A new space

moving... to a space more open and more appropriate:


http://thoughtsonprocess.blogspot.com/


thoughts on the process.... and there it continues, in its old form, and new.  come visit...

A "haiku" installation

more concretely forming...


a table of onions...red?  in a pile, in a grid?
a fan, several feet away, in motion, moving their skins
the sound of water rushing, from hidden speakers, emanating from under the tabletop


and these words...somewhere...
sorrow breathes into 
tight spaces that lie waiting
river tumbles on

Few little gems?

From the sketchbook.  Written in August.  I might like them.


a longing for ground
a hue, a scent; collisions
that break sweat.  Today.


lightness cast on limbs
tracing butterflies movements––
a washing away


sorrow breathes into 
tight spaces that lie waiting
river tumbles on

Lunacy

when the moon is undressed
a weight

Day ??: Making some art

Time to come out from under...
underneath, underground, out from under the weight.
More combinations from the medical terminology study card set:


a slow heart rate
pertaining to the tongue
covering


hard 
fast
transparent


swelling
a dissolution of a vertebra
an inflammation of the tongue


difficulty breathing
an abnormally increased degree of sensation
"all powerful"


skin
throat 
bind


toward the near end
a stoppage of blood flow
incomplete expansion


death
apart; the breaking apart
blood vessel narrowing


a site of union
after
a bitter poison


fever without fever
together; living together
stupor

Day who knows what: not counting anymore

Hades visiting

evanescent chemistry

naked, white, sleeping

A gorgeous fall day, filled with images.  

Day 84: After a hiatus

Smoothness in flight.  But only on the way back, the return.

 

I ruminate on the red cardinal, who lately has not crossed my path. I have been looking for other signs.  Gesticulating onion skins, do they whisper a promise of intimacy?

Now, suddenly, turbulence.  Mid-air, after acknowledging its lack.  Reminding me…. Do not get too comfortable.

Day 78: Flow and resistance, a potential installation

A vision of onions continues to beckon me. In a pile. On a table. Loose skins, being moved by air.

Day 77: The non-duality of absence and presence

Monday morning:  The old man who knows Sylvia's name hobbles by and I catch his movements.  He brings me such joy, walking so slowly, one foot in front of the other in a mechanical, broken body kind of way.  He emanates difficulty in his gate, yet he persists anyway.  His old dog on a leash.  A black and white Australian Shepherd, with grey hair... and one blue eye and one brown.


Fifteen minutes later: another old man walks by in the same direction.  Long grey hair and beard, bandana, shirtless.  Seemingly exercising.

I hear the wisdom in Saturn's voice.


Ten minutes later:  the same old man, the shirtless hippy, bounces in a strange perfunctory manner outside my window in the opposite direction.  He seems to be trying his hand at jogging.

Could Saturn have a sense of humor?




In meditation practice part of "achieving" presence means sitting inside the judgment that comes with realizing failure.  Not chasing it away, but watching it, accepting it.  My daily commitment continues to wane, spaces between posts becoming larger.  There is much potential for shame.  But I also realize in this opportunity that I do not believe in hard lines. Commitments sometimes require readjusting.  I am still "here" within the space of this public form of expression...nearby anyway, at all times. Its existence continuing to provide an anchor, and that is the point. However, I do realize that I can do better.  Much has fallen to the wayside, including the garden, which is dry and full of weeds.


    

Day 72: Passage into and out

Day 71: In the interludes

These deep long spaces, held open for moths to drink.  Ones that pollinate.  While nectar accumulates, I wait.  Congruency disappearing in the gaps.

Day 70: Phantasm

I am haunted by the presence of a limb gone missing.  This rapacious want, this dire craving, makes for a dark mood.  I am only half.

Friction in Eden, at the farm.  And in the cells. 
Swirling.  And killing the butterflies. 

Day 66-69: Delirium...

...that can only come from severe lack of sleep.  I am revisiting new motherhood again, in all its inexplicable randomness and challenges to sanity.  So I water the garden, quenching a deep thirst left from several weeks of neglect and late summer heat. 

I neglect many things lately.  While dispensing a burning gaze.  Onto a world inhabited by an image.  And swarming moths.

Day 65: Commencing

moments modified

a spiraling into red,
gold. a resistance


moths swarm the cat litter

Days 61-64: Failure...

...to stay on course.  Somewhat.  The tension of the square at work:  liberation and restriction.  But promises fade, despite the constance of the discipline.  These days I exist mindfully.  I am [mostly] present.  And not thinking to make words about it.

Day 60: Fitting

a congruency
under skin, and out of hair
no weeping,
only

Day 59: Possession

Reading tall tales of fortune-tellers and wicked girls.  And floating in a language not mine, but mine to be had.  “Mine.”  The word of the month.  Spoken incessantly by S who wants to possess the world, including me.  I am hers.  But unbound.

Day 58: Swooning...

...over Isabel's words:


You think in words; for you, language is an inexhaustible thread you weave as if life were created as you tell it.  I think in the frozen images of a photograph.  Not an image on a plate, but one traced by a fine pen, a small and perfect memory with the soft volumes and warm colors of a Renaissance painting, like an intention captured on grainy paper or cloth.  It is a prophetic moment; it is our entire existence, all we have lived and have yet to live, all times in one time, without beginning or end.

Day 57: Craft

falling for nine days and nine nights
and forged under a volcano

Day 56: Swirling

a whirlpool, moving out
into intentioned waters

Day 55: Lightness?

I ascend… only to encounter a slaughter.

The bodies of hundreds of dead ladybugs on the floor of the the loft of the treehouse.

Day 54: Smoldering

Fire makes its way out through dead skin cells.

Day 53: Convergence

Another day in trees on sanctified land.  But marked by dissimilar intentions and a distinctly different community….  Worlds merge and tension mounts.  My pores bleed out the inner, and the outer holds an inaccurate reflection.

Though the red cardinal keeps crossing my path.  An indication?

And so I seek water…  

Day 52: Arriving home

An arial shot of myself.  Looking through windows… a distanced view.  Of scars and fractures and cast shadows.

Day 51: Taking leave of the Earth

Day 7 at Hambidge

Day 50: Currents

Day 6 at Hambidge


the wind dances, in
hot, humid air, not breathing
but holding...lightness

Day 49: Pairings

Day 5 at Hambidge
more from the Medical Terminology Study Card Set:


the deposition of semen within the female reproductive tract
the study of blood
thick speech

Day 48: Removal of breath

Day 4 at Hambidge

A flock of bees outside my cabin door, in the Liriope jungle.... swarming, humming, pollinating... 

Day 47: The lived body

Day 3 at Hambidge

pinned to the walls...

Day 46: An aliveness in the darkness

Day 2 at Hambidge

I mistook it for an empty shell....

Day 45: Arrival and a sign?

the front door to my studio/cabin... stuck between the screens 


Day 1 at Hambidge

Day 44: Melancholy contentment

For breakfast–– A ringing of the Sunday bells.  An ease in the morning after good rest.  A trust in what is…  The cardinal visited again while Billie Holiday was singing her song. 

Day 43: Madness

a leaving of self?


behind, yet coming to...


Day 6: leaving Lama

Day 42: Approaching departure

the withdrawal home.

sugar, respirator, and
whole salted blossom


Day 5 at Lama

Day 41: Deep Venus space

A line calls forth in the ground.  After ants swarm.  And until ants swarm again.  A subtle gesture, unearthing food.  


Day 4 at Lama

Day 40: Coming into being

Stillness steeping.  A merge into sky, stars, vapor.  The distanced view of rain provides a new perception, a deeper understanding of my spiritual agoraphobia.  An observation anyway. In the old growth, largeness.  A reinforcement of self-importance, of ego.  Here, vastness, smallness, inconsequentiality.  And therein lies the discomfort. 

But a concert mounts.  Between myself, and the lightning, and the itinerant rains…between the pines, the Sufi spirits, and even the hard ground.


Day 3 at Lama

Day 39: In the desert

A serene view of limitless ground.  Of canyons, buttes, mountain plains.  I sip coffee while shrouded in a cloud and the sun touches down ahead, onto the rolling green river.  An intense ocular sensation.

I come to understand my preference for the old growth rainforest.  Cutting out vision heightens other senses.  Here, it is impossible not to gaze upon the immense earth with winded veneration.  Though a separation exists within the distanced view.  Here, there.  Me, mountain.  And I too much feel my selfness when walking on firm ground and when such immense blue swarms overhead.  Exposed to sky, and not sinking into land. 

when my vision is masked,
an openness.  With vastness,
an uncertainty.

Of my place.  But all of it.  An illusion.

Clearly there is an elegant energy here.  The legacy of Ram Dass and other spiritual teachers who have inhabited this land over the years…their presence passes through the morning vow of silence and other rituals.

Day 2 at Lama

Interlude

A doorway. Tomorrow I may glimpse where it goes.

Day 38: Beginning

vacant swings, a vast
rolling river of ground, and
a missing of parts


Day 1 at Lama

Day 37: Liminality and anticipation

rain wakens currents.
navigating erosion
to a homecoming?

About to embark on a retreat into the New Mexico mountains.  A retreat from all daily things...to forest, to clouds.  To a “consecrated” Sangha, where Ram Dass wrote his first book.  Sleeping on the land, though downpours expected.  I have little indication of what the week will bring, except a revealing.  And wetness.  Given the "off-the-gridness" of the center, blog postings will be short.  Haikus, images….perhaps of little "art projects" should I be so lucky.

Perhaps I will be so saturated in Sangha, I will be full, inside and out.  Or, perhaps I will just be cold.  Perhaps everything will change.  Perhaps nothing at all.

Day 36: Always, tension in the inbetween sun and moon

in the interval
meanwhile, wearing away

Day 35: Desire

A pathway to Sangha through the pores of the mouth?  Deep tongue kisses.  And chocolate lavender wedded in ground almonds.  Though, an idealization.  That only breeds longing and a pain in the bowels.  


a moment of joy 
essentially divulges 
a lock in deep trance

Day 34: Spontaneous iPhone haiku #3

been waiting to be seen...

Day 33: Calm before the storm

a time of movement
draws near dehydrated ground
away from fever

Day 32: Homecoming

Cogitation.  Weight.  The anticipation of flight.  Many different homes mingling.  Oldness. Newness.  And the fury of preparation.  

Day 31: Mourning

a voiceless lament

for edges, for lines,  for those
close by and long gone

The souls of Aunt Saretta and Grandpa are possibly skipping together in the ether at this moment.  Lillian, my grandmother, her sister, his wife, grieves, contemplates, reflects, makes peace.  She is good at that these days.  Markers of change, so many lately.  Infusing my being.  Soon, nothing will be as it was.
  

Day 30: Satiated

Like limbs indulging in long deep stretches, the creeping jenny creeps away, into muddy spaces.  Proliferating into wholeness.  They are fond of the home I’ve offered them.  Acceptance.  

Day 29: Watering

A bird escaped from a fern this evening.  I inadvertently watered its house.

I understand this bird's nature. The desire for forest.


Likely it is the same bird that made a home in this sweet potato vine, 
until it too was watered. 





Though a genuine birdhouse sits empty next door...

I think I too would prefer soil over pre-fab.

Day 28: Wu wei

Acquiescing, while gently asserting.  Gently asserting, while acquiescing.  

Moving fluidly. Upright, poised, limber, malleable.  Strong.  A beautiful thing, a surprise. Moments emerge here and there like little fish.  Flecks of gold swimming around me.  

A memory from Costa Rica... of white herons:
tributaries, green
buttressing ghosts that hover
amid light shadows

Day 27: Wetness

a tomato seed
stuck under neck, and winds that
assume, bearing rain

Day 26: Dancing with the boogymen

a call out, tender

a voice out of the blueness
but not, ire hushed

Day 25: Swimming

Swaddled in blue.  The paint found its way home.  Each day I will swim while I eat.  (The paint color name, incidentally, is Chartered Voyage).

With plunger in hand
I unleash steady waters.
Sustenance for heart

Day 24: Swimming

Floating in imaginary waters.  The lagoon in Akumal.  The pools from my childhood.  A bath?  No....  It doesn’t matter.  What matters is feeling space beyond head, beyond fingers, toes.  And being held by warm atoms. 

Outside thunder crashes and the rains surge.  It is a nestling.  A forest of water.  My feet swim in the air.

The full day of rain leaves such a lushness in its wake.  Reminiscent of Costa Rica in summer–bird calls and yellow.  Behind a wash of grey, colors pop.  I swim in a cool quiet and inhale soothing wetness.  Though the tree in the corner of the yard remains dead. Naked branches among full green.

Day 23: more hokkuing

a divine abode
awaits beyond white spacesuits
distance lessening

Day 22: Spontaneous iPhone haiku #2