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A world class Chicago street photographer discovered posthumously

slow motion test

slow motion test
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A new year full of hope and possibilities to all

"this is your hand"-Separateness...Creativity...Growth

"You Begin" ,by Margaret Atwood

You begin this way:
this is your hand,
this is your eye,
that is a fish, blue and flat
on the paper, almost
the shape of an eye.
This is your mouth, this is an O
or a moon, whichever
you like. This is yellow.

Outside the window
is the rain, green
because it is summer, and beyond that
the trees and then the world,
which is round and has only
the colors of these nine crayons.

This is the world, which is fuller
and more difficult to learn than I have said.
You are right to smudge it that way
with the red and then
the orange: the world burns.

Once you have learned these words
you will learn that there are more
words than you can ever learn.
The word hand floats above your hand
like a small cloud over a lake.
The word hand anchors
your hand to this table,
your hand is a warm stone
I hold between two words.

This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world,
which is round but not flat and has more colors
than we can see.

It begins, it has an end,
this is what you will
come back to, this is your hand.

I am thinking about beginnings, starting afresh,clearing the slate. This has been a rough few days as I think of moving away. I feel I am riding the harsh ,crashing,unrelenting waves of a tsunami.They are however waves and waves by nature and design undulate and contain a rhythmic periodicity, which allows one to gasp for a deep breath to prepare for the next submergence amidst the roaring oceanic forces. I am remembering when I weaned my now adult daughter from nursing amidst her toddlerhood. It was a process of unentangling of a web that entwined the blurry boundaries of mother and child. It was not the easiest of processes for me or my child. There was the constant urge to regress to old patterns of entanglement that prevented individual growth. I remember that I cut open a big brown paper bag and drew a calendar of 30 days where I mapped out the sequence of the gradually letting go,lessening, deleting the frequency of nursing. I remember the pain of the "let down " response that I needed to sit still with and accept.The beginning was a great struggle. I remember showing my daughter how the days were marked, that this was what our plan was and it became a game of sorts with time, a ritual, a pact we had come to become proud of that each of us in our own right was emerging into a new person hood. The distance that grew between us in that month gave me as mother and she as daughter an authentic arena to play,to breathe , to dance,to respect that we are unique and separate and in that separate space real growth and creativity has the possibility to emerge. So these days, I am reminded that growth only occurs in the context of appreciating our separateness and that is the only way it can be and allow it to be,to unfold as the alternative is stagnation, the opposite of living ang growth. I feel the faintest tinge of the let down response again. It is never easy or graceful, it is the painstaking but elegant flow of allowing life to unfold .

"comfort to overflowing"

again from the Writer's Almanac
A Short Testament

by Anne Porter

Whatever harm I may have done
In all my life in all your wide creation
If I cannot repair it
I beg you to repair it,

And then there are all the wounded
The poor the deaf the lonely and the old
Whom I have roughly dismissed
As if I were not one of them.
Where I have wronged them by it
And cannot make amends
I ask you
To comfort them to overflowing,

And where there are lives I may have withered around me,
Or lives of strangers far or near
That I've destroyed in blind complicity,
And if I cannot find them
Or have no way to serve them,

Remember them. I beg you to remember them

When winter is over
And all your unimaginable promises
Burst into song on death's bare branches.

"A Short Testament" by Anne Porter, from Living Things. © Zoland Books. Reprinted with permission
I like this one,
"if I have wronged ,Repair,comfort to overflowing"
In my world, that is in the domain,the duty of all humankind,it is not godly....but humanly mundane, what needs to be,what can be,what is....

the "unfurling of one's DNA"....change

How much experience needs to be , in what way for change
to occur
what is the difference between change and transformation.
what sensory modalities are necessary for change to occur,
can or is change enduring,
is transformation a disappointment
as often the hard painful work that changes us evades us in transformation.
caterpillars notoriously transform to butterflies,babies to children, children to adults
,is that change.
does change really mean"work" sweat blood scars tears pain.
Do tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, births, deaths, illness, recovery
Does love change us or transform us
Is it not the the time that glacials move in
That the steel gates of our dna slowly crack open
that painstaking unwinding and unfurling occurs
that leads to be breathing land creatures that walk the earth, give birth a child that has nested in our womb,
suckled at our breast
How do we change
It is evident why we must change
Can we change

For. the. better.

"ubuntu"

Words today from author,poet Chris Abani, from my inbox from the Writer's Almanac
Today the sun has reappeared in the very blue skies above, Such a good day.
to find ,see,discover,be "ubuntu"
he says that he does not at all believe in “the role of the poet as polemic educator.” He said, “If writers and poets have any role, it is this one: to not limit in any way the ability of their imagination to engage the world.” He said the difficulty he faces is how to “balance narratives that are wonderful with narratives of wounds and self-loathing . . . to balance the idea of our complete vulnerability with the complete notion of transformation or what is possible.”

Chris Abani said, “What I've come to learn is that the world is never saved in grand messianic gestures, but in the simple accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible acts of compassion, everyday acts of compassion. In South Africa they have a phrase called ubuntu. Ubuntu comes out of a philosophy that says, the only way for me to be human is for you to reflect my humanity back at me.”
Oh. the pic, I was at the Shedd Aquarium with a friend this weekend,we watched the Baby Beluga swim with its mom. My friend
has taught me much ....... "ubuntu"

And he said, "You know, you can steel your heart against any kind of trouble, any kind of horror. But the simple act of kindness from a complete stranger will unstitch you."

"unstiched' is about as good as it can get
"REFLECT" my humanity to you and yours to me....

Sublime....Good Will to All Men

Christmas Bells
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men."


As I awoke this morning, I was aware that today being Christmas, the pace has slowed, the world seems so quiet, that the possibility of quiet can exist on this planet at least sometimes.I was thinking about a favorite topic of mine, "goodness".Sometimes we desperately want to do something very good, for ourselves, for others that is good, meaningful, sublime. Sometimes despite our best efforts that is not enough to change the course of human suffering. I think.... that is where "good will " steps up to the plate. Sometimes the knowing that we are wished well from the bottom of one's heart in transformational. So on this quiet Christmas day, I wish all inhabitants of this planet a wish of sweet sublime good will.

Music ....within on a winter's eve

Bach captures the essence of the churnings of our souls, the Winter Solstice today is a time to look inward and listen to the music that lies within...

Lifting of the darkness....

Winter-Worship

by Charles Wright

Mother of Darkness, Our Lady,
Suffer our supplications,
our hurts come unto you.
Hear us from absence your dwelling place,
Whose ear we plead for.
End us our outstay.

Where darkness is light, what can the dark be,
whose eye is single,
Whose body is filled with splendor
In winter,
inside the snowflake, inside the crystal of ice
Hung like Jerusalem from the tree.

January, rain-wind and sleet-wind,
Snow pimpled and pock-marked,
half slush-hearted, half brocade
Under your noon-dimmed day watch,
Whose alcove we harbor in,
whose waters are beaded and cold.

A journey's a fragment of Hell,
one inch or a thousand miles.
Darken our disbelief, dog our steps.
Inset our eyesight,
Radiance, loom and sting,
whose ashes rise from the flames.

"Winter-Worship" by Charles Wright, from Negative Blue: Selected Later Poems © Macmillan, 2001. Reprinted with permission
Yesterday, as I was driving in car on a midwinter sunday afternoon, i was struck by a feeling of cold darkness. I realized it had already been dark for almost three hours, that the moon had begun to appear in the sky around 3pm.to me, it felt like midnight, that the winter night had this luminous ,expansive, never endingdness.for some reason,not yet revealed to me the darkness of winter as it looms upon us earlier and earlier afore the approaching equinox is densely palpable to me this year ,more than any other that I remember. I searched for words to express something coherent of this troubling desolate sentiment and then this poem appeared this morning. sometimes a voice that gives words to our deepest thoughts ,a kindred spirit can begin to lift the darkness....

Today is Marie Rainer Rilke's Birthday...his 9th Elegy

The Ninth Elegy
Rainer Maria Rilke

Why, if this interval of being can be spent serenely
in the form of a laurel, slightly darker than all
other green, with tiny waves on the edges
of every leaf (like the smile of a breeze)–: why then
have to be human–and, escaping from fate,
keep longing for fate? . . .


Oh not because happiness exists,
that too-hasty profit snatched from approaching loss.
Not out of curiosity, not as practice for the heart, which
would exist in the laurel too. . . . .

But because truly being here is so much; because everything here
apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which in some strange way
keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all.
Once for each thing. Just once; no more. And we too,
just once. And never again. But to have been
this once, completely, even if only once:
to have been one with the earth, seems beyond undoing.

And so we keep pressing on, trying to achieve it,
trying to hold it firmly in our simple hands,
in our overcrowded gaze, in our speechless heart.
Trying to become it.–Whom can we give it to? We would
hold on to it all, forever . . . Ah, but what can we take along
into that other realm? Not the art of looking,
which is learned so slowly, and nothing that happened here. Nothing.
The sufferings, then. And above all, the heaviness,
and the long experience of love,– just what is wholly
unsayable. But later, among the stars,
what good is it–they are better as they are: unsayable.
For when the traveler returns from the mountain-slopes into the valley,
he bings, not a handful of earth, unsayable to others, but instead
some word he has gained, some pure word, the yellow and blue
gentian. Perhaps we are here in order to say: house,
bridge, fountain, gate, pitcher, fruit-tree, window–
at most: column, tower. . . . But to say them, you must understand,
oh to say them more intensely than the Things themselves
ever dreamed of existing. Isn’t the secret intent
of this taciturn earth, when it forces lovers together,
that inside their boundless emotion all things may shudder with joy?
Threshold: what it means for two lovers
to be wearing down, imperceptibly, the ancient threshold of their door–
they too, after the many who came before them
and before those to come. . . . ., lightly.

Here is the time for the sayable, here is its homeland.
Speak and bear witness. More than ever
the Things that we might experience are vanishing, for
what crowds them out and replaces them is an imageless act.
An act under a shell, which easily cracks open as soon as
the business inside outgrows it and seeks new limits.
Between the hammers our heart
endures, just as the tongue does
between the teeth and, despite that,
still is able to praise.

Praise this world to the angel, not the unsayable one,
you can’t impress him with glorious emotion; in the universe
where he feels more powerfully, you are a novice. So show him
something simple which, formed over generations,
lives as our own, near our hand and within our gaze.
Tell him of Things. He will stand astonished; as you stood
by the ropemaker in Rome or the potter along the Nile.
Show him how happy a Thing can be, how innocent and ours,
how even lamenting grief purely decides to take form,
serves as a Thing, or dies into a Thing–, and blissfully
escapes far beyond the violin.–And these Things,
which live by perishing, know you are praising them; transient,
they look to us for deliverance: us, the most transient of all.
They want us to change them, utterly, in our invisible heart,
within–oh endlessly–within us! Whoever we may be at last.

Earth, isn’t this what you want: to arise within us,
invisible? Isn’t it your dream
to be wholly invisible someday?–O Earth: invisible!
What, if not transformation, is your urgent command?
Earth, my dearest, I will. Oh believe me, you no longer
need your springtimes to win me over–one of them,
ah, even one, is already too much for my blood.
Unspeakably I have belonged to you, from the first.
You were always right, and your holiest inspiration
is our intimate companion, Death.

Look, I am living. On what? Neither childhood nor future
grows any smaller . . . . . Superabundant being
wells up in my heart.

translated by Stephen Mitchell



"If we surrendered to earth's intelligence we could rise up rooted, like trees. "
— Rainer Maria Rilke (Rainer Maria Rilke's Book of Hours: A Complete New Translation with Commentary)
tags: environment, nature 34 people liked it

Teaching independence to a whale calf in its first breath

Today on the the radio on npr on the "third coast audio" festival they were playing old audio pieces from the early days of npr.One of the pieces which touched me was by Keith Talbot called "Ocean Hour". It is a musing of memories, sounds,feelings evoked by the ocean. The piece included a small excerpt of the work of Dr. Marie Poland Fish who worked as an oceanographer collecting audio pieces of the marine life of our oceans.This was done as part of a government project in the context of differentiating between the sound of submarines and marine life sounds.The sound that I heard today was heart wrenching. It was the sound of a mother whale screeching, wailing,rumbling in search of her lost whale calf. I found the piece haunting and searched for it online to share on my blog. I could not find it, so I will share the link here.
http://www.thirdcoastfestival.org/library/89-ocean-hour


What I found instead was the you tube of a mother whale teaching her newborn calf the beginnings of independence in its first moments of life. One can see in the video that the mother whale stays very lose and gently nudges her calf up to the surface where the calf can open its spout and take in its first breath. Each time the mother whale gives the calf a little more space,a little less nudging until the calf freely and spontaneously with exuberance swims up on its own and flips around in space moving freely in space on its own. This graceful act of gently and patiently teaching her calf self reliance brought tears of joy to my eyes.It is so profound,simple yet auspicious to facilitate the growth,wonder and self discovery for any other being.It is joy in its essence!

Mermaids must return to the.....sea

Lyrics: English Translation:

Is cosúil gur mheath tú nó gur thréig tú an greann It seems that you have faded away and abandoned the love of life
Tá an sneachta go freasach fá bhéal na mbeann' The snow is spread about at the mouth of the point
Do chúl buí daite 's do bhéilín sámh Your yellow flowing hair and little gentle mouth
Siúd chugaibh Mary Chinidh is í ndiaidh an Éirne shnámh We give you Mary Chinidh to swim forever in the Erne

"A mháithrín mhilis" duirt Máire bhán "My dear mother," said blonde Mary
Fá bhruach an chladaigh 's fá bhéal na trá By the edge of the shore and the mouth of the sea
"Maighdean mhara mo mháithrín ard" "My noble mother is a mermaid"
Siúd chugaibh Mary Chinidh is í ndiaidh an Éirne shnámh We give you Mary Chinidh to swim forever in the Erne

Tá mise tuirseach agus beidh go lá I am tired and will be forever
Mo Mháire bhruinneall 's mo Phádraig bán My fair Mary and my blond Patrick
Ar bharr na dtonnta 's fá bhéal na trá On top of the waves and by the mouth of the sea
Siúd chugaibh Mary Chinidh is í ndiaidh an Éirne shnámh We give you Mary Chinidh to swim forever in the Erne

Lullabye for a cold winter eve

Artist: Kate Rusby
Title: Who Will Sing Me Lullabies?




Lay me down gently, lay me down low,
I fear I am broken and won't mend, I know.
One thing I ask when the stars light the skies,
Who now will sing me lullabies,
Oh who now will sing me lullabies.

In this big world I'm lonely, for I am but small,
Oh angels in heaven, don't you care for me at all?
You heard my heart breaking for it rang through the skies,
So why don't you sing me lullabies,
Oh why don't you sing me lullabies.

I lay here; I'm weeping for the stars they have come,
I lay here not sleeping; now the long night has begun.
The man in the moon, oh he can't help but cry,
For there's no one to sing me lullabies,
Oh there's no one to sing me lullabies.