...I have lived through everyone from Kennedy to two Bushes. In that time I had great hopes with Kennedy, and a little hope with Carter, and absolutely no faith in Johnson or Nixon. After all, the last two didn't seem to mind sending a lot of kids in my generation to die in a country in Southeast Asia that nobody else in the world seemed to care about. Call me crazy, but I like seeing nineteen-year-olds alive and stoned in college. It's a little quick of mine.
- Lewis Black
11.02.2008
politics as (un)usual
10.21.2008
out beyond
view from beyond - djstrang 10/08• • •
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,there is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense.
- Rumi
10.20.2008
noda
• • •Life tells the biggest lies of all,
And draws wages from itself.
Truth is a landscape the saintly tribes live on,
And all the lenses of Japan and Germany
Wouldn't know how to focus on it.
Life flickers on the frame like beautiful hummingbirds.
That is the film that always comes out blank.
The painting the artist can't get shapes to fit.
The poem that shrugs off every word you try.
The music no one has ever heard.
...from I Am a Cameraman by Douglas Dunn
10.18.2008
things
Red Church - Oct. 08• • •
There are worse things than having behaved foolishly in public.There are worse things than these miniature betrayals,
committed or endured or suspected; there are worse things
than not being able to sleep for thinking about them.
It is 5 a.m. All the worse things come stalking in
and stand icily about the bed looking worse and worse and worse.
- Fleur Adcock
10.07.2008
friday night
Photo by James D. Davis, III• • •
In the medieval night
'Twas love's design
And the sky was open
Like a valentine
All the lacy lights
Where wishes fall
And like Shakespeare's child
I wished on them all
Ahh to be your destiny
Was all that I pursued
I could see the sights
From the lofty heights
But my heart obscured the view
- Patti Smith
9.28.2008
lila
I love you, Lila Lou.• • •
You are an ocean in a drop of dew,
all the universes in a think sack of blood.
What are these pleasures then,
these joys, these worlds
that you keep reaching for,
hoping they will make you more alive?
-Rumi
healing
• • •Let a teacher wave away the flies
and put a plaster on your wound.
Don't turn your head. Keep looking
at the bandaged place.
That is where the light enters you.
And don't believe for a moment
you are healing yourself.
- Rumi
9.27.2008
leaves 3
Acrylic Painting by DJStrang• • •
I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content.
- Walt Whitman
9.26.2008
leaves 2
Acrylic Painting by D J Strang• • •
I know I am august,
I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be
understood,
I see that the elementary laws never apologize,
I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant
my house by after all.
- Walt Whitman
leaves
Acrylic Painting by DJStrang• • •
And I know I am solid and sound,
To me the converging objects of the universe
perpetually flow,
All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means.
- Walt Whitman
9.17.2008
angel
I am an old woman named after my mother
My old man is another child that's grown old
If dreams were lightning, thunder was desire
This old house would have burnt down a long time agoWhen I was a young girl well, I had me a cowboy
He weren't much to look at, just a free rambling man
But that was a long time and no matter how I try
The years just flow by like a broken down dam.There's flies in the kitchen I can hear 'em there buzzing
And I ain't done nothing since I woke up today.
How the hell can a person go to work in the morning
And come home in the evening and have nothing to say.Make me an angel that flies from Montgomery
Make me a poster of an old rodeo
Just give me one thing that I can hold on to
To believe in this living is just a hard way to go- John Prine
9.09.2008
9.07.2008
night light
8.22.2008
solitude
Jax Beach - July 2008• • •
Just as the soft rains fill the streams,
pour into the rivers and join together in the oceans,
so may the power of every moment of your goodness
flow forth to awaken and heal all beings,
Those here now, those gone before, those yet to come.
By the power of every moment of your goodness
May your heart's wishes be soon fulfilled
as completely shining as the bright full moon,
as magically as by a wish-fulfilling gem.
By the power of every moment of your goodness
May all dangers be averted and all disease be gone.
May no obstacle come across your way.
May you enjoy fulfillment and long life.
For all in whose heart dwells respect,
who follow the wisdom and compassion, of the Way,
May your life prosper in the four blessings
of old age, beauty, happiness and strength.
Traditional Buddhist Healing Chant
8.18.2008
stormy weather
Jax Beach - July 2008• • •
One morning, when the air was misleading and mild with hope, I saw my mother standing beside the forsythia. The blossoms had just begun to open, and were now as much yellow as they were green. The branches tumbled into the yard, heavy with the weight of flowers and leaves, and there was my mother, all alone. She was smoking a cigarette, the first she'd had in years, since her cancer had first been diagnosed and treated. Her hair was dark and thick, and she hadn't bothered with a comb or a brush. She was crying out there, beside the forsythia, but even if she hadn't been, I would have known. Certain things need not be said, and there's nothing, not a whispered prayer, not a sacrifice, not a payment of any price, that will change what's about to happen.
excerpt from The Rest of Your Life by Alice Hoffman
8.17.2008
8.16.2008
pink motel
Neptune Beach - July 2008Two monks were arguing about whether their train was moving.
One said: "Our train is moving."
The other said: "The train on the tracks next to us is moving."
The sixth patriarch happened to be walking down the aisle.
He asked them: "Would I look good in short shorts?"
This Mind is Buddha by Mike Topp
8.14.2008
8.12.2008
out of stillness
I was happy enough to stay still
inside the pearl inside the shell,
but the hurricane of experience
lashed me out of hiding
and made me a wave moving into shore,
saying loudly the ocean's secret
as I went, and then, spent there,
I slept like fog against the cliff
another stillness.
Rumi
whatever
July 2008• • •
Whatever happens. Whatever
what is is is what
I want. Only that. But that.
Prayer by Galway Kinnell
8.11.2008
8.09.2008
8.07.2008
Water
July 2008• • •
The sea is unfolding scrolls
and rolling them up again.
It is an ancient diary
the waves are murmuring.
The words are white curls,
great capitals are seen
on the wrinkled swells.
Repeated rhythmically
it seems to me I read
my own biography.
from At Truro by May Swenson
8.06.2008
Snap Shot
• • •I imagine Nice and topless beaches,
women smoking and reading novels in the sun.
I pretend I am comfortable undressing
in front of men who go home to their wives,
in front of women who have seen
twenty pairs of breasts today,
in front of silent ghosts who walked
through these same doors before me,
who hoped doctors would find it soon enough,
that surgery, pills and chemo could save them.
from Snap shot of a Lump by Kelli Russell Agodon
8.05.2008
Sunrise
• • •Since you have left, death draws us in.
A fish quivers on rough sand until its soul leaves.
For those of us still living, the grave
feels like an escape-hole back to the ocean.
This is no small thing, the pulling of a part
back into the whole.
Rumi
8.04.2008
Dawn
My name is Calypso
I have let him go
In the dawn he sails away
To be gone forevermore
And the waves will take him in again
But he'll know their ways now
I will stand upon the shore
With a clean heart
And my song in the wind
The sand will sting my feet
And the sky will burn
It's a lonely time ahead
I do not ask him to return
I let him go
I let him go.
except from Calypso by Suzanne Vega
Dividing Line - July 2008Neptune Beach and Atlantic Beach
8.03.2008
gate
Old Sea Horse Inn Gate• • •
I was a wing in heaven blue
Soared over the ocean
Soared over Spain
And I was free
Needed nobody
It was beautiful
It was beautiful
- Patti Smith
8.02.2008
Ocean
Atlantic Beach• • •
The ocean sits in the sand letting its lap
fill with pearls and shells, then empty.
A bittersalt taste hums, This.
Rumi
1.30.2008
As the Night Goes By
• • •
Sands shift
Orchids so strange
In the moonlight
Brushing our faces
Places where love blooms
And dies
While the night goes by
Oh, and the spirits call
Sun upon your shadows fall
Tracing every breath we draw
- Patti Smith
Morning Wind
Jaz•
The morning wind spreads its fresh smell.
We must get up to take that in,
that wind that lets us live.
Breathe, before it's gone.
- Rumi
1.25.2008
Farther and Farther From Zero
Words are ways we add up breath,
counting stress and syllable
with our exacting musical knack
that takes us farther and farther from zero.
- Rumi
1.22.2008
The Snow Man
Rutilated Quartz Necklace• • •
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
The Snow Man by Wallace Stevens
1.20.2008
The Sunrise Ruby
Keep knocking, and the joy inside
will eventually open a window
and look out to see who's there.
Rumi
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