If I’d lived my life by what others were thinkin’, the heart inside me would’ve died

I was just too stubborn to ever be governed by enforced insanity

Someone had to reach for the risin’ star, I guess it was up to me

"Up to Me" by Bob Dylan)

Thursday, December 30, 2004


H. T. & Companeros

At Uncle Rand's

Cardigan (for Paul)

Wednesday, December 29, 2004

Christmas Past

Orange Barney’s flurry feline coat
So cool and damp from a walk
Amidst barren, silent limbs
Winding in the spiral flakes of waltzing snow.

At an oaken table
It is second breakfast
Butter, warm breads
Juices, eggs and bacon.
Here is health and life!
Here is music for my health!

Tchaikovsky’s “Winter Dreams”
Distant children’s laughter
Before the sparkling Christmas Fir.
Shreds of paper,
Gold and silver ribbons,
Tea cups,
Wholesome life!

I wait
I listen
As in a bath
As in the green-blue sea
In open sight
Words spark to my ear:
“Time for breakfast!”

Sweet perceptions clamber to greet my lips:
The symphonic, percussive offbeat hoofed bass beats---
an offbeat sleigh
Drawing down the road, now veering, now racing
Patterning the fields
Beneath the boney knuckle and creaking branch
Water sprouts, the green sap grows in Winter’s strong grip.

Here I am!
Beyond the pale of words
My boney hand winds another line.


Christmas Past

Christmas Gifting II (for Heidi)

Christmas Gifting (for Heidi)

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas

Periwhite

Serenity

Monkeyboots

Esmeralda

Awakening

Tuesday, December 28, 2004

Photos: December 28, 2004

I want to comment on the photos posted today.

It is said that "the camera never lies." This is not true. It is the phenomenon that never lies. I prefer the phenomena in all of their myriad qualities, multiform colors and substantial being to the technically and digitally reproduced image. The trunks, and ice dripping, green, orange and white algae only appear in just this light and the photograph miraculously "stops" the event of these things coming to pass. But it is the event of these things coming to pass that amazes me.

The camera always lies is more accurate.

Even if I were to step into the wet mud every day until I die, I would never step in the same mud as I did today. All is flowing as Heraclitus has said and you can never step in the same river twice.

Indeed, it is far behind me now, the bottle I tossed into the green rushing river. To where? Like a scroll unfolding (from what to what?) time allows the scene to unfold and be revealed in the sunlight as phenomenon, from the void into the void, or from the plenitude of being into the plenitude of being, which description fits I know not.

All things seem to linger after we have gone like the ancient weathered milestone photographed below, and even permanent markers are changed if only because the scene keeps on changing around and behind the stone.

Other things are more ephemeral like the algaes, or the mud dipped boot like a fat brush in a pot of golden brown oil paint.


Milestone from the Old Pennsylvania Turnpike

Stumps like Cut-out Figures Leap Forth

Black Moshannon (Blackie)

Black Moshannon

Enter Black Moshannon

Figures of Barren Trees

Back On the Hill

Shredded Woody

Pale Days

Ice Dancer

Gushing Water

Veils of Light

Interlude (Fungi)

Ice River

Water Path II

Water Path I

Down by the River the Memory Relieves

Interlude (Ice Kisses)

He Took the Fall (Hats off to Van Gogh)

The Trap

Don't Shoot too Soon!

Our Objective is to Scale that Slope

A Lieutenant

Scrub Oak in Command

Watercolor III

Watercolor II

Watercolor 1

Ice Cave V

Ice Cave IV

Ice Cave III

Ice Cave II

Ice Cave I

Ice Globule

Coal and Ice

Captive Waterlily