Sapphire Eyes Hath the Daily Skies

Sand and Grass under Sapphire Sky Photographic Print

The Jewel of Life is Multi-Hued.
There is a clue in it.
All is one. One is all. Food.

The sky overlooks with a starry-eyed gaze.
Flipping over does not turn its page.
Once there is Fire and Water, Earth, and Air
There's no reason to turn in despair.

So beautiful. Given and received forever.

Well, that was kind of interesting. I started out looking for a picture of a jewel to be phonic representative of a Jewish person (me), which led me to a sapphire sky, which led me to the Jewel of Consciousness, which has now led me back to the story I intended to tell of a time when being Jewish got me 'in trouble,' and yet led to a discovery of strength.

I was waiting at a bus stop in Seattle with a lovely gentleman of another ethnic minority. We had a lively discussion, and then the bus came. I sat in the front vertical seats, he in the rows beyond. The bus driver had a break, so we all just sat there, until a loud-voiced alcohol-fumed person came aboard.

For a while he just talked in exaggerated tones to himself, and then he caught sight of me.

Shouting across half the length of the bus, he challenged me - "Hey, you a Jew?" I immediately tensed up, but in the next couple of seconds I could feel a zone of protection lovingly surround me. On and on he continued to rant and rail at me, threateningly, but I began to ease into the public humiliation like a warm bath. I really couldn't hear his slurs anymore. They didn't matter to me. If anything, I felt sad for the man I was so friendly with at the bus stop, moments before, who looked anxiously away from meeting my eyes, in fear that he might become a target as well.

The Daily Phoenix

Phoenix Rising Poster

Most nights I go to sleep scared  and sad, jumping at all the neuralgia biting at my body... never knowing where nor when... but it's more than that. I become a child, and the boot could come down at any time.

Then I wonder about life - and behind which veils that still small voice has floated as I fall asleep - but those are the worst times to search hysterically for it, because most mornings, I rise from a sleep in which I'd been a burning phoenix. Then, cycle completed once more, prepared to elevate above the ashes.

Once again, there is a life with hope, for whole moments at a time. It's important to me to cast my net out into life-giving energies for some renewal at those times.... I often miss my chance, not always.

I'm working on it, and it matters to me. I've always wanted to live life properly... Remember the 80% rule, S.W.? Everything is binary in difficult moments - yes or not.

Life.

If there's any art that I need to aim highest, it's that. Does it include cutting myself free?

Once Upon a Time in the Painted Desert

Painted Desert Landscape Photographic Print by David Edwards

"Painted Desert Landscape" by David Edwards

When I get scared sometime, about being sick or time passing, or not knowing what the state of my body or mind is at a particularly vulnerable moment, I sometimes think about other places and times I've been when I wasn't afraid at all. Some of these are solely internal landscapes, but this description is about traveling to the Painted Desert.

I'll edit it in slowly as I can.... so I'll guess I'll re-tweet it or whatever they say for posterous.

*Driving all night, the dawn light began to shine upon a ceiling of cloud, its underside thickly coated in reds and oranges some miles away. We started heading toward this event that was never before seen by us. What could paint the sky such vivid colors?

As we drove we soon found out that something as huge as a cloud could easily and enticingly appear close by in the sky could actually be much MUCH further away.

It took all morning, and most of the afternoon, to get there. What we found was Mars.

Mars come to visit Earth.

We parked the old sky-blue and white VW Van by the side of the road, and got out, testing the ground with our feet. It felt like no other piece of earth I had visited in my travels, soft and spongy, like I could jump on it as in those moon videos where the astronauts bounce away. I loved the feeling of being on another planet, ancient clay towers rising in different shapes and colors all around me.

It seemed a hundred times larger than the eye could see… even in that flat country.

After getting cocky and running about, gaining our footing and confidence…. I started out – barely - touching the towers, wanting to be careful that I wasn’t damaging their integrity, just as I had done with the ground.

Though soft as well, in some special extra-terrarium hold-together-magically way, I decided that I could climb a bit, and found this one niche with an overhang.

I sat down to meditate and be still. Survey the vast stretches of cloud-coloring brilliant material.

Looking our over the lands, there was no longer time nor space.

No mine or anyone’s. No want. This was the land of many lifetimes, and I had returned to a quietly spectacular welcome.

Sitting there I was Mars myself. I had joined, melted, and reshaped along with it.

It was a long while sitting more calmly and comfortably than I had ever been, free of all restrictions, even the small limitations of a human body in a vast land.

Once the time had moved along a ways, the moment passing on to my living memory, I was able to rise once more, and reach for the hand of the companion who had shared that travel experience with me, saunter over to a late night version of a vw van, and get in to find ourselves never alone in the universe. Big, but it fits inside.*

I wanted to post at least one thing today; keep up the discipline of enthusiasm...

Modem Down; Communication Lost

Line of Operators at Macy's Main Switchboard, with Alice Lennon Flipping Through a Rolodex File Photographic Print by Nina Leen

Nina Leen, "Line of Operators at Macy's Main Switchboard, with Alice Lennon Flipping Through a Rolodex File"

I've found it hard in life to communicate accurately a sufficient amount of the time. 
To attain unaffectedness, I can work with either the 'accurately' or 'amount of time' parts. Heck, why not work on both simultaneously! Now, there's a thought. It seems like there are so many things to work on, but communication has always been important to me.

The fact that each person means even a slightly different thing by every word they speak or write prompts a great feat to people who enter each other's worlds through words alone. I say this, though I treasure words and what they CAN do. It's definitely a step in the right direction.

But then there's just 'being in the presence of' - still and without words... and some things are then just understood. That's global, and then lovely words attempt to sculpt that into the perfect symbol, which will then point toward something meaningful. Making meaning, observing consciously - that's the stuff.

I don't know whether others can't sleep at night and find these types of thoughts, nay concerns, running through their brain, but it seems that I am. I'll keep the blog - who, with a life of its own, makes no false assumptions...nor right ones.

Life Elephantine

Momma's Boy Art Print by W. Michael Frye

W. Michael Frye "Momma's Boy"

Like humans, elephants run the gamut of behaviour, intelligence, and evolution. Noble beasts, who honor their dead, teach their children in complex ways, and remember distant relatives... can also run powerfully amuck via those same emotions that betide people. It's hard to picture such a being in a zoo. Any being... though I know that it is coming to the point where that might be the only way to keep species going as we expand our territory and they have no place to go. I also know that many folks are involved in the humane treatment and design of zoos, and I applaud them... loudly. It just makes me sad tonight, like part of myself is not free.

I would like to recommend  one of the most beautiful books I've ever read. It is about an elephant and a boy, born on the same farm on the same day, at the same minute, and had a friendship that lasted 80 years. I don't think I got through a single tissue-less page once the first obstacles began, though they're told in straightforward manner, just like the true story it is.

Peace.

The Norse Myth of Balder/Baldr

Baldr on this pyre, Artist unknown

All my life I have been interested in mythology... there's so much to learn about human nature in these stories. 
As Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell and others have said repeatedly from their farflung travels, these types of stories - the basic skeletons - appeared with new names and clothing all over the world... at a time when there was no contact between the different cultures.

One of my favorite myths in Norse Mythology was always the myth of Baldr. 

His mother finds out from a prophecy that he will be killed young, so she goes all around the world securing oaths from all the growing plants so that they would do him no harm. It was a huge task for a mother who dearly loved her youngest son, the favorite of all the gods.

The only plant that would not agree was mistletoe.... so she felt pretty secure. Word was sent to everyone about an ixnay on the istletoemay... and so they would take turns hurling objects made of all sorts of other plants at Baldr as their favorite game, laughing as they bounced off.

[This is the part where if I were there, I might put in a, "But aren't you just asking for trouble here?" But, no - I was not there.]

Now Baldr himself knew about this prophecy, but it was to be the start of Ragnarok, the final battle between good and evil, after which the world shall be reborn in a new phase of development, so he did not shun it. 

He accepted his destiny, though his mother could not. Neither, though, knew when nor how it might occur. Sounding quite familiar to many other mythologies.... Baldr was to come back, in elevated form, from the dead after a certain period of time.

So, Loki - the mischievous  - came along and put an arrow made of mistletoe into Baldr's blind brother's hand, and the one killed the other. The prophecy was fulfilled.

I see this myth at play in my sorrow at the deaths of so many young men (I know there are other myths and stories for female sacrifice). After all these years, it's worked its way into my psyche to the point that I grieve as if some of them were known to me, personally. I think culturally, too, it is in force.... as James Dean, Heath Ledger, and so many others with great potential.... all the soldiers at war as well - are elevated to a mutual grief. I'm prone to it, I think.... due to my early imbibing of that story.

Youth, Beauty, Potential, and Belovedness... gone in an instant, yet still to come.

Yet Another Test...

And I was going on about IQ tests earlier...

This is a test to see whether flickr pics of the before internal of some of the aforementioned 'house' can be seen on this page without someone having to sign up for flickr themselves. Someone will have to help me out here... as my computer has the cookies on and I don't want to sign out for fear of forgetting password. I know that's not a 'good' excuse, but I'll use it as tired is as tired does, I suppose.


Thanks for bearing with me, myself and all.

Brussels Carpet Sprout

I thought this picture was too amazing not to share.

Energy not wasted; can never be created nor destroyed.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever....
A thing of nature is ephemeral and rare; 
Enjoy it while it's there, then carry it in memory
To enjoy forever.


The Haiku Herald

Peacock Tail Feather Photographic Print by Darlyne A. Murawski
D.A. Murawski

One eye in; one out

Collect all my belongings, 
then rinse them each out.

If a flood should come
I know what I would reach for
and scarper away

Written things come in 
Threes; You know it's true, you just
feel the completion; don't you?

And yet there's one more
Just what am I saving for;
The future or past?