Jun 13, 2023

Metaphors and Storytellers

 


Much to consider on why we read or write tales of enchantment, those magical stories from our childhood and adolescence. Some of us love these tales our entire lives in their original form or ones we create for our adult minds. It is a complex journey to understand why tales of enchantment and magic are so steadfast in a post-postmodern culture built on existentialism, personal identity, and even cognitive science. Perhaps this is really a question about metaphors and history and even psychology. Perhaps it is an enchanted tale about a species who built a world completely out of stories?

Jun 9, 2023

Grandmother and Hollyhocks on Summer Vacation.

 


“There was so much time that marvelous summer. Day after day, mist rose from the meadow as the sky lightened and hedges, barns and woods took shape until, at last, the long curving back of the hills lifted away from the Plain. It was a sort of stage-magic.”
                                 ― J.L. Carr

Jun 7, 2023

Nature is important.

 


“Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help.”
            ― May Sarton

Art by Angela Barrett

Jun 6, 2023

For me, it was both.

“Psychoanalysis was probably more useful to me as a writer than as a neurotic.” 

                 — Philip Roth

Jun 5, 2023

Magic is powerful.

"Magic enables man to carry out with confidence his important tasks, to maintain his poise and his mental integrity in fits of anger, in the throes of hate, of unrequited love, of despair and anxiety. The function of magic is to ritualize man's optimism, to enhance his faith in the victory of hope over fear. Magic expresses the greater value for man of confidence over doubt, of steadfastness over vacillation, of optimism over pessimism". 
           — Bronisław Malinowski

Stepping outside yourself

To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself. Whenever a man so concentrates his attention—on a landscape, a poem, a geometrical problem, an idol, or the True God—that he completely forgets his own ego and desires, he is praying. 

                           — W. H. Auden

Jun 2, 2023

The Own Service by Alan Garner

 


Going to post every day in June to celebrate beautiful things I love. This is about finding an anchor, doing my art, being enchanted by the beauty of life, and learning to live in the present. Worked in the garden today, planting sun impatiens, Shasta daisies, and new lilies. Soaked everything. Tonight, after supper, I am going to read The Owl Service by Alan Garner, a classic low fantasy novel. I love low fantasy where something extraordinary intrudes on ordinary life. This is a classic story that I never got to read as a child. I've been making up for all the age appropriate fiction that I missed. I'm feeling both confident and good about my own work-in-progress and it's coming along faster now. I still face challenges in my personal life and am working all that out. But I am optimistic.

Jun 1, 2023

Modern Restlessness

🎵💜"Collapse into never."💜🎵🎶
— Brian Molko.
All reactions:

Come from the fairies

I got drunk on that honey wine🌼
of the lunar cocoon that the fairies
collected in hyacinth glasses:
dormouse, bats and moles
they sleep in the crevices or in the grass,
in the deserted and sad courtyard of the castle;🌿 🏰
when the wine spilled on the summer land🐝 
or amid the dew its vapors rise,
happy their blissful dreams become
and, asleep, they murmur their joy; well, they are few
the fairies that carry those chalices so new
. 🌺
Percy Shelley

June 1, 2023

"And then one fairy night, May became June." — F. Scott Fitzgerald 🌿🌺❤️🐝🦋

May 26, 2023

Dead Flowers for Her by Skywatchers

She cries on broken wings, she lies on all she's seen
Oh and you know I can change for, her ways
She cries well, still she cries
She dies from, broken songs
She lies on histories thorns,
oh and you know I can change for, love
She dies well, oh she dies
And i live on open seas,
and i drink down on my knees,
oh and you know I can change for, love
I die well, oh i die
For love


Skywatchers

May 25, 2023

I am a summer girl.

 


Some days I am yellow and warm-hearted, living in tune to place and people, eyes opened, soul stirring, skin pricked, attached to nothing and everything.  



Dear Diary,

This last winter and early spring was difficult, the worst times I've had since the winter John died and the following spring when I was so ill, I did not know if I would survive. That was 2016-2017. I posted this because I am painting my door this color. Smiling. And because I now feel like it is summer though that date is not officially here. But it's swimming temperatures, and I planted some very special yellow/orangey Petunias today. Although I face a few challenges, I survived the end of last year and the earlier part of this year and began work again on the first of April. Now I am pushing full speed ahead with several projects, including house repairs and painting.I've returned to my Brian Molko project, along with my novel and feel very confident in both efforts. I tend to thrive in the heat. Many people do not, but I was born and reared in the hot Mississippi Delta. We did not even have an air condition until I was about ten years old. An attic fan was all we used. Windows were screened but the glass was raised all late spring and into the summer until cold temps returned. I have been thinking of my childhood a lot this year and I had such wonderful experiences. It was a sort of freedom that many children do not know today. We lived outside as children, riding bikes, playing soft ball, jumping ropes, volley ball, kick ball, tennis. We swam in pools and lakes. First person out the door, last person in the door—that was me. Oh, how I wish I could still do a cartwheel. Maybe next year. This is not really a selfie. Someone took this photo because I am wearing my favorite yellow shirt which I got off a sale rack at J.C. Penney's for $9 last spring. Normally, I never get a deal. I love yellow. It reminds me of summer, of my childhood, and keeps me anchored in some kind of possibility. 

May 18, 2023

43 Years Ago on this Day, Mount St. Helens erupted.

 


It was 43 years ago, May 18, 1980 that Mount St. Helens blew its side out and killed at least 57 people. Dick Lasher was not one of them. If he had rounded the ridge not far ahead of him, he would have been caught in a wave of heat and ash and died. Thinking he was going to die, he took this photo of his red hatchback Pinto and motorcycle. It is an iconic shot. Lasher then turned around and drove, blinded most of the time by ash until he escaped the blast. Ironically he went back a few times trying to get more photos until he was arrested and jailed to protect him from harm. I imagine an event like this is overwhelming and really addictive. Robert Landsburg, a freelance photographer from Portland who often took photos of the volcano, was not so lucky. When he realized he was going to die, he rolled his film back up, put it in its case, then backpack, and finally on the backseat of his car where he laid on top of it to protect the photos he had taken of the blast. Seventeen days later, Landsburg was found in his car. He had died instantly in the pyroclastic cloud that engulfed the car and him. His film survived and has been published. David Johnston, a volcanologist, also died that May morning, after sending this message,"Vancouver, Vancouver, this is it!"

May 1, 2023

May 1st is sunny.

"Those who prefer their principles over their happiness, they refuse to be happy outside the conditions they seem to have attached to their happiness. If they are happy by surprise, they find themselves disabled, unhappy to be deprived of their unhappiness."

         — Albert Camus