Month: December 2016

Saturday Morning

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in-the-snow-donata-wenders-photography

…it is winter here.
Look how white everything is,
how quiet, how snowed-in.
I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly
As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands…

To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.
How free it is, you have no idea how free——
The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,
And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets…

~ Sylvia Plath, from Tulips in Collected Poems

Notes: Poem Source – Poetry Foundation,  Photo: Donata Wenders (in the snow)

 

 

5:00 PM Bell! (Lucky Chops)

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Check out the foot work of Mr. Green Hair @ 1:06. How good are these guys?

The brass band Lucky Chops was started by some kids at New York LaGuardia High (the “Fame” school) who cut their teeth playing in the subway. When a South American tourist shot a video of them that went viral, they started getting real gigs…”We still go into the subway to perform when we have the time. It’s a great training ground, if we workshop a new song in the subway and are able to get strangers to stop what they’re doing and listen to us then we know that song is a keeper.” (Source: Bedford + Bowery)

Liked this? Check out Lucky Chops with their Adele Cover: Hello

Breathe, babe, breathe

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eric-rose-sleeping

I knelt beside him. “Breathe, babe, breathe,” I said to him, little puffs accompanying each word…After running a bunch of tests they decided that John had…No heart attack, as they had first surmised.  All of that was pretty memorable. But what I remember the most vividly is this: later that day, I was driving the rental car down some minor highway, the snow surrounding us still, a house here and there, both John and Maya asleep, and I felt a soaring sense of euphoria. Not a hallucinogenic euphoria. It was an earthly euphoria, one of the most grounded feelings, in fact, that I can ever remember having.

This is my person. This is my baby. They are both safe, sleeping. This is the snow. These are my strong hands on the steering wheel. This is my life. This is all there is. And it is so fragile. And beyond enough.

It is these moments that we fear, these moments that are inevitable, that put us in touch with a proportionate sense of gratitude for just how lucky we are to live on this earth for even one day.

I’m not claiming that’s any consolation for the suffering — particularly for those who don’t get the comparatively gentle perspective borne of close calls, but the brutal realization of disease and death. I’m just acutely aware of how much more accurately we weigh our own small lives when we touch into just how vast and inevitable loss really is. Time slows down. Our senses are empowered. The sound of a peacefully sleeping person that you love becomes what it really is, the most sacred sound in the entire universe.

~ Courtney E. Martin, from The Shocking Clarity of Almost Losing it All (On Being, Dec 16, 2016)

Photo: Eric Rose

But dawn— dawn is a gift.

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morning-frost-grass-light

There is a rumor of total welcome among the frosts of the winter morning. Beauty has its purposes, which, all our lives and at every season, it is our opportunity, and our joy, to divine. Nothing outside ourselves makes us desire to do so; the questions, and the striving toward answers, come from within. The field I am looking at is perhaps twenty acres altogether, long and broad. The sun has not yet risen but is sending its first showers over the mountains, a kind of rehearsal, a slant light with even a golden cast. I do not exaggerate. The light touches every blade of frozen grass, which then burns as a particular as well as part of the general view. The still-upright weeds have become wands, encased in a temporary shirt of ice and light. Neither does this first light miss the opportunity of the small pond, or the groups of pine trees. And now: enough of silver, behold the pink, even a vague, unsurpassable flush of pale green. It is the performance of this hour only, the dawning of the day, fresh and ever new. This is to say nothing against afternoons, evenings, or even midnight. Each has its portion of the spectacular. But dawn— dawn is a gift. Much is revealed about a person by his or her passion, or indifference, to this opening of the door of day. No one who loves dawn, and is abroad to see it, could be a stranger to me.

~ Mary Oliver, from “Wordsworth’s Mountain” in Upstream: Selected Essays

 

Photo: emeL (magic grass)

Lightly child, lightly.

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lightly-wind-breeze-orange-sky

True singing is a different breath,
about nothing.
A gust inside the god.
A wind.

—Rainer Maria Rilke, from “Sonnet I.III,” in Duino Elegies; The Sonnets To Orpheus in The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke

 

Notes:

  • Oil Painting by Laura E. Pritchett . Poem: Thank you The Vale of Soul Making
  • Prior “Lightly child, lightly” Posts? Connect here.
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”