through

Separation

Your absence has gone through me   
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.

-W. S. Merwin

tandaradei

Under der linden

an der heide,

dâ unser zweier bette was,

dâ mugt ir vinden

schône beide

gebrochen bluomen unde gras.

vor dem wald in einem tal,

tandaradei,

schône sanc diu nahtegal.

Under the linden tree

On the heather,

Where we had shared a place of rest,

Still you may find there,

Lovely together,

Flowers crushed and grass down-pressed.

Beside the forest in the vale,

tandaradei, 

Sweetly sang the nightingale.

-Walther von der Vogelweide

cultivate

Freedom is not given to us by anyone; we have to cultivate it ourselves.

-Thich Nhat Hanh

the kind of day...

It was the kind of morning where it wasn't difficult to spend an hour studying color charts in an effort to determine if the pre-dawn sky was violet blue or ultramarine -- an activity which had the unintended consequence of turning me into some strange sort of blue "radar."  And so it has turned into the kind of day where I've somehow managed to yield all kinds of time to similarly compelling pursuits of questionable utility:

transmitter

 ... this morning fog.  I am the receiver and this is the message (@6:20, but go ahead and listen to all of it):

In case I've forgotten, there's little doubt the universe knows what it's doing.

lau

field notes

Mindful

Every day

I see or hear

something

that more or less

kills me

with delight,

that leaves me

like a needle

in the haystack

of light.

It was what I was born for--

to look, to listen,

to lose myself

inside this soft world--

to instruct myself

over and over

in joy,

and acclamation.

Nor am I talking

about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,

the very extravagant--

but of the ordinary,

the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.

Oh, good scholar,

I say to myself,

how can you help

but grow wise

with such teachings

as these--

the untrimmable light

of the world,

the ocean's shine,

the prayers that are made

out of grass?

-Mary Oliver