Exposed

Paul Simon said that one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor. Whose floor is the sky?  Does it open at night to spill the dance of the stars, the sailing of the moon, into our earth-bound feet?

Moving toward eclipse–
double reckoning of light
bearing winter’s tides.

My windows become eyes to let the nightshine in.

 

Could I resist the dVerse winter moon haibun prompt?

This was my best photo of the first New Year’s Moon (that’s a rubber band that was on the floor…how did that happen?).

hush

“…till the morning break
And the white hush end all but the loud beat
Of their long wings, the flash of their white feet.”
–W.B. Yeats, from ‘To some I have talked with by the fire’

Once again I dipped into Jane Dougherty’s Month of Yeats for some inspiration.  The Oracle seems to have caught a mood circling around the earth which is definitely Yeatsian.

Above is the view out back last night, which also somehow feels right for the Oracle’s (and Yeat’s) words…

bird wings like
cloudlight caught between
frost and wind
covering winter with paths
which grow cold shining

 

Trampoline

Down at the Jersey shore they used to have these inground trampoline places. My sister and I had never jumped on trampolines and we used to like going. I found a picture of me jumping with my sister in the foreground.

Here’s the photo probably taken by my father. We’ve been going through a lot of stuff and I continually find myself intrigued by old photos. I went through all my colored pencils and arranged them in color order in two containers; also sharpened them. Colored pencil on black paper is a fun way to draw.

Beach I Ching 15

#30  Li  Fire

Clarity–
illuminating
fire with fire–
transforming
intersections of endings–
beginning to rise

I was amazed to see that it’s been almost a year since my last Beach I Ching post.  I’ve been working on this one for awhile, though.  The symbol of fire has shown up a lot for me this year.  Li is a doubling of fire, reflecting its dual nature of creation and destruction.  This hexagram is also called Radiance, Clarity, Sun, Transformation–it has many manifestations.  The Chinese characters are also sometimes said to resemble a bird captured in a net.

“Do not think at the moments when you see no light that there is no light at all.”
–Fritz Blok

“It is good to see what you have lost and mourn it, to let grief flow, like time.”
–Barrett

“Take what is important and let the rest go.”
–Karcher

Collage with painted bird, photo of objects collected on the beach, and another shadorma for Shadorma November.

You can see all the Beach I Ching posts here.

 

Sign of the Times

This one’s for Jack Davis.   Seen in Soho walking from the subway to Chinatown.

My reader (or my computer maybe?) is totally wonky this morning…will try to catch up with everyone’s posts later.

Drawing Table

everything
has to be somewhere–
(organized
to surprise)–
chance determines connections
that cross mind to hand

Jane Dougherty’s prompt to photo and versify our workspaces offered a good opportunity for me to think about the way I work.

 

Sunriseset

grey suddenly blue
I walk circles with the light
returning to stars

“On the Road” has a haiku prompt this week that considers the life and work of Kikusha-Ni, a Buddhist nun, poet, artist, and wanderer.

I used two sky photos I took at the beach and did some quick watercolors on rice paper, combining the elements in a few different ways.

The haiku evolved along with my photoshop manipulations.

dawning grey to blue
the sun wears orange this evening
returning to black

Window

Table in the sun
still holding its vacancy—
the cat is not there.

Rose of Sharon flowering
through light of summer’s return.

Lillian at dVerse proposed we take a photo through one of our windows and respond in poetry.  The words I’ve read have been really evocative, and of course, there’s the chance to look into another’s intimate space.

This was taken from my kitchen.  For most of the time I’ve lived here, I would look out and see my neighbor’s cats, who spent many of their days lounging in what passes for my back yard, often on this table. We got to know each other well, and I still look for them, even though all of them are gone now.

Her current cats prefer to stay indoors.

Surprise

Shapes appear
reflected, freshly
pressed—falling
into place
like the Fool’s card—zero played
openly, surprised.

I’ve been neglecting the Secret Keeper’s prompts the past few weeks for lack of time, not interest.    They are always like a puzzle for me, coming together in unexpected ways when I start to write.  The appearance of the Fool, after a few drafts of ideas, was definitely a surprise.  But serendipity is always part of the work I do.  The end is never where I thought I was going.

I took the photos of Japanese ceramics with the beautiful window light reflected on the glass display cases at the Metropolitan Museum last spring.  I was reminded of them by Marcy Erb’s post a few weeks back of a photo with reflected light on a Buddha, and I think they fit with this poem.

And I’ve resurrected a few Fools from past posts.  The Fool (Zero in the Tarot) represents for me a capacity to be surprised and delighted, to leave an empty space to be filled by life.  Wonder is everywhere; we just need make some room for it occasionally.

 

Today NYC

 

“This is what Democracy looks like.”