Three in Italy

When I think of a trio, I think of the Three Stooges, the three blind mice, or Peter, Paul and Mary. My mind is a curious place. So there’s no telling how this post might have turned out. Fortunately, when I started browsing my photos in response to the Weekly Photo Challenge, “Trio,” I found this beauty, which I think you will agree surpasses Larry, Moe, and Curly Joe.

 

These gorgeous statues usually stand over the famous “Gates of Paradise” of the Saint John Baptistery in Florence, Italy, but when I took this photograph they were at an exhibit at the Duomo in the center of the city.

The figures depict the Baptism of Christ, and were created by Andrea Sansovino between 1501 and 1503. It must have broken his heart, but he wasn’t able to complete his commission, so Christ and John the Baptist were completed by Vincenzo Danti. The angel wasn’t completed until 1752 by Innocenzo Spinazzi.

Nice, huh?

Click on the Trio photo challenge link above and check out the stunning picture of three redrock formations in the Utah desert.

 

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A Beautiful but Dangerous Frame of Mind

I saw it yesterday, the very image you are requesting. Powerful is too tame a word for it; the whole world was transformed — dramatic and primal, beautiful and dangerous at the same time. 

Standing on my screened porch, which had seemed perfectly safe and sturdy until that moment, I watched the storm blow in. The trees were dead-still one minute and then whipping about the next, as if a wind-snake of monstrous proportions were writhing and whirling overhead. 

Quiet. Then chaotic. Then calm again. Then wild. Branches squealed and moaned. My skin tingled and my heart raced. 

“Don’t be silly,” I told myself, “you love storms.” 

Fear. Dread. Tornadoes. Falling trees. 

I weenied out and went inside. I clicked on Facebook, a safe and familiar refuge. The screen flashed a dozen photos — Check out this rainbow! Go outside NOW and see the rainbow! Double rainbow! Gorgeous sunset through the black clouds!

I looked out the window. Black as death. No sign of any other color. My friend texted from a pub three blocks away — “did u c the rainbow?” I looked out again — the black was turning charcoal grey, but I saw no rainbows. Thunder rumbled.

I clicked on a few random articles — gun rights and transgendered rights and women’s rights and civil rights — and then looked out the window again. The entire sky had turned a brilliant gold in a matter of minutes. I don’t mean that muddy yellow you see before a tornado, I mean an intense you-have-died-and-gone-to-heaven golden blaze.

The color you never see in the real world except in those landscapes from the Hudson River School painters like Frederic Edwin Church, Thomas Cole, and Albert Bierstadt.

Bierstadt; Sierra Nevadas
Wikipedia Commons

As the gold faded and the sun reached the horizon, the sky turned pink, then scarlet, and then rich plum. And then the stars ventured out.

So, WordPress Daily Prompt, you want me to paint my current mood onto a canvas and tell you what the painting would look like? That was it. Yesterday’s storm. 

Black and grey and magnificent gold and radiant scarlet, changing moment by moment and sometimes all at the same time. Deep and primal; menacing, yet captivating. 

You know there’s a rainbow, but you can’t see it yet.

I know this canvas. This is my painting. This is grief, six months, two weeks, and two days after my brother’s passing.  

The Music of Life: A Poem and a Picture

I’ve mentioned before that I don’t consider myself a poet. I wouldn’t know an iambic if it bit me in the pentameter. Nevertheless, I do from time to time write things with funny line breaks. So here, for your reading pleasure, is one of those things.

First, here is the lovely painting that inspired it, “Morning Music Detail” by Rod MacIver at Heron Dance art studio.

Sing Life

Sad? Sing.

Sing despair, sing way deep.

Sing anger at Mystery;

Sing loud into Empty.

 

Afraid? Sing.

Sing lost, sing hollow.

Whistle, if that helps;

Whistle into  Alone.

 

Joyful? Sing. Sing!

Sing light, sing golden.

Sing honey into Our Oneness;

Sing laughter at Big Questions.

 

Confused? Might as well . . .

Sing high, sing low.

Sing “How should I know?”

 

Bored? Hum.

Hum monotone, if you must;

Still, hum.

Cool Stuff I Saw in the Woods

I wasn’t going to mention God in this post. I just wanted to share some cool pictures. Really. I know I’ve been doing a lot of God-posts lately, and I don’t want to alienate anyone. But what the hell.

God in the Woods

One of the main reasons I believe in God is because of the natural world. I came to know God outside in the woods, without any holy books or parental guidance or Sunday School teachers. When I see the damage “the church” did to many of my friends who grew up in the Christian tradition — all the healing and deconstruction of beliefs they’ve had to do — I’m very glad that I met God in nature before I ever cracked open a Bible or sat in a pew.

Still, there’s good stuff in that musty old black book. Here’s something that Paul, one of the first followers of Jesus, wrote in a letter to early Christians in Rome: “Ever since the creation of the world, God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things God has made.”

(I know, I know, this brings up creation vs. evolution, which I humbly deem barely worth a parenthetical mention. God invented evolution. Why is this so hard?)

Paul’s not my fave biblical guy – his words have caused a lot of trouble. Being a human, he had his own issues to deal with, but even worse, his words are often taken out of their cultural context, and used as a weapon by people who are trying to make themselves the ultimate arbiter of truth. Used in this way, Paul’s words have done untold damage to women, gay people, marriages, and people who don’t call Jesus by name.

Rembrandt did a number of paintings of the Apostle Paul – this one’s my favorite.

But Paul’s words to the Romans ring true through the millennia.

“Ever since the creation of the world, God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things God has made.”

Here is some divine artistry:

Mushrooms are Funny; Lichen are Awesome

Here’s a helpful tidbit from Wikianswers: “Why are mushrooms called mushrooms?” someone queries.

“Because that’s what they are called. That’s the way it’s meant to be. Mushrooms are funny.”

Thanks for that.

Frilly Fungus

Solar Flares on Fungus

Totally LOVE lichen – the idea that algae and fungus at one point decided to get together to form one organism, a sort of co-organism, makes me happy. The alga brings chlorophyll to the relationship, so it does the photosynthesis thing and passes energy to the fungus; the fungus offers roots, which draw minerals and water from rocks and plants. Lichen can grow just about anywhere – from cooling lava to frozen rock and tundra.

Stunning Symbiosis

Brown Frog, Red Moon

Here’s a frog. You can’t do photos of God’s fun creations without including a frog. Look how tiny he is in the leaves, and how perfectly camouflaged!

Camouflaged Critter

Here’s a blurry red moon that kind of looks like a Van Gogh if you squint your eyes. And no, it’s not the apocalypse – I messed with the color.

Red Moon

I Don’t Like Poetry, but I’ve Written Some

I recently went to a prose poetry workshop at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda. An oxymoron, right? I thought that prose and poetry were by definition different animals. Not anymore, not in the postmodern era when anyone gets to do whatever they want and call it whatever they want.

Prose poetry is basically poetic prose – regular ol’ writing with some of the elements of poetry, like rhythm and repetition and word imagery and  “compression,” which means getting rid of extra words. Obviously the latter is not something I’ve mastered. (Compressed that would read: I blather.)

I was excited to learn about this literary form; it changes the way I think about poetry and makes it more accessible.

I have never understood poetry and always wondered why writers can’t just say what they mean without getting all complicated and obtuse.

In recent years, I’ve come to appreciate poetry (or at least poets) through the Johns Hopkins Masters Writing program . . . but only the teensiest bit. I still have a problem with poetry, but at least I know it’s my problem, not the poet’s.

In fact, I want to be a poet. Then I could wear a beret, right?

Which is why prose poetry is good news for people like me. I love playing with words and sounds and flow and metaphor. Perhaps we non-poets can aspire to poetry?

Anyway, in celebration of doing whatever I want and calling it whatever I want (hey, in summer anything goes), I’m going to share these with you and call them poetry.

Planet Prose Poetry

Night Magic

A winking airplane is as magical as a firefly

If at first you think

it is a firefly.

Renewal

Where the trees stood,

Before the chainsaws came to kill,

Now raspberries and wildflowers grow

And deer come to eat.

Oh Well

The wells don’t dry up anymore,

And I can shower in August

Since the flooding began.

Climate change, they say.

Oh well.

I can shower in August.

Hello?

On the crest of the mountain

Grow two cell phone towers painted blue and green

To match the sky and trees.

How stupid

Do they think we are?

Thanks for humoring me. Poets among you — I would love your feedback in the comments!

Online Dating as a Creative Process

Reading about creativity is way easier than actually creating something, just as messing about on a dating website is way easier than going on a date.

Today I’ve been reading about art as process, rather than product; about how our consumer mindset cramps our creativity by asking questions like, “Where is this idea going?” or “How might this direction help my career?”

creativity (Photo credit: Sean MacEntee) Creative Commons

Fine questions for a certain time and place, but there’s a time in the creative process – the writing process, in my case – when you have to let your wild woman/man be in charge. No judge, no editor, just gut.

You can read a superb essay by Betty S. Flowers about this artistic process here.

Asking “What is this going to be?” might be asking for a creative block. It tells your curiosity and sense of fun that they are not welcome.

“When we focus on process, our creative life retains a sense of adventure,” says Julia Cameron. “Focused on product, the same creative life can feel foolish or barren.”

Foolish. Not to mention barren.

Sex or True Love?

Which brings me to online dating. If you read my last post, you will know that I have just entered this baffling world, after many moons of being happily single and date-free.

One of the questions on the site I’m using asks:

“Are you interested in A.) Sex or B.) True Love?”

That’s it? Those are my options? The “products” I’m allowed to choose from?

What about C.) Having Fun and D.) Enjoying Myself and E.) Trying New Things?

Daydreaming a Date

One person who commented on my last blog said I should make haste to meet anyone I might be interested in, lest I start daydreaming and create imaginary partners. Point well taken: I’m already doing the imaginary man thing. She warns against wasting time in case there’s no chemistry once prose becomes human voice and personality. She is a wise woman.

On the other hand, I have time. Perhaps there is a place for daydreaming, making stuff up, letting my wild woman romp around in my head for a while.

I think that for someone like me who has not focused on dating for an eternity, simply enjoying the process can be healthy. For instance, contemplating all this has led me to seriously consider what I’m looking for in a guy . . . to create that guy in my mind. This gives me an ideal to compare the “real thing” with, if and when I decide to meet one of those real things.

The Perfect Product

When I consider what I’m seeking, not one of my desires resembles a product or an end goal.

From my journal, I offer just a taste: “Someone to share perspectives with – to laugh together, be outraged together, wonder together, be grateful together, pray together . . . I want somebody to encourage me, to share my dreams for who I want to be and to support me getting there in a loving, ego-free way . . .”

All process, not product.

All journey, not destination.

My two-page list also hopes for someone creative and maybe a little quirky who will cherish and adore me and help me with projects around the house. Yes, I’m asking for a lot, but if I’m going to give up one iota of my freedom, it’s going to have to be for a VERY good reason.

The wish-list ends with a heartfelt prayer: “God save me from being bored.”

To be continued . . .

Creating Abundance

I was chatting with my neighbor Linda this morning about psychology, types of therapy, and what constitutes childhood trauma. You know, the usual over-the-back-fence conversations.

We agreed that there are two ways to view life, metaphysically speaking: as if the universe, or God, or whatever Higher Power might exist is good and benevolent, or as if She/He/It is vindictive and negative. Some folks simply expect good things, like the person who says (and actually believes) “everything will work out OK,” while others cycle between “It figures,” or “What do you expect?” or “Of course this would happen to me.”

You can see the physical manifestation of these mindsets in the lined faces of elderly people, can’t  you? Were their eyebrows often raised in wonder or expectation, their cheeks creased by smiles? Or were their mouths drawn down in discontent or bitterness?

What’s Johnny’s mindset?

Family Flack

Our childhoods and the attitudes we absorbed from our families heavily influence which side of the dichotomy we occupy. If your father regularly dumped his obsessive financial angst on your little head, you might have grown up fearful, expecting the worst. If your older siblings railed at you, “What the hell is wrong with you??” whenever something happened to spill or break in your vicinity, you might have grown up believing that you are such a loser you don’t deserve anything good to happen to you anyway.

I have a friend who invariably remarks whenever I share anything good that’s come my way, “How come nothing like that ever happens to me?” His attitude sucks the joy out of his own life and out of our interactions.

Counting the Cost of Freedom

My point is this: we have choices in this matter. If we have learned an attitude of scarcity and a mistrust of fate as kids, we can decide to do the hard work of recovery as adults and unlearn the negative beliefs that make us unhappy.

Oh sure, there is some satisfaction in playing the victim or in anticipating scarcity and/or trouble. It feels good to say, “See? I knew it. I was right.” There’s a certain sense of control in that. And it’s familiar and comfortable.

One has to calculate the costs of abandoning negativity and the benefits of launching into the unknown realm of hope.

What we Nurture

One of the bugaboos that clings to me like a fat tick is my habit of nurturing dread. When things are going smoothly, my default is to wonder what’s going to go wrong.

“This can’t last – when’s the other shoe going to drop?” is a perfectly natural reaction for a person who grew up in an alcoholic family. Anything could and would happen.

And this is true in general. Good times will pass because change is the nature of life. Good times pass, but so do bad times. Happy times and sad times. Life is both/and.

It’s what you choose to focus on that creates your reality. Something awful might happen tomorrow, but why should I ruin today by thinking about it? I have better things to nurture.

Which brings me to creativity.

Creating Abundance

One of the reasons I enjoy reading fine literature is that I find the world of words and ideas to be infinitely expansive. That’s why I write, too. When I’m in the zone, my tiny mind is released from all constraints, and I expect magic. It might not *read* like magic, but it *feels* like magic.

Creating and experiencing art gives me a sense of open, boundless freedom through which I can connect to others.

My neighbor Linda is sitting on her patio picking out a new song on the guitar. She plucks and sings, then picks up her pen and writes. I’m sitting on my porch, writing this blog. The fact that Linda is exhibiting her creativity doesn’t mean that there’s less for me. In fact, there’s a symbiosis going on. Her guitar is providing a soundtrack for my morning and bringing back memories loaded with creative potential; she asks if I can help her with lyrics.

Inside a human head and heart there exists a reality of limitless abundance and possibility waiting to be unleashed, no matter what’s going on in day-to-day reality. When you open to this creative spirit, whether its visual arts, music, or writing, you are saying you believe in abundance. You believe there is more than enough.

And it is all good.

Julia Cameron writes in her book, The Artist’s Way Every Day: A Year of Creative Living:

“Because art is born in expansion, in a belief in sufficient supply, it is critical that we (artists) pamper ourselves for the sense of abundance that it brings to us.”

She says that creative blocks usually come from our attitudes. “The actual block is our feeling of constriction, our sense of powerlessness. Art requires us to empower ourselves with choice. At the most basic level, this means choosing to do self-care.”

I like people who tell me to pamper myself. I’m thinking I might go see a movie instead of cleaning my dining room. For the sake of creativity, of course.

Make Something Good!

I hope that you get a chance to do something fun and creative this summer. If you don’t think of yourself as the creative type, I call B.S. You were creative when you were a little kid, and you can recapture it. It’s all in the attitude.

Give yourself permission to believe something different.

Finger paint.

Write a poem or a children’s story.

Build an awesome sand castle.

Make some quality mud pies with your kid.

Experience the abundance that’s bottled up inside you.

Happy summer!

Related articles

• Gratitude Creates Abundance (tiarefitness.com)

Talking Trash in the Literary World

I’ve been talking with some writing friends about the trend in literary magazines towards, well, trendiness. The editors usually say they are seeking “edgy,” but the effect is more often, well, “trashy.”

A quick aside to express my annoyance about the random use of the word ”well” to mean “for lack of a better word.” (See above.) This over-used affectation was oh-so-clever the first quadrillion times I read it, but it hasn’t been trendy in years, and it doesn’t belong in literary magazines. You can all stop now.

Edgy, Man

Sorry — back to trendy journals. Neither my writing friends nor said journals will be named here. I mean, what if one of us wants to get published in a trashy trendy journal?

Actually, my writing aspirations do not include afore(not)mentioned literary magazines, because we are probably “not a good fit.”

I don’t use the word “motherf**ker” nearly enough.

Ever, actually. I don’t use a-hole in my prose, either. And that, my friends, is what passes for trendy in some corners of the literary world.

I mean, how can you be edgy if you don’t trash-talk like a middle-schooler?

Raw and Daring Language

There’s a best selling author – one of Oprah’s hallowed few – who has coined a phrase, which “has gone viral in the writing community,” according to Creative Nonfiction magazine.

The phrase is, “Write like a motherf**ker.”

Huh? Please tell me that “the writing community” is not inspired by this.

Good Lord, people.

Creative Nonfiction is apparently very inspired. The editor, Lee Gutkind, has dedicated much of his latest From the Editor column to the scintillating phenomenon. Gutkind says that it is “the style, the forbidden ‘MF’ word” that has turned this catchy phrase “into a kind of mantra.” He also advises that “before you can write like a motherf**ker, you have to research like a motherf**ker.

“It is gutsy,” Gutkind writes, “raw and daring.”

No, it is not, Mr. Gutkind.

It is dated and juvenile and stupid.

No offense meant to author Cheryl Strayed who started the hub-bub; I haven’t read her work. She was doubtless as surprised as anyone when her casual words of raunchy wisdom started appearing on mugs and t-shirts. There’s an interview with her in the Creative Nonfiction, which I’ll get around to reading. Guess what it’s called?

Yup – How to Write Like a Mother#&@%*&.

Brilliant

It’s all very exciting for those assembled.

Elissa Bassist interviews Ms. Strayed. Both are editors at The Rumpus, which is where the unique and compelling verbiage originally appeared. Bassist says the phrase has “become an anthem and a lifestyle.”

An anthem?

A lifestyle?

Really?

Ms. Bassist then goes on about “motherf**kitude” and “motherf**kery” for a while before getting down to the interview.

I’m not kidding.

I mean no disrespect for the magazine or the editor, both of which are a well-recognized blessing to creative nonfiction and to the literary world as a whole. I am certainly not lumping CNF in with the trashy trend; that’s why I’m wondering what’s up with this fixation?

And While I’m Being Annoyed

The rest of Mr. Gutkind’s From the Editor column addresses the message splashed across the magazine’s cover:

Who Says Women Don’t Write Serious Nonfiction?

Who, indeed? Is it necessary to perpetuate an antiquated charge like that in 2013?

This headline leads to a suspicion that certain people at Creative Nonfiction spake thus, or they would not need to argue otherwise. “The  headline doth protest too much, methinks.”

The magazine consistently receives more submissions from women than from men, so I suppose we should be encouraged that they decided to print a collection of women’s writing, even if they did introduce it with questionable condescending kudos on the cover.

Questionable Kudos

Or maybe I’m way off base. Perhaps Lee Gutkind’s tongue was planted firmly in his cheek when he crafted that cover, as I hope it was when he expressed the hope that his winter issue demonstrates that “it’s not true that women write only memoir or that they don’t write about ‘serious’ topics.” I am going to assume that he has read serious memoir by women on suicide, mental illness, child slavery, prostitution, homelessness, widowhood, the loss of a child — you know, frivolous girlie stuff.

Whatever the big boys think, I’m going to keep at it, writing like a … like me.

God’s Work

Now that the U.S. election is over, perhaps we can let God get back to work. We’ve kept the Creator of the Universe very busy with ballot initiatives labeled “anti-God” or “God’s will” or “godless.” This party or that party is rejecting God or using God or ignoring God. Millions of people have been praying to God to let X win or Y lose because otherwise it will mean doom for our nation and perhaps the world.

Really?

Don’t you think God has just a wee bit bigger perspective? Sometimes people forget:

God is not a Republican. God is not a Democrat. And guess what…God is not even an American!

Gasp!

Let me step back — I am aware that quite a few people don’t believe in God — many of the people I love most do not.

In America, much wind is expended trying to justify – or nullify – the existence of God. This strikes me as highly amusing – I’m not sure why.

I mean, if there is a God, how funny is that? All these little created things running around insisting they weren’t created.

God’s existence, though, is one of the very few things of which I am certain.

I’m Not as Smart as I Used to Be

I used to be certain about lots of things. To be honest, I thought I knew best about most things. I think a lot of people do. It covers up their low self-esteem.

I inherited this “I know best” belief. I dearly love my departed parents, but recognize that my mother’s regal British nose was tilted ever so slightly upwards, and my father’s Texan roots were firmly grounded in the belief that Texans are bigger and better, period.

Her Royal Highness, Queen Victoria

Don’t Mess With Texas

I can still be cocky or defensive on a bad day, especially during an election. Tilted noses and Texan roots die hard. But really, why would I have more or less of “the truth” than anyone else?

What a relief: I don’t have to have all the answers or “prove” anything!

Unnecessary Extravagance

I don’t have to prove to you that God exists. I can’t. That’s God’s work. Still, I will say that the idea that there is no God, no higher spirit, no over-arching consciousness, no Creator, seems utterly absurd to me.

Here’s why I believe:

• There are sunsets. (And sunrises, so I’ve been told.)
• We can see colors. How astonishing!
• I have looked through a microscope and a telescope.
• Galaxies upon galaxies. Shooting stars and crescent moons.
• Humans make art and appreciate beauty for no apparent reason.
• Flowers attract pollinators with exuberant colors and soul-filling smells. Unnecessarily extravagant, wouldn’t you say?
• Natural cycles: water, nitrogen, photosynthesis, evolution – gloriously complex, yet simple. Brilliant.
• If I pray, I can easily LOVE someone I previously could not stand. Try it.
• Because the longer I spend alone and in silence, the more I know I’m not alone.
• Because the idea that all this just kinda happened  is funnier than Jon Stewart.

I’m done writing about politics for now. (Unless you consider climate change political. I can’t seem to stay away from that topic.) Since I’m swearing off writing about politics on account of my blood pressure, I thought I’d move on to something less controversial, like religion.

Which brings me to my questions: If God were to register, do you think it would be as an Independent? And if you don’t believe in God, what’s wrong with you anyway??

 

An Elemental Longing

It comes without warning, this sense of longing. Autumn always brings it on for me, when the colors arrive and the humidity — blessedly — departs. While making the switch from flip-flops to boots, from iced tea to hot, from flakes to oatmeal, that’s when the feeling descends.

It trembles in my gut, like the faint rhythm of a far-away freight train. In fact, the click-clack on the rails can summon the feeling, as can the call of migrating geese.

It was Time to Go, And They All Left

from

Heron Dance

Bittersweet

The bittersweet pull is made more so by the fact that I don’t know what it is. I once asked a poet friend, John Morris ( http://www.writer.org/johnmorris), if he knew the feeling. I wanted a word, a label. After I’d rambled on about trains and geese for a while, he suggested “melancholy.” That’s a start. But it’s more. It’s deeper.

Do you know what I’m talking about?

This longing brings to mind the stomach churning homesickness I experienced as a kid on the first day of school and whenever I tried to spend the night at a friend’s house. But that was unpleasant, so much so that I sometimes ended up in the nurse’s office and always had to abort the sleep-overs. So no, it isn’t exactly that. It’s not unpleasant, it’s just . . . sad. Still, I rather like the feeling; it contains a kernel of the intensity of the teenage years.

Smitten

I was twelve when I had my first kiss, not counting a tentative spin-the-bottle kiss in fifth grade with the preacher’s kid Johnny, who later turned out to be gay. This one was a real kiss from dreamy Steve in the church basement, while the sock-hop plodded on upstairs. Steve was my best friend’s foster brother, who lived two doors down from my family, and we had been slow dancing — always trouble.

I was smitten. Every night, I would open the bedroom window closest to my beloved’s house and put on my 45 RPM record of the The Crystal Ship by The Doors.  I would sing from the very core of my being:

Before you slip into unconsciousness, I’d like to have another kiss

Another flashing chance at bliss,

Another kiss, another kiss.

It was fall, and the air smelled like rolling around in a leaf pile. It seemed the moon was always full, and the night was always lit a pale blue.  Now do you know? 

Spiritually Homesick

 The freight train/migrating geese longing is a different kind of homesickness, a spiritual homesick. A good kind. Not the lonely, fearful kind in the nurse’s office or the desperate, grasping waves that wash in with the words, “I’m seeing someone else.” It’s deeper, more real, more elemental than those surface upsets. It isn’t something thrust upon us by emotional needs and hurts. This feeling is built into us; it’s a birth-right of being human.

We have a longing to be home, to belong, to be loved in a never-ending embrace. I believe it’s our Creator Spirit, reminding us that there’s more than this.We are never fully at home, here, there’s always the longing. We are not quite whole yet.

I imagine this divine longing is what my Mom was feeling in hospice when she said, “Daddy? Daddy? Can I come home now?” And God said, “Yes.”

“Thou hast made us for Thyself, O God,and the heart of man is restless until it finds its rest in Thee.”

Saint Augustine (354-430)

Do you know the feeling? What words do you have for it? Theories of where it comes from and why? I wish you all the blessings of autumn, and most especially the Elemental Longing.

The Crystal Ship, by The Doors:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsmtFRVqQZo

Please support the arts – more lovely work at Heron Dance:  http://www.herondance.org/it-was-time-to-go-and-they-all-left-limited-edition-print/