
rainbows
warm sunlight kisses all my tears and hurt away levitating rainbows
warm sunlight kisses all my tears and hurt away levitating rainbows
have you heard it before? the land as it whispers the voice of soft soil underneath soles—bared to the earth calling calling out your name in the wind in the wild wild wind and singing between canyon walls and among the tall and slender reeds, your name Come, come home — it says — into my arms stretched out open and wide, and into my heart. and i run i run right into this wild wind without resistance as these whispers of land and soft sacred soil singing sing straight into my heart and i run and run right into these waiting arms into this heart i run, i run and run and run i run home
i dance to breathe and breathe to dance to fly to fly to my sun i dance in the light, and on the light feather of the hawk so swift so soft and so f i e r c e i fly to my sun burning on fire burning brightly and, oh so lightly on these skins, these mountain skins and i breathe i breathe i breathe to dance dance to breathe here between heaven and here between heaven and this earth
Preamble: This is the first time to upload a video to my blog post, and it is entirely the work of my iPhone which voluntarily made it for me! 🤣 But fortuitously and synchronistically so. I’d been wondering what one photo could capture the rich abundance of flowers and my phone spontaneously offered me this little photo montage. Thank you, iPhone! 😁
What makes you flower?
Like the stunningly vast array of flowers, what makes each one of us flower or thrive may indeed be very distinct. The needs of a pink water lily are not the same as those of golden gazanias. Where one would flourish, the other would simply wither away. But all flowers need the same elementals: some particular mixture of sun and sky, water, soil and minerals.
What is yours? Your optimal mix of elementals? The personal ecology that brings out your soul to shine? Are you flowering? What do you need to flower and to flower more?
What is your Flower Power?
have you ever felt that? Earth—in your body, breathing... a sweet sigh, and then a swift intake what song does she sing passing through your skin your surface soft, light, and open dancing here under this boundless sky? to whom or to what absolute and singular love does she serenade?
The above “photo-poem” was made when I was still placing print on top of photos and unfortunately, I don’t have the original photo now. I also haven’t been able to recapture the same feeling—the same ineffable sensation of breathing—in another photo. But perhaps on some mysterious, sweet, and softly lit day, I will again find the perfect set of trees and sky, breathing.
Have you experienced something similar? A discovery of the world breathing through your body? Or your body breathing through the extended world around you? In this physically embodied realization of connection, we discover that we ourselves are love. Love itself. Nothing other than love. We discover oneness and totality, beauty and grace. Hózhó. An absolute and singular love.
"In your light I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems. You dance inside my chest where no one can see you, but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art. ~Rumi~
What is it that awakens your love, kindles your desire to create, and
like the water’s sparkling surface—reflects back to you the artistry of your own soul?
If you know the answer to this question, you have found all that you will forever need.
If not, then rest assured that the light once sought, always find its seeker.
Reunion is the inevitable resolution of quest.
~a short meditation on healing~
Each person sheds her own light on the same landscape, allowing us to experience shifting perspectives as the cycles of day and night circle one another. Who among us would stop day at high noon, saying truth is only revealed through full exposure to sunlight, at the expense of never again feeling the gold of sunrise or peering into purple shadows at dusk? Indeed, the nature of a rock is not just in its exact proportions, mineral content, etc., but also in its relationship to sun and moon light, hot and cold, wind and rain. In its fullest capacity, truth is known in the continuous spectrum of light and dark, changing continually through the seasons and expanses of vast time. ~excerpt from my master's thesis chapter discussing research methodology
There is a tendency in western culture and/or in the English language, to equate light with truth and revelation, and shadow with obscurity and dishonesty. To “shed light on” means to reveal something previously hidden or unknown; to “descend into darkness” communicates an anguished journey into mental/emotional confusion or ignorance. In this dualistic and dichotomous worldview, truth is reduced into a series of either/ors incompatible with a holistic realization of experience. In the fanaticism of either/ors, of light versus shadow, we may experience blinding whiteouts and loss of vision in violent flashes of light, or, we may fall into states of alienation and estrangement and depression in the pitch dark of blackouts.
When we suffer, we are counseled to seek the light, to lift ourselves out of gloom and doom, to step into the light, to come out of the shadows… What if, on the other hand, we were encouraged to embrace both the light and the shadow, to befriend our monsters, to live with our angels and our demons—both? Perhaps we would then see that there is a special glow in the between spaces that connect rather than separate… In these spaces shared and cohabited by the light and the shadow. We would see that it is a dance—a beautiful and an intimate partner dance. A warm embrace. A love, unconditional and eternal.
~purple dreams~ flickering in clouds gold dust settles over these hills yawning and round and drifts into the shadows, all purple the dreams are sweet like plums heavy on their branches bowing ripe and full with love with honey with the scent of your name with your whispers all tangled in my wind-tousled hair and with this heart with this body my soul like streams swollen after the storms in spring rushes out into the open into these unkept fields of golden dusk and erupts into a riot of wildflowers, all purple all yellow, white, pink, and g o l d
Kyoto Coffee flowers startle white in the black night caffeine-steepedand camouflaged in e l e g a n c e i awaken all enchanted the wild blossoms are singing light into new day .
I wrote the original version of this poem about three years ago, after enjoying coffee in an elegant cup at a café in Kyoto. After a long talk with a good friend, the night was late and I cycled back to my small, secluded-away in a quiet and dimly-lit neighborhood near ancient temple grounds in Higashiyama, house. Along the way, I was startled to encounter these white flowers glowing out of the darkness—similar to the white flower on my black coffee cup just a short while earlier. What magic potion had I just consumed, I pondered, in the guise of an elegant Kyoto cup of coffee? Little did I know then, just how truly magical and extraordinary our worlds can be. And I was entirely guileless as to the adventure I’d unknowingly embarked upon. But here I am now, three years later, still traversing these caffeine-steeped nights of enchantment. And what has emerged? Worlds of poetry, beauty, magic, and a precious love—like no other.
So what it the moral of the story?
Surrender to the irrational demands of your heart and of beauty, to this wild world far too vast to be contained within the narrow confines of our minds. And something more magical than you could have ever dreamed of will welcome you, on the other side of night.
your smile just for me more precious than all the stars in darkest of nights