i have been absent from this space for far too long. i forget to write because i get lost in the imagery; the visual elements of things. i forget the poetry. i forget the dance of words. the sensual language.
this must be remedied. starting today.
the day started with photo editing. i have been photographing flowers all spring long - it has been a lovely season. instead of usual crisp and bright photos, i have been doing more ethereal work lately - and i really love it. it's a new direction for me. always expanding my fields. always growing.
my youngest is ill, which is making the rest of the household a bit miserable. we are nursing him back to health, but this is a stubborn virus. it is so hard to see Dante so upset and uncomfortable - he is always the happiest of the 4 of us. always smiling and loving life. when he is sick, however, the whole world must DIE. poor little guy. i understand.
after some extra buttery grilled cheese, we decided to take the boys for a nap drive in the afternoon. our usual route through southern Ontario wine country. the black locusts are in bloom, and daisies are growing in the fields alongside the road. i must collect some later this week for perfume making.
we ended the day attending a "cruise night" car show at the beach. the boys weren't as into it, but husband adores classic cars, so we let him geek out for a bit while we walked around. after Greg got his fill, Drake ran around for a bit and threw rocks into Lake Ontario. Dante and i sat in the sand playing with rocks and sticks. he was content, even happy, for a wee while. then he made it clear it was time to go home.
and now it is almost midnight. i have been photographing my mineral/rock collection to post on a geology forum in hopes they can help me identify/confirm their classification. i am hoping to go rockhounding later this week, hopefully wednesday. we shall see.
i am also planning on conquering the devil's punchbowl this month.
what is the devil's punchbowl? let me google that for you.
"The Devil's Punch Bowl is a 37 metre ribbon waterfall on the Niagara Escarpment. The Devil’s Punch Bowl originated 450 million years ago when materials that form the Niagara escarpment were originally deposited in an inland sea. Corals and other organisms that lived in the area became fossilized as the sea bottom deposits changed into rocks. The formation of the Devil’s Punch Bowl occurred 1 million years ago after one of the four great ice ages. Today it has become a famous landmark amongst geologists worldwide because of its exposed rock strata."
in other words, it's awesome. a rockhounders dream.
the last time i hiked down to the falls, 2 years ago, i nearly broke my body in half. it's a rough hike. and this was before i had two babies and gained an extra 40 pounds. it's going to be a challenge, but i'm going to make a day of it and take it slow. i need to get back into shape, and hiking is great exercise.
and now it is time for some more photo editing, and blissing out to Bhagavan Das's lovely voice.
Namaste.
ॐ
1.8.12
is the weight heavy where you are? the weight of blood and bone a pain that seeps like cancer beneath the skin turning blood to poison and bone to shattered glass.
are you riddled with sound the sound of tears and childhood fears the sound of heart muscle tissue bending breaking changing shape. can you feel the teeth gnawing to the bone until you are only made of thick dark smoke the color red the sound of despair and defeat and disappointment.
veins run like rivers. limbs grow limp in exhaustion. and love, love falls like rain.
i run like wolves in the night.
27.7.12
The Master Teachings of a Snail by Michelle Hanson
If mankind’s ideal is to achieve a place of compassion and unconditional love, all we need do is regard our domestic pets to see they already possess these qualities. If you are willing to concede that these animals are pretty high up on the evolutionary ladder… what about a snail? Surely man is more highly evolved than a snail. Allow me to submit this story of the helmet conch, a member of the snail family, for your consideration.
Helmet conch shells grow to be 8-12 inches and were so named because their appearance resembles helmets worn by ancient warriors. In Shells Alive, Neville Coleman, the Australian author and biologist, writes in great detail about his encounter with a group of helmet conch snails.
During his normal recording functions underwater, he came across three helmet conchs in a triangular formation, each about five meters away from the other two. Two were positioned properly to get around, but one was buried in the sand on its side. This conch was left exposed to any predator in the vicinity. Even if it somehow avoided that fate, being stuck prevents it from foraging for food and it would eventually die.
Neville admits that it never occurred to him to turn this animal over because his mind was full of the recent observations from his swim, and he had to return to change film. He barely took notice of the three conchs except to observe their position. He assumed that other divers had gathered these shells on a boat and tossed them overboard after being informed that they were a protected species.
A few hours later, with fresh air tanks and new film he made his way back and he nearly froze at what the torchlight revealed. The two upright conchs had moved closer to the one in trouble. Being a trained scientist, he sat back and observed the action. After the two liberated conchs reached the one buried in the sand, he discovered they had furrowed out a depression around the immobile shell, having dug away the sand as efficiently as if they were a pair of miniature bulldozers. He says: "I just didn’t believe what might be happening, but I took the pictures anyway."
As he watched in awe, after loosening the sand around the conch that was stuck, the two mobile conchs came around behind it, climbed up on the shell and toppled it over. Neville was nearly in tears as he witnessed two "dumb, unfeeling invertebrates without vision or any known form of communication, with pea-sized ‘brains’ and no reasoning mechanism that we are aware of, combine their actions to assist another of their species in trouble."
Let’s consider this scene Neville witnessed. These conches had to: 1) know a comrade was in trouble, 2) care enough to travel for hours to respond, 3) cooperate in figuring out a plan of action, then 4) carry it out…and, they did. Is this simply animal instinct? We can choose to believe that, or to believe that through compassion, intelligence, and dedication, they accomplished a rescue that neither could have achieved alone. Contrast this to human victims whose cries for help fall on deaf ears because nobody wants to get involved.
If I may make a suggestion, perhaps animals so obviously possess traits that we aspire to, that the only way we allow ourselves to be comfortable with their capacity for unconditional love is to label this as instinct. Otherwise, if they possess this altruistic spiritual trait we desire, logic dictates that they (animals) are the more evolved beings. What if a dog does have a choice whether to run into a burning building, or to dive into freezing waters to rescue a family member? These acts of love could be the genuine article, and writing them off as instinct does us all a disservice.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the animals were mirroring our own potential — the loving beings we really are? I believe that energetically we are all light beings. One of us comes to Earth and zips on a “human suit,” another a “dog suit,” another a “snail suit,” but underneath we are all the same light beings. At this energetic level, no being is above or below another on the evolutionary scale. We are all one. Instead of looking upon this demonstration of animal compassion as "less than" because it is only instinct, why not see the gift they offer us — teaching us who we are, even in the behavior of a snail.
{Neville Coleman: 1938-2012}
26.4.12
19.4.12
opiates and dark hallways a sense of humanity the day you showed me pictures of burn victims and cum rags and i, naive and in between worlds a screen of smoke and mirrors an alibi a senseless whore bore foreplay decay i was made of fire. you were made in hell.
setting fires, woods in winter stolen smokes and racing trains you were lightning and i was white water broken knives purple bruises and swollen lips holes in your arm where your father once strangled the life out of you.
i was atrophied homosexual tendencies spider veins and skin stretched tight over broken bones that never healed. and you, you left your sperm on my prom dress and a virus that devoured flesh and dreams alike.
and the end came suddenly and incomplete covered in blood and tears and holy water scratched raw from suicidal tendencies and dead animals a trail of stolen stories and infected sores i was incomplete with madness a bonfire covered in piss and shit and you, a deranged creature of loathing and hate shook me off like a bad case of fleas.
10.4.12
forgive you? no, i don't think i am ready for that yet. it is no longer my lot in life to save you from your sins and from yourself. i am not capable of, nor responsible for, abolishing your guilt and sadness. you are the one that walked away. i survived you.
i have listened to the sounds of hydrangeas in the middle of the night they whisper, almost inaudibly, of rain and fog and gray skies of forests trembling at the thought of storms of oceans unraveling in the wake of day and the moon, i hear her too, at night telling tales of stars and planets and black holes of solar flares and lights in the night sky she sings of nonsense and fire and women of broken spines and flightless birds and things that will never shine like she does so i stretch my legs and bruise my feet with pine cones and pink granite skin so softly scratched by spruce and cedar and as i walked, naked and transformed there was fog and rain and gray skies smoke and teeth, bones and blood and the tales of hydrangeas behind my eyes, beneath my skin.
5.4.12
“I’m not in anyway afraid of death…I’m afraid of dying now, I don’t want to leave behind my wife and child, so I don’t do things that would jeopardize my life. I try to do as little things as I can to jeopardize it. I don’t want to die.” —Kurt Cobain, 1993
20.3.12
i am the girl holding her elbows when watching the ocean. i am pulling the stitches closed and wincing against the saltwater on my scars. i am not afraid to look in my opal-reflection, but i’m not ready to face it just yet. because i am the girl building sand castles during high tide, the one running into the waves fully dressed. i am breathing in coral and starfish so that when i come apart, at least my insides will be beautiful.
i am breathing coral in deep to paint my insides the color of magic. i am shrugging off the weight of the past and letting it disperse with the pulse of the tide. i am floating and wrapped in seaweed, shedding my clothing of cotton and denim in lieu of freedom and adventure. i am brushing wrinkled fingertips against the shadows of angler-fish and bottle-nose dolphins and despite the distance, i am connected. i am gently awakening and letting the scales fall from my eyes. i am diving into the darkness to where even fear can’t touch me.
{Megan Madgwick}
13.3.12
14.2.12
a need to return to the wild. a need to write. a need to devour the world with my eyes and ears. a need to feed my heart and soul.
in spring, i unfold.
6.10.11
visions of forests, lunar snow and ocean waves. the cold dawn of morning. my hands, shaking. a sky so brilliantly gray, as fog rolls off the lake. wood smoke. the scent of pine and cedar. soft, wet earth. my eyes adjust to the light. show me where it hurts. howl when i find it.
i express myself in deviating and decayed ways, but i am not broken in the ways young girls are broken, no. i am the woods in winter, snow falling in the night. the moon over vast oceans and the rustling of dying leaves in october. my bones are brittle with age and malcontent. i do not speak, i can only whisper. i do not expect you to hear me.
{about}
If mankind’s ideal is to achieve a place of compassion and unconditional love, all we need do is regard our domestic pets to see they already possess these qualities. If you are willing to concede that these animals are pretty high up on the evolutionary ladder… what about a snail? Surely man is more highly evolved than a snail. Allow me to submit this story of the helmet conch, a member of the snail family, for your consideration.
If I may make a suggestion, perhaps animals so obviously possess traits that we aspire to, that the only way we allow ourselves to be comfortable with their capacity for unconditional love is to label this as instinct. Otherwise, if they possess this altruistic spiritual trait we desire, logic dictates that they (animals) are the more evolved beings. What if a dog does have a choice whether to run into a burning building, or to dive into freezing waters to rescue a family member? These acts of love could be the genuine article, and writing them off as instinct does us all a disservice.
