Tag Archives: attitude

The Caress

Posted on by Standard 2
Free Bing photos

Free Bing photos

Leaving work it started to rain. I turned, intending to go back in and take the causeway to the parking garage. Save myself a drenching, I thought. As I turned, I felt the coolness of the air that was ushering in the rain caress my cheek. Just a second, really. It lingered upon my face, before my hand touched the door handle and I stopped to turn back into it. Fresh and full of that summer rain, which now dropped in big, slow drops upon my head.

Surely, I’ll get wet walking to the car, I told myself. Hair will be a mess and you’ll ruin this leather bag, said the always cautious, always organized part of my brain. Still, I couldn’t resist the feeling. A curious intimacy of being touched by the weather, for it was a caress, of that I’m sure. A delicious taunting of a lover to come back to bed. The wind was begging me to stay. So I left the door closed and walked out into that summer rain and let myself fall in love.

Smallness

Posted on by Standard 8
Re-posted from the Art For Ever Facebook page

Re-posted from the Art For Ever Facebook page

When I look closely at my small life I get caught up in the details of its constrictions. I see pitfalls and turn little disturbances into high drama. When I look around at the people and places I see every day, it can feel closed in and predictive. But if I look up at the expansive blueness of the sky above me, or out upon the grandeur of a cityscape I fine myself breathing more deeply. The dirt of a trail and a green canopy above invert the smallness of my life into an expansiveness that is freeing. If I draw my eye away from the close aspects and out to the wider view I don’t feel smaller. I feel I have grown bigger and become more connected to what is vast and beautiful. What is eternal dissipates my constrictions and my fear of sameness. A few moments of a night breeze through the bedroom window shows me my life is not small. Only my perspective is.

If Every Journey…

Posted on by Standard 10
Bridge over Bear Creek: Photo by Noelle

Bridge over Bear Creek: Photo by Noelle

If every journey started with a bridge we would know the moment we crossed over into something new. We’d know when we’d left the familiar and wandered into an unknown land. If every journey began with a bridge, midway across we could ponder which of the two sides looked better and which we would prefer. We could stand over the chasm or the river or the valley and consider calmly our progress and feel the distance we’d come. If every journey started with a bridge, there’d be that moment, before we stepped upon the first planks, where we could decide if we even wanted to cross. If every journey started with a bridge it is likely there are many paths we would never have taken and many journeys we would have missed. If every journey started with a bridge our cautious, logical mind very likely would have stayed home, more often then hiked onward.

Sometimes tripping off a blind ridge or down a dank rabbit hole is the best thing that can happen to us. No time to ponder or decide. No chance to consider all of the ramifications. We might discover that we are not these prescribed lives with planned goals and agendas. Going in through the out door or slipping on a banana peel, might open our eyes that we are so much more than habits and due dates. That we are magic and light and a creative tour de force that would’ve left Da Vinci weeping.

Falling into the unknown is what we were meant for. Not to organize it all, but to just live. Right now, with nothing but our wits.

Dying Grace: Photo Poem 45

Posted on by Standard 16
Last years art, waiting on new spring: Photo by Noelle

Last years art, waiting on new spring: Photo by Noelle

For my fortieth birthday my colleagues at work gave me a party with black balloons and a wheelchair. I’m normally a person with a sense of humor, but I had watched this parade with colleagues before me. I work with mostly women. We have a habit of telling each other stories of how our time is past as we age. The best years behind us. We’re used up and lost our sex appeal. Men don’t do this to us and they don’t do it to each other. We do it to ourselves. I smiled and thanked everyone, but I knew in that moment, that I would live differently. That I would not see aging as a cross to bear, but an immense opportunity.

I look at this leaf dead, fragile, used up and am filled with its beauty and grace. Even dead, passed its season and it’s still showing the world what it can do. What it has to give. Aging isn’t about years, it’s about perspective. It’s seeing beauty where no one else would think to look. That isn’t weakness, that’s power. In that power is the possibility to transform. To embrace death when it comes and know you are about to pull out your best work yet.

Little Gem: Covered in Shit

Posted on by Standard 4
Free Bing Photos

Free Bing Photos

This is re-posted from Jeff Foster’s Quotes page on Facebook. Simply beautiful.

“I remember, early one morning several years ago, while working as a home carer, I found myself washing faeces off a man’s giant, swollen testicles. He was dying of cancer which had spread throughout his testicles and prostate, and in the night he had defecated himself and rolled all around in the mess. We laughed a lot together and we chatted about football and the latest news stories as I cleaned him up. He could barely move, he was so sore and swollen everywhere. He was myself in disguise.

He had a few weeks to live, but he was so alive, so in the here-and-now, without a trace of self-pity. There was no loss of dignity there – there was just what was happening in the moment. He had somehow found a way to deeply accept his circumstances, even though his life had not turned out the way he had dreamed when he was younger and he had time to dream. It took over two hours to get him ready for his day, to hoist him out of his dirty bed, to get him toileted and dressed and into his favourite chair. He didn’t live for long after that. But I will always remember him.

Even when covered in our own shit and without a tomorrow, we are nothing less than divine.”

~ Jeff Foster

Squatter’s House: Photo Poem 43

Posted on by Standard Reply
Abandoned Factory in Hearldsberg, CA. This is the view from a squatter's bed: Photo by Noelle

Abandoned Factory in Healdsberg, CA. This is the view from a someone’s make-shift bed on the factory dock: Photo by Noelle

I sat next to the bed of a someone who is living in this abandoned factory, to take this photo. It is curious to see what another sees as they come to rest at the end of their day. In every life there is beauty and drifts of light. We each see the world from our own perspective and sometimes even in dire corners are unexpected views.

The Trail

Posted on by Standard 11
Bear Creek Lake, Lakewood, Colorado: Photo by Noelle

Bear Creek Lake, Lakewood, Colorado: Photo by Noelle

The trail is long as a river in the grass. Sand lilies grace the trail dwarfed now and then by soapweed yucca. In this vastness, the short and tall grasses each belong to me, as surely as the wild sky. Storm clouds gloom, but the rainbow only laughs. The sun has broken through and crickets sun themselves on drying stones. They snap and sing, flying just ahead of me into the sagewort and buffalo grass. I hear the mountain plover and the meadowlark close and far, but they are nothing more than flickers in my peripheral vision. So much moves in this rolling prairie, but always sees me before I see it. Still, I do not hunger for company in such a crowd of scrappy rabbits and field mice. If I keep my pace, I may find the pot of gold before the light winks night.

Leaping

Posted on by Standard 6
Walking bridge at Clement Park: Photo by Noelle

Walking bridge at Clement Park: Photo by Noelle

Not everyone at the edge is leaping towards death. They aren’t all desperately escaping grief and depression. Some of us come to the edge to see who we are in the air. Then the water. The chance to leap, a joy hungered for. For surely, there is exhilaration in risking everything to become who you truly are. In the quiet corners of our lives we daydream of how water transforms.

Comes the Storm

Posted on by Standard 4
Storm brewing over the hogbacks: Photo by Noelle

Storm brewing over the hogbacks: Photo by Noelle

As the sun set, it was clear, the beauty was in the clouds, the high winds, and the violence between. They gave the sun something to shine upon, and in that, was the miracle at dusk. This is the path of healing. You are whole again when you can shine the light of your spirit on that which was broken, violent and torn asunder.