exuberant is existence

"That Lives in Us" by Jalaludin Rumi

If you put your hands on this oar with me,
they will never harm another, and they will come to find
they hold everything you want.
If you put your hands on this oar with me, they would no longer
lift anything to your 
mouth that might wound your precious land--
that sacred earth that is
your body.
If you put your soul against this oar with me,
the power that made the universe will enter your sinew
from a source not outside your limbs, but from a holy realm
that lives in us.
Exuberant is existence, time a husk.
When the moment cracks open, ecstasy leaps out and devours space;
love goes mad with blessings, like my words give.
Why lay yourself on the torturer's rack of the past and future?
The mind that tries to shape tomorrow beyond its capacities
will find no rest.
Be kind to yourself, dear--to your innocent follies.
Forget any sounds or touch you knew that did not help you dance.
You will come to see that all evolves us.

---

Perhaps somewhere, someplace deep inside your being, you have undergone important changes while you were sad.
— Rainer Maria Rilke

postcards from kiss to kiss

Baby in a Birdhouse

Rosie, looking

flower season

spreading contentment

cross-pollinating

Here at last are a few more photos from my summer series, just in time for the end of summer! I wanted to use color, and lots of flowers, and mix-up a few stories inside of them while I was at it.  Then, I converted some of them into postcards....would you like one? Send me an email with your mailing address and I will make one just for you :)) 

And lastly, I want to share a little inspiration from Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66 and their breezy, forever summer song " Look Around". yes, please look around! :))

New Orleans

  the French Quarter
 girls in white

little red riding hood and the big bad wolf 

 trees festooned with Mardi Gras beads in the Garden District

 colorful houses
Bourbon Street Ladies
Uncle Sam said, "hey, paparazzi!" after i took his photo :))
silver man flipping the bird....

 umm....

 their famous hand grenade

 big easy sidewalk...

from kiss to kiss

*i have been busy creating a summer project in color.  it's been quite fun---these are just a few of the  small moments of "dreamy" delight created around my house and neighborhood....i hope you like them! p.s. i will share the finished project when its done...

a kind of clarity

"There are moments when a kind of clarity comes over you, and suddenly you can see through walls to another dimension that you'd forgotten or chosen to ignore in order to continue living with the various illusions that make life, particularly life with other people, possible."
 - Nicole Krauss, Great House

the hidden

everything we see hides another thing...

---rene magritte

lifting the veil

Montrose Harbor, Chicago

looking for clues

girl country

The Riot's Gone

Santigold

Video by Pippilotti Rist

i've been waiting for a chance to share this video and today is international women's day--so it's perfect. please watch it many times. :)) 

As a woman, I have no country.

As a woman, my country is the whole world...

--Virginia Woolf

endless and vanishing

counting the trees

four windows

white stone 

silent doors

let me go

 endless and vanishing,
 st. croix

And wasn’t the church of the world always in ruins?

--Mark Strand, The History of Poetry

chinese checkers

Columbus Park
new york city, 2012

I watched the movie "Searching for Bobby Fischer" on Netflix recently--about a young chess prodigy who gets his start playing against the chess hustlers in Washington Park in New York City--and I remembered these photos I took one December day in New York when a ride on the wrong train took me to Columbus Park which is nestled right up against NYC's Chinatown. Everyone was playing cards or chinese checkers--or some version of checkers and chess as I know---and no one seemed to mind the fact that it was pretty cold outside to be sitting in the park playing games like it was in the middle of summer instead of December....

party hats

party hats on state street

i've been feeling a little rudderless ever since i said i was going to start posting "different" things other than street photos. its a little trickier finding my own way now so i have a new-found appreciation for my friends who blog free style. i am learning it isn't easy! anyway, let's get on with the goods--here's a fun little watercolor on black and white experiment i conducted on one of my street photos--i really liked how it turned out and plan on making more of them....

in a dark time

dark, dark is my light and darker my desire-
---theodore roethke, in a dark time

i always find the first week or so of January particularly grueling. and recent events in France make for dark times indeed. my thoughts go out to all journalists; and to our friends in paris; and to all of us, that we may light the secret spaces in our hearts where the darkness may be deepest....have a safe and happy friday....

yes please

i can't say i know what's going to happen here, but i've been thinking about doing this for a while. this space is for my other interests: mainly art, life, music and culture, poetry and of course, more photography....i hope to read more, write more, learn more, and most importantly, enjoy more! well, that's the plan at least,  i'm curious to see where this will go and hope you will stick around to be with me wherever it leads...Welcome and thanks for stopping by!