Origami crane lit by the morning sun

Shadow photography

(Clickedy for full size) 

Eight More January Sunsets

(Click to see them full size and all that.)

Every Once In a While (This is Supernova)

Can't apply myself to writing today,
Though the pen scratches at my ribcage,
The birds are making an enormous racket--
And I would throw stones at them--
But I'm a content sort of restless.

Every once in a while I become sick of metaphor
Weightlessness,
But I'm trying to fly,
Alternately floating off and crashing to the ground.

Creativity, today, is an itch I can't scratch,
A rope thrown over a tree branch that won't catch.
Would anybody like to hold these things?
Take them from me and explore them
And give me your own things in return.

How much does the song in your heart vary?
Every once in a while mine becomes this elemental,
Orchestral movie score, and I have no idea what to do with it 

Or how to sing it anymore.
That is the itch that begs to be scratched,
Scales hanging just so,
Ready to be shed at the slightest touch,
But it is an art.

The dance of the girl in supernova,
Brighter than she can stand,
A whirl of color and light;
Singing and drawing and playing the guitar--
And wondering what to do with it all,
Everything begging for another shoulder to alight on.

Did you know that the universe is underneath our feet?
This planet is round,
But it is no wonder we once thought it was flat,
And every once in a while we forget
that the universe isn't just above our heads;
We stand upon the stars.

Sunsets From the Past Month

On a longboard ride a few weeks ago

The minute patterns in nature

Split wood again today, we found another anomaly and I finally photographed snow crystals like I've been planning to on the walk back home. (I have no idea how this font materialized...)

December Does Funny Things To My Thinking

Weird how long the days are, and yet the weeks and year are flying by...

Kesang Marstrand: clear-sighted giddiness awoken within me

I think this is one of the days I've been waiting for to come to pass.
I've made a choice, and I've rediscovered something that once struck me as so beautiful, but I didn't investigate further, maybe because it just wasn't time. I took note, however, and that has enabled me to find it again.


Kesang Marstrand - The Spell I'm Under
I don't actually remember hearing this the first time, but I wrote
Kesang Marstrand 
"The spell I'm under" 
(Incredible voice, that one...) 
on a piece of paper taped to the side of my dresser. Today I glanced at it and thought it might be interesting to look the song up and listen to it again, and so began my plunge into a world I didn't know I already knew so well.
(The man in the video? The one with the baggy eyes? There is a lot of beauty in him, he just is.)

Kesang Marstrand - Colorless Farewell
Oh love, this video, this song, this may sound silly, but this is almost exactly what I would film and sing, maybe that's a little presumptive, but I feel this whole thing so deeply in my heart.
This is the music I've been looking for, the girl I thought I'd never find outside of myself.

Kesang Marstrand - Grow a Garden
This song makes me smile, this video looks so much like how I see the world, I understand it so much, I think, though that may be presumptive too, I don't care anymore, though, all that is beautiful in her I see in me, so I will try to stop being so critical of my own heart.
Everything is so profoundly beautiful lately, I thought I'd lost that, but it's been with me all along, I've just grown accustomed to everything being so beautiful, and my heart's already broken, so it doesn't break all the time every time anymore. Everything is beautiful, always.

Kesang Marstrand - Endless Skies
Different sound from a lot of her other songs. This one I don't really know how to say a lot of what it means to me. I guess I feel like hiding today, I feel like living in prayer and meditation and quiet today. Endless skies inside, you know. Reflection and introspection. Ohm.
It feels like she so freely writes the things I hold myself back from. Why?
I'm still so self-conscious of myself, of the things I like and want and discover and want to share.
You see this? What I'm doing right now? Maybe it looks uninhibited in a way, but also it's not. I choose to stop being so self-critical all the time, but I've chosen it before, and that voice is getting weaker, but it's still hanging around my neck, guarding my heart.
Today is supernova, though, a quieter sort of supernova, but supernova all the same, my heart burning pretty clear and bright. Can you see it?
My heart as the sun, dark spots here and there, but less than the light and shrinking as I see them and light them on fire again.

Kesang Marstrand - Bodega Rose
The second of her videos I watched today, right after The Spell I'm Under.

It is funny, this feeling like I know a person so well even though there's no way that's possible. Kinda naive and silly, but hey, interesante. Something to think about.
I wonder who she has loved? She sounds so earnest.
I may be supernova, but I am also eclipse and must remember to relax over and over again so the curtain may fall away.

Kesang Marstrand - Stand By Me
I think it's really cool that it looks like she just sat down and recorded this in her home one day, maybe with a phone or some sort of low-grade camera.
I guess I hold myself back in some things because I have this wish to share, but I don't think anybody wants to hear all that's in my head. Kinda the problem with my poetry lately, I write stuff and I don't like it and I figure it's not worth anything anyway. But it's still something close to my heart, things that mean a lot to me. How can one disregard and devalue the things one cares about? I guess I don't really take myself seriously, and I've noticed that in some strange, small way, I'm afraid that others will take me seriously.


I'm not sad today, I've acknowledged sadness in myself, and I've chosen to stop dwelling on that so very much, because it seems like I've become slightly bitter, and I don't want to be that. I'm still kinda snarky about myself, but hey, if I can write all of this on here, with a clear voice and steady eyes, I think I'll be ok.
Namaste

Musings

Life as battle or quest? Or something else entirely?
Life as battle, war; everything is won or lost, everything is a struggle and a fight, an upward climb and tearing of the heart and soul and flesh. You can only ever conquer or fail, pulling yourself up a cliff's edge by your fingernails and teeth, crashing down onto the rocks below when you falter and lose your grip. Life as some great thing you must win, only one pathway, only one right. Inflexible, binding and restrictive.

But life as quest, a wending pathway of discovery, exploration, learning and seeking, is a beautiful living. Then life is stream and pathway and wind about your ears. Then you can shine and love and really see, really understand, and understand that, honey, you're really never going to get it all, and that's perfectly okay. Life as quest; life as play and happiness, life as learning to be with sadness, tears as rain on the ground, nurturing growth and further beauty. Being in emotion, all emotion, acknowledging and allowing it. Life as flowering, a great opening up and unfurling and shedding color and light. Giving, not taking. Creating; not only destroying. Life as pulse, wave, flow; up and down and back and forth.




Rumi;
"Great lions find peace in a cage.
But we should only do that as a last resort.

So those bars I see that restrain your wings,
I guess you won't mind if I pry them open."

And Hafiz;
"How did the rose ever open its heart and
give to the world all of its beauty?

It felt the encouragement of light against
its being, otherwise we all remain too
frightened."


If I let it be, and don't try really hard to fit it all together, it will fall into place in its own structure. 

Fire and blazing light, comet cutting through the dark

(What I wanted to write but couldn't until I sat on the clean front room floor that clear afternoon while mom was asleep and everyone else was away. The most beautiful things are born in stillness.)

You are the brightest piece of gold I've ever found in life. 

Shedding stardust everywhere you go. 

I follow, starving. 

You are one of those things I want to get all over myself and my memory, better than mud or berry-stains or scratches on my arms from collecting and stacking wood for the winter. 

You make me burn bright, you're not the only, but you are the best. I guess that's why I run away sometimes, it can be too much for me to handle, and before, I hid it. But now I don't, and maybe you see. 

I can feel you (wings) on and between my shoulder blades, and deep in my heart. You make my heart burn low and superheated and dark, then explosive supernova. 

I haven't really let myself fall, plunging into the depths of the universe, you, but I'm tottering on the edge, and you're beckoning. 

I'm raising my arms, spreading my fingers, feeling the wind. 

I want to fly with you

Photo essay of a sort

(Click on the last three to make them bigger. One of these days I'm going to have to figure out how to get a template that's friendlier with photographs...)