She took me around the garden,
placed in my hand a few leaves
and a flower bud for tea.

Yesterday morning, I walked to Sundown Ridge. At the end of the road, there stood three bucks, their antlers, still velveted, softly reflecting sunlight.

They stood unmoving, their gaze following my movement.

From the points on their antlers, their size and bulk, they looked to be three generations.

I passed them, they did not move. After reaching the end I turned around, and glimpsed their movement away into the woods.

It was approaching 11 PM when, traversing dark fields unpopulated by humans on Hwy 71 between La Grange and Smithville, I looked out the window.

Oh, what magnificence! Scorpio stretched across the southern sky, peppered in stars, its coiled tail dipping into the Milky Way. Saggitarius was adjacent, Jupiter a beacon in its handle.

It has been so long. How I’ve missed the starry sky.

There is a physical connection between the physics of the universe outside us, and the physics of our internal reality.

The language for what we discover is different for each realm (although there is some crossover). One is the language of science and math, the other of the arts, dreams, metaphor. Thus, there is often a divide in our understanding because people like to be among those who speak their own language. We keep barriers between the different territories.

There is something to be said for visiting another culture.

One day, we'll know much more about the physics of how our mind is connected to time and place distant from here and now. The knowledge will come from those who become fluent and educated in both realms, to find it's all one after all.

In this Sept. 3, 2006 file photo, a spectator watches the aurora borealis rise above the Alaska Range, in Denali National Park, Alaska. On Thursday, July 24, 2008, NASA released findings that indicate magnetic explosions about one-third of the way to the moon cause the northern lights, or aurora borealis, to burst in spectacular shapes and colors, and dance across the sky.
(AP Photo/M. Scott Moon, File)

Source:
http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/NASA-File/photo//080724/480/c2c103d412f84f37abdb7aca0b2f0606//s:/ap/20080724/ap_on_sc/sci_northern_lights;_ylt=As12gkO6ebu.yKZcjHehUvxxieAA

Friends and sisters arrive;
How lovely the rain,
water falling from sky.

Would you believe
the magic words today
are fried, egg, sandwich?
He's bemused.
His face is spotted
and vertically creased.
He shows me a picture;
he was 20 years old.
His face at 84-
the same dark brown eyes-
is far dearer.
To gaze upon it
is to drink clear water-
to be gazed upon
unbinds my heart.

Venezia

Saturday, I was writing about natural gateways into a meditative state. In the paper the next morning, I came upon the following:

I challenge all of you musicians and “music-o-philes” out there to listen all the way through a locust [cicada] chorus show one evening. Give it your main attention one evening, say 6 to 8 p.m. And be warned: You’ll need to be alert and strong going in to this thing, for they will transform even the slightest bit of dreaminess/wistfulness or fatigue on your part into an ultra-mesmerizing ride into, well, somewhere in the universe.

If you can somehow maintain some semblance of scientific objectivity through at least 10 to 20 minutes of the show at a stretch, you’ll note not just a variation or two, but actual layers of chorusing, all rolling—cycling—in a sort of elliptical fashion.

Eventually, though, I predict that you’ll succumb to the pure power of the show, and allow it to take you where it will. In order for this to occur, all you have to do is quit thinking. The intensity of the experience is in proportion to the degree to which you can suspend thought and maintain awareness.

Bill Fontenot
Nature Notes
The Advertiser
Sunday, July 20, 2008

She brought each of us a bloom
from her passion flower vine-
the band played on.
We kneeled,
hands cupped,
upon the planks of the dock,
set our passion flowers adrift
one here
one there
and there
upon the river’s current,
sparkling
open blooms
on blue waters.
The contagion of love:
its many shapes
ignite our journeys,
our thirst to learn, to stay alive.
The secret passions
harbor danger;
we let our passions float,
bright candle-lanterns
on clear water.

Soup and tea;
the island sighs;
summer serenity
within, without.

It is so difficult--at least I find it difficult--to understand people who speak the truth.

Mr. Beebe
Room With a View
E. M. Forster

Milano


It’s not brakes that we need. It’s more space to go all out.

It was an epiphany this morning, that the barriers, handicaps and interference in life push us out into new territory that we might in easier situations overthink and avoid.

We were given the space to go all out at the end of the International Shintaido Fest in Italy this month, space where we could test the boundary of our limits, and hurt no one in the process.

In meditation, true eiko dai: no brakes, no limits.

The green lizard (an anole) was strolling along the top of the fence, inflating its red neck to startle little gnats for snacks, when a dragonfly lit upon the prongs a foot ahead. The lizard hustled over toward it, then stopped.

I knew what the lizard was dreaming: oh! big juicy feast. But as the dragonfly was as big as the lizard, it seemed like a standoff. Or maybe the odds were so impossible, the reptile and insect were able to just enjoy each other's company.

Everybody was still, catching rays on the rail.

The dragonfly lifted. The lizard leaped high toward the dragonfly, out and away from the fence. Bam! There was connection as they hung in mid-air. The dragonfly tugged free and flew away; the lizard plummeted to the pavement five feet below.

Oh! Bravo! I said.

The lizard had gone all out, flying without wings toward food as big as it. It had tested lizard limits of what was possible. The dragonfly had placed itself at risk, as well.

The lizard lay on the ground a few moments, then limply worked its way a couple feet up one of the supports and rested. Then he went about his business.

It’s as though my brakes don’t work, and I keep skidding into mayhem. Instead of slowing down and moving out of harm’s way, I react and swerve and crash. Instead of apologizing, I whip out my middle finger and accelerate.

I could hire a chauffeur to take me everywhere, activate the child locks on the doors and windows.

I could stay parked in a garage, or I could wear a big warning on my shirt: Watch Out! No brakes!!!

The best thing to do is to change my life circumstances in healthy ways. Oh. How hard I’ve been trying.

Meanwhile, notice given. Read at your own risk.

My brake pads are worn to a crisp.

We’re all honest. Oh, our words may be lies, but don’t the lies themselves tell us some truth about the situation or the speaker’s history? Look at the hands, the eyes, the tremor of the lower lip, the tilt of the head, the tension in the neck. Smell the air for the metallic scent of fear, the fertile ambiguity of arousal, the electricity of celebration. Listen not to the words, but to the triumph in the voice, the warmth of attraction, the high-pitched defensiveness, or the quaver of uncertainty or despair. See the chewed fingernails? the clenched jaw? Smell the fresh-washed hands? No one is lying because no one can lie. Look and listen carefully. What if everyone is telling the truth?

It's good to have a goal to move toward...

Isola Bella
Lake Maggiore, Italy


A quartet played on the Piazza San Marco in Venice, and the melody so weightlessly shimmered in the warm afternoon.


Puccini

Madonna di Compagna
Verbania, Italy

I was just wandering, not there for church. But the bell was pretty insistent. So I went in and joined a dozen people for 5:30 Mass.

Two voices had already begun the service, perhaps an echo? But then I saw at the altar two priests-at a Monday service.

The language-Italian-was foreign to me, so there was no dogma to dispute in my mind, just the beautiful cadence of the two men's voices.

Very businesslike were the priests and these people with their half-hour ritual. It clipped along without hesitation.

Late in the Mass, I saw that the second priest-silver-maned like the first-was in a wheelchair behind the altar. He didn't recite all of the litany; he'd come in and fade out, perhaps according to how his memory and energy level were functioning. But he was committed to offering his daily Mass as all priests vow to do.

Bodies bent toward each other, their voices murmured in synchrony; dusty shafts of light illuminated their heads and the altar.

Sitting in the last row, I saw before me the people in their worn church clothes. My eyes eased to a little ledge beneath the top of the pew. And there was a euro penny glowing precisely in front of me.

It wasn't until I got back to the dorm room that I realized it was my mother's birthday.

I went back again the next day; the light was too hard at noon for pictures. The summer leaves of the trees whispered. A man watched his daughter on her pink bicycle. A boy, perhaps 12, walked alongside his grandmother, holding her elbow, deeply engaged in communication.

The last morning in Italy, my foot crushed a big golden slug below the hydrangeas; a couple days later, back in the states, I came upon a California snail starring in its own video; this morning, a tiny slug half-dried-out on an empty sugar bag in a Louisiana ditch found its way into the moist green grass...

Cry, laugh, cheer.

day to dusk to night to dawn to day to dusk to night
dark turns to light turns to dark turns to light
Who are we to say how things are
when they're always in motion?

Funny how critters like slugs and snails can be our teachers.



http://hchamp.com/2008/07/09/snail/

art by Brandi Delashaw
10th grade
Ola High School
photographed at Atlanta International Airport on June 25

Perhaps the trip really began when we were trying to catch a train from Milano to Venezia. The man upstairs told me we wanted Platform 6. Once we got there, that train didn't correspond to the information on our tickets. My companion approached a man in uniform who was sweeping the steps of a train car. They seemed to have difficulty communicating, she in English, he in Italian. So I took my ticket and pointed out the confusion. He moved my finger and examined the whole ticket. Through gestures, he showed us where we were to go. It was 8 we were looking for, Platform 8.

Then he kissed my companion's hand. She tugged away and walked to the other side of the platform as he then took my hand. But I didn't pull away and he didn't let go. He looked me directly in the eyes. Words spilled from his mouth, a flow of Italian. He told me I was beautiful, very beautiful, to never forget this, to not let anyone tell me otherwise. He said it again as he took my face between his hands and kissed one cheek, then the other and then firmly, squarely on my mouth.

I felt a little dizzy, but, oddly, I bowed and said 'grazie.'

I suppose I could have acted repulsed or insulted, but I wasn't really. I hadn't been kissed on the mouth in several years. I wasn't sure if perhaps this was a simple man. He seemed sincere and I accepted what was offered, and was moved.

I'm not at all what most people would call beautiful. But the train man was right. I am very beautiful. And you, you are very beautiful, too.