Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Monday, March 28, 2011

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Friday, March 25, 2011

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Thursday, March 17, 2011

today is hell's kitchen

tonight is Guinness, and so today is reborn, again...

today is surya namaskar with stars still visible in the sky

 


Also,

today is green

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

arise my soul and sing

now does our world descend
the path to nothingness
(cruel now cancels kind;
friends turn to enemies)
therefore lament,my dream
and don a doer's doom

create is now contrive;
imagined,merely know
(freedom:what makes a slave)
therefore,my life,lie down
and more by most endure
all that you never were

hide,poor dishonoured mind
who thought yourself so wise;
and much could understand
concerning no and yes:
if they've become the same
it's time you unbecame

where climbing was and bright
is darkness and to fall
(now wrong's the only right
since brave are cowards all)
therefore despair,my heart
and die into the dirt

but from this endless end
of briefer each our bliss--
where seeing eyes go blind
(where lips forget to kiss)
where everything's nothing 

--arise,my soul;and sing
 

~e.e. cummings

Today is quantum transformation! Yesterday was future fantasies.

Monday, March 14, 2011

Today is...

Today is the cosmic game.

My Friday FB update was "Today is paradise." I've been just so entranced with the enjoyment of today. I've been exposed to this concept for so long - "Be here now," "Be present," "Live in the moment," etc., but I think mostly my mind comprehended it before as a mental concept rather than as an is-ness. 

So I'm beginning a "Today is..." project, doubly posted on FB and here.

Yesterday's was, "Today is dark chocolate."

Viva hoy!

Friday, March 11, 2011

Deep Terrain

I was pointed in the direction of reflecting on GRIEF a few days ago. Strange, I thought, as I feel so overjoyed to be alive right now. Thinking just a little more about it, I realized that wherever I am in the moment, I am standing and walking through a deep terrain that contains much more than what is obvious. That evening I rediscovered this poem, written two days after my grandma Shirley's birthday, less than a month after she passed away, seemingly quite suddenly. 

It's good to remember that all our stories need to be told.


1.9.07
Deep calming breaths are not possible right now
A concentrated attempt, an elongated, nostril-flared focused sip
Is thwarted as the air is diverted, released through a deep hole
Between my breasts, both sides buzzing with the living’s speeded heartbeat

The soul is not at ease, cannot be stripped of its suffering,
Needs to be bathed over and over in tears,
Sung to over and over in wailing lullabies, bubbling down into
Sniffling attempts again at the breath of life
The prana which will feed each organ and cell

The rocking ebb and tide, apparently not so endless
Catch, catch, catching against a jagged rock again,
To wail the widow walk’s howl to the sound of the sea, relentless
Breath which keeps coming in and out, without that feeling of fullness
As a deep emptiness sits among apparently thriving systems, buzzing
Along with all the exchanges, receptions and pathways required
With mysterious flexibility and commonalities

Somehow this buzzing complex system receives its heart’s message beyond blood
And connects so deeply and un-physically, that the corpus can be annihilated
By a memory floating down neuron streams, can do things beyond reason,
Beyond belief, with the strength of that unseen powerful force,
And can create a growth or an emptiness in itself in response to so many
Factors beyond the scope of generations of rational study

The hole is deeper than the depth of my torso,
Like an endless well with a bottom somewhere,
A child not ready to drop a coin in and find out where
Or what lies down there, breathing and squinting into the blackness
To make out ephemeral forms that remind her
Of what’s most important, even though it never looked just like that.
A faint hum from under the breath hugs the hole
Blows warmth on a blazing ember losing its outside fire, still hot
To the core, and opens the windows to let more air in
And sing joyfully discordantly out to the trees whizzing by
In sweet full summer of life moments that resound
Through the cold snake of a tunnel
When that coin is dropped.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Teddy Sampson

On International Women's Day, I'm celebrating my great great aunt Teddy Sampson, who starred with Pancho Villa in The Life of General Villa while she was still a teenager and 2 years before Villa ordered a cross-border attack on Columbus, NM, which is about an hour and a half from where I live now.
In this photo, it's Teddy on the right and aunt Anne on the left. They were two of my great grandma Mary's sisters.
She later married silent film actor Ford Sterling, and continued to act in silent films for about 10 years. I wonder, did she stop making films because she was she too old - in her late 20s?! - then? She lived all her life in CA and never reconnected with her family back east. Even though I mostly resemble my dad's side of the family, I bear a resemblance to aunt Teddy. Her birth name was Nora, and I was almost named after her.