I dwell in Possibility – (466)

BY EMILY DICKINSON

I dwell in Possibility –

A fairer House than Prose –

More numerous of Windows –

Superior – for Doors –

Of Chambers as the Cedars –

Impregnable of eye –

And for an everlasting Roof

The Gambrels of the Sky –

Of Visitors – the fairest –

For Occupation – This –

The spreading wide my narrow Hands

To gather Paradise –

Vesuvius at Home

#1705

Volcanoes be in Sicily
And South America
I judge from my Geography
Volcanoes nearer here
A Lava step at any time
Am I inclined to climb
A Crater I may contemplate
Vesuvius at Home


by Emily Dickinson

Swimming in the Ocean without a Shark Cage

Diana Nyad, 64 years old, is the first person to swim the 110 miles of wild water between Florida and Cuba without a shark cage, arriving on land today.

more about her journey....

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/09/01/us-swimmer-nyad-looking-very-good-after-1st-night-cuba-florida-swim-jellyfish/





when she arrived on land, she said:

"I've got three messages: 
1. is we should never give up.
2. you are never too old to chase your dreams. 
3. is its never a solitary sport, it's a team.


As she put it, and what I take from it.... "Find a way."

Web in the Rain, poem with photos

Web in the Rain

Sometimes it takes the tears

of rain to reveal

the interconnected nature of the web

that touches the limbs of the family

tree to itself and the earth.

more photos from this misty morning's spider web revelations at https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/104335158602581059145/albums/5919087222259626993

I Was Amelia Earhart, part two

more excerpts from Jane Mendelsohn's I Was Amelia Earhart....  Read more about the book with a review here: http://www.janemendelsohn.com/novels/i-was-amelia-earheart/

Amelia in the Electra cockpit, c. 1936

"When she thinks of her father now, she sees him at the end of the day.  That's his time of day, twilight, or just before.  The late afternoon, when the sun is setting, when it feels sad and beautiful, like the last day.  When the sadness is too unbearable to think about, and this makes you strangely cheerful. (93)


The heat will take over the island.  It will keep up all day and all night for several weeks.  The sun bears down, the air is still, the deafening hum goes on.  The things that will happen could only have happened during a heat wave.  Everything becomes quite unreal and it seems as though there is no future.  It is impossible to think about the future during the heat wave.  All during the heat wave we have the feeling, even in the darkness, that we need to escape from the sun.  (97)


Fot long stretches of time we're completely silent.  Long after sunset we're still sitting there, on the sand.  I recognize the terror of the quiet, the silence of flying.  Everything is moving, but everything is still. (99)


But before all this, there was the dry storm.  The storm between the heat wave and the rain.
The heat wave lasted for several weeks, at the end of which we were strangers.  We had changed so much, the heat had taken so much, we were strangers to ourselves.  We spent our time together, but we barely spoke anymore.  What was there to say?  We were desiccated, blistered.  Noonan had done everything he could: he'd built us shelter, he'd perfected his device for extracting water, he'd made us a little boat.  But still the sun was too much for us.  One day, he went out in his boat, and by the time he came back he was bleeding from the heat.  He'd covered himself, but the sun had burned through his protection, and he was so cooked that his skin peeled and then bled. (104-5)


I think it was then, during the storm, while we were waiting, that he finally understood what had happened to us. (107)


She spends the morning watching the birds pick at the debris, she watches them fight over fish and pass over urchins, and she does not realize for quite some time that Noonan is among them, squawking and clucking and bickering.  She sees him when he is already deeply engaged in conversation with a bird of paradise, gesticulating madly, with his radio in one hand and a piece of fish in his mouth.  She calls out to him, but he doesn't respond, and she sees him walk away from her, lost in argument with a bird, and then soon afterward she sees him round the bend of the beach and disappear from her sight.

Then she feels completely alone.

Three days later, on an exquisitely clear night, she found herself in the traditional state of a stranded islander, with a melancholy composed of memories and regrets, and too much time on her hands.  Noonan had survived the storm with a poetic stoicism, taking their exile to its purest extreme.  He appeared that night wearing flowers in his hair, he danced alone on the sand in the transparent moonlight, and before daybreak she decided that he was lost to her and to the rest of the world forever. Heartbroken with grief, she had gone to sit in the cockpit, where his singing couldn't reach her, and she put on her goggles and her skullcap in an effort to overcome the desire to join him in his madness.  It was a time of torment, which ended at dawn when she sighted the shore of her island through the broken windshield of her plane, and she decided once and for all that she had taken this journey in order to escape the madness of the world, that she didn't give a damn if she was alone, she wouldn't go crazy, and that she would live the rest of her long and brilliant life on this wild and desolate island. (107-9).

I Was Amelia Earhart

Lately, I've been engrossing myself in the beautiful prose of Jane Mendelsohn in her book I Was Amelia Earhart.  It is a "brilliantly imagined," fictional account of what happened to Amelia Earhart when she and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared off the coast of New Guinea one glorious, windy day in 1937, never to be seen again.

I need to return this book soon, and I want to be able to read these words again as I want.  So, I propose that perhaps they are beautiful enough to be worth sharing with the greater public here  while I can simultaneously store excerpts from the text for my later access.  I will break excerpts into several postings....  I hope you enjoy the narrative....


Excerpts from I Was Amelia Earhart by Jane Mendelsohn.....

So, the sky.
It's the only sky that I can remember, the only one that speaks to me now.
I am flying around the world, there's nothing but sky.  The sky is flesh.  It's the last sky. (4)


Sometimes my thoughts are clearly mine, I hear them speak to me, in my own voice.  Other times I see myself from far away, and my thoughts are ghostly, aerial, in the third person.

When I was very young, six or seven, I already wanted to die.  I already had the dream.  I wanted to escape, to go higher, to leave my body, and this made me seem ambitious, greedy for life.  When I was young, people hated my greediness, but they enjoyed it too.  A little girl filled with desire is a beautiful sight, ugly, but very beautiful. (10)


It went very quickly, those first few days.  They got out of the plane, and together they looked around and tried to make sense of their surroundings.  Then all of a sudden, as if part of the choreography of a dream, they set about performing the necessary rituals of survival. (62)


This is how we talk to each other now, in overlapping monologues.  We've been separated by fear.  Fear has set in, and memory, and blame.  I'm awake most of the night, waiting for a ship to see our fire, hearing in the wind the radio operator, hearing the scratch of his breath in the shifting leaves, comforting myself in my anguish with memory traces, the agonizing moments before I lost contact with the world. (74).


We couldn't have foreseen what would happen to us as a result of witnessing our own abandonment.  It seemed impossible that the plane hadn't seen us, but equally impossible that it had and then just flew away.  We never understood the meaning of the plane.  It abandoned us. It was too terrible to believe, that our only hope, our one salvation, that the messenger we had been waiting for, the protection we had expected, was out there, it existed, but not for us.  So at first we did not lose hope.  We did not even worry.  But gradually, in the hours and days to come, our hope abandoned us too, and all that was left was the memory of that plane.  Like children, we adored the plane that abandoned us.  We sat on the beach for a long time, waiting, cultivating our separate vivid images of the plane.  We loved the plane even more after it left us, as if that might bring it back. (81)


We didn't speak to each other for a long time.  We were angry and we blamed our anger on each other. There were no more planes, no ships on the horizon.  At first we kept track of the dates, counting the days, and then we stopped doing even that.
      It lasted a long time, and then finally we couldn't be angry anymore.  We abandoned hope, then worry, and then even our anger.  It was easy: we never tried to do it, we just did, finally, because we had no choice.  (82)

End of Summer, poem

Clouds pass quickly these days,
transforming and dissolving.

The half moon hangs in the sky, shrinking.
The hunting hawk overhead cries out.

The trusty darkness of the New Moon is coming
as the wind begins to blow in
the changes of the Fall.

blue moon

Today is the full moon, a Blue Moon, because it is the third of four full moons to take place in a season (in this case between June 2013 solstice & September equinox).

The last Blue Moon by this definition happened on November 21, 2010....

Where were you then?


and now a rendition of "Blue Moon" by Frank Sinatra
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vr0amOKCHo

for my soul-dog Nuva

A healthy woman is much like a wolf: robust, chock-full, strong life force, life-giving, territorially aware, inventive, loyal, roving.

~Clarissa Pinkola Estes

for the woman howling inside of us all...

a Spanish Gypsy Flamenco song...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Scus9teTdjo

the dew of little things

And let your best be for your friend.
If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.
For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
Seek him always with hours to live.
For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.
And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

-Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931)

2913 E 117th St

It has taken me over a year to get these photos of 2913 E 117th St, Cleveland to the computer so they are viewable, and the scene has already changed so much since here, and it will only change dramatically more, as this building is set to be demolished within with the year....

In the true spirit of wabi-sabi....

view the full series here at:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/104335158602581059145/albums/5911261818765052865

Hope Transforms

Yesterday, I received a timely surprise postcard from a good friend with a quote from Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man.  It read:

"Man's hope can paint a purple picture, 

can transform a SOARING VULTURE 

into a noble eagle or moaning dove."

She had sent it to me to because I had told her about a vulture that I had witnessed one early evening, perched up on the chimney of the house next door.  My daughter, Rosemary, and I had been out saying goodnight to the moon, it had been near Full, when the giant bird made his presence known expanding his wings as if to flap them dry.  He clicked his sharp beak across the top of the chimney.  And after several serious gazing moments, he took flight, dropping into the air, soaring right over Rosemary & I's head.  I almost thought he was going to pick one of us up.  I thought, something dead is near.

Currently, I am facing many deaths in my life, and I believe with every death comes Life.  This vulture, a hunter of the dead, the Gray Lady in bird form, who cleans up the dirty remains inspired me.  I took it as a great acknowledgment from the Universe that I am on my Path, and Death is necessary and glorious (just look at how he flew!).

Coincidentally, as part of the August Postcard Poetry Fest I am participating in (http://poetrypostcards.blogspot.com/) I just sent out postcards the past two days with poems about doves.  I will share one here, in the spirit of man's hope transforming a soaring vulture into a moaning dove.


Doves Separated

If you close the door
you won't hear the Dove, or
see his beauty or
feel his love.

You cannot have it both ways.
Quiet and joy is matched with pain.

He is unescapable
on every post and wire
unmated, lamenting,
as if his nest is on fire.

Close the door
and the coos will still vibrate,
for the Mourning Dove feels
with great weight
being separate.

written August 6, 2013


--------------------

As SMO wrote:
a large bird swooping from every rooftop
to surprise us all.

Thank you, smo!

---------------------
finally, for you to hear doves now where you are...

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/mourning_dove/sounds

Walking

Today I was given the great opportunity to walk along the main four-lane, six-lane in some places, highway that goes through my hometown.  Since I was in elementary school I have watched as the wild fields of Queen Anne's lace and goldenrod turned to grass monoculture, strip malls, and paved parking lots with lamp posts.  It still continues in this fashion, and there are a few last stretches left of these wild fields, and one of the last one, perhaps the longest and biggest stretch has just begun to be bulldozed, built-on and paved.  Every time I rush by in my car, trying to get here and there in suburbia, I sneak gazes out the window as I dodge traffic, attempting to catch a glimpse of the gorgeous mountainous clouds and the trees that are left still blowing in the wind.  I have repeatedly thought- oh, I want to spend time in that field.  It wants to be played in, admired, gazed, loved.  It is the beauty of the Universe and we are just passing it by and then throwing it in the trash.  Today was my chance to be with it.

I got out of the car and walked, maybe 5 or 6 miles, up 611, headed North, along four traffic lanes of rushing cars with turn-off lanes, and little sidewalk to be found.  There was the small stretch of emergency lane on the road, and the occasional patch of grass.  I was amazed at what was revealed to me.  First, it was the whizzing cars that pummeled by unknowingly.  I realized there was a chance I could be hit by a car, walking so close with little protection, but walking on I went.  I sang loudly and felt the vibration of my lungs and diaphragm like the motor of an engine.  It fueled me forward.  Then the great field opened up, and I saw the glen in its beauty.  Solitude and serene despite the rushing around it.  I could feel that even as the Speedy Carwash will take this field's wild place soon, this spirit cannot be removed.  It is in the sky and the clouds, and the wind; this cannot be denied.

Then I walked further, and began to smile at the glory and the gift of my legs, and my body, and my strength to carry myself.  My health that keeps me alive and strong.  I felt trust in the Earth that supported me under my feet.

With little to no sidewalks, and so many cars, it felt like I walked in an urban desert and ventured alone like an Elephant.  Then I saw a narrow footpath worn into the thin strip of grass along the road.  I knew then I was not so alone on this sojourn.  Many had gone before me, and many would go behind me, without the protection of a plastic car- only the strength of their body.  They, too, knew the power of our humanity to transform the landscape just by living in it.  They knew that one day, we may all learn to walk again and come close to the concrete and be intimate again.  I was with others in my awareness of being alone and strong in my self.

After a few miles, I came across a little forest, forgotten for now until the real estate agency gets the call to start building.  I have seen this alcove many a time driving by, but standing at its level it looked completely different.  Just as I stepped in the direction of the field, away from the road, I heard a hawk.  The hawk alerted me it was there, and alerted others I was there, and flew to another perch showing me their great wingspan.  He perched, and we gazed at each other as I sat on a concrete scrap of litter.  The beauty. The honor.  I was on my path.

.............

And there is more to this, but I must stop for now and let my legs rest and see the sun as it sets.  I am grateful for this day and the miracles it has brought me.

Love in Nature

For with Love in Nature -
first come Blossoms,
then come Seeds
then a pile of Compost.

three haikus

Beware the fuzzy
bumble bee kissing blossoms.
Grasp him and be stung.

          -------

The moon and two hawks
on a sunny morning blind
eyes that look skywards

          ------

Cicada, like pain,

shakes the body's attention.

Sit still, and silence.

     

for the full moon on moonday

THE CARDINAL

The Cardinal


I do not take lightly
the bright red cardinal
showing me the direction
in which he flies.

RIP "Grandma"

RIP "Grandma"

Our barred rocks hen 

who from the beginning was the queen of the roost 

April 2012 - June 28, 2013

A very friendly and inquisitive chicken who was known to fly onto your shoulder when she was young.  She was killed by the dog next door who got through a hole in the fence.

Bear Shopper Captured

Two Links to newspaper articles on local bear shopper:

Bear Spotted & Captured in the Suburb Shopping Center

Second Bear in Ewing, NJ Spotted & Captured

For my friend- the bear, & my hometown of WAR-ing-town (Warrington), I offer these proverbs...

Time to catch bears is when they're out.

(American)

The bear dances, but the keeper takes the money.

(Russian)

A bear that is not tied up won't dance.

(Russian)

When one flees from the wolf

the bear appears.

(Finnish)

The bear doesn't dance for his own pleasure.

(Rumanian) 

---------------------------------------
Proverbs from Howl Like a Wolf: Animal Proverbs by Wolfgang Mieder
& photos from newspaper article links listed above.

moonlight sonata

sometimes a certain melody just follows you around...

and how appropriate with the "super" moon upon us this weekend.

turned on the radio yesterday and they put on a recording of Andre Watts playing Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata.' It is amazing the subtleties of each pianist's voice, making one so different from another.  I particularly like Watts.  And though I am not sure if this youtube recording is the same as what was played on the radio- I figure it is at least a recording of the same person playing the same piece of music- even if it is played differently.  Enjoy listening.

First Movement:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJYkxMv7sds
Second & Third Movement: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTZVwNGdUpE

and Happy Solstice!

Howl Like A Wolf

A hungry wolf is not at rest.

(Portuguese)

Hunger drives the wolf out

of the woods.

(English)

The wolf doesn't concern himself with

the price of a sheep.

(African-Hausa)

It is a hard winter when one

wolf eats another.

(English)

If the wolf feared rain, he would

wear a clock.

(Greek)

The wolf is not afraid of the dog,

but he hates his bark. 

(Yiddish)

Do not measure the wolf's tail

till he be dead.

(Serbian)

A wolf changes his coat but

never his nature.

(Serbian)

All taken from Howl Like a Wolf: Animal Proverbs by Wolfgang Mieder.

mushrooms

an old photo from early Spring 

when I had my third and final mushroom flush 

from the oyster mushroom bag we started back in mid-Dec.

PRESSED FLOWER poem

PRESSED FLOWER

like freshly peaked blossom petals
I am smashed between two pressed surfaces,
and held there,
newly positioned,
until I preserve.

Suck the Sweet Nectar of Life

Honeysuckle Honeysuckle!

Never have a care!

For the sweet scent of Honeysuckle

is perfuming all the air!

----------------------------------

And now for a How-To on Proper Honeysuckle Sucking....

a skill I learned as a kid as I'd stop off my bike to get a taste on almost every corner where the honeysuckle hung...

Only later did I learn this Japanese Honeysuckle is invasive in the US (you can find it everywhere around here!)- all the more reason to start picking!

Step One: Delicately pick a fresh, sweet Lonicera japonica or Japanese honeysuckle flower at its base, with care to not tear the pistol.

Step Two: Pinch the base of the flower, so that you can gently slide the pistol out the bottom.

and then start sucking!

and tasting the sweet nectar of life!

enjoy!

where is the moon?

"where is the moon

when the moon

is new?

It's a sliver on the right

growing bigger 

every night....":

SCENES AT SHAKER LAKES poem

just unearthed this from some old papers....
-----------------------------


Lost in the Lake

Rustlings in the Brush

Goose's Triumphant Return

Muddy tracks on Snowy paths

SCENES AT SHAKER LAKES
          March 7, 2011

-----------------------------

I.
lost in the lake,
absorbed in its wholeness.
admiring its moneylessness.
and the fuzzy shadow show of trees
        moving extraordinarily slow
        with the gentle breeze.

II.
slumped on a snowy log,
with a dog at side - fingers in her fur -
and a rustle.
A bustling rodent gathering, packing, hustling
         in the brush.

III.
Under the arch,
a triumphant return,
honks like a bark
Proud + showy silvery breast prompt
         upon a protruding rock.
Others sleepily tuck their white splotches,
         nestling into black,
some honk back.
Spring - Spring - Spring is back!

IV.
Muddy tracks on snowy paths-
"you may not come back"
warned the chatty dog walker.
I remember why I wore my boots.

On being wild

"When women reassert their relationship with the wildish nature, they are gifted with a permanent and internal watcher, a knower, a visionary, an oracle, an inspiratrice, and intuitive, a maker, a creator, an inventor, and a listener who guide, suggest, and urge vibrant life in the inner and outer worlds.  When women are with the Wild Woman, the fact of that relationship glows through them.  This wild teacher, wild mother, wild mentor supports their inner and outer lives, no matter what.

So, the word wild here is not used in its modern pejorative sense, meaning out of control, but in its original sense, which means to live a natural life, one in which the criatura, creature, has innate integrity and healthy boundaries.  These words, wild and woman, cause women to remember who they are and what they are about."


-from Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D.

new york city, good morning

A METROPOLITAN CENTER

SO MANY!

SO MANY!

THEY COLLIDE

THEY EMBRACE

UNCOMPROMISED

new york city, good morning

urban possibilitarian garden scenes

a poem

from beth's window apartment

on the street corner

-------------------------------------------------

the jungle returns to the jungle

life of summer

here come the hot days.

suburban flowers

some photos taken just walking around the corner....

bearded iris and lupine 

oriental poppy

colombine and coneflower

renew

 

and to Nature we follow suit.

Kindness Poem

Kindness


I hadn't noticed
till a death took me outside
and left me there
that grass lifts so quietly
to catch everything
we drop
and we drop
everything.


by Leonard Nathan

can you hear vladmir horowitz now?

can you hear vladmir horowitz playing yet?

the full moon is upon us,

may we sing her sonata!

may the wild weeds heal

photos from possibilitarian garden        may 2013

may the wild weeds heal

 everbearing, and red,
keep the bees buzzin'
and broccoli a-comin'

 Sit back, relax and watch new life grow
as if a hurricane ripped through.

Blessed be the sage that sits center
with elderberry on guard
and the egg-layers just scratching the surface.