Just give me one thing that I can hold on to

it's 4 am and i can't sleep
my right hand signs beautiful behind my back when i think of you

Things are quieting down on the ecstatic union with God front, but these are still lovely lovely lovely.

God and I have become
like two giant fat people
living in a tiny boat.
We keep bumping into each other
and laughing.

*** *** *** *** ***

All these words are just a front.
What I would really like to do is
chain you to my body,
then sing for days
about God.

*** *** *** *** ***

Now is the time to know
that all you do is sacred.

Now, why not consider
a lasting truce with yourself and God.

Now is the time to understand
that all your ideas of right and wrong
were just a child's training wheels
to be laid aside
when you can finally live
with veracity
and love.

Hafiz is a divine envoy
whom the Beloved
has written a holy message upon.

My dear, please tell me,
why do you still
throw sticks at your heart
and God?

What is it in that sweet voice inside
that incites you to fear?

Now is the time for the world to know
that every thought and action is sacred.

This is the time
for you to deeply compute the impossibility
that there is anything
but Grace.

Now is the season to know
that everything you do
is sacred.

*** *** *** *** ***

How did the rose
ever open its heart
and give to this world
all its beauty?

It felt the encouragement of light
against its being,

otherwise,
we all remain too frightened.

*** *** *** *** ***

Everyone is God speaking.
Why not be polite and listen to him?

*** *** *** *** ***

God
disguised as myriad things
and playing a game of tag
has kissed you and said,
"You're it -
I mean, you're Really IT!"

Now it does not matter
what you believe or feel
for something wonderful,
mind-blowingly wonderful
is someday going
to happen

~Hafiz (translated by Daniel Ladinsky)

Amen.

Dear Universe,

It's very sweet how you are constantly showering me with unrelenting beauty. Thanks.

Wendy

Things that make me cry in my cubicle. Part VI.

Prepare to be astonished

Yes.

The Invitation

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon...
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments.

Oriah Mountain Dreamer from The Invitation

The amazing paper art of Peter Callesan.

Cars full of moonlight

I like it when my friends drive me home late at night. Sometimes they play their favorite songs for me. Sometimes they sing along. Sometimes I become hushed and smoothed from the loveliness, from the life.

Except for the bones and skin part.

I don't know who made this or where it came from, but...YES.

More book art!

Alice in Wonderland yumminess by Abelardo Morell.


And the work of photographer Cara Barer.

Singing and confluence

Walking to work today I passed a plot of grass being watered by sprinklers. The sprinklers were well positioned to cover the maximum amount of grass without dousing passers-by (although it is always a little bit fun to negotiate sprinklers and think about childhood and rain and play). But the middle sprinkler was placed just so that the full force of the water hit the pole of a street sign at the very left-most edge of its range, just as it turned back. Which made the street sign sing. It sang, to me and to the cars and to the clouds and to everyone, every 20 seconds.

And then I thought about the confluence of things. Of the moments when things join up, touch one another, glance off of one another. Of the kiss of connection. Of items in their own cyclical patterns occasionally brushing up against one another. And, in that brushing against, one sometimes finds a song. I like things that sing when touched. I like things that resonate. When the circumstances are just right and the moment is silvery, on the tip of the tongue, until the vocal chords breathe of their own accord, singing, singing singing singing, singing a song of connection.

Brian Dettmer: Book Autopsies

"Brian Dettmer carves into books revealing the artwork inside, creating complex layered three-dimensional sculptures." More images are over here.

(Thanks to David for the link, and also, more generally, for being ultra-distilled magic).

what i really want to say is this

i miss the night. the softness, the shadowed edges, the stillness. walking out under the stars and realizing you are a human being. everything weighs differently at night - i'm pretty sure gravity changes. some things float a few inches above the surface of things while others weigh you down. if virginia woolf had tried to kill herself at night, the stones she put in her coat pocket would probably have pulled her right out of the river, and taken her up up up up and away like a balloon, until she kissed the face of the moon.

time is different, too. slower. maybe heavier, maybe lighter. dreamier. perhaps that is it. maybe the world of dreams seeps out at night, gliding along the surface of things, pooling in unexpected places, brushing up against corners like a cat, painting everything strange colors, making things more permeable. everything is more permeable at night. past, present, and future bleed into each, causing everything to make a different kind of sense, a new kind of sense. love makes sense at night. and families, too. all of that heart bone blood marrow stone stuff makes sense at night.

ach. i want to be painted the color of dreams. i want all the rocks in my apartment to float against the ceiling, to try to break free. i want to feel the weight of someone's dreams, of their bones, of their heart.

i want to stay up until i get all the words right.

I love the emergence of fabulous new Wendy-beasts!

Back from Burning Flipside where I spent time with some of the loveliest lovelies that ever lovelied. I want to extend a big thank you, sloppy kiss, and smack on the ass to all the people who walked with my in the rain, made me laugh, danced with me, talked with me, let me rub them, fed me, and were just generally 87 different kinds of fantastic. The mildly burnt skin on my shoulders is beginning to peel off, which of course makes me wonder what fabulous new Wendy-beast is about to emerge. There are clearly plenty of things I would love to slough off along with that skin and I am well on my way to doing so.

Of course this is only my second time at Flipside, and I haven't been to Burning Man, but it seems to me that Flipside gives you what you need, even when it is not what you think that you need [Insert Rolling Stones quote here]. I am slowly learning to live my life without the filter of my dreams and expectations getting in the way. That is one of the lessons the universe keeps throwing at my feet lately and I am trying not to kick it out of the way. Okay, I will go ahead and put in the damn quote already. I fought it for four sentences, but sometimes what a blog needs is a Rolling Stones lyric. "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need." What I expected at Flipside last time was not what I got, but I did get what I needed. And the same goes for this year. I can only imagine how this dynamic plays out at Burning Man.

Now that I am back in my office, answering emails and drinking coffee, I am naturally thinking about my life, and the life of our society generally. And what I have come up with is a list of What (my) Life Needs, as Gleaned from Flipside. Enjoy.

1. More art
2. More art ON FIRE
3. More touching
4. More pretty lights
5. More accepting attitudes towards sexuality
6. Less judging
7. Less expectations
8. More talking to strangers whom you eventually come to adore
9. More wandering with no destination in mind
10. More having no idea what the hell time it is
11. More realizing that you are actually in a metaphor
12. Less being trapped in your mind
13. More building.
14. More realizing you are alive
15. More hope
16. More fun
17. More beauty
18. More acceptance of impermanence.

Oh and more nudity. We can't forget that.

Kisses to all the Flipizens. MWAH.

There is beauty in the inhale and in the exhale
There is a lesson in both the rise and the fall
Help me not to close my eyes in the moment in between

Something like renewal - Part deux

Late April and the scent of honeysuckle returns. Reminding me of last April, and the April before, and all 30 of my Aprils on this world. I like to think that all I smelled in the first month of my life was honeysuckles, mingling with the freshness of baby powder and the scent of my family. That perhaps my home was overcrowded with this perfume.

Late April and the scent of honeysuckle returns. Reminding me that it is time to buy flip-flops and start wearing skirts again. Time to eat strawberries and go swimming everyday. Time to enjoy the coolness of the evening, to stand in the sun, to dance again. Time to forget the austere winter. Time to remember who I am.

Late April and the scent of honeysuckle returns. It is time to move the fuck on.

The beauty needs to be honored.

I am having the urge to start writing again. Which seems strange somehow. As if that part of my life had slipped away and I wasn't expecting to see it back again. Someday I will understand the cyclical nature of writing, of life. I can go months without wanting to feel pen on paper, or watch my words appear on the screen. But then it's back and I am writing everyday.

For me, there is a distinct emotional and physical feeling associated with the desire to write. A certain state. A certain thoughtfulness. Pondering. As if I am trying to process something somewhere. Remember something. Mark the moment. And it is not quite the case that things are processed through finding the right phrase, the right word, the right sentence. It is happening somewhere else, by some other means. Below the surface. Outside.

I think I feel as if something is shifting, somewhere. The beauty needs to be honored. I need to remember. To be translucent and resonate when touched. A renewal.

Hmm.

Resonantie

Science is pretty...

Strange to post in a blog, I know, but...

"I no longer want to know the names of things. I do not care if I am mute or if my tongue is useless for everything but the taste of salt. The verbal map is the wrong map. It is a labyrith to false treasure. This exotic, wholly liquid place lies outside words but well within the realm of the sensual."

Ellen Meloy - The Anthropology of Turquoise

new constellation

I want to make a new constellation
fashioning stars from rusted pocket watches and kindergarteners' art projects
old library cards and cats' stares
the shape of our hands while we sleep
the smell of pecan trees
my first thoughts upon waking
the color of your beard
train whistles, snail shells, and the tiredness of old men
the sounds that slip from us during sex
secret gardens and crushed wisdom teeth
the space above your collarbone
timelines
disappearing magic
all the tiny things that slip away
and the crinkles at the corner of your eyes

we can give each star its own gravity and spin
spend sunday afternoons lazily naming our favorites
and then pin it in my hair
or rest it on your pillow
or place it in the stillest part of me
where its orbits will carve spirals on my spine
and my veins will become entangled with its meteors
until eventually my movement, my pulse
will depend upon its nightfalls