OOO ooooo and there's more!  Before I share the 'more', I'd really like to thank the poster's of other blogs.  Without them, perhaps some of my form of expression would be a bit stymied.  (I hope they don't come and tell me my form of artistic and creative expression is less than! --hilarious!)

The following portion of this blog, well, some might just find objectionable, though it is worth the view to grasp the expression of a point.

DOES the road wind uphill all the way?
   Yes, to the very end.
Will the day's journey take the whole long day?
   From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?
   A roof for when the slow, dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
   You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
   Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
   They will not keep you waiting at that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
   Of labour you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
   Yea, beds for all who come.

Christina Georgina Rossetti

Taking a Chance on Love
He could tune her
Nearly as well as he could tune his guitar
His fingers, fearless, wise
Warm, welcoming, willing
His touch vibrating through her
A whisper flows through her heart
The flutter is no mystery, she hears his call

Music melts her, frees her, overwhelms her
Alive with desire, with a love she carries inside
Igniting fires of hope, inspiration, feelings
Wherever she goes, her heart goes too

And there he is, silent, a mystery - alive
Life, Love, Light - convincing her, 110% proofHer heart pounds furious, raging and wild
His love is life, she melts - ice touched by fire or sunshine?
She feels him before he appears, like a ghost

From her heart... when she least expects him
There he is, weakening her resolve, exposed
Naked and vulnerable, weak and incomplete

She should be strong enough to not see, but she is weak
She knows that he knows - her heart is in a fury, pounding
Even before she sees him, she is weakening
A heart he knows too well, answering him
Loving him, in spite of herself and her good intentions
She has always been his, it feels... even when she doesn't see him.

Her heart is in tune to one of his guitar strings, she thinks.
Wonders which string she might be and what he thinks as he turns the key
Does he even know that he been with her for eternity?
Does he see her... breathing, alive, eating, drinking him...
The liquid warmth of his memory, his love, his strength...
And she can't tell him... how she's loved him forever

This life is overcast with shadows of pain, disillusion, despair
Her heart still beats for him, - hope, happiness, healing
She is the vessel that is full - more love than she can hold...
Spilling over, sparkling in her eyes... she smiles when she thinks of him
Wishing she could hold him... but it wouldn't ever be enough
To keep her heart satisfied... The moment would be worth ...
Every moment she's spent missing him, though

Under the shadow of feigned strength, she prepares her heart
For the day when she can find the courage to face him... to speak
Then she fears she will never find that kind of strength again
She dreams and believes ... he has been light during the darkest night
Warmth when she was cold, ... and so very close to letting go of any hope

He doesn't have to see her or feel her or need her... he only has to be
She knows that this is enough to keep her heart through the storms... beating for him
Like a silly little girl, she smiles and thinks of him, drinking him, remembering
His touch, his smile, his kindness - the feeling he inspired inside of her
Where does she go when those flames ignite and she has no willpower to stop the flow
She doesn't possess the strength to put those flames out,... love is too strong for her.

She goes home and feels the flow of love moving through her
Heart pounding, resounding through her mind and body
Revealing the truth in waves of compassion and reassurance
She loves beyond her own capacity and he is loved - eternally
Will she ever be able to face him?... Show him?
Will she ever be strong enough to say to him... words that should have been said...
So many years before.

She loves him from her heart, feels him with her heart
Carrying this love has become a part of life for her
Today, she doesn't flinch when they say his name
She can say his name, too - and smile,
Allow her heart the chance to feel the soft, torturing touch
of a love that is eternally with her ...
He is like a star in the night, light filling her bedroom's darkness
Love she carries with her wherever she goes.. Forever, she knows
He will be with her.
Inside of her

She smiles... and erases the past from her mind
Once again...

--Regina Hill

The Midnight Club
The gifted have told us for years
that they want to be loved
For what they are, that they,
in whatever fullness is theirs,
Are perishable in twilight,
just like us. So they work all night
in rooms that are cold and
webbed with the moon's light;
Sometimes, during the day,
they lean on their cars,
And stare into the blistering
valley, glassy and golden,
But mainly they sit, hunched
in the dark, feet on the floor,
Hands on the table, shirts with a
bloodstain over the heart.
- Mark Strand
The Continuous Life

This morning I am thinking about cooking and being grateful to have enough food.  I am thinking that my writing streak --one that I was expressing elsewhere, yes I am a traitor!,  has dried up, taken a vacation--wow punctuation!

I realize that my expression of late correlates to my feeling of angst.  So many from outside taking liberties with effecting what they consider conformity--or glad acceptance of their help--makes them feel alive and useful I expect.  All of this has caused or created a depression for me.  I am apologizing all over the place again.  I am worrying about what others think--as the threats or implied threats that came with the conformity 'help' meant that somehow we are broken and that I do not know best about myself. HA!

The inside still strong bits of me inside sitting patiently though less and less tolerantly and becoming snarky little beasts now.  I am snapping at many and busy finding faults.  Finding faults is contagious, perhaps the government might create a vaccine or no WAIT! PROVIDE PSYCHOTROPIC MEDICATIONS FOR!  All nice quiet and numb and stupid then.

(wow i have a lot to express!)  Wait I'll get you a visual aide!


Taaaaa daaaaaaaaaa! Visual Aide!  See how frustratingly quiet and silent it is?  I guess that is what it is really like when one stuffs or acts like one is well I dunno what....It seems awfully strange to me of late that when I move forward with my day, I stop to think wow I used to call this coping, but it seems an awful lot like stuffing my head in the sand and pretending.  Addictive behavior says keep it together act like it's all fine, so does coping.  A friend pointed out to me that since I have been blessed with so many wonderful sober days, that the distinction of the kinds of 'coping' activities that I choose are so vastly different.  Drinking is hiding and destructive and I gain nothing from it--well perhaps a reminder that I ought not do that activity as it does not help and only makes matters worse.  Writing or working on stones for jewelry is supposedly NOT hiding.  It creates a nice thing at the end, an expression of who and what I am in a moment--even if that thing is an image of me hiding until I feel like doing otherwise.  Part of me can agree with her, it seems logical.  (I think she was afraid that I might drink and was trying to wake me up.)

That said, how does one know the difference between expressing, choosing and enjoying, and hiding and denying what is going on in the world around you?  I may have been watching, looking at and  reading too many things of 'new age-rs' of late.  I have found a very very strong correlation between what they serve up on a platter that is now being touted as healthy behavior and what is labeled as schizophrenia.  It is startlingly alarming. 

See!? I have now been creative however disorganized and fragmented it appears, it is all prefectly clear in my head...i think, though I am overloaded and would be very grateful if someone came along and trundled me into the shower and did it for me so that I could just stand there.  Dressed me, fed me, cleaned up after me...and then duct taped me to my willow tree for several hours and then came to fetch me. 

Happy Overloaded and Stuck Day!
me!

pst..for those who know me, did i mention that i had a very large quantity of corn and then since i had the corn i thought i may as well have several cookies(let's not ask me how many) and i have pms too

Gooooooooood Morninggggggg!!

Most excellent walk at the Tree Place this glorious, crisp, clear, and cool autumn morning!
I listened and took my camera along this morning. I figured out how to use the video setting by accident, wow what a lot of shake! I shall need practice and will reshoot at another time :D Yay! More new things to learn and to do!!

I figured out this morning why I have a feeling of conflict about taking images as I do the Tree Place thing. And when I got home and downloaded all of the images, ate, got tea and then set out to begin to write today's Ponder, this was the first thing that I found:

"There's a bit of Faust in us all, believing as we do that the more we learn about something the closer we are to it. Not so. Any event, fully attended, uproots all our knowing at the source and carries inexhaustible surprises.
True attention is rare and totally sacrificial. It demands that we throw away everything we have been or hope to be, to face each moment naked of identity, open to whatever comes and bereft of human guidance.
Nor is the potential for pain to be underestimated. Now we come face to face with the radical fact that there is nothing, however dear, that cannot be taken from us from one moment to the next; nothing, however sinister or horrifying, from which we will be permitted to recoil or separate ourselves. All the dreadful, mute suffering from which inattention shielded us will now be seen and heard."
- Flora Courtois
The door to infinity
Parabola

Tree Place time, I can realize what and how much I put other things first, how I deny the call of Now, to remain what society calls 'functioning". When I attempt to take photos, even by pull of energy, it requires me to focus on what I will do, rather than what I AM (doing). It is pretty humorous that the best images I capture are at the Tree Place lol! Silly chatter in my head...pray first girl, then come back for the camera...but, what if I miss the heron or another irreplaceable shot(HORRORS!! lol)

Choose...chooooose, gotta love binary thinking :D Here is what can happen when I allow myself to create more options and doors when I am unsure of what to do with a No.

And She Ripples--by Elisa



Desire Dancing--by Elisa


Eternally glad for direction!
Elisa, One Aries

When one sits in Life on Life's terms, one can feel many things. One can attempt to escape by drawing a pretty picture in the mind on what is not so pretty. One can create a lie inside oneself, by repeating words like All is Well, without meaning it. This can create HUGE debt. It also reinforces negative tapes within oneself, normally those tapes we are thinking to avoid or to blot out by using affirmations.

Now, should one use affirmations to unlock doors, ones they truly feel and internalize, these then hold what looks like great power. Is it the words that hold the power? An outside source which we must despair to rush after crawling on knees hoping the supplier of said affirmations doesn't decide to take away that which we desire in order to feel good. Junkies of feel good waiting for the next provider?

Or, have we noted our innate gift, once attending, to convert anything at any time. The ability to notice and see the smallest speck of joy in the present moment of despair is God's gift to us. Enchantment with life! To note in infinitesimal moments of now, smaller and smaller so that each runs together in God's time, not ours. With this gift we can move through anything and retain our inner God granted JOY!

Much Love to You,
Elisa, One Aries

Goooooooood Mafternooooooooon!!

I'm sitting here, feeling I'm not quite sure what. I can say I'm a bit wistful when looking out at a constant gray and dismal sky. (note to self increase calcium with d already this darker seeming season)

And I just stepped out to try looking at it again and to the East, in the plain flatness of the gray, were streaks upon streaks and mounds, the type that look like the mud shaped ripples that form at the edges of hot pots and lava flows. I have never seen a gray sky quite like it, magnificently fractal.

I made some rather bad dietary choices for myself this last week, add that to hormones. YIKES!! The body is quaking and shaking. It sends frantic signals to the body that say fright, anxiety, trick trick!! In my OH LORD I have to stop this feeling/utterance, I realized once again that I was utilizing one of His great gifts to me. The ability to attend. At once I thought wow ocd type moment...tooooo much focus, run shut it out ignore. However that way of thinking traps me, it's an escape. So, I took the gift and paying attention to the body I said, "I am truly sorry for giving you so many bad things. Thank you for signaling to me that I have forgotten to care well for myself and where it all will lead if I continue. Then, I talked to the minds and I said please invoke all standard grounding procedures and ignore the body. I thanked them for telling me that my feet are on the ground. The keys are under my fingers. My emotions and senses are truly stable with NO cause for alarm, save the body reaction to the food, which will pass shortly, while I continue to signal it that all is really calm and there is no need to locate some drama nor fear to analyze, grow, or rid myself of. The minds thought of a nice warm vat of chocolate pudding to submerge the body. Other parts of the mind a nice float on a calm river, under bright blue sky and sun, the sounds of water trickling off of my fingers front and center.

This is what I found to share with you today.





"One of the most difficult things to learn is that mindfulness is not dependent on any emotional or mental state. We have certain images of meditation. Meditation is something done in quiet caves by tranquil people who move slowly. Those are training conditions. They are set up to foster concentration and to learn the skill of mindfulness. Once you have learned that skill, however, you can dispense with the training restrictions, and you should. You don't need to move at a snail's pace to be mindful. You don't even need to be calm. You can be mindful while solving problems in intensive calculus. You can be mindful in the middle of a football scrimmage. You can even be mindful in the midst of a raging fury."
Mindfulness Versus Concentration
- Henepola Gunaratana
Mindfulness in Plain English
and/or
Mindfulness in Plain English

Yours,
A very chocolatey,
Elisa, One Aries

English translation:

Our words go beyond the moon.
Our words go into the shadows.
The river sings the endlessness.
We write of our journey through night.
We write in our aloneness.
We want to know the shape of eternity.

Who knows the way it is?
Who knows what time will not tell us?

Mountains, solitude and the moon
until the journey's end?
The river holds the lost road of the sky;
the shape of eternity?

Who knows the way it is?
Who knows what time will not tell us?

Where is the beginning?
Where is the end?
Why did we fall into days?
Why are we calling out into the endlessness?

Who knows the way it is?
Who knows what time will not tell us?

Loxian Lyrics

Mmer-hymm a rhee-a ka-n
Mmer-hymm a vl-a lu-ua
E-a hymm llay hey
A rhee o mmay
hOr-oom-may o nay rhay
hOr-oom-may he eer-hee-mo
h'er-ra-Kan sy ay a rhee a mmay

h'un-nin in la go dee rhee?
h'un-nin in la go chwk a too?
h'un-nin in la go dee rhee?
h'un-nin in la go chwk a too?

h'airr rin a kan a-he-ra,
h'airr rin a kan o-rhay-na?
E-a nno llow rro;
A rhee a mmay?

h'un-nin in la go dee rhee?
h'un-nin in la go chwk a too?
h'un-nin in la go dee rhee?
h'un-nin in la go chwk a too?

Ta-na mmo-ree va rhay?
Ta-na mmor rro nna oom a?
(yl) Le-a tor-ee-ay
A rhee a kan
Kor-rhee-ay ko-da nay a
Kor-rhee-ay a-ru hil-la
Vee a kyi a hey
A rhee a mmay.

Ah hey, Ah hey, Ah hey, Ah hey,
Ah hey, Ah hey, Ah hey, Ah hey.

Yll yy-ka pirr o bay ru
Yl-y-ka kal-la kwyay la
O-na han-ee ay
A rhee o mmay?

h'un-nin in la go dee rhee?
h'un-nin in la go chwk a too?
h'un-nin in la go dee rhee?
h'un-nin in la go chwk a too?

Mmer-hymm a rhee-a kan
Mmer-hymm a vl-a lu-ua
E-a hymm lly hey
A rhee o mmay
hOr-oom-may o nay rhay
hOr-oom-may he er-rhee-mo h'er-ra -
Kan sy ay a rhee a mmay.

Ah hey, Ah hey, Ah hey, Ah hey,
Ah hey, Ah hey, Ah hey, Ah hey.

Yll yy-ka pirr o bay ru
Yl-y-ka kal-la kwyay la
O-na han-ee ay
A rhee o mmay?

h'un-nin in la go dee rhee?
h'un-nin in la go chwk a too?
h'un-nin in la go dee rhee?
h'un-nin in la go chwk a too?

Mmer-hymm a rhee-a kan
Mmer-hymm a vl-a lu-ua
E-a hymm lly hey
A rhee o mmay
hOr-oom-may o nay rhay
hOr-oom-may he er-rhee-mo h'er-ra -
Kani sy ay a rhee a mmay.

Yll yy-ka pirr o bay ru
Yl-y-ka kal-la kwyay la
O-na han-ee ay
A rhee o mmay?