ben harper

if/then

If this were so; if the desert were "home"; if our instincts were forged in the desert; to survive the rigours of the desert - then it is easier to understand why greener pastures pall on us; why possessions exhaust us, and why Pascal's imaginary man found his comfortable lodgings a prison.
--Bruce Chatwin

it's time

Thanks Will -- one we agree on!

collection

            

flight

I have been digging around for my copy of Desert Solitaire because my memory is sure of an essay that perfectly describes the mixture of disbelief and awe that I feel every time I find myself sitting in air. 

But I didn't find it so this is what i wrote:

There is only hum and hiss and pressure in this loud silence that is thick and weighted with whispers.  I am full of absence -- but I would no sooner let go of all that I am missing than I would let go of my own soul.  I could not bear that lightness.  

field notes

Baltimore:

It happens all too often -- I am somewhere but somehow struggling to actually be there.  It's not necessarily for lack of trying.  One can only serve so many purposes at a time. 

I spent a lot of time on the ground -- in the field -- covering miles, seeing sights, EATING, accomplishing "things", meeting people, ruffling feathers, smoothing ruffled feathers, smoothing wrinkles in clothes... 

A good window, open to a good view, is a powerful anchor to a place.  I am chained to moments full of night and dawn and day and dusk and repeat but with with the same disposition as fingerprints -- held by the weight of brilliant swaths of light and deepening shadows, the path of the moon, the texture of water in rain and wind and calm, light in all its color and variation.

tijuana

digging through lesser known JJ Cale covers...

magnolia

magnolia

rise

steel

Collin Herring with Ben Roi Herring on pedal steel:

silence

Silence is something that comes from your heart, not from outside. Silence doesn’t mean not talking and not doing things; it means that you are not disturbed inside. If you’re truly silent, then no matter what situation you find yourself in you can enjoy the silence. There are moments when you think you’re silent and all around is silent, but talking is going on all the time inside your head. That’s not silence. The practice is how to find silence in all the activities you do. 
--Thich Nhat Hanh

I took these pictures on Sunday and I can't help but notice how they don't feel the slightest bit like now anymore, but when I look at them, I can feel the now that was then and I am impressed again with a superb silence and a simple wish to carry it.

Thanks Rob.

collection

notes from home

Things are piling up here and my homework hasn't even made it out of the bag.  The boy is gone, I don't know where, and I'm glad because I do know he's not in his bedroom playing some electronic something.  The last I saw of him he asked about duct tape and rubber bands and then disappeared out the garage door.

Quiet, the kind of quiet that lets in the background -- the soundtrack -- that sometimes fades in the wake of daily stuff.  I keep thinking I might put on some music but instead I'm wondering about the smell of the screen door in the rain.  I'm listening to the rain peck at the awning, the sound of occasional dog pacing; little clicks over hardwood, and the birds -- always the birds and now the swelling of their evening song. 

sometimes

There's a storm outside, and the gap between crack and thunder...

If I bothered with tags, for this post they'd be:  Storms, Rain, Nostalgia, Stevie Nicks-esque Interpretive Dance, Small Guitar Armies.

storm

an under-appreciated blessing that deserves due welcome...

... just like any other dear friend you haven't seen in a while.  

constellations

thistled spring

like this:

love these cows:

blossom

Three moments.  I am moving fast.  Way faster than I'd like.  Treading, still, my own heavily trodden trails, I catch myself dreaming of unfamiliar roads, sights unseen and new worlds beyond the bend -- but this one is becoming new again right in front of me.  The trees are thicker tonight than this morning; clean limbs, grown fuzzy in the time that I was away.  Like the fall when the season goes so quickly in reverse, this spring thing that I've been waiting for can't last long.  I pray for time and presence of mind to be here and the grace not to will it away.  Somehow I need to figure out how to make every moment feel like sunrise, like the smell of freshly turned earth, like reaching limbs ... like a blossom.