Monday 10 June 2013

The Day's Reflections

The days of summer drift in on rain clouds.
The year has taken me thus far from Edmonton to China, China to Thailand, Thailand back to Edmonton,
then to Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi and finally onto the home soil of Ontario.
Too seldom have I taken moments to pause and breathe and reflect on time gone by.
Too few times have I walked across the field to one of my favorite place of reflection,
seated on the rock that sits before the forest.
A small bush grows beside it and vines clamber their way along it.
The rock is big enough that I can sit with feet dangling in the tall grass where bugs take the liberty of making a jungle out of my leg hair before I swat them aware for their itchy intrusion.
There, on that rock, I will just sit with paper and pen on my lap and, without fail, I will write with the inspiration that always travels on the breeze moving across the fields
and through the small trees growing just outside the forest.
The small trees whose leaves always shimmer when they shake
and whose song that they sing is always in tune, pitch perfect.
More than a few birds cannot resist to join in the melody and each,
with distinctive voices and even different songs,
 join together lifting one lyric together that moves me.
It always moves me upward from where I was when I came to that rock.
Upward beyond the present pomp and prejudice of stimulants designed to distract us from anything of real substance. Fleeting, momentarily satisfactory and pleasurable voids.
So unlike the song lifted up by the divinely created.
To one in love with the Creator, the songs of Creation, if allowed to percolate through you, is an amazing way to be lifted upward into His gaze; how sweet the sight.
I think that a good sign that you were truly present in a moment is if you can dissect it, even weeks later, and relive the phenomenons of perception that you experienced while in the moment.
The green shimmer of the leaves in the wind and sunlight is the most clear phenomenon I recall,
and how vivid it is.
How strangely easy it is to bring myself back to that spot with the use of this one memory.
The power of an intimate moment.
Power to draw yourself, almost as if out of body, into another place of a time gone by,
perhaps longs gone or perhaps merely only a moment ago.
If I were not careful though, I would be thankful for these moments and their power
but I would do little to replicate more by actually allowing the stillness of the heart to set in on a more common occasion.
And thus on that note, I must bid adieu.

Monday 18 February 2013

She Sweeps the Breath of Another Year Away

Here's looking at you lady Abby.
Happy Birthday!




(Sorry about the pixelies, the perils of facebook photos)

Sunday 17 February 2013

Thinking Back

There was a time I, alone, climbed trees to dream,
 Laying in the arms of something I can't ever really understand.

Just reminiscing on some old days, and lessons learned and unlearned, with the words of Mr. Frost.


"When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay 
As ice-storms do.  Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain.  They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust--
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows--
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer.  He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground.  He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return.  Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches."
                        -Robert Frost, Birches
 
 

Friday 15 February 2013

To Shake the World

I was surprised, after having not posted for a solid three months, that there are still new page views happening on this ol' blog. Particularly yesterday with a solid 12 views. Perhaps others, alone on Valentine's Day as I was, with extra time to kill, were perusing the old haunts of inspiration like what I hope this place to be. Or perhaps they were merely random wanderers who have never seen this side of web before. My mystery page viewers, whoever you are, I thank thee for thy views, and for this I shall post once again.

With a newfound phone comes newfound possibilities, such as downloading classic literature to peruse and feel more in touch with a deeper sense of soul than I have for a while. On the go recently has been some Tennyson and Blake. The piece that has struck the deepest chord so far is The Poet's Mind by Tennyson. Allow me to quote the final stanza's of this work.

"And in her raiment's hem was traced in flame
WISDOM, a name to shake
All evil dreams of power--a sacred name.
And when she spoke,

Her words did gather thunder as they ran,
and as the lightning to the thunder
which follows it, riving the spirit of man,
making earth wonder,

So was their meaning to her words. No sword
Of wrath her right arm whirl'd,
But one poor poet's scroll, and with his word
She shook the world." 

Wisdom, it is a name to shake. And with a word wisdom can shake the world. 
I feel lately quite lacking in wisdom. Acting poorly towards those I care about the most. 
But may I not forget the power a little wisdom in thought, word and action can offer. 
May it grow as a seed in my mind in heart taking root,
 growing amidst and entangling my words in a radical way.