"rain at omiya"

i'm pretty sure that this is my 1000th post. the first post on the golden fish was created and shared on august 26th 2007. i see from that post that i have more-or-less stuck to the original intent of the blog which has been to unpack who and what i am through sharing my perception of "the big now" which is the place where my past, my present, and my future-becoming-present all meet.

i have been very fortunate to meet wonderful, amazing, clever, creative and kind spirits on a similar journey of sharing their experience of this world (and others!) in a manner that suggests they see beneath the surface.

well below the surface!

you see,

i value depth of perception!

so thankyou to my many visitors from all over the world for sharing your worlds and for visiting mine.

i am learning so much from each of you.

~

now speaking of kind spirits on a similar journey . . .

i came across this beautiful image on delwyn's blog.

"rain at omiya" by kawase hasui

it appears as an illustration of part of one of her longer walks entitled the "nakasendo walk", an amazing journey through a part of japan that has been traversed by famous artists and poets for centuries. take the walk yourself - it's an amazing travelogue and an art gallery come to life carefully and thoughtfully melded together.

in the last year of his life, hasui was made a "living national treasure" in japan.

can you imagine?

a person being valued to that degree!!!

i could look at this image for hours.

it says so much.

it tells so many stories.

i could live there and write, paint, make music . . . and dream, oh yes dream about all that was,

all that could have been,

all that might be . . . .

~

but what i'd really like would be to have met hasui himself.

i'd invite him to this beautiful home for green tea.

i'd ask him how he knew to create his incredible artwork.

i'd especially ask him how he learned so much about the experience of rain that he could recreate the complete sensation of rain . . . on paper.

i'd ask him about his life.

maybe you're one of the lucky ones ...

over on luke's blog, words that remind me that this isn't just entertainment . . . .

“advice? i don’t have advice. stop aspiring and start writing. if you’re writing, you’re a writer. write like you’re a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there’s no chance for a pardon. write like you’re clinging to the edge of a cliff, white knuckles, on your last breath, and you’ve got just one last thing to say, like you’re a bird flying over us and you can see everything, and please, for God’s sake, tell us something that will save us from ourselves. take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we’re not alone. write like you have a message from the king. or don’t. who knows, maybe you’re one of the lucky ones who doesn’t have to.”

- alan watts

stop! ...................... continue . . .

i love to visit shorpy's. shorpy's features photos from a time long past. a time and a past that i am disconnected from in ways other than chronological - i'm english by birth, canadian by relocation and the experiences and contexts in shorpy's blog are american. but, i can place them in context of the many films and books and my own experiences of america not to mention, the very human moments and experiences that shorpy shares.

this one caught my eye recently.

this is entitled "madame lubouska, national american ballet, 1924". i love this pose. it's so hard to tell if she's moving forward, falling backward, or perhaps somehow miraculously in stasis. i'm thinking of a gurdjieff stop exercise.

after long silence

i love to visit reya's blog every day for her very cool photography and her deep and real insights into human nature and the experiencing of life. yesterday morning i read a piece by her on the benefits of middle age.

her writing obviously got me thinking. so there i was edging a garden bed out front of my home and a song came into my head called "after long silence". english majors reading this will say "hey, that's not a song, that's a poem by yeats" and you're right. but i have heard it rendered by cleo laine the great british jazz singer and that's what i heard in my head. but why that song? so i looked up the lyrics / poem and here's what you see.

after long silence

speech after long silence; it is right,
all other lovers being estranged or dead,
unfriendly lamplight hid under its shade,
the curtains drawn upon unfriendly night,
that we descant and yet again descant
upon the supreme theme of art and song:
bodily decrepitude is wisdom; young
we loved each other and were ignorant.

william butler yeats (from "the winding stair and other poems" 1933)

what on earth are we doing here

anneke brassinga has been one of the stars of the dutch poetry world for many years. her use of language is at once sensual and from the gut. instinctive and insightful. the dance between her inner and outer perceptions is masterfully demonstrated in this lovely piece of writing entitled:

the happy ending

what on earth are we doing here, we do not
ask ourselves as long as the jigging of tunes
keeps coming from the speaker cabinets, hanging
invisible in the trees, and we go on thinking
that it’s birds there twittering away –

what are we doing here? just feel first if
our feet are warm enough and their knobbles
bearably painful, then take a good listen
to the gentle bubbling in the deep recesses of
our gut, old soothsayer that lets us know

if we’re once more dying of hunger if not
thirst, there’s no way of knowing otherwise
and please let it not go awry in the
here, the silting up, the woody sand-drift
where the lemonade stalls one after the other

appear to be mirages, if, panting, you thought
you were there – in the here where you walk and,
since you constantly cannot refrain from once more
looking back to see where you have come from,
keep on stumbling over tree stumps,

getting grazed by the rough bark of oaks
and scratched by rust- or blood-red barbed wire,
remains of civilisation. and the more you turn
your head, slogging on, at the magnificent
sunrise motionless at your back above the distant

trees that rustle inaudibly, the more you
know: that waking with the freshness of tahitian limes,
that paradise-like first bite of tropical
delight in a covering of milk chocolate –
the blindingly pristine does not return.

what are we doing here? what we are not doing
is taking heed. or is the abyss invisible, or
is there no abyss until you fall into it,
shoot along a smooth rock wall? it happens
swiftly. in the grass by the stream at the bottom

God waits, cheerful as a mother who all that
time has stayed at home, with a bowl of peanuts,
sherry in the glass. and from beyond the flowering
trees, at last there they come, the missing ones
for whom you unmissable, whom you could not bear to miss.

© 2006, anneke brassinga
© translation: 2007, john irons

visit the golden fish sister blog over at flow.

six sentences

i've come across several blogs and some of them have whatever those things are that get sent from person-to-person that encourage people to write either lists or short pieces of writing.

i'll be truthful and say that for the most part i find them uninspiring exercises that don't really require me to think. at their worst, they feel more like surveys having that "fill-in-the-blank" feeling about them.

however, i came across one that actually felt really good and had tons and tons of really good written responses so i'll share it with you here.

to begin, you need to go to the blog that goes by the name six sentences. there you'll enter a world in which short, rich and sometimes intense pieces of writing are featured, not to mention a kazillion links to things "six". so go there first, read the incredible writing. then - craft one of your own and submit it.

will you become instantly rich and famous? no and no.

but do it just because!

here's a golden fish "six sentences" fan favourite: by luke storms.

by the way, while you're here i should tell those of you who come from well-educated, highly-trained writing backgrounds that the golden fish perspective on what a sentence looks like is probably very different from yours. here's a place that describes my knowing of "sentence" in one big long cluttered fulsome nutshell! and that's why yours will likely be picked to appear on the "six sentences" webpage long before mine!!!!

have fun - oh and visit the golden fish sister blog "flow"!!!