“it is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.”
the trees have gathered together for a chat. it's a little warmer than usual, the wind is howling across the front and back porches, and the squirrels are corkscrewing up and down the tree trunks in search of food, friends, some place where there is no wind perhaps. there are great negotatiations going on between the wind and the clouds and the trees and the ground, negotiations mediated by big brother sun who is occasionally peering in to see what the commotion is all about . . . . hi brother!
a life without love is a waste. “should i look for spiritual love, or material, or physical love?”, don’t ask yourself this question. discrimination leads to discrimination. Love doesn’t need any name, category or definition. Love is a world itself. either you are in, at the center…
one of the grade two girls likes to hold my hand as i walk back and forth across my area and she says "it wants to rain but it's forgotten how. see. see it's frozen rain."
as ice pellets fall in a thick stinging smear that peppers the skin of my face.
on my ride home last night, this song returned to my head after twenty five years. it's a very beautiful old irish song . . . my favourite irish song actually . . . it's called "my lagan love" . . . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lagan_Love i first heard it when van morrison sang it with the chieftains on a disc released in 1988 called irish heartbeat. . . .
this is sinead o'connor's live rendering in dublin . . .
i was thirteen years old in 1970, on a plane flying from toronto to manchester, england. this piece of music was on one of the channels on the in-flight music player. it was the first blues song i had ever heard . . . i had no idea who it was and i played it over and over and over . . . i have never forgotten it . . . in retrospect, it messed me up for life!
i like to live in the sound of water, in the feel of the mountain air, a sharp reminder hits me: this wolrd is still alive;
it stretches out there shivering toward its own creation, and i’m part of it. even my breathing enters into this elaborate give-and-take, this bowing to sun and moon, day and night, winter, summer, storm, still - this tranquil chaos that seems to be going somewhere. this wilderness with a great peacefulness in it. this motionless turmoil, this everything dance.
i came out with my bike onto my porch one morning in february to discover this overhanging cornice of snow on my roof. i had been listening to the music of the incredible mali band tinariwen just moments before.
their musical expression of the experience of living in the desert as toureg nomads filling me alongside my cup of coffee.
so, looking up into the sky and seeing the tree somehow growing out of the snowy cornice, a circle was drawn with their music growing out of the equally unlikely barrenness of the desert.
"that was a narrow escape!' said alice, a good deal frightened at the sudden change, but very glad to find herself still in existence; 'and now for the garden!' and she ran with all speed back to the little door: but, alas! the little door was shut again . . ."
this is what happens in the real world . . . kids create something very special with good people, some of whom are teachers. they all have fun and learn something and . . . and they raise money for a good cause!!!
margaret is my only aunt . . . but in "only" getting her, i lucked out because she was, and still very much is what i know as "the cool aunt" . . . you know, the person who dropped the important books ...
siddhartha, steppenwolf, a book of dali prints, and much much more
at exactly the right time
to wake me up to the worlds beyond and inside this world . . .
she was the person who took me to europe in the middle of my teen years and made sure that i saw berlin - east and west, amsterdam, koln, and many places i had read about or heard about and which suddenly became entirely real and colourful.
as i look back on that journey (and i do that often) i still cannot imagine how she managed that.
but she did.
margaret opened a space in my understanding of this world that my own parents couldn't - through no fault of their own - (because i wouldn't let them) that allowed me to grow beyond my own limitations.
to be clear, i am very grateful for her existence beyond what she has provided me!
the world is a richer place for her incredible food, her passion for english history, her kindness, and her astonishing gardens.
yesterday we had coffee and little cakes from a local pastry shop.
she told me she was feeling her age.
well. not if her appearance, her lifestyle, and her wide ranging and
fascinating conversation are any indication!
how still it is here in the woods. the trees stand motionless, as if they do not dare to stir, lest it should break the spell. the air hangs quiet as spaces in a marble frieze. even this little brook, that runs at ease, whispering and gurgling in its knotted bed, seems but to deepen with its curling thread of sound the shadowy sun-pierced silences.
the darkness brings no quiet here, the light no waking: ever on my blinded brain the flare of lights, the rush, and cry, and strain, the engines' scream, the hiss and thunder smite: i see the hurrying crowds, the clasp, the flight, faces that touch, eyes that are dim with pain: i see the hoarse wheels turn, and the great train move labouring out into the bourneless night. so many souls within its dim recesses, so many bright, so many mournful eyes: mine eyes that watch grow fixed with dreams and guesses; what threads of life, what hidden histories, what sweet or passionate dreams and dark distresses, what unknown thoughts, what various agonies!
...we bow, we take our cups of wine, we give our attention to beautiful poems. when the mind is exalted, the body is lightened and feels as if it could float in the wind. wei yingwu
this morning: stepping off the final step of the front porch and finding my foot hovering in mid-air
as i look down and see the sun's soft colours searing under the thin silver-blue skin of the fractured ice
one year - my last at university as it turned out, - i lived across the river from this factory.
i was often hungry and this factory churned out granola bars.
the smell was so good i never tired of it.
it was almost magical in the way it filled me without eating.
today i cross this same river to get to east city to visit my friends.
the smell is the same, but i'm not hungry any more.
"these memories of who I was and where I lived are important to me. they make up a large part of who i’m going to be when my journey winds down. i need the memory of magic if i am ever going to conjure magic again. i need to know and remember, and i want to tell you.”
“those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. there is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature - the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”
