Blog Archives

April 23rd, 2017

4/23/2017

Tuesday I leave on the cruise. This will be the last post then. Somehow, thinking of leaving sunny warm Florida for the north made me think of the sea here (I expect it to be more grey up north). And that reminded me of this from Rainer Maria Rilke: "I could imagine someone writing a monograph on the color blue, from the dense waxy blue of the Pompeiian wall paintings to Chardin and further to Cezanne: what a biography!"

April 21st, 2017

4/21/2017

Florida in April: Rainbow Springs
New leaves are a glowing yellow-green
while last year's lie where they have fallen
shades of brown, or grey, or even red
a season for rebirth indeed

I am leaving for a cruise next week, so I won't be posting after Sunday; Boston and Maine and then into Canada up to Montreal. It will apparently be cool (cold?) and rainy; still I look forward to what I will see there . . .

April 16th, 2017

4/16/2017

Han-Shan wrote:

"An Old Tree"

Here is a tree older than the forest itself;
The years of its life defy reckoning,
Its roots have seen the upheavals of hill and valley,
Its leaves have known the changes of wind and frost.
The world laughs at its shoddy exterior
And care nothing for the fine grain of the wood inside.
Stripped free of flesh and hide,
All that remains is the core of truth.

Happy Easter . . .

April 14th, 2017

4/14/2017

Roser Park neighborhood, St Petersburg

April 08th, 2017

4/8/2017

Paul Reps: "Not to know where one is going the day or hour before is best. You take the cement skyscraper, give me the low wood building. You wear the necktie, give me the old shirt. You worry over the news, give me the glory of these mountains where the people are red-cheeked, where the fisherman blends into the stream, woven into nature as each of us must be someday."

April 06th, 2017

4/6/2017

Fall, winter and early spring have been very dry here. This morning, however, big flashes of light, loud booms of thunder, and heavy rain. A bit early for the wet season and we return to 0% chance of rain for the near future. But it was good to see the light and hear the roar and listen to the rain pelting the windows. It reminded me of some of my favorite quotes from Thomas Merton: "Let me say this before rain becomes a utility that they can plan and distribute for money. By 'they' I mean the people who cannot understand rain is a festival, who do not appreciate its gratuity, who think that what has no price has no value, that what cannot be sold is not real, so that the only way to make something actual is to place it on the market. The time will come when they will sell you even your rain. At the moment it is still free, and I am in it. I celebrate its gratuity and it meaninglessness." And, "Nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it. It will talk as long as it wants, this rain. As long as it talks I am going to listen." So may we all . . .

April 05th, 2017

4/5/2017

Black Elk: "Everything an Indian does is in a circle and that is because the Power of the World always works in a circle, and everything tries to be round. The sky is round . . . and the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds build their nests in circles . . . The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The moon does the same, and both are round. Even the season form a great circle in the changing."

April 01st, 2017

4/1/2017

"The alphabetized intellect stakes its claim to the earth by staking it down, extends its dominion by drawing a grid of straight lines and right angles across the body of a continent . . . according to a calculative logic utterly oblivious to the life of the land.
If I say that I live in the 'United States' . . . I situate myself within a purely human set of coordinates. I say very little or nothing about the earthly place that I inhabit, but simply establish my temporary location within a shifting matrix of political, economic, and civilizational forces struggling to maintain themselves . . . largely at the expense of the animate earth. The great danger is that I, and many other good persons, may come to believe that our breathing bodies really inhabit these abstractions, and we will lend our lives more to consolidating, defending, or bewailing the fate of these ephemeral entities than to nurturing and defending the actual places that physically sustain us." David Abram

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