Pillars of Light . . .

Saturday, January 18, 2025. It’s the Satyr’s day … and bitter cold marks my last day in  Durango, heading back to Ridgway tomorrow morning early.

When you do things from your soul, the river itself moves through you. Freshness and a deep joy are signs of the current. — Rumi

Myth of the Organic City.  Given that the vast majority of the world’s lands have by now been modified by humans, urban gardens might be the best we can hope for. 

Reminders

A.A. Milne was born today in 1882, London, England.

Its the birth anniversary of motion picture icon Cary Grant. The romantic and action lead actor was born in 1904,  Bristol, Gloucestershire, England.

And Mark Rylance turns 65 today. The British actor, playwrite, and director was born in 1960, Ashford, Kent, England.

Sadly,

David Lynch has taken his last drive up on Mulholland.

In Blackwater Woods 

Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars of light.

(…)

To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go.

— Mary Oliver, “In Blackwater Woods,” American Primitive, Back Bay Books, 1983. Pulitzer Prize, 1984.

Celebrate the snowflake. . .

It’s Frigg’s (Freya’s) day. Settling in for a brief visit with friends in Durango, Colorado for a few days.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh. — George Bernard Shaw.

Birthdays

Betty White was born Jtoday in 1922 Oak. Park, Illinois;

The Academy Award laureate actor with an unmistakable and iconic voice, James Earl Jones was born in 1931, Arkabutla, Mississippi.

Muhammad Ali was born in 1942 Louisville, Kentucky

One of the principle “Founding Fathers” of the U.S. and the
Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Franklin was born today in 1706, Boston, Massachusetts.

Yesterday was the birth date of writer Susan Sontag. The critical essayist, cultural analyst, novelist and filmmaker was born on this day in 1933 New York City.

And it was the birthday of poet and memoirist Mary Karr, born yesterday in 1955 Groves, Texas. 

There is no essential separateness between you and me, you and other people, you and other species, or you and the trees. You can look at anyone or anything and say: You are a part of me I do not yet know. — Valarie Kaur, Sage Warrior: Wake to Oneness, Practice Pleasure, Choose Courage, Become Victory (One World, 2024)  In Meditations, The Center for Action and Contemplation.

(…) conducting research for one’s doctoral degree, you are likely warned against stepping on a dislodged eyelash: "Lest you turn mad in a second!"   I have long been hosted by the possibility that what's obvious obscures what the world is doing, and that clarity is a political project of training the senses into a particular notion of the real - very often the state-sponsored one. The miraculous often thrives beneath the rags of pathology.— Bayo Akomolafe.  

(…) Stop calling yourself 'flaky', 'fickle' or 'a jack of all trades' and instead started seeing your creativity as a beautiful, evolving lacework of ideas, mediums and passions. — Eleanor Chaney

The thought Creation holds of you is perfectly unchanged by your forgetting.

Finding faith . . .

Wednesday, January 15, 2025

It’s Odin’s day … and Ridgway is clear, cold with Southerlies warming things up a bit today. 

It turns out that life doesn’t need a purpose to simply be what it is. Does a tree need to find its purpose to grow? Does the wind need a reason to blow? — Santiago Santai Jiménez

Martin Luther King Jr., was born on this day in 1929 Atlanta, Ga.

"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” — MLK

Trump is salivating over the Mercator Projections.

The University of Notre Dame was officially chartered on this date in 1844, founded in Indiana by the Congregation of the Holy Cross. 

Faith

I want to write about faith,

     about the way the moon rises

          over cold snow, night after night,

faithful even as it fades from fullness,

     slowly becoming that last curving and impossible

          sliver of light before the final darkness.

But I have no faith myself

     I refuse it even the smallest entry.

Let this then, my small poem,

     like a new moon, slender and barely open,

          be the first prayer that opens me to faith.

— David Whyte: Essentials. Originally published in Where Many Rivers Meet