples.

***

Let’s just say this is a fragment of Day 2 Poem-A-Day Challenge from the Poetic Asides blog by Robert Brewer and yes, I am going to do this challenge…writing one poem a day is FAR less daunting than a whole novel/novella in a month (which I have epic failed on twice– though it did result in learning that I could actually write over 1000 words a day).  For us poets, writing more than 50 lines in a day is HUGE.  That said, “What got me here” was a lot of writing poetry and reading, reading, reading!

Look ahead friends…I am going to participate (again) in Kelli Agodon’s Poetry Book Giveaway too…can’t wait!