Beginning - Again

Night sky, marcasite with stars
overstrewn and fighting for position...

I've just revisited this blogsite that I abandoned unintentionally last April. I was surprised to see that it was so hard to find due to its inactivity, so I begin again...
I am sitting here in front of a long and slanted window, much like a picture frame. The rain has streaked it and through the streaks I see the long dark silhouettes of the tree tops. This space is high up over a garage and has the feel of a treehouse. I look up and out into the treeline and into the sky above it...the view so interesting to me because there is no ground from up here. These windows are skylights set into slanted ceilings...my desk set under the largest.
In the mornings, I watch the crows fly across the window's frame and settle into the branches just outside my reach. At night, I see the moon and stars directly in front of me, no stretching of my neck to scan upward. It's all here for the easy viewing, a fresh perspective that I might not see if I were two floors down.

The light darkens into evening... drifting into the night sky, I set these last few words gently into place....

Rebirth

Thick hushing rush of rain
composes April morning.
Green wind swings the trees,
sodden buddings softly swell.

Empathetic,
I lie within
wrapped tight in blankets,
rocking;
waiting to be lifted
and held.

Ice Storm

The path through the woods
where I find my words
has frozen over.
Thick crust and ruts
slice ice-wafered trails,
no passage under armored skies.

All night wind driven ice
has pounded the roof above my bed.
Deep winter works its magic
in reverse.

I have been pokey this last month or so...not much writing being done...what is it that I wanted to write about?
I have been visiting the Underworld...pondering and processing...Who knows what may rise up...what may wander out of the over-wintering cave?
Today, it is raining hard and thick. I am looking through the window, watching the water glaze the stark black shapes of the winter landscape, the many shades of gray and black...
Deep under the earth, things are stirring. This will be a year of many changes. I feel the rising, the finger-drumming, the tap-tapping of the invisible foot...
Quiet excitement.
I wonder now, what will I be processing this time next year?

First SnowFall

A view from outside my office during the first very light snowfall of the season.

November Sunsets - Ocean Beach Ponguogue

The sunset skies have been stunning this past week or so. So many evenings, driving home westward on Sunrise Highway, I am faced with colors too vivid to stare straight into...cloud layers, vapor trails, all manner of special effects... and me without my camera!

Last weekend I stayed at a friend's apartment in Hampton Bays while she was away, and made my way, finally, to the ocean to take some sunset shots. I was intrigued at how the scattered fishermen were able to stand so still and patient in the deep chill of ocean water and gusting wind...I took my shots from the shelter of the dune paths and even a few from my car, parked across the road from the entry to the Ponquogue bridge.

The colors were so intense, so blinding, that when I viewed them later on my laptop, they were too much for the little screen to handle; too many shades of reds and orange layered and streaking across the screen. This little camera of mine captured exactly what it saw as the molten yellow sun slid down into the ocean side horizen.

NaNoWriMo

I have decided to make the grand attempt at writing a novel in 30 days, joining the ranks during National Novel Writing Month. Slow going thus far, but I have a general idea of where I'm headed and some interesting "people" are emerging from the far, far recesses - the back of my head. This is how I visualize different levels of consciousness...the great unconscious as the "back of the head", consciousness as the "front of the head" and dream state as the pool between the two spaces where ideas float about, waiting to be hooked and reeled in by conscious mind. Simplified, but it works for me.
I used to think that I couldn't meditate, that it was something hard, something that needed a users manual or some intricate form of direction to acheive. Other people did that; I was too busy to learn the trick. Eventually I realized that I was meditating constantly without realizing what I was doing. The pattern emerged as I gave myself over more and more often to the writing. I noticed that when I needed to write on assignment, I found myself suddenly exhausted, heavy headed and in need of a catnap. I usually wound up face down on my couch, drifting until a line for a poem or the first sentence of a story came to me. Suddenly I was clear-headed. I would jump up and take that line for a walk - literally - out the door, down the road and through the wooded path to the neighboring roads. I would work out the lines in my head and then sit down to write when I got back to the house. Eventually I realized that my "catnaps" were alpha states and that I was indeed meditating my way into the process - grabbing the word ideas as they floated up from the deep. When someone asks where I came up with a story idea or where a particular line of poetry came from, I just smile and say "oxygen deprivation." Hmmmm...all that time face down on the couch...
I am fighting a seasonal head cold right now and feel sluggish and confused...not optimum conditions for writing, but I intend to push through and get done what gets done...hopefully a good seed will have been planted and, with a little nourishment and hard work, will eventually produce fruit...

A Picture's Worth...