Monday, September 12, 2011

vale


unconditional goodness
kindness
a gentle place



music by charles tomlinson griffes vale of dreams

Monday, September 5, 2011

little fingers


i remember
your soft little fingers
buried deep in the flesh
of my palm

our first walk

i remember
the thrill of knowing
that you were mine
and then entirely yourself

alone
together
side-by-side
my pace slowed
to match yours
until you were older
and your hand rarely met mine
and your pace
matched so well
that we were like
each other's shadows

walking
and talking
about matters so removed
from our immediacy
that i wondered
how you could know
about such things
let alone
talk about them
and it was then
that i looked up
and saw you again
for the first time


Sunday, August 28, 2011

flow


after a long silence brought about by my inability to maintain a state of silence within myself for even the shortest period of time as i failed miserably to reconcile the terms of my outer life with those of my inner life
i am bringing this blog back to a life it retreated from in may of this year
when i celebrated the life and music of gil scott-heron.

as the older sister of a blog also long dormant entitled "gone to earth", "flow" holds a place in my heart with
its purpose being to share insight accompanied by images of simple beauty. i welcome other possibilities and have a sense that they may need voice and so - here i am.

where the mother blog "the golden fish" posts on a daily basis, "flow" has a more relaxed approach to posts being driven by what makes itself available to the writer.

welcome back to those of you who have maintained the connection and to those of you new here - welcome!

Sunday, May 29, 2011

i'm new here


two versions
of the same song

could it be that twins
are as convergent
and divergent as this?

could it be that music
was never meant
to emerge from one mouth
one pair of hands

that in its
own telling of the story of itself
it knows no map
to define its journey

follows no signposts
that don't lead away from itself

this song

the words of a man
sung by a man
acccompanied by a man

tell the story of the space
between who we are
and who we wish to be
and then of how
those places
are inseparable

my love to gil's family and friends and admirers who felt his wings as he flew away yesterday



with credits to "smog".

Sunday, May 15, 2011

with enough rain


these stones
placed as carefully as stones will allow

i can call each one
a day
a moment
an experience

i can imagine
each stone
has been placed
to contain the soil
of my self

with enough rain
those stones will bulge outwards
and collapse
revealing the rich world
they have so succesfully contained

Thursday, May 5, 2011

glitch too


the monotone thread
courses harshly through the braided
and woven
involuted edges
of music with
internal parabolas
that arc without meeting
and just as suddenly
coalesce
and deliquesce

Brian Eno - glitch (taken from Drums Between The Bells)

Sunday, May 1, 2011

glitch


in the fragmented instant
a beauty reveals itself
the source image is destroyed

reinventing itself before our eyes
each tiny shape
a revelation
a painting

the whole
an unlikely gallery of possibilities

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

his heart


they race blindly along rain-softened red brick alleyways,
the breeze of their passing like silk threads through an ever-expanding eyelet.

turning a right angled corner, she stops.
her arms stretch like soft arrows from the bow of her shoulders.
she extends one leg behind her.
holding the moment, holding the pose, she slowly turns her head as he rounds the corner still running.

his heart races ahead of him - a kaleidoscopic candy-iced orb.

she allows her many-ringed and hennaed hand to descend to her hip.

like a pollen-covered bee, she gently extracts herself from the pose
and then walking towards him
kisses his mouth.

her mouth blooms with a sudden flowering of vanilla, cumin, cherries.

the thin blue-grey edge of a rope of candle smoke circles their heads.

Monday, April 25, 2011

it all returns



the leaves at the bottom of the pool
shift slowly
side to side
unsettled
in the soft pale brown
of their decaying brothers and sisters

all memories
lost

each gently pushed and pulled
by the rain the wind and the sun
as they await their return to their mother and father's bodies

Friday, April 15, 2011

return to life


as the doors to spring are flung wide open, the rain, the sun, the birds and animals come rushing through.
it's overwhelming. learning to listen, to see, to smell, to feel, to taste -
well it's like christmas and a birthday rolled into one!

the world returns to life once again.
gradually.


"what shall we do for the boy who prevented the world from coming to an end?"
asked the good-natured corncrake.

"nothing," said the wagtail. do nothing at all for him."

"i'll sing for him," said the goldfinch.

"i'll teach him what the birds say," said the crow.

"yes, yes, yes," said all the birds in the king's garden.

the boy had not gone far when the crow flew after him and lighted on his shoulder. the crow spoke to him in the boy's own language. the boy was surprised. the crow flew to a standing stone
and went on speaking plain words to him.

"oh," said the boy, "i didn't know you could speak."

"why shouldn't i know how to speak," said the crow, "haven't i, for a hundred years and more,
been watching men and listening to their words?

"and you can speak well, ma'am," said the boy, not forgetting his manners.

"you know one language, but i know many languages," said the crow, "for i know what people say,
and i know what all the birds say."

the old crow sat there looking so wise and so friendly that the boy began to talk to her at his ease.
and after a while the boy said, "ma'am, do you think i could ever learn what the birds say?"

"you would, if you had me to teach you," said the crow.

"and will you teach me, ma'am?" said the boy.

"i will," said the crow.

then every day after that the crow would sit upon the standing stone and the boy would stand beside it. when the crow had eaten the boiled potato that the boy always brought she would tell him about the languages of the different birds. he learnt the language of this bird and that bird, and as he learnt their languages, many's and many's the good story he heard them tell each other.


illustration and text excerpted from "the boy who knew what the birds said" by padraic colum

Saturday, April 9, 2011

i draw hope



i draw hope in
pencil-thin scratchy tracings
lines that meander
from purpose
to insight
smudged and smeared
shaded for depth
coloured to appeal
then tucked away in a drawer

Saturday, March 26, 2011

hopefulness


among the soft words of the place
i know as home
so many are spoken
so kindly
so truthfully
that they compel through their mere existence
the need to be addressed

among them and most especially i know
the voice that passes through me
and honouring that voice
amid the turbulent divergence
and diversions
that i know as life
gives me hope

hope sings its song
in the language of every listener
shaping its body to the form of the cup
from which i drink
of life's experiencing

hope asks me to see
by the flickering candle flame that is the short-lived gift of my life
the great and small possibilities
that i am
and to love and respect
each as fully as my very own children

hope compels me
to embrace
my reflection
in the wine
that is this world

Saturday, March 19, 2011

circulation

to see the possibility of what i intuited could happen so many years ago when i mistakenly assumed that the emerging digital connection was the very edge of what was possible or even necessary . . .

a manifestation of connectedness that speaks in one voice through many hands, minds, and hearts


the guitar circle of europe ~ circulation

Saturday, March 12, 2011

possibilities


when i see myself stopped

and consider
the harmony or dissonance
in the echoes of my actions

when i watch myself stopped
and see the sometimes synchronous sometimes chaotic
dance of my choices
swirling outwards and intersecting
even melding
with the choices of others

i'm drawn into the kaleidoscope
of real and imagined worlds
possibilities
and actualities

even as they fall
around me like rain
and soak into the soil of this world's becoming self





Thursday, March 3, 2011

benevolence



trees love themselves and extend that knowing of love into their sense of all othernesses
in whatever form they may take.

i know this as loving kindness.
it's a pairing of words that bears reflection and consideration.

loving kindness.

loving kindness allows for the possibility of a state of care that is unconcerned
with like or dislike, right or wrong.

loving kindness is entirely present in the possibility that maybe, just maybe, everything, all things,
are features, perhaps even signs pointing to the process of love that emerges unimaginably
and without condition from a creative moment we express as "the creation".

the creation manifests in our own experiencing as a sort of creative infinitude that embraces the tiniest plankton, the most ancient joshua tree, the most beautiful sunset and everything in-between,
despite and other.

all are expressions of love.

the creation is an unfolding gift within which it is possible to refine the presence of the soul that in this incarnation manifests as the youness of you.

and so as i stand on a streetcorner (as i did this very day) and watch the sun break through clouds painted pale violet and the softest of sienna and (if you can imagine)
turning my head ever so slightly to look further south
i watch a frostbow form and see the colours that will become spring fall to the earth

i am keenly aware of the finite features of my bodies' life and then the ebb and flow of the seasons and the larger cycles of our planet which in turn sing of the orbiting of the worlds comprising our very tiny place in this universe which even as it becomes and fills the space in its plentitude is already aware of the necessity of its return to the essence of love from which it exploded.

please understand that the extraordinary and almost unbearably beautiful forms that i am so graced to share this place with leave me filled with the overwhelming compulsion and desire to share the deep feelings of gratitude and awe that i would wish to contain but whose ownership i cannot isolate and so as an echo of the unconditional loving kindness which they reflect, i choose to share them inside my emerging understanding here.

Monday, February 28, 2011

ashore

charles sprague pearce reading by the shore


she brought herself to this place
already knowing
the nonchalant pose
even the title of the book being read

~

last night
she had been reading poetry
and drinking wine
alone
in a small candle-shadowed apartment
drifting aimlessly

in that moment of then
the air moved slowly
through an open window

she could see
rain
falling
thick and golden
in the gaslight flare

~

in this moment of now
she is remembering

holding the rice paper umbrella's
lacquered stiffness
and forming
soft words with her eyes

sand and water
whispering
its coming and going

and she lies
still
as if washed ashore
tangled and overlooked
like so much seaweed


Thursday, February 17, 2011

smooth


if you polish the rough edges off
the outside of my inside
does some of the surface smoothness
descend inside?


Friday, February 11, 2011

to be becoming


there are places of confluence
of intersection
placess of mutual support
and places
that slow growth
until we move past

and looking back
at each
as a waystation
a place
in which we were negotiating
our path

looking back
at each
as a place in which
our intentions
were forestalled
altered
modified
halted
or sent
in an entirely unexpected direction

we can see
these places
as layers
that have over time
settled beneath the surface
of our experiencing

perhaps still affecting
our trajectory
our path


we are what we were
to be becoming

Friday, February 4, 2011

a place of silence



i have a strong sense
of passing through this place
in the life i am living as steven


but i know that i am not steven
well, not exclusively
not precisely
not only

i know that
steven is "i"

the first few layers

i also know
that unpacking the "i" of steven
you'll find a collection of maps
of the knowing of himself
as perceived by himself
and then also
as perceived by others

steven is a history of events and ideas
that have been borrowed
and assembled
to create something
that is
almost an object
as real as can be sensed by the senses
felt by the heart
and known by the mind

but pull all of that away
and put it
in the drawer
of the one great moment

and i bet that there's a silence
deeper than any winter woods

no tell-tale footprints left behind
whose stories can be tracked and told

no fluttering of the wings of worldly wisdom

no birdsongs of revelation

just a place of silence

~

i am the wind that wavers
you are the certain land
i am the shadow that passes
over the sand

italicized words excerpted from "i am the wind" by zoe akins

Friday, January 28, 2011

the wooden hill

the paint on the front door
is older than my eyes

pushing against the door's heavy body
i follow
the staircase's cautious winding
upwards
and away from the street

edward hopper stairway at 48 rue de lille, paris

moving side-to-side
i can hear the soft giving creak
and feel the curved metal edge
of each stair

my hands curl and
grip the thick softness of the railing
even as my tongue
draws thickly against
cracked dry lips
that crave nothing more
than wine
bread
and sleep

on the landing
the number seven
tilts slightly
on a red door
thick with age

the smells of cooked cabbage
and fish
swim grey and thin
in air long-yellowed
and tarnished
by hope long forgotten

pressing the key
into the lock
the handle turns reluctantly
admitting me through its dark frame

i am home

the frayed signposts
of a well-worn track
lead
toward the window

through which
i see snow
painting the softest pale-grey
light on the rooftops

pressing my lips to the window
i watch my breath
spread outwards like an island
on a glassy sea

gustav caillebotte rooftops with snow

Saturday, January 22, 2011

every window a wall, every wall a window

norman clark from an upstairs window




i am
sent outside
to play

on this dove grey sunday morning
even the sun is cold

behind me my mother
watches from the upstairs window
her sight of me
framed by
cream and butter yellow curtains
filmed with coal soot
and soft with dust

.

i like to let my sight of the world
be framed
by the garden walls

each moss-coated brick
has stories
of migrations
flowerings
fairy tales

but even the walls are silent

caught
like me
in the hollowness
of this day

.

the ground is frost hardened
and tumbling with hummocky grass

if he were still here
it would have flattened
under the weight
of his lawn roller
each blade
would have known the sharp snick of his shears

.

the sudden flapping of wings
draws my eyes skyward
where tendril branches
grope across the grey expanse
each in search of its opposite

the wind is the music for a sort of dance
and i find my own arms and legs
waving and flailing
until
self-conscious i stop
and slowing my breathing
pat the dog's head

he looks at me
with orange-brown eyes
as if seeking something

i think that if he could speak
he'd explain so much of all of this

.

the cold finds its way past my clothes
so i turn and open the door to the shed

inside
the darkness is comforting
a single window leaks light
onto workbenches
furred with shavings

the sweet smells of cedar
and machine oiled metal
weave in orange and blue threads

i sit on the floor
and think of my father
and my grandfather

they worked here

they both dreamed of the inexplicable immensity
of this place

this world of worlds
within and without

bisected by the single thin thread of work


sitting on the floor
of the wooden shed
i sit still and listen
to the sounds
rising from other gardens

Thursday, January 13, 2011

the song



in the bowed strings
of a day

the consonant braids
with the dissonant

the whole
sees its mirror
in the part

and the song
that is the passage of my soul
through this world
melds
seamlessly
with all others

in a place
defined entirely
by silence


~


"music is the wine that fills the cup of silence. "


visual prompt provided by tess kincaid at magpie tales

Sunday, January 9, 2011

closer

charles sprague pearce solitude


each small puff of dust at footfall
the hovering hush of late-summer grass
all the feather borne spectral threads of birdsong

are like bookmarks
holding the page

containing the revelation

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

small birds

andrew wyeth wind from the sea


small birds
and tiny flowers
etched like frost on the waving silk

-

pale grey birds and flowered shadows
chase
around her candlelit room

-

rutted parabolas
mark the route
of his departure
across
the pale yellow field

-

her eyes
find the dark corners

Saturday, January 1, 2011

robert fripp live at the world trade centre dec. 4. 2010



music courtesy of wnyc.