Girls of Autumn: Photo Poem

Posted on November 15, 2013 by noellevignola Standard Reply

Light Trails: Photo by Noelle

A recent study demonstrated that light-emitting photons continue to emit light for up to twenty-eight days, AFTER, the photon had been removed. That is, the light the photon gave off when it was at a given point in space and time would still exist in that space and time even after the photon had moved on. They found the average degradation of that light was approximately twenty-eight days. Give this some real thought. Imagine as you move through your day that you are quite literally walking through light trails everywhere you go. Not discernible to your naked eye, but there, nonetheless. Look at these little girls running, dancing amongst cattail particles on a sunny day. They are not merely dancing in cattail dust, but dancing in light that is refracted off of every surface that autumn sun hits. And even after the photon hits and leaves, its light gift remains floating there for you to touch. The negative of this picture captures this idea for me, as each little girl appears to be leaving a light shadow.

Psychiatric and therapeutic circles spend a great deal of time discussing what Carl Jung referred to as our “shadow”. The side of us we don’t want to see or confront. Our ‘darker’ aspects. But what if the real story isn’t in our darker side, per se, but in our light shadow? What if, by confronting our darkness what we really find is a light trail we are leaving everywhere we go? What if the trail isn’t a dark shadow at all, but like those light-emiting photons we are leaving light wherever we go?

My favorite Thomas Merton quote goes:
“There is no way to tell people they are walking around shining like the sun.”

Hard to get people to believe, but I will tell you all the same. You are walking around shining like the sun and as in the photograph, you are leaving a light shadow everywhere you go. Embrace that today. Namaste

Balance of Off: Photo poem 13

Posted on November 1, 2013 by noellevignola Standard Reply

Run Off: Photo montage by Noelle

This is a composite piece from a photo I took of sprinkler run off, layered with spliced sections of two poster paintings. One from The Mind Unleashed Facebook page and the other from Hippie Peace Freaks Facebook page completing the collage.

It is clear I long for balance, as each piece has a composition that embraces balance and harmony. Balance, proportion and color bring a sense of forward motion and ignite a creative hunger.

Yet, there is also a need for bits of asymmetry. Pieces that are slightly off center that bring the piece into a different kind of harmony and nurture creative innovation. An expansion that moves beyond yourself into larger views. I call it the balance of “off”. A tension that comes from being at a harmonious odd with the world around you. It is the threads in the tapestry intentionally mis-woven. The grace that comes with imperfection and the uniqueness that can only be found in what is slightly off the beaten trail.

Each person needs to find their way and I will merely pose here that the “Balance of Off” is a potent and surprisingly harmonious path to take. The Chinese understood this as yin-yang and sought it out in the balancing of their homes and lives. Apparently, I seek this too, both without and within.

Coming Winter

Posted on October 22, 2013 by noellevignola Standard 2

Re-posted from Enchanted Nature’s Facebook page

COMING WINTER

The rain is steady across the field
And cold lays heavy on the pane
I welcome the turn inward
As fall drifts to winter’s mane

Fires are stoked without
And within a blaze burns, too
A warmth bathes my thoughts
As the blanket wraps the limbs, cocooned

Incubation brings reflection
In the way the clouds mirror on the lake
Real, rich and yet, transparent
To be remembered even as they fade

Gold leaves fall, wet and dark
In the growing wind
So I let my thoughts fall, too
Damp upon the skin

Winter lurks amongst the vines
Of the pumpkin patch, now bare
And I grow empty of a year’s losses
Floating lighter on this eve’s air

The fields are empty of there harvest
Apples are long to their bins
All things must sleep to be fertile
And I am now free to sleep in

Security

Posted on October 14, 2013 by noellevignola Standard Reply

Algae: Photo collage by Noelle

It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power. – Alan Cohen

Alphabet Soup

Posted on September 30, 2013 by noellevignola Standard Reply

Hidden River: Photography by Noelle

After their all gone, I find I’m still here
Bound to earth a regular oak in the field
Captured in this moment a
Dog with her bone
Even the clock ticks slower than a
Frost’s melt
Goaded by the weight of
Hampered grief in my chest
I stand in the quiet, deciding?
Jump back in or dally
Kicking the cat
Love is at the center of all this, even as
Misery runs me down in
Narrow alleys that smell of
Old fish and over sweet
Poppies
Quit your begging at
Rama’s door, I say to the mirror
Salvation is in your
Tight belly – hungry for
Unity a
Volcanic sound blasting
With the power of
Excalibur
You are grace and beauty at the
Zenith of a transformation you command

This Abecedarian was created in the Front Range Writer’s Room hosted by Marj Hahne

City Walk

Posted on September 16, 2013 by noellevignola Standard 4

Photo collage: City Pavement: Photography by Noelle

I walk along the Hudson river in Manhattan near my brother’s home. Cicadas are singing in the trees. Sail boats are on the water and today there is a good summer breeze. A father speaks to his son in a language I don’t recognize and the boy squeals with laughter, a language we all know. Two women jog past, sweating and talking about stock trades while four girls ride pink and purple bikes ahead of me. There is a group of East Indian men speaking in excited voices about something in a soccer game on a park bench. A large and very loud, woman covered in tie-dye down to her sneakers offers me jewelry, as an elderly man taps his way up the stairs with his cane behind her. Two men kiss by the water’s edge and a boxer’s head suddenly protrudes from a bush looking for a stick. I hear the cicadas again in the trees randomly vibrating their timbrel membranes which make those distinct vibrating sounds we all know in summer. It’s like a musical back drop to all these people moving in and out like the waves on the river. More peaceful than the band playing on the speedboat that bursts by, but louder and more strident than the homeless man who speaks ceaselessly in a whisper to no one in particular. I smell the lilies in the garden boxes and fresh cut grass. I stop. A tendril of hair moves along my cheek. All of us are living our lives from cicadas to the homeless man. Each life as dense with events, mundane or exotic, as each seeks out. Every single one unique. Nothing is the same. Not each living thing, not each second that unfolds. That butterfly has never moved or landed on that hibiscus, with the light coming off the water like it is doing right this moment before. That’s why it’s all about The Now. Every second is a snowflake. A divine finger print that is like no other.

Little Gem

Posted on September 12, 2013 by noellevignola Standard Reply

Continental Divide: Photography by Noelle

“EVERY path may lead you to God, even the weird ones. Most of us are on a journey. We’re looking for something, though we’re not always sure what that is. The way is foggy much of the time. I suggest you slow down and follow some of the side roads that appear suddenly in the mist.” Real Live Preacher

Untethered Boat

Posted on September 11, 2013 by noellevignola Standard 2

Free Bing stock photos

Today, I send into your meditation an untethered boat. It drifts in the early morning on a slow moving river, just off shore of a small dock. Bits of fog come and go and the sun is not quite up yet. You see glimpses of the opposite shore with trees and brush, but it fades in the mist as quickly. The oars rest in their locks at your feet. Your inclination is to pick them up and row. Row out onto the river and see where it goes or row back to shore and the dock. Three beliefs arise with this plan. The first, is to validate the belief that you must “do” something to get “somewhere”. The second is to affirm the belief that “effort” is also required to reach some destination. It may seem as if “doing” and “effort” are the same thing, but they aren’t actually. Doing means activity and busyness that may or may not take effort or yield any meaningful results. Effort means work, exertion, and definitely implies hoped for results.

What if you didn’t pick up the oars? If you simply let the boat drift in the morning mist? This brings us to the third belief. Can you believe in the river? Trust in its swiftness? Trust that it is going in a direction you wish to go? Trust that the scenic route, will, in fact, deliver the scenes you wish to see? Today, ponder what would happen if you let go of the doing, the effort, and the need to know where it’s all going. What would happen if you just let it all go and drifted on this slow moving river, in an early morning mist, with no idea where you are going at all?

Great White Crane

Posted on September 9, 2013 by noellevignola Standard Reply

I feel the lapping at the farthest reaches of my mind from a stone thrown centuries ago
Cracking barriers like a dam giving way
It is more effort to hold in, than to break loose
I have nothing to hold onto
Bits of sand and dust
Everything to give
What is this resistance really?
Rubber band girl
It is plain to see that with what goes out only more floods in
A dam letting loose a rivulet that becomes a stream
A river to a great delta water course gushing into the bay
That opens further to an even greater ocean
There is no purpose to these chains that bind when I have only love to give
Let it rain until the floods have washed even the mud away from my feet
I walk freely in the reeds, a great white crane

Sandhill Cranes: re-posted from Bing photo of the day by Patrick Frischknecht of Aurora Photos

Little Gem

Posted on August 13, 2013 by noellevignola Quote 3

Late afternoon at Clement Park

“I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.”
— Haim Ginott