Sunday Quote

I am the wind which breathes upon the sea,

I am the wave of the ocean,

I am the murmur of the billows,

I am the ox of the seven combats,

I am the vulture upon the rocks,

I am the beam of the sun,

I am the fairest of plants,

I am the wild boar in valour,

I am a salmon in the water,

I am a lake in the plain,

I am a word of science,

I am the point of the lance of battle,

I am the God who created in the head the fire.

Who is it who throws light into the meeting on the mountain?

Who announces the ages of the moon?

Who teaches the place where couches the sun? (If not I)

-Amergin, The Mystery, Leaphar Gabhala (The Book of Invasions) translated by Douglas Hyde.

Getting Better...

Emmy, who has not been well, is responding quite nicely to her new diet which will help her very ancient kidneys.
Thinking about pets, here's a link to a story in the Times - the last few lines are the truth, huh? Thanks, Stephanie for sending that.

Here's a Billy Collin's poem I have always liked - it seems appropriate with all this rain and our house of two seemingly perpetually soggy dogs.

Sunday Quote

"As we live through thousands of dreams in our present life, so is our present life only one of many thousands of such lives which we enter from the other more real life and then return after death. Our life is but one of the dreams of that more real life, and so it is endlessly, until the very last one, the very real the life of God."

— Leo Tolstoy

We might as well go fish

Mudskippers and Burr Fish seem apt when the sky is getting heavy and low with an intent to rain all night and all day. My May flowers are pummelled and drooping, and mosquitoes are having a healthy (for them, not us) growth spurt. What to do? Celebrate fish, we might as well learn fishy ways, grow fins, learn to experience inhabiting water as a natural way of being. Maybe I can grow a mermaid's tail after all. Now that would be fun :)

Variations, arbor, farm, green and light

Sunday Quote

"The opposite of samsara (The eternal cycle of birth, suffering, death, and rebirth) is when all the walls fall down, when the cocoon disappears and we are totally open to whatever may happen, with no withdrawing, no centralizing into ourselves. This is what we aspire to, the warriors journey. That is what stirs us--leaping, being thrown out of the nest, going through the initiation rights, growing up, stepping into something that is uncertain and unknown.

What do you when you find yourself anxious because your world is falling apart? How do you react when you're not living up to your image of yourself? Everybody is irritating you because no one is doing what you want. And your whole life is fraught with emotional misery and confusion and conflict.

At these times it helps to remember that you're going through an emotional upheaval because your coziness has just been in some small or large way addressed. It's as if the rug has been pulled ou from under you. Tuning into that groundless feeling is a way of remembering that basically you do prefer life in warriorship--to death."

-Pema Chodron

Beam me up. Scotty!

We were afraid we were going to miss the Star Trek movie because of endless illnesses and whatnot here, but we got there today...and just perfection - the best seats, a very thrilled ten year old sandwiched between us, and the movie was terrific. As a gal who was the only one who really liked ST in her family, watching with my husband who, like me, has seen each episode of the original ones a zillion times, the movie really did not fail in any way. Great fun. Can't wait for the next one (there is a next one, right?). The characters were so perfectly cast also - if you were a fan of the original series with Captain James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock and everyone else, this is a must-see. (Shout out for Leonard Nimoy!).

Driftless, Greg Brown style.

Been driving around playing this song today...makes me want to spin the edge off some blues and head someplace flatter, wider, kinder. Where might that be? It's the rain, and the age, and the turning of things, time, the old dog not doing well...when I was submitting poems somewhere, I noticed so many of them had a white dog in them...of the five up at Anderbo, two have that white dog in the lines...hey, Emmy.

Don't know why there's no sun ....

...up in the sky, Stormy Weather. Just can't get my poor self together, keeps raining all the time...

Have always loved that song...it's June, it's cold and wet, it's antibiotics and Nyquil. Some remaining photos from our April jaunt - cranberry bogs at the Cape and a lovely blue doored garage (that the garage should have such a view!), an island building in the waters off the harbor in Guilford Ct and some seagulls keeping an eye on all the goings-on.

Sunday Quote

Praised be you, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars in heaven; you formed them clear and precious and beautiful.

- Saint Francis of Assisi

More NYC shots from a Cranky Gal

The gorgeous tree chandelier is still in the GCS market - on our December visit, I had thought it was just a holiday thing....a giant Clifford at the BEA convention at the Javits Center, an East Village Public Library shot I threw in even though that was an earlier visit (it's my blog and I'll merge if I want to - sing it, Susan!)...my, my, I am cranky. It must true. Even the mostly patient husband says so.

I do hate being sick.

Last weekend, NYC

Last weekend, the long ago time when I was not ill and sitting at home quite out of sorts and unpleasant to be around, we went to the BEA convention in NYC, the husband and I.

Lugged my camera all about but didn't remember to take very many shots.

I do love the details on buildings, windows in NYC, even office windows and the suggestion of busy lives within, the enormous market at Grand Central Station...

Happy Birthday to you...

My youngest child is double digits today - he is elated and I am happy for him, sort of stunned that a decade has come and gone so quickly. His brother, my other darling boy and oldest son, is a decade older - equally stunning to me to see how much a child changes in ten years - truly a boy to a man in what seems so brief a time now...ah, I am melancholy and it is time to go meet up with everyone and have celebrate...ice cream and birthday cake, here we come!