{Budding Potential}

“Everybody has a secret world inside of them. I mean everybody. All of the people in the whole world, I mean everybody — no matter how dull and boring they are on the outside. Inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds... Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe.” 
-Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 5: A Game of You



My obsession with sticks, buds and other twig like things will soon pass. I promise...it will be replaced, with who knows. I have to say it is pretty darn cool to see how they change daily on my walks these days. They were hiding under there all winter ready to break free! And that is my zen moment for the day...

{Umbrellas at Beaches}

Broken windows and empty hallways,
a pale lit moon in a sky streaked with grey.
Human kindness is overflowing,
and I think it's gonna rain today
-Bette Midler


I love the movie Beaches. When it came out I saw it more times than I could count. And who could stop playing the poignant "wind beneath my wings."  We even sang it in high school chorus, deep and moving chords...Or should I say, as deep as you can get when you are 16 years old and singing a significantly emotional song...which then, in your short years you most likely had no idea what the hell you were singing.  But it was still beautiful. And how can you go wrong with the words hero, wind and wings as the structure of your song. That WAS the 80's and early 90's...I'm sure of it.  Mostly, the song made people treat each other better. Perhaps elicit some empathy. So I was all for it.
It meant the real popular girls were nice to me for a week...

Much later, I was listening to a show tunes Pandora station (Theater nerds, like goonies, never die!) and "I think it's going to rain today" came on and it moved me. Similar to wind beneath my wings. I don't even remember it in the movie that I had watched, I'm pretty sure close to 100 times. I even had the soundtrack. It's interesting to me the whole concept of music, songs, lyrics and meanings. I'm pretty intuitive so usually when something strikes me I just know it's important for some reason or the other. Sometimes it's a long time down the road...So rain has just been on my mind a lot lately. I guess I'll put this all together at some point. Maybe I need to watch Beaches again.

Today I did a short photo walk in the rain to track down some daffodil shots for my mother. In all honesty I can't stand these flowers. I'm not sure why. I think I associate them with too much church and Easter church services. But they were so stunning to me covered in raindrops. I just tried to study and appreciate them from a different, fresh perspective. It sort of worked...

Then I at the end of my walk I saw these beauties. White and yellow toned...I must confess, I have a new appreciation for this flower.  The flower of Hope I am told.

{9 to 5}

“In my own life, as winters turn into spring, I find it not only hard to cope with mud but also hard to credit the small harbingers of larger life to come, hard to hope until the outcome is secure. Spring teaches me to look more carefully for the green stems of possibility; for the intuitive hunch that may turn into a larger insight, for the glance or touch that may thaw a frozen relationship, for the stranger's act of kindness that makes the world seem hospitable again.” 
 ― Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation

{To Reverie}

Written love is going out of fashion, but the benefits remain. There are still souls for whom love is the contact of two poetries, the fusion of two reveries. To tell a love, one must write. Love is never finished expressing itself, and it expresses itself better the more poetically it is dreamed. The reveries of two solitary souls prepare the sweetness of loving. The reality of love is mutilated when it is detached from all its unrealness. 
 Gaston Bachelard In honor of my new favorite word: Reverie
 rev·er·ie ˈrev(ə)rē/ noun a state of being pleasantly lost in one's thoughts; a daydream.
"a knock on the door broke her reverie"
synonyms: daydream, daydreaming, trance, musing;
More
MUSIC an instrumental piece suggesting a dreamy or musing state.
 archaic a fanciful or impractical idea or theory. I just love it...

{Expressions of the Soul}

“I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.” ― Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Vol. 2 Lately, I've been thinking of how to merge all the best parts of my work life into one perfect career. Because Perfection exist right (eye roll). I say this tongue and cheek but I do believe that their is a calling for each one of us. I saw a cute and overly simple venn diagram that indicated true vocation was where what you love, what you do well, what the world needs and what people will pay intersect. This Pinterest pin has really set off a chain reaction of introspection, investigation and action (another ven diagram!). It's been fun to look at patterns and ways different job duties over the years could merge and create different work, different pathways. For instance how about a funeral home assistant? Noooo....too much...what's the word...Death. And death to me, most days, is overwhelming and freaks me out. But I did a lot of counseling with people who came into the flower shop to order funeral work for the deceased. I enjoyed that part of my job immensely. Helping people and listening. Using flowers to help ease the pain of death. Lot's of reflective listening and unconditional positive regard. My point in all of this is, it was an job concoction that I never thought would appear in my life. As in, NEVER EVER...whew! So I'm investigating art therapy right now and I love it. I haven't been excited about something in all my life with the exception of photography. In hindsight, I realized that during my time as a school counselor I used play and art to connect with students most often as early teen hood does not an articulate student make. However, open a game of Jenga or pull out the paint and play dough and a once muted 12 year old boy (yes a boy!) becomes chatterbox station. It really is a fascinating, growing field. Most important, I notice too in the last few years, as I transition from the period of the divorce and some challenging health issues that it has been art, poetry, movement helping me heal. And thank god for that....Feel like crying, make art. Going to court, make art. Complete existential crisis...oh yes, lots of art. (I can't take credit for that last thoughts, I saw it it from an inspiring artist on Facebook, different examples...same point) Lots of intersecting going on here. Expressive Art Therapy would be it's formal name and it a growing, well researched field. So let's jaunt down that pathway and see where it goes...

{Spring blossoms and beams}

“If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.” 
-Virginia Woolf

{Power}

Living in the earth-deposits of our history



Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth

one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old

cure for fever or melancholy a tonic

for living on this earth in the winters of this climate.

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:

she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness

her body bombarded for years by the element

she had purified

It seems she denied to the end

the source of the cataracts on her eyes

the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends

till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil

She died a famous woman denying

her wounds

denying

her wounds came from the same source as her power.
-Adrienne Rich


I thought I'd let a brilliant writer share my thoughts for the day. I discovered her in a roundabout way as I'm currently reading the book Wild and Adrienne Rich's "Power" was cited.  It was late last night when I read it and I felt a surge of energy and connection. It took some time to ramp the brain down and ease into sleep. But it eventually came.

Spending an hour or so at Asbury Woods this afternoon, walking, praying, observing. It was brilliant outside and the boardwalk was cleared mostly from the snow. It was an invigorating walk and brought back good memories of when I was young and a volunteered here.  I can accredit this experience for my fearlessness when it comes to snakes. Or maybe a better would be not scaredtheshitof them...unlike spiders.  Which scare the FUCK out of me...even itty bitty, dead and curled up in a ball ones. Yuck!

 One of my volunteering duties was giving the boa constricter a bath and feeding a dinner plane of mice. Which was kind of sad in retrospect. I thought the snakes was mean, tough, sly and patient...and the mice were stupid, wandering and obvious.  They squeaked and didn't shut up...and pooped a ton.

I would think how awful it would be do be those mice just chilling out in a new pad full of space and warmth, or so these rodents thought. In all reality there were in a death row line up...with a huge Boa licking it's slithering long, tongue . It was at this time I also realized I think too much:) And felt to much. I mean, who feels so sad for a mouse? I do.

But today, the woods was a haven to my busy mind.  I took what I now call my "Forrest Gump" walks , camera in hand; relaxing and welcoming peace.