por webcam: October 2010

Sunday, October 24, 2010

To Life!

Listen

Psalm of the Daughters and Sons of Earth and Sky

Are we not your daughters and sons?
We who wish to be of service
Who walk with you
Who listen for your words
Who meet fear daily
And go forward inch by inch
With broken hearts
With deep weariness
And yet with love and hope in you
In whom wholeness and brokenness dwell
Together through life without end

(October 2010)

My unpublished book 42 years: a book of changes is in the process of the addition of the above poem, an afterword and a list of books that helped me through those years. Oboe is sitting next to those books whose titles and authors need to be entered, along with the poem and an afterword, into my manuscript on my MacBook Pro. It's been a little over 2-1/2 years since Richard died, and I find I have more to say. For those of you have bought a copy of my book, I plan to give you a copy of the newer version, if you would like one. My energy for doing the footwork needed to get my book published is limited, but that is my goal.

"Go on, go. In our tongue it is a single word, i.

It is the last word Aeneas said. So in my mind it is spoken to me, said to me. I am the one to go, to go on. Go where?

I do not know. I hear him say it, and I go. On, away. On the way. The way to go. When I stop I hear him say it, his voice, Go on."

(From Lavinia, by Ursula K. Le Guin, 2008)

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Sharing Our Gifts

"The small enclosed rock is from the base of the outcrop, probably a piece of chert -- a type of flint -- uplifted from the floor of an ancient ocean.
(from a birthday note from an old friend from college (1967-1968) who took a strenuous walk to a place called Eagle Rock -- about halfway between San Luis Obispo and Morro Bay on Hwy 1-- and sent me a piece of chert as a gift.)

Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.
(Aristotle)

Monday, October 11, 2010

Love Minus Zero / No Limit

"We have to learn what we can, but remain mindful that our knowledge not close the circle, closing out the void, so that we forget that WHAT WE DO NOT KNOW remains boundless, without limit or bottom, and that what WE KNOW may have to share the quality of being known with what denies it. What is seen with one eye has no depth ..."

(Quote from Always Coming Home, by Ursula Le Guin, but the capitalization is my mother's. She typed that out for me on a little piece of notepaper with a drawing of Rattlesnake Grass from California's North Coast and enclosed it in a letter she wrote to me during the 1980s. I may have posted this quote before, but I feel like posting again it because I love it.The photo was taken a few days ago from the trail just before the small bridge over Whatcom Creek at Derby Pond)