on this date

Old bones creaking today and I was not quite up to participating in a vigorous day at the street fair of my favorite organization, the San Francisco Center for the Book. I went back and looked at photos I had taken in previous years, but then thought…did I document this calendar day on other years? What do I remember…and were the photos worth it? The photos are within the 24 hours of September 29th each year since 2008. Really weird what I photograph! Only one is a verifiable event. Photo four is setting up for the street fair early in the morning of September 29, 2011.

before the sky filled

Autumn came in with a surprise rainstorm…very unusual for September here. I am always amazed that the ocean roils with a storm message before the sky is filled with clouds. Once, many observers knew what this portended, how to read it….now, at least for me, I go to the internet weather report.

circular nature of nature

This morning I had several reminders of the joy of the changing seasons. 

A flutter outside my kitchen window focused my sleepy eyes on a small flock of birds feasting on the seeds of a drying garden a few properties to the north. Finally, able to identify them as juncos…all the dates for arrival in my bird book have been in late October or November. Not sure the significance of this….perhaps an early and harsh winter?

Later, puttering in my little garden area, I saw a butterfly on a salvia…same type butterfly in the Spring on a meadow sage. (I posted it here at the time...they look almost identical). 

Just a gracious and happy reminder of the circular nature of nature.

the end of art

Seamus Heaney, RIP

“The end of art is peace…."

                                                                                             From The Harvest Bow

 “It strikes me that the hermit and the poet probably have much in common: the need for solitude; the deep-down awareness of things and the self-discipline to spend hours in contemplation,” 

                                    Fr. Kevin Doran, homily at funeral mass for Seamus Heaney

and you get to smile

If everyone had the luxury to pursue a life of exactly what they love, we would all be ranked as visionary and brilliant. … If you got to spend every day of your life doing what you love, you can't help but be the best in the world at that. And you get to smile every day for doing so.

                                                                                                    Neil deGrasse Tyson

I am not sure lolling about qualifies one for vision and brilliance, but it does look like something that would make me smile a lot. Not feeling particularly visionary, but the weather here is finally nice enough for pool time. (But, I don't have a pool).

memory and time

I am fascinated by concepts of how we perceive time and how memory seems so variable, often changing in each recall. Of course, as a poet, both time and memory are central to my writing. Maria Popova in a brilliant review of Claudia Hamilton’s Time Warped:Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception used this quote connecting memory with how we perceive time:

It is memory that creates the peculiar, elastic properties of time. It not only gives us the ability to conjure up a past experience at will, but to reflect on those thoughts through autonoetic consciousness — the sense that we have of ourselves as existing across time — allowing us to re-experience a situation mentally and to step outside those memories to consider their accuracy.


Maria Popova's superb blog is: http://www.brainpickings.org/

barriers exist

Various barriers to free expression and privacy have been much in the news, but those barriers often do not apply to me in my every day world. However, barriers exist.

I am truly struggling in a new phase of my poetry to explore some difficult times in my life. Those times are an essential, but mostly an unexpressed part of who I am today. It seems imperative to bring those times openly into my creative process.

But, I have become so aware of my barriers to writing honestly, and even to remembering. The barriers once seemed, or were, essential for self protection in society, relationships, work and ultimately my own self image. Because of change and aging, they are no longer relevant. The question today seems to be, can I remove these fences that block my reach? 

Are they unmovable or a matter of changing perspective?