Winter Approaching

There’s a hole in your heart begging for adventure
Play yourself a new track
Set traps for the future ~M83

Dusk in the city of roses

Now Where

It wakes when I wake,
walks when I walk,
turns back when I turn back, 
beating me to the door.
It spoils my food and steals my sleep, 
and mocks me, saying, "Where is your God now?” 
And so, like a widow, 
I lie down after supper.
If I lie down or sit up it's all the same: the days and nights bear me along. 
To strangers I must seem alive.
Spring comes, summer; cool, clear weather; heat, rain..

 ~ Jane Kenyon,

Fall Be Kind

Pretty in Portland

This view is from the Vista bridge. I vote that the car dealership be replaced with trees.

View from Washington Park

He went that-a-way!

I hope he remembers he promised to take me with him.

Blue 

Blue is the sea harsh and strong

Blue is my eyes now tell me I’m wrong

Blue is the rain pouring down

Blue is the sapphire on a kings beautiful crown

Blue is the water surrounded by fish

Everything is blue in my turquoise wish

    ~Written by River Jenison age 10

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" 
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to." 
"I don't much care where –" 
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go.” 
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Autumn mocks me with her arrival.

And he knew in that moment what he was destined to be...

On this Harvest Moon...

This view is from the Vista Bridge in Portland, OR

Awake! 

    Shake Dreams from your hair my pretty child.

Circles and lines

There is comfort to be found in circles and lines....

  

In 

through

 the 

out 
door

Left Behind

Death changes have into had

is into once was

Death steals pleasure from seasons

turns colors to shadow

and leaves all that is left, lonely and less,

screaming, “IF ONLY YOU WERE HERE!”

Solitude is Bliss

A writing by Saul Bellow

I came across this quote today. It puts into perspective something I have been struggling with since my son died three years ago. 


"I should have written you a letter, it was too late to make the deaths of my brothers an excuse. 
Since they died, I wrote a book; why not a letter? 
A mysterious but truthful answer is that while I can gear myself up to do a novel, letters, real-life communications, are too much for me.

 I used to rattle them off easily enough; why is the challenge of writing to friends and acquaintances too much for me now? Because I have become such a solitary, and not in the Aristotelian sense: not a beast, not a god. Rather, a loner troubled by longings, incapable of finding a suitable language and despairing at the impossibility of composing messages in a playable key--as if I no longer understood the codes used by the estimable people who wanted to hear from me and would have so much to reply if only the impediments were taken away." 
— Saul Bellow

Tomboy on vinyl

Sometimes when objects come together it can be heart-stirring ...

A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose

Each fairy breath of summer, as it blows with loveliness,

 inspires the blushing rose.  ~Author Unknown

Oh! Do tell my dear,  I know you know. It inflames you.

Like sleeping and like waking, all at once!"
-  George Eliot  

"Our individuality is all, all, that we have. 

There are those who barter it for security, 

those who repress it for what they believe is the betterment of the whole society, 

but blessed in the twinkle of the morning star is the one who nurtures it and rides it in, in grace and love and wit, from peculiar station to peculiar station along life's bittersweet route." 

— Tom Robbins

Lament For a Son by Nicholas Wolterstorff

A writing from Lament For a Son by Nicholas Wolterstorff

Something is over. In the deepest levels of my existence something is finished, done. 

My life is divided into before and after. Especially in places where he and I were together this sense of something being over washes over me. It happens not so much at home, but other places. A moment in our lives together of special warmth and intimacy and vividness, a moment when I specially prized him, a moment of hope and expectancy and openness to the future: I remember the moment. 
But instead of lines of memory leading up to his life in the present, they all enter a place of cold inky blackness and never come out. The book slams shut. The story stops, it doesn't finish. The future closes, the hopes get crushed. And now instead of those shiny moments being things we can share together in delighted memory, I, the survivor, have to bear them alone. 
So it is with all memories of him. 
They all lead into that blackness. 
It's all over, over, over. 
All I can do is remember him.
I can't experience him. The person to whom these memories are attached is no longer here, no longer standing up. He's only in my memory now, not in my life. Nothing new can happen between us. Everything is sealed tight, shut in the past. I'm still here. I have to go on. 
I have to start over. But this new start is so different from the first. Then I wasn't carrying this load, this thing that's over.
Sometimes I think that happiness is over for me. I look at photos of the past and immediately comes the thought; that's when we were still happy. 
But I can still laugh, so I guess that isn't quite it. Perhaps what's over is happiness as the fundamental tone of my existence. 
 Now sorrow is that. Sorrow is no longer the islands but the sea.

*********************************************************************************
In Memory of my son Jade River
October 10, 1996 - March 8,2008
And
In Memory of  heroic Ross Barfuss,  who at age 16 selflessly risked and lost his life to rescue a boy he didn’t know. 

Ross is the photo on the left, River is on the right

At the Intersection of Hue and Garnish

On Beyond Zebra

A stick, a stone,

 It’s the end of the road,

It’s the rest of a stump,

A lonesome road

Love

"Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules.

The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice.

Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet.

That would mean that security is out of the question.

The words "make" and "stay" become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free." 

— Tom Robbins