The Four, no. 20

I found I could say things with color and shapes

that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for.

-Georgia O'Keefe

challenge posted on The Four

Pauses

The Four's challenge no. 16:

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
~Leonardo Da Vinci

To participate, click here

The Four, no. 7: Kristen's challenge

(more photos from New Orleans: Bywater)

Challenge no. 7 from The Four:

"April hath put a spirit of youth in everything."

William Shakespeare

#48

"How does our intimacy with each other, or lack of intimacy, affect our intimacy with the land? Like death, I think our sensuality is something we're afraid of and we have avoided confronting it. I am interested in taboos, because I believe that's where the power of our culture lies. I love taking off their masks so we can begin to face the world openly.

I believe that will be our healing."

-Terry Tempest Williams

in interview with

David Peterson of The Bloomsbury Review

1991

#44

I'm simply thrilled with the newly discovered (by me that is) world of textures! Many thanks to Mary for sending me a "how-to" link. I've also been finding many free offerings on Flickr (for example, here and here and here).

The following is for my oneword February, "Breath":

"Reflections, a pause"

#41

pauses in my day for knitting

and breathing deep,

hand moving mind still

even as I sit

these moments

pressed with urgency

(The yarn comes from Marion's Etsy shop)

#40

And today I am grateful for:

"these precious details"

and the courage to risk living

#39

"Exhale"

#36

Practices of visibility.

Born and
Rising, we
Enter quietly
these
Abbeys of
The
Heart

#34

"finding Home"

#30

so beautifully (extra)ordinary, this breath, our spirit, the heart of being:

"...not in the I but between I and You. It is not like the blood that circulates in you but like the air in which you breathe..."

Martin Buber, I and Thou page 89

#29

#25

Next month (Feb 2009), I'll be participating in the Shutter Sisters creative challenge, the One Word Project. We're to pick a word that will inspire our images through the month of February. As I began to search for that perfect February theme, waiting was the first word that popped into my mind. Waiting for spring, waiting for the completion of an arduous Masters program, waiting for the move from the Boston area back to my roots in south central small town PA, waiting for a place to call home (it's been a good ten years feeling without one), waiting for space to dig and plant and grow and harvest...
But alas, I am here still. And as I recognized this, along came a second word: Being. With being I think of stillness and of patience but most importantly, I think of connection. The word "being," implies to be with, to be in relationship to all other things.

But with connection comes visibility, the next possibility for my February word search. And Visibility involves allowing myself to be seen, to be known, to be engaged...

This terrifies me. And as I sat bent over paper, a pen in hand, jotting these words one after another, I realized that I had been holding my chest tight and barely breathing. This is how I finally arrived at my word for the month of February: Breath.

From Rules for the Dance by Mary Oliver:

"Metrical poetry is about: breath. Breath as an intake and a flow. Breath as a pattern. Breath as an indicator, perhaps the most vital one, of mood. Breath as our personal tie with all the rhythms of the natural world, of which we are a part, from which we can never break apart while we live. ...It is as good as a language. We sigh. We pant. We reveal ourselves."

moments pressed with urgency

(dated the morning of Tuesday, August 12th)

I've awakened to that wild sense of urgency, heart skipping frantic as though the devil's on my heels and I must do something NOW, quickly, to stop this!

and then my puppy greets me with kisses and a crazy wagging tail and I shuffle to the kitchen where I fix myself a bowl of oatmeal, topped with raisins, bananas and milk, and sit, a cup of coffee in my hand, watching rain gather against street curbs.

These tiny details have become the fabric of my life, colors blending together, my heart wide open even as I breathe quick, these moments pressed with urgency.