write

https://allpoetry.com/So-You-Want-To-Be-A-Writer

Morning Pages Exercise

http://juliacameronlive.com/basic-tools/morning-pages/

"If beauty is simply our radiance from within projecting out, how do we let that inner light shine? How do we stroke our inner fire? How do we cultivate our radiance? An essential ingredient is acceptance; accepting ourselves exactly as we are, good and all. Our culture wants us trimmed and clipped like a well-cut lawn, but we're not manufactured, manicured mannequins. We're women! We're the embodiment of the Diving. Every hair has a purpose. Every curve is a blessing, an expression of our creative, feminine power. To deeply relax into the body, as it is, to accept and bless every hair, every mole, every freckle, every fold exactly as it should be is to embody our femininity. It's the first step to true beauty."

- Sat Purkh, Everyday Grace

Piedras sueltas
by Octavio Paz

1
Flor

El grito, el pico, el diente, los aullidos,
la nada carnicera y su barullo,
ante esta simple flor se desvanecen.


2
Dama

Todas las noches baja al pozo
y a la mañana reaparece
con un nuevo reptil entre los brazos.

3
Biografía

No lo que pudo ser:
es lo que fue.
Y lo que fue, está muerto.


4
Campanas en la noche

Olas de sombra
mojan mi pensamiento
-y no lo apagan.

5
Ante la puerta

Gentes, palabras, gentes.
Dudé un instante:
la luna arriba, sola.

6
Visión

Me vi cerrar los ojos;
espacio, espacio
donde estoy y no estoy.

7
Paisaje

Los insectos atareados,
los caballos color de sol,
los burros color de nube,
las nubes, rocas enormes que no pesan,
los montes como cielos desplomados,
la manada de árboles bebiendo en el arroyo,
todos están ahí, dichosos en su estar,
frente a nosotros que no estamos,
comidos por la rabia, por el odio,
por el amor comidos, por la muerte.

8
Analfabeto

Alcé la cara al cielo,
Inmensa piedra de gastadas letras:
Nada me revelaron las estrellas.

LOVE! LOVE! LOVE this!

"Master your mind and you can re-create your reality"  ~Sonia Ricotti

A Color of the Sky

BY TONY HOAGLAND

Windy today and I feel less than brilliant,

driving over the hills from work.

There are the dark parts on the road

                     when you pass through clumps of wood   

and the bright spots where you have a view of the ocean,   

but that doesn’t make the road an allegory.

I should call Marie and apologize

for being so boring at dinner last night,

but can I really promise not to be that way again?   

And anyway, I’d rather watch the trees, tossing   

in what certainly looks like sexual arousal.

Otherwise it’s spring, and everything looks frail;

the sky is baby blue, and the just-unfurling leaves

are full of infant chlorophyll,   

the very tint of inexperience.

Last summer’s song is making a comeback on the radio,   

and on the highway overpass,

the only metaphysical vandal in America has written   

MEMORY LOVES TIME

in big black spraypaint letters,

which makes us wonder if Time loves Memory back.

Last night I dreamed of X again.

She’s like a stain on my subconscious sheets.   

Years ago she penetrated me

but though I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed,   

I never got her out,

but now I’m glad.

What I thought was an end turned out to be a middle.   

What I thought was a brick wall turned out to be a tunnel.   

What I thought was an injustice

turned out to be a color of the sky.

Outside the youth center, between the liquor store   

and the police station,

a little dogwood tree is losing its mind;

overflowing with blossomfoam,   

like a sudsy mug of beer;

like a bride ripping off her clothes,

dropping snow white petals to the ground in clouds,

so Nature’s wastefulness seems quietly obscene.   

It’s been doing that all week:

making beauty,

and throwing it away,

and making more.

True love/gratitude > limerence

From Hamlet

Nature is fine in love, and where ’tis fine,

It sends some precious instance of itself

After the thing it loves.

-Ophelia

Felt Sense

From The Journey (Brown 1992) As cited in Chapter 14 of Lenses by Kraus (2008).

This is Tom Brown Jr. sharing how "Grandfather" described an inner vision:

"The tightness in your gut when you tried to remember but could not was your Inner Vision trying desperately to talk to you. . . . That tension, that deep gut feeling, is exactly how our inner vision tried to talk to us. Thus when the answer is finally found on a logical level, the gut reacts with the release of tension. Your greater self is so relieved that you have found an answer, an answer that it knew all the time."





Something else shared in the book is by Gendlin (1996, p.37-38).:

"the odd feeling of knowing you have forgotten something. . . . You are troubled by the felt sense. . . . Notice that you don't have factual data. You have an inner aura, an internal taste. Your body knows but you don't. . . . Then suddenly, from this felt sense, it bursts to the surface [remembering what you forgot]. Somewhere in your body, something releases, some tight thing lets go."

As I walk this line, I am bound by the other side
And it's for my heart that I'll live.

--Warpaint

Honey of My Failures

Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt --marvelous error!--
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

-Antonio Machado

"Surrender is not giving up or saying that everything is perfectly okay; it is the willingness to let yourself energetically off the hook of trying to control the outcome." ~ Shannon Kaiser

“On the day when
The weight deadens
On your shoulders
And you stumble,
May the clay dance
To balance you.

“And when your eyes
Freeze behind
The grey window
And the ghost of loss
Gets into you,
May a flock of colours,
Indigo, red, green
And azure blue,
Come to awaken in you
A meadow of delight.

“When the canvas frays
In the currach of thought
And a stain of ocean
Blackens beneath you,
May there come across the waters
A path of yellow moonlight
To bring you safely home.

“May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
May the clarity of light be yours,
May the fluency of the ocean be yours,
May the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow
Wind work these words
Of love around you,
An invisible cloak
To mind your life.”

― John O’Donohue from To Bless the Space Between Us

The lavender lays
no longer scented.

Just like you.

They say it's bad feng shui
leaving dead things around,

yet the sprig lies on my altar.

Lies. altar, alter.


You're alive,
but not with me.

Ce n'est pas moi qui chante
c'est les fleurs que j'ai vues
ce n'est pas moi qui ris
c'est le vin que j'ai bu
ce n'est pas moi qui pleure
c'est mon amour perdu.

Jacques Prevert

Translation:

This is not me singing
it's the flowers that I saw
it's not me who laugh
it is the wine that I drank
this is not me crying
this is my lost love.

Mother Earth

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/radical-conservation/2015/aug/04/plants-intelligent-sentient-book-brilliant-green-internet?CMP=fb_gu

Obsessed

Leaves of Grass by Whitman

I took my time with this short, stellar book.  I read the 1855 original edition with a intro by Malcolm Cowley.  When you're ready for this piece, you're ready!  Take your time with it, it's funner that way.

Here are a few of my favorite lines:

pg. 28
"Loafe with me on the grass .... loose the stop from your throast,
Not words, not music or rhyme I want .... not custom or lecture,
not even the best,
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice."


pg. 75 
"Dancing yet through the streets in a phallic procession..."


pg. 104 
"I swear I see not that every thing has an eternal soul!
The trees have, rooted in the ground .... the weeds of the sea
have .... the animals.

I swear I think there is nothing but immortality!
That the exquisite scheme is for it, and the nebulous float is for it 
and the cohering is for it,
And all preparation is for it .. and identity is for it .. and life and death are for it."


pg. 119
"There is something in staying close to men and women and looking
on them and in the contact and odor of them that pleases the
soul well,
All things please the soul, but these please the soul well."


pg. 141
"And that I grew six feet high .... and that I have become a man 
thirty-six years old in 1855 .... and that I am here anyhow - 
are all equally wonderful;
And that my soul embraces you this hour, and we affect each other
without ever seeing each other, and never perhaps to see each
other, is every bit as wonderful"


pg. 145
"Great is life .. and real and mystical .. wherever and whoever,
Great is death .... Sure as life holds all parts together, death holds
all parts together;
Sure as the stars return again after they merge in the light, death is 
great as life."