My Most Beautiful Thing

Today I’m taking part in the My Most Beautiful Thing Blogsplash to celebrate
beautiful things – inspired by Fiona Robyn’s new novel, “The Most Beautiful Thing”.  Bloggers from all over the world are taking part and writing or posting pictures of their most beautiful things today.  Find out more and see other blog posts at :  http://www.writingourwayhome.com/2012/04/my-most-beautiful-thing-blogsplash.html

My Most Beautiful Thing

A pink velvet day.  The rapturous glow of tulip magnolias.  The air is fresh with sunbeams after a sudden shower.  One tree in particular calls to me.  I walk over and behold its enormous lotus shaped blossoms, votives of delicate fire.  It is a candelabra of corollas singing light to the world.  I feel a presence of song entering

A thousand petals–
I hear them
shining the air pink

On the sidewalk and the grass beneath the tree, hundreds of petals have fallen.  I look up at the tree and the flowers still sitting on the branches, glorious and full.  I notice that the petals on the ground make an exquisite pattern of pink and green and cream.  I wonder about this separation, the brokenness of the flowers

flowered grass
looking at flowered tree
looking at
flowered grass
wholeness, when apart

I am dreamy standing here with this artist of spring.  Color above and color below.  A single cloud passes over to block the sun, another lotus, this one shape-shifting in blue.  I pick up one of the fallen petals and put it in my pocket.  I don’t want to forget.  Before leaving

a magnolia light breaks through this moment’s petalstar
I float away

Beauty is a way of seeing.
When we see beauty,
we call more beauty into being.

Friday Bliss

Joining the Friday Bliss Party

http://blog.livlane.com/2012/04/little-bliss-list/

Spring Tankas

sunshine road
out of this twilight heart–
a dalliance
with daffodils and daisies
carries me most of the way

_______________

the tree
of camellias
rejoicing–
I am loved
inside their song

_______________

studying
the blue clouds
I make a wish–
a rainbow ride
to the sun

Simplicity

The Donkey and the Sea

In my dream I am walking up a long white path with a donkey:  yellow sun and blue sky.  We wander to the top of the hill with the Grecian blue sea breathing silently behind us.  At the high point, a simple turning back toward the water.  We face a blue that goes on forever.  I feel as if the donkey sees something in the tea-cup waves.  I turn to look at him; thick white clouds surround his coffee bean eyes.  He doesn’t blink, doesn’t give anything away.  I return my gaze to blue space.  Time does not pass–it sits with us like an old friend on a park bench.  If there is wind, I do not feel it.  The air is warm with salt.  A thought floats by:

I want simplicity

blue and white
satisfied by spaciousness
sun over sea

Worship

What do you worship?

Beauty, God, Words, Love, Money, Children, Work, Cynicism?

I read this excerpt from a commencement speech from David Foster Wallace:

“You get to decide what to worship.  Because here’s something else that’s weird but true:  In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism.  There is no such thing as not worshipping.  Everybody worships.  The only choice we get is what to worship.  And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type of thing to worship – be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles-is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.”

____________________________

I have never thought about worship in quite this way.  But it rings true.  I know that when I worship someone’s physical beauty or youth, I can fall into a negative spiral of comparison.  When I worship someone’s intellect, I can all too easily feel stupid, inferior, inadequate.  If I worship material things, I can feel deprived, like I never have enough.  If I worship things that ultimately don’t align with my values, I live out of harmony with my nature.

To live our values requires effort and intention and renewing these on a daily basis.

Here is a poem I wrote today as part of my effort.  I give thanks to the German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, for teaching me about worship.

Dear Rilke,

You taught me what to worship.
Temples in longing, harps in the sound of rain.

Night-sky a road or orchard or doorway.
Love shattering the heart into stars.

In sadness I now go to the well.
Dark water speaks, from listening:  a white flower.

Your poems give the sustenance of light.
Hunger falls away, the bread is delicious.

With you, revelation is always near.
Even the silence blooms.

In gratitude, I write toward this brilliance.
My palms in the shape of a tree.

Becoming

Being open to change and possibility is much easier when on vacation, especially in the expansive warmth and color of Hawaii.

I recently returned from a yoga and dance retreat on the Big Island.  While in this tropical garden, I lived closely to the rhythms of nature, watching the sun rise over the ocean and breathing in the ancient light of the stars.  Whenever I am away from my everyday life, I seem to have greater clarity about what nurtures my soul, who I am becoming and what I want to contribute to the world.  Nevertheless, upon return, there is no escaping the realities and challenges of living life artfully in the midst of work, laundry, bills, responsibilities.

Carl Jung said, “We humans are always becoming something and being afraid to become”.

I couldn’t agree with this more.  We are not static beings with fixed identities.  We are always adapting, changing and with a little intention and luck, evolving as we age.  Despite knowing this, becoming is not easy.  We have to take risks, challenge our fears, go against the status quo of our own minds.  So far, I think the effort is worth it.

Here is a poem I wrote while in Hawaii.  It is an attempt to come to terms with fear and what I want to become.  For me, I am most interested in becoming a person who brings inspiration and healing to the world through the beautiful and sacred power of language.

How about you?  Who do you want to become?  Are you attending to this, at least a few minutes of each day?  I hope so.

A Little Talk with Fear

It is evening and I sit in the tree
the round one bursting with the color of lime.

The stars are whispering.  I hear their secrets
downdrifting through space

and the night frogs croak ceaselessly
with their response.

I take a deep breath, sweet thickness of coconut air,
and I say:

Fear, it is time.  Time for you, little trapped hummingbird
that you are, to fly out of my heart

and into the world
where you can be held by something bigger

like the seashore or the breeze
or the altar of this ancient earth.

I thank you, Fear, for all that you have done.
You have kept me safe and I know

I cannot live without you.  I hear you say:
friendship is the key, dishonesty must go.

It is morning and I sit at the point
immersed in the ceremony of gold.

The sun rises in the east, so this is the direction I turn.
I lift my hands to the sky and give this tender fear to the flower

the radiant one coming up just now, touching the water.
Who do I want to become?

The ocean shimmers a silky light:  green   violet   rose.
And the hummingbird floats, cradled in this music

this music of beauty, I want to sing.

Sunrise: Photograph taken by Melina Meza

“There is in us an instinct for newness, for renewal, for a liberation of creative power.  We seek to awaken in ourselves a force which really changes our lives from within.  And yet the same instinct tells us that this change is a recovery of that which is deepest, most original, most personal in ourselves.  To be born again it not to become somebody else, but to become ourselves.”

- Thomas Merton

Poemflakes Falling

The snow is falling here in Seattle!  A few poemflakes marking my passage through this week.

On a white morning I sit in front of the white page.  With each moment thoughts poke their tiny heads out of the winter den and retreat back to the warmth of curved darkness.  The stillness of snow patiently painting the earth promises the hue of solitude and I am given a place to rest.  I let go into the falling of light and feel the dream carrying me to the ground beyond the ground.

In every snowflake
a blue star distilled, its wish
hidden in the silence

_____________________________

A blue-silver light
pulls me in to the outside
snowfall, each flake
falls through the portal, the one
opening just now–my spirit.

_____________________________

Snowfall

To let go into purpose
is to be lost in the right direction.

As a snowfall gives
it takes you away from yourself
and your joy is carried
from the periphery
to the center
of a most delicate order.

The day is black and white
but you are glittering silver.

Falling like snow
be an emissary of light,
get lost in the twirling
and don’t worry
about finding the ground.

________________________

Feeling lost today
aimless without anywhere
to go, so I look
at the branches heavy with snow
and they show me how to rest.

________________________

White on green grass
the first snowfall of winter;
happy to see clouds
giving soft serenity
to the flow of ceaseless time.

HappySad Solstice

Tags

meister eckart, winter solstice

We are nearing winter solstice, the shortest day and the longest night of the year.  Last year we had a full moon and a lunar eclipse.  This year, we are nearing the new moon on solstice which means a darker sky, but with the potential to see more stars.  It is the potential that darkness offers, to see unforgettable beauty, that pulls my attention toward this particular moment of midwinter.

Reflecting on darkness, I remember many cold nights in Juneau, Alaska, sitting next to a bonfire on the beach.  I watched with my mouth dropped open–wide as the black night–the Aurora Borealis crackling its wild green flames against the winter sky.

And a warmer memory, but no less dark, was a night I went diving in the Andaman Sea.  I did not expect to see anything that night; however, beneath the surface waves, I discovered the exquisite dance of phosphorous and water.  Fairy dust.  A slowed down dream of silver on silver.  Magic sprinkling through the underworld like an incantation.

I have also seen, more times than I can count, eyes gleaming like emeralds after a long bout of tears.

Darkness reveals its own light and beauty, if we are open to receiving its unique gifts.  Not only in the outside world, but inside our difficulties, our sorrows, our darknesses.  With a generosity of receiving toward all that existence brings to us, our potential for making contact with these shiny gifts widens.

Meister Eckart said,

“Truly, it is in the darkness that one finds the light,
so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us.”

No matter what you are facing this solstice, sheer joy or a deep sadness, or something in between, may you find the light that is closest to you.

What can you see in the darkness?

____________________________

Here is a poem I wrote during a dark time in my life.  The light did crack through in the process of writing the poem and each time I read it and share it anew.

Night in the Flower

In the night of matter black flowers blossom – Gaston Bachelard

When the sea rose to cover the land
I was there too, with the trees
And the grasses and the ebony air
All of us sinking like stones.

I cried out to the sea with a sea
Of my own, but nothing could stop it
Nocturnal surges capsized rootedness
Snakes of salt strangled me to a seed.

Bones floated by like disoriented fish
I grasped at their haunted buoyancy
I entered a feeling of escape
but the liquid fortress hardened.

Then weeds and moss and roots
Tangled-up, lost spiders in my hair
Violent currents pulled from all directions
At once and deeper I fell.

I arrived beyond the comfort of matter
Here, all friction, all edges disappeared
Nothing below, nothing above
No thing inside or outside to name.

And in the depths of dissolving and
Remaining, I heard the voice of the water
Rendering itself through this lonely shroud
I drank in her cryptic murmurs

The black tomb cracked.

Releasing Light

Early in the morning, I look out the window.  It is dark and raining.  I search the backyard to see what is visible.   I know the apple, pear and holly trees are there, but right now they are indistinguishable dark shapes, blurring with each other and the blue-black sky.   The artist looks at the landscape, sees what is there, and waits for the inner and outer landscapes to meet.  Something new emerges.

Art has the potential to wake us up, to help us see ourselves and life anew.   When we experience delight in something beautiful or strange, when our perspective shifts and suddenly we see the world with a wider range of colors than we did before, we have expanded our capacity for love.  And I don’t mean love in the romantic sense of the word, although this could be included.  Rather, I’m talking about love and deep appreciation for our lives and all that we find in it.

The impressionist painters had a term, “releasing light”, to describe the work they were trying to do.  In this sense, the painter’s work consists in studying the object—a human face, a building in shadows, a vase full of blue clematis–and waiting for it to release its hidden store of light.   One can imagine this light didn’t always release easily or quickly.  A certain amount of faith and steadfastness must have been required.

The Sun in the Fog - Monet

We are all artists of our lives.  Each one of us has the potential to “release light” from things in the world and from within ourselves.  We need to make time and space to do this well.  We need nourishment for our imaginations.  In one of Van Gogh’s letters to his brother Theo, he talked about the importance of going out into the world with his canvas, regardless of the weather, to come closer to the life he wanted to paint.  He believed that one had to get out of the studio and find nourishment for the imagination from the reality.

I believe that when we feel nourished–light is released.  And vice versa, when light is released we feel more nourished, alive, able to love and be generous, to experience deep contentment with simple pleasures.

Have you left your studio today (office, house, your busy mind)?  How do you nourish your imagination?  Have you been outside to see if a garden, or a tree, or the delicate crystals of frost on your windshield might have something to say?

Here is the poem I discovered today, after waiting and watching and yes–a few moments of actually feeling the rain on my face.  I was lucky, a brilliant light revealed itself and I was there to see it.

Waiting

Waiting
all day in the rain

black crow
yellow maple

the light is dull and grayish-brown

not red like the sun of the cloud’s dream

not knowing if this
waiting
will bring answers

or revelation
some secret promise
bending through the cracks

what is there

what is seen

like the rain
of silver
and blue diamonds
of wild silk

shimmering now through the maple
now through the crow

The Highest of Arts

“To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts”  Thoreau

And this is what I intend to do here, to affect the quality of the day, yours and mine, by sharing inspirations through the beautiful power of language.

I intend to share my own poetry, poems I have translated from the Spanish language, and hopefully some wild and reflective wanderings in the exquisite forests of philosophy, literature, art, psychology, culture and travel.

Yes, I aspire to find new treasures in the simple things, like the frost on bamboo and the shimmering aliveness of yams and kale at the market.  I’d also like to grope around in the darkness and if I’m lucky, throw a wee bit of light onto the more complex areas of life:  love, death, freedom, faith, truth–to name a few.

To affect the quality of the day, I believe we must slow down and pay close attention to the world, notice what we see and how it affects us.

Radiance and luminiosity and sacredness are everywhere.

The art of finding these qualities in life depends upon our capacity to get quiet, to listen, to let go of the things in our minds and actions in our days that are not life-enhancing.

Octavio Paz asked, “Wouldn’t it be better to turn life into poetry rather than to make poetry from life?”

My hope is that the words and images you find here will help us do both; to live life as art, to create poetic moments with a cup of tea or a smile, and to find expressions through language that connect us indelibly to the world and our precious lives within it.

I’ll end my first post with a little poem about a walk.

A November Walk

Tangerine light bursting a cold sweetness.

The air made of ginger.

A man rides by slowly, pink face red bicycle.

Leaves, yellow and red

layer the grasses with the grief of trees.

From a pale faraway blue, I hear

winter whispering closer.