When you embark for strange places, don’t leave any of yourself safely on shore. Have the nerve to go into unexplored territory. Be brave enough to live life creatively. The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. It is not the previously known. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You can’t get there by bus, only by hard work and risk and by not quite knowing what you’re doing, but what you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover will be yourself. ~ Alan Alda (Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself)
The human heart has hidden treasures, In secret kept, in silence sealed;- The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, Whose charms were broken if revealed. ~ Charlotte Brontë (The Poems of Charlotte Brontë [Currer Bell])
The Drop, that wrestles in the Sea – Forgets her own locality As I, in Thee –
She knows herself an incense small – Yet small, she sighs, if all, is all, How larger – be?
The Ocean, smiles at her conceit – But she, forgetting Amphitrite – Pleads “Me”?
~ Emily Dickinson (The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #255)
I’m saying open up And let the rain come pouring in Wash out this tired notion That the best is yet to come But while you’re dancing on the ground Don’t think of when you’re gone ~ Dave Matthews ♫ (Pig) ♫
How lovely trees are. The human species grew up in and around them. We have a natural affinity for trees. … We human beings don’t look very much like a tree. We certainly view the world differently than a tree does. But down deep, at the molecular heart of life we’re essentially identical to trees. ~ Carl Sagan (Cosmos)
When a man plants a tree, he plants himself. Every root is an anchor, over which he rests with grateful interest, and becomes sufficiently calm to feel the joy of living. ~ John Muir (Steep Trails)
A tree is a self: it is unseen shaping more than it is leaves or bark, roots or cellulose or fruit. … We can not point to anything physical and say, “There is the self!” This holds for the tree’s activity as well as for the human’s. What it means is that we must address trees. We must address all things, confronting them in the awareness that we are in the presence of numinous mystery. Who shapes the tree? Who shapes my thoughts? We are in the mystery of the self. ~ Brian Swimme (The Universe Is a Green Dragon: A Cosmic Creation Story)
There is a solitude of space A solitude of sea A solitude of Death, but these Society shall be Compared with that profounder site That polar privacy A soul admitted to itself – ~ Emily Dickinson (The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #1696)
You left me Boundaries of Pain – Capacious as the Sea – Between Eternity and Time – Your Consciousness – and me ~ Emily Dickinson (The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #713)
Wednesday afternoon Janet and I found a new woodland garden to explore, Kentford Farm in Stonington, Connecticut. We seemed to have the place to ourselves, but for a very charming tortoiseshell cat who acted as our hostess. When we left we spotted a sign saying the garden was open Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays – unknowingly we had been trespassing! But the gate had been open so perhaps our confusion was understandable.
We introduce ourselves To Planets and to Flowers But with ourselves Have etiquettes Embarrassments And awes ~ Emily Dickinson (The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #1184)
5.28.14 ~ Stonington, Connecticut
We will have to return as the seasons progress – it’s a perennial garden and there will be different things blooming every time we go. Please enjoy some of my favorite photographs. The plan was to travel light, with just the camera and not its bag, but it backfired on me when the camera battery died only about a third of the way through. Next time I will carry the whole kit and caboodle with me!
5.28.14 ~ Stonington, Connecticut
The wall is silence, the grass is sleep, Tall trees of peace their vigil keep, And the Fairy of Dreams, with moth-wings furled, Sings soft her secrets to the drowsy world. ~ Ida Rentoul Outhwaite (Tibetan Buddhism Deck: Buddhas, Deities, and Bodhisattvas 30 Meditation Cards)
5.28.14 ~ Stonington, Connecticut
Way over yonder is a place I have seen In a garden of wisdom from some long ago dream ~ Carole King ♫ (Way Over Yonder) ♫
Frequently the woods are pink – Frequently, are brown. Frequently the hills undress Behind my native town – Oft a head is crested I was wont to see – And as oft a cranny Where it used to be – And the Earth – they tell me On it’s axis turned! Wonderful rotation – By but twelve performed! ~ Emily Dickinson (The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #24)
5.28.14 ~ Stonington, Connecticut
In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (Nature)
5.28.14 ~ Stonington, Connecticut
The good Will of a Flower The Man who would possess Must first present Certificate Of minted Holiness. ~ Emily Dickinson (The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #954)
The Kate is a relatively small venue, very cozy and intimate, and we thoroughly enjoyed seeing Dar Williams perform there. We didn’t even mind having to sit a row apart, in the same seats, Tim in the row behind me. But Tim wasn’t in his seat much, poor guy. He still has a lingering cough from the bad cold he caught early in January. For much of the concert he was out in the lobby, where he could listen to the music without disturbing the rest of the audience.
Dar was amazing! These are some of the songs I remember her singing – no doubt there were some more: February ~ The Light and the Sea ~ The Beauty of the Rain ~ If I Wrote You ~ Buzzer ~ I Have Been Around the World ~ When Sal’s Burned Down ~ Mercy of the Fallen ~ Crystal Creek ~ Storm King, which she dedicated to Pete Seeger. All of us joined her in singing If I Had A Hammer in memory of him, too. Her stories in-between the songs were heartwarming and funny. It was wonderful spending an evening immersed in her music and inspiring lyrics. Beyond wonderful…
“North Star” by Alphonse Mucha
Oh my fair North Star I have held to you dearly I had asked you to steer me ‘Til one cloud scattered night
I got lost in my travels I met Leo the lion Met a king and met a giant With their errant knight
There’s the wind and the rain And the mercy of the fallen Who say they have no claim To know what’s right
There’s the weak and the strong And the beds that have no answer And that’s where I may rest my head tonight
There’s the weak and the strong And the many stars that guide us We have some of them inside us
