angelbirdflies

The Well of Grief Those who will not slip beneath      the still surface on the well of grief turning downward through its black water      to the place we cannot breathe will never know the source from which we drink,      the secret water, cold and clear, nor find in the darkness glimmering      the small round coins           thrown by those who wished for something else.   -- David Whyte

My latest piece of art just went to its new home.  A mixed media encaustic.  Here is a farewell photo to share.  I am off to Hawaii in two days.  I will post some inspiring beauty on my return. All love Angelina

When your eyes are tired the world is tired also. When your vision has gone no part of the world can find you. Time to go into the dark where the night has eyes to recognize its own. There you can be sure  you are not beyond love. The dark will be your womb tonight. The night will give you a horizon further than you can see. You must learn one thing: the world was made to be free in. Give up all the other worlds  except the one to which you belong. Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you. ~ David Whyte

It is possible I am pushing through solid rock, like the vein of ore encased, alone. I am such a long way in I can see no way through and no space. Everything is close to my face and everything close to my face is stone. I don't have much knowledge yet in grief, so this darkness makes me feel small. You, be the Master; Make yourself fierce; break in. And then your great transforming will happen to me And my great grief cry will happen to you. -Rilke

My face catches the wind from the snow line and flushes with a flush that will never wholly settle. Well, that was a metropolitan vanity, wanting to look young forever, to pass. I was never a pre-Raphaelite beauty and only pretty enough to be seen with a man who wanted to be seen with a passable woman. But now that I am in love with a place that doesn’t care how I look and if I am happy, happy is how I look and that’s all. My hair will grow grey in any case, my nails chip and flake, my waist thicken, and years work all their usual changes. If my face is to be weather beaten as well, it’s little enough lost for a year among the lakes and vales where simply to look out my window at the high pass makes me indifferent to mirrors and to what my soul may wear over its new complexion.  -  Fleur Adcock

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -- over and over announcing your place in the family of things. ~ Mary Oliver ~

The Journey One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice -- though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. "Mend my life!" each voice cried. But you didn't stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do -- determined to save the only life you could save.  ~ Mary Oliver ~

When you create a problem, you create pain. All it takes is a simple choice, a simple decision: No matter what happens, I will create no more pain for myself. I will create no more problems.   - Eckhart Tolle

When I am thirsty and no amount of water will fill me, this is where I turn.  This is my tribe, my clan.  These are my women.  My sisters.  My well.  Thank God, every moment, that they are breathing and dreaming on this beautiful spinning planet.  With them "I have a meat ye know not of".

A kiss blown to my beloved, sister-wife-forever love-friend-kin, whose heart beats with my own, as my own...life expressing in infinite form... forever whole.

I have been in Canada for quite a while, enjoying the beauty of my sweet sister, China, and the landscape  she inhabits.  Here is a window into our time:  Trips to the beach with our two wildly wonderful children, Bodhi and Mina.  Walks to the beach without our two wildly wonderful children.  Days spent reveling in beauty more abundant than I had cause to dream.  Walks alone on moody mornings, breathing in the salty spray from a thousand miles of distant ocean.  Long treks and short rambles through the forests in Metchosin  Falling deeply and passionately in love with arbutus trees.  Deer so close you could touch them if you were patient enough, we weren't (well more specifically Bodhi and Mina weren't).  Waterfalls  Lakes  Fires on the beach...  Happiness picking veggies in the greenhouse to be humbly transformed into culinary masterpieces in the kitchen by sisters joyously working side b...