Apples Like the Evening Sky

This is a photo my dad sent to me taken during my little brother's long, long life-changing drive from Tucson, Arizona to our home town of good old, St. Augustine, Florida. All roads, don't they, dear brother, lead back to home? {From left, my dear brother Prajna (the bigga guy), my dear dad (though he says his hair looks like the original daffy duck), and my second-to-baby baby brother, Austin, all in Austin, Texas, plus pink flamingos in the Texas yard. So happy to see them together. Such love in Dad's eyes, such pleasure in the eyes of his boys, their dad's arms wrapped around them in love.

To wit, a fitting quote by John Cheever, the author born on this day, who once wrote:

"The world that was not mine yesterday now lies spread out at my feet, a splendor. I seem, in the middle of the night, to have returned to the world of apples, the orchards of Heaven. Perhaps I should take my problems to a shrink, or perhaps I should enjoy the apples that I have, streaked with color like the evening sky."

Love, in my humble human estimation, is the finale, it is the birth, it is the sweet apple. It is stronger than death. It is stronger than anything, anything, any single thing at all. And ain't we lucky to have a taste of it?

Taking Flight: It's a Major Award!

I won! I won! It's a Major Award! (And much prettier than a fishnet legged lamp any day of the week). It's a tender and lovely necklace by Stacy de la Rosa of Bella Wish, won by commenting on a post from the lovely and amazing Kelly Rae Roberts. Thank you, Kelly Rae & Stacy de la Rosa. I heart you. For realz. Boom! (Photo by KellyRae).

Feast on Your Life

It's been a hectic, kinda sad, kinda wonderful week. Working more at work so not on the up and up as far as posting goes...but for whoever out there who does check in, I found this poem too wonderful not to share. Putting yourself first in this way, remembering,

"Wow, look at me, I mean, I AM ALIVE, I have this amazing machine in my skull, and this love and this sorrow and this laughter that pours out of my heart and my mouth and my skin, that makes my blood race and my back ache and my bonesswell somehow with love for everything. I am here. All this that I see, those baby geese swimming on the lake, the way I love spring breezes, the way jasmine swells, the way it feels to hold a baby. All this, too. And me, too? REALLY? WOW."

Whatever this living is, whatever this life is, we are here. Don't let your beauty pass you by...like trees growing, our inner and outer beauty shifts and changes, provides different, equally beautiful and bountiful and painful offerings.

I'm learning to give myself permission to love me. And why shouldn't I? To quote Marianne Williamson from her book A Return to Love:

“Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

We have a divine obligation. So glad to have woken up today, to have woken up awake, to know in my body that those I love, when their bodies I've known well or fleetingly, pass in violence or in peace, which has happened lately, are so very happy and so very free.

Never woulda happened 3 years ago, when I found myself dangerously close to never waking up again. So now I feast ravenously, relishingly, ravishingly, with joy. On my own amazing, precious self. Now, you try it, too. Without further ado, here's this:

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

By Dereck Walcott. Discovered via this interview with Job Kabat-Zinn on Speaking of Faith. Picture is of my Grandma Jerry when she was 101 & fading like paper, but still feasting on life. She was a woman who knew herself, enjoyed her own company, and shone light all about her. I miss her.

Who Knows All the Changes We'll See?

By the time it gets dark. This is a view of St. A's Lightner Museum, taken from the nunnery parking lot nearing 8 p.m. I took this pic and the new header photo avec my telephone. Lyrics quoted from the song "By the Time It Gets Dark," first introduced to me through the voice of the inimitable Sandy Denny, then much enjoyed, similarly lovely version performed by the also inimitable Mary Lou Lord.

You Know. They Call Them Killer Whales.

Bitter. Sweet.

Grandma Jerry, when I forget how much I miss you, when I think of you instead of me, I daydream about your heaven and what might be there. There would be lots of yummy, no-longer-dangerous cigarettes, sweet and satisfying. And rose gardens, red red roses, pink, yellow, white and red red red. And Solitaire, Bridge games, Edna St. Vincent Millay, rhyming couplets, Shakespeare, big band swing, your long-lost-too-soon Mama, your here-too-briefly daughter Alice Elizabeth, and all those hundreds, easily hundreds of people who loved you but most importantly, who you loved and bid farewell over the years of your long, long life. Laughter is raucous. Cattiness elicits woops of hearty laughter, and the month is April, the breeze is soft, the sun dappled by light tree branches, those imagined poetic metaphorical erector-sets of your poems dissolved from stark nakedness into the lush lush breathing green of Spring. Today, you would be 104 years young. So there would be cake. Chocolate birthday cake--dark chocolate with a chocolate rasberry mousse center, chocolate frosting, and a map of fresh raspberries on top. The blackest, hottest coffee, even in the sun, cicadas singing, cardinals alighting on those branches, robins riding waves of sweet spring air. So. Spring is here. You are gone a year. You are no longer of time, of space, of dimension. Wish your shoulder, grown so tiny as you aged, were warm and waiting for my weary head. I miss your touch. I'm pretty good at voices, but yours won't pour from my lips. I wish I could hear your voice, my sweet sweet Grandma. It rolls through my mind but never hits the air outside. Relief? Spring is here. Spring made you weep with relief. You had the most beautiful hands, the fullest mouth. You loved so fiercely, so passionately, so plain. Spring has come, Spring came. And I, I guess, I can. I can weep again.

The King of Kong: A Fistfull of Quarters

The King of Kong: A Fistfull of Quarters. An engrossing human drama about high scores and Donkey Kong. As intriguing and funny and unforgettable as Hands on a Hardbody. Watched it last night. Documentary-lovers, this one is for you! So awesome.

Biko. Scissors. Stories.

Listening to Peter Gabriel's "Biko" and marveling about how Eudora Welty, the writer born on this date in 1909, edited her short stories by cutting them up with scissors and reassembling with straight pins. That is all. I have to go back to work now. This portrait is by Irina McGuire. xoxo Ama

one more broken morning

one more broken morning and a spine whose tiny vertebrae seem to roll and fret like an early spring ocean. a dance is what's holding me up. nothing ever settled, nothing finished, nothing sold. a day begins. a day ends. words can come fast. words can come not at all. voices come along and fade, a roaring train shaking the windows in my head. blue sky gray sky blue. shining sun. cold wind. full moon. forward motion. falling. and beginning again. let's forget this dance; remember almodovar; remember neruda; remember wheat. let your hand unwrest. let it fall to music and melody and waves of sound, broken and shattered like fallen leaves flying upwards under the pressure of the tiniest foot. (image via we heart it)

Suicide Aside {A Melody of World

suicide aside try watching birds regard them as they fly like salt to bread spice up this crusty world a giant spider web their lines of flight tie up and bind the world they fly birds jump up in the air and stay you try it flap your arms for all you're worth no way you're stuck they’re free to leave the world the colors lemon zest and lime and berry sugar coffee cream and all the rest sublime delicious flavors how our eyes drink in the world and listen to them sing the wind becomes a thing alive with music whistles squawks and chirps a melody of world so tell me why you thought you'd rather die check out pluck all the feathers close the lights alright don't tell me but please me stick around a while with me to watch the birds see how they swirl and turn the world
{Suicide Aside" by Bruce Dethlefsen, from Breather. © Fireweed Press, 2009.Image via ffffound.com}

Just So I Don't Forget

I'm planning on purchasing these records:
1.) SCORE! 20 Years of Merge Records: The Covers

2.) PJ Harvey & John Parrish: A Woman A Man Walked By3.) Airborne Toxic Event 4.) Marianne Faithfull: Songs for Music Lovers5.) Ida Maria: Fortress 'Round My Heart