Time.

Poetry and picking from one of the world's most underrated guitarists.

Take all the time that you want
Take all the time that you need
Slow and easy
You might succeed

Time precious time precious time precious time
Time precious time precious time precious time

Searching for scars that you hide
Looking beneath every stone
Half deep half empty
This must be home

Time precious time precious time precious time
Time precious time precious time precious time
Remember remember

Time precious time precious time precious time
Time precious time precious time precious time
Remember remember

Cultural Offering proves the point, here. DO NOT LOOK DOWN!

Finding.

How will you go about finding that thing, the nature of which is totally unknown to you?
- Meno

Ripples.

Waiting patiently to pop my popcorn and pour a jar of "something" ...

The Lost World of Mr Hardy (trailer) from Trufflepig Films on Vimeo.

The old generation ... they didn't like change.

Heads up.

Hartley 2 comin' at ya.

Earth & Sky provides the "true gen" here.

Be gentle.

I have been thinking of a few of my students who, for various reasons, aren't happy in their place right now, and are feeling a tremendous weight on their shoulders.

A weight that is more than ten year olds should bear, let alone be aware of.

I read the latest from Roz Savage and was reminded of Desiderata, ... desired things.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Read the rest here.

Be gentle with yourself ... you're the only one we've got!

Head in the clouds

... or clouds in my head?

Woods.

Let the wind do the talkin'.

Thanks, Frazier.

Larger.

Lost really has two disparate meanings. Losing things is about the familiar falling away, getting lost is about the unfamiliar appearing. Objects and people disappear; you lose a bracelet, a friend, a key. Everything is familiar except that there is one item less, one missing element. Or you get lost, in which case the world has become larger than your knowledge of it. Either way, there is a loss of control. Imagine yourself streaming through time shedding gloves, umbrellas, wrenches, books, friends, homes, names. This is what the view looks like if you take a rear-facing seat on the train. Looking forward you constantly acquire moments of arrival, moments of realization, moments of discovery. The wind blows your hair back and you are greeted by what you have never seen before.
- Rebecca Solnit

Time.

This morning I woke from a tremendous dream, slowly opened my eyes, looked through the window above and was greeted by stars shining through the heavy air.

Poetry for "this beautiful, misty morning ..."

Magic Hour
Come climb the hill with me
Come and be still with me
Come watch the sun sink away
If you will with me

Come watch the garden grow
Down by the gravel road
Come warm your hands in the gold
Of the afterglow

Into the peace of these wild things,
Into the wild of this grace,
Into the grace of this blessing,
Speak in the peace of this place

Come walk the cedar stand
Over the broken dam
Sit on the bench at the bend in the trail again

Look how the children laugh
Out in the tumble grass
Bright as a fire and as fine as a photograph

Here at the magic hour
Time and eternity
Mingle a moment in chorus
Here at the magic hour
Bright is the mystery
Plain is the beauty before us
Could this beauty be for us?

What is this voice that sings
Holy and hovering
Over this hill in the still of the evening?
(Son of God, speak)
- Andrew Peterson

Awake.

Singer-songwriter Andrew Peterson on George MacDonald, imagination, and not growing up ...
I mention that as an example of a time I’m glad I remembered how to be a child, and how to take the time to see. Most of the time I just snap a picture with my phone. But once in a while I manage to take a deep breath and make a choice to live life as if everything is a miracle. I remember what it was like to be a kid who loved to draw. Now, imagine learning to approach the Gospel that way. Imagine looking at your children that way. Imagine how rich every moment would be if we could keep that sleepy inner child awake.

Part One is here.

Part Two, here.

Here's Part Three.

Andrew Peterson's latest album, Counting Stars, is very, very good.

More here.

Thanks for your thoughtfulness, Abi.

Protects.

Bruce Schneier on privacy ...

Two proverbs say it best: Quis custodiet custodes ipsos? (“Who watches the watchers?”) and “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Cardinal Richelieu understood the value of surveillance when he famously said, “If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged.” Watch someone long enough, and you’ll find something to arrest — or just blackmail — with. Privacy is important because without it, surveillance information will be abused: to peep, to sell to marketers and to spy on political enemies — whoever they happen to be at the time.

Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we’re doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.

We do nothing wrong when we make love or go to the bathroom. We are not deliberately hiding anything when we seek out private places for reflection or conversation. We keep private journals, sing in the privacy of the shower, and write letters to secret lovers and then burn them. Privacy is a basic human need.

CONNECT 

Spirit.

Walking tells you where you are. Dogen said “When you find yourself where you already are practice occurs.” The language of dogs and birds teaches you your own language. I think of reality as the aggregate of the perceptions of all creatures. It’s important for me to understand that I’m no more important than a bird. Walking is walking. We’re bipeds. Everything of value is informed by spirit. The Navajo bow to the directions on waking. I walk. For truly bad weather I have a zafu from which I’ve tipped over sideways several times when thinking about women or food.

Read the rest here.

Head in the clouds

Raised.

The soul of the listener or the spectator completes this act itself; the soul actualizes truth through the experience of sublimity: that is, it completes an independent act of creation. Longinus says: "For our soul is raised out of nature through the truly sublime, sways with high spirits, and is filled with proud joy, as it itself had created what it hears."

Read the rest here.

Unhurried.

The conundrum is that the language to describe the ineffable splendors and possibilities of our lives takes time to master, takes a certain unhurried engagement with the tasks of description, assessment, critique, and conversation; that to speak this slow language you must slow down, and to slow down you must have some inkling of what you will gain by doing so. It’s not an elite language; nomadic and remote tribal peoples are now quite good at picking and choosing from development’s cascade of new toys, and so are some of the cash-poor, culture-rich people in places like Louisiana. Poetry is good training in speaking it, and skepticism is helpful in rejecting the four horsemen of this apocalypse, but they both require a mind that likes to roam around and the time in which to do it.

Read the rest here.

Don't miss this or this.

Rebecca Solnit gets it ... I still think the revolution is to make the world safe for poetry, meandering, for the frail and vulnerable, the rare and obscure, the impractical and local and small.

Understand.

It occurred to me some years ago that a poet or a writer, wherever he is, should know it biologically, botanically, historically, geographically. On my aimless aim of non-directional driving all over the United States, which I did for years to refresh myself, part of the fun was to research or really look into different places. I wrote a couple of novels based in Nebraska, for instance. It was really quite overwhelming to learn that area, where the last of the great conflicts between cultures, us and the Native American, took place, sort of ending with Wounded Knee. But understanding where you are, it’s a little more difficult now for many poets because so much of poetry I would have to say has become somewhat suburban. I’ve never cared for the suburbs. I like the country and I like the city. The in-between, it kicks your ass.

Read the rest here.

Immersed.

Warmth's weight, aromas burst open.

Ripening strength.

Offering, encouraging stillness.

Immersed.

Love.

²²But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faith,

²³Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.

Transformation.

Metanoia is the Greek word for conversion: a "fundamental transformation of mind." It is the process by which concepts are reorganized. Metanoia is a specialized, intensified adult form of the same world-view development found shaping the mind of an infant. Associated with religion, metanoia proves to be the way by which all genuine education takes place. Metanoia is a seizure by the discipline given total attention, and a restructuring of the attending mind. This reshaping of the mind is the principle key to the reality function.

- Joseph Chilton Pearce

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The Roar of '84

My Tigers won the World Series on this date in 1984.

Gibby goin' big fly ...

Is there?

What would life be like if there were no repetition?

- Søren Kierkegaard

Head in the clouds

I took this one yesterday morning over Hoover Reservoir ...

... and Frazier took this beauty last evening ...

Thanks, bud.

"... awake ... and opened."

Some lessons taught by e.e. cummings ...

We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.

Love is the voice under all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear; the strength so strong mere force is feebleness: the truth more first than sun, more last than star...

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.

Unless you love someone, nothing else makes any sense.

Happy Birthday cummings.

i thank You God for most this amazing

day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

- e.e. cummings

What time is it?

On this day in 1884 Universal Time/Greenwich Mean Time/Zulu Time was established. It's a time scale called "Coordinated Universal Time" (UTC) which is the basis for the worldwide system of civil time, and is therefore the international time standard. This time scale is determined using highly precise atomic clocks around the world.

Nasa explains all you need to know (and more!) here.

The United States Naval Observatory offers some tools for your belt here.

BING, BONG ... the correct Universal Time in the United States is ...

Boost your knowledge here.

Malts hangs 'em up

Long-time Detroit Red Wing and Grind Line right wing Kirk Maltby retired yesterday.

The Wings remember #18 here and the Freep covers the story here.

Thanks, Malts.

Hidden.

On this date in 1492, a sailor on board the Pinta sighted land early in the morning.

It had been known since the Greeks that the world was round, but its girth was greatly underestimated by Columbus - luckily. The error sustained him through the incredible rebuffs and delays at the hands of the Portuguese and French authorities. The Spanish queen Isabella is rightly credited with sponsoring him, but not till she had turned him down several times like all the others, while committees argued: he was a braggart, a bore, and a bit cracked. God would not have hidden land for so long if He had meant it to be found.
- Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence

Cultural Offering offers more here (don't miss it).

Kris Kristofferson, "To Beat The Devil"

You see, the devil haunts a hungry man,
If you don't wanna join him, you got to beat him.
I ain't sayin' I beat the devil, but I drank his beer for nothing.
Then I stole his song.

As the boys 'round here say ... "Nut up or shut up."
Kristofferson is a poet.

William Blake, "Evening Star"

Thou fair hair'd angel of the evening,
Now, while the sun rests on the mountains light,
Thy bright torch of love; Thy radiant crown
Put on, and smile upon our evening bed!
Smile on our loves; and when thou drawest the
Blue curtains, scatter thy silver dew
On every flower that shuts its sweet eyes
In timely sleep. Let thy west wind sleep on
The lake; speak silence with thy glimmering eyes
And wash the dusk with silver. Soon, full, soon,
Dost thou withdraw; Then, the wolf rages wide,
And the lion glares thro' the dun forest.
The fleece of our flocks are covered with
Thy sacred dew; Protect them with thine influence.

Head in the clouds

It was a glorious day to be a watcher of the skies.

From sunrise ...







... to sunset.