"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."