i want to

I say I want to save the world but really

I want to write poems all day

I want to rise, write poems, go to sleep,

Write poems in my sleep

Make my dreams poems...

-Dorothea Lasky, from Ars Poetica

frost moon

Before my bed there is bright moonlight

So that it seems like frost on the ground:

Lifting my head I watch the bright moon,

Lowering my head I dream that I'm home.

-Li Po

dance

Eadweard Muybridge, A Couple Waltzing, 1893

field notes

...boots back on the ground in my home woods -- sunset and ice:

 ...and waxing gibbous:

ghosts

Moon walks through the trees
tripping over things like ghosts
and last summer's leaves

still

the right place

live

Leibovitz, Georgia O’Keeffe’s bed, Abiquiu, New Mexico, 2010.

I didn't expect to be moved when we walked into O'Keeffe's studio, but I found myself weeping.  It's hard to describe the sense of solitude and peace in that room.  There is a narrow bed with a woven linen covering.  O'Keeffe's bedroom, which is around the corner, is about the size of a closet and has another twin bed in it and two windows that extend to the edge of the wall, so that they meet.  She looked out over the desert ... 

The simplicity of her single bed with the threadbare linens and the horizon line says it for me.  You can tell what's important to her.  I've seen some ways I wish I could live, and on some level Georgia O'Keeffe sets the bar.

--Annie Leibovitz, from Pilgrimage, 2011

Pilgrimage, my favorite from this expedition -- and I'm just that much more anxious to begin planning the next leg of my own.

blue

the moon tonight

I've posted this before but that's the way it is with me.

rise

Standing in the quiet.  In the cold.  Just before full light.  I waited all week for this as I flew past the misty bay, past bare fields and frost and low fog and sunrises.  It was just as I had hoped.  Then I came home to hot coffee, toast and jam, cheese, all of which I ate in stocking feet while still wearing my hat and coat.

vespers

friday

Gonna bust up a week's worth of funk

... may take a few repeats but I think it'll do the trick.

true romance

Ruess, Eucalyptus Grove

December 14

Polk Street

Dear Frances,

I have just acquired the most heart-rending symphony you ever heard, You must come out to my mean hovel Saturday night to hear it, for I have to share it with you.  In addition, there are two things I want to read to you, and a new picture I want you to see.  Don't refuse, for I must see you, and I have laid in a store of Roquefort cheese as a special inducement.  Yesterday and today I have been working, spasmodically, and then drowning myself in music.  I saw two girls on the streets this morning who reminded me of you.

I'm going out to Charley's tonight, but I'll try to call you sometime tomorrow.  Meanwhile, don't despair, for I'm trying not to.

Love from Everett

From Everett Ruess:  A Vagabond For Beauty

when the devil's loose

I am hypnotized by his spidery strumming weaving fingers.  It's as if they have a life of their own.

so be it

This day was a long stretch of grey flanked perfectly on each end with a dramatic meeting of clouds and sun and horizon -- a fiery meeting which evaded my obsessive and now I'm late to work attempts to capture.  I was also distracted by the rain as it poured outside the kitchen window all day, and distracted by the perverse exhilaration I get from the anticipation of being out in it.  Some people like rainy days so that they can snuggle in, hunker down, but I ... well not so much.  I want to throw myself into the cold and feel the sting of rain and wind as I fly recklessly over muddy sodden hillsides.  

There is color in a sunless day.  I like to look for it especially in the quiet between growing seasons (though warm weather has confused some plants).  And I am still into the blur -- it doesn't seem right these days for things to be in focus.  The light is low and everything is bare and loose in the wind.  Something about it all feels transient.  Today is neither yesterday nor tomorrow.  All is becoming.  So be it. 

wings and threads

 

This world is not for everyone.  For the rest of us, if we are not afraid, we might make our own from things like leaves and wings and the threads we've pulled from dreams.

no place like the right time

a good song for a Sunday night if you were looking for a Saturday night, because you didn't get one on Friday ... and here it is almost Monday:

collection

revival

Standing in a streaming field with my favorite walking companion on a Sunday morning.  Already, it's like a dream but my lungs still feel as if they are filled with this radiant shower of light that we couldn't help but breathe. 

light

brocade

Don't slander this

as a heap of debris—

it's a Chinese closet box

a brocade of autumn leaves

folded inside.

-Rengetsu

well

O'Keeffe,  NO. 8—Special (Drawing No. 8)

I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life - and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do. 

--Georgia O'Keeffe