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...

Wandering

Yesterday, in a meandering, deep-thinking state of mind, I took the long, slow ride out to the furthest end of the North Fork...out to Orient Point and then into Orient Park. It was a brilliant, sunny day with the wind blowing across the water on both sides of the road. In East Marian, I stopped on the Orient Harbor side of the road to take pictures of the sun shining across the lightly ruffled waters...(the photo at the end of this site is of that exact spot in early September, sailboats drifting off in the distance)...across the road the Sound water was choppy and wild...the wind almost knocking me over when I stepped out onto the beach to take my pictures. It was the best of both worlds and all on the same east-west roadway. I passed vineyards and farmstands and just beyond them on the opposite side of the road, inlets and bays. A small farmstand sits close on the road with the water just a few hundred feet behind it. There are two lavendar farms heading east toward Orient with deep patches of lavendar visible from the road; one serves tea and hot soup. The apple farms were serving fresh squeezed cider, produce farmstands selling roasted corn on the cob...hoards of pumpin pickers cruising the seasonal fall festivals, winery tours, corn mazes...antique stores, farm houses, B&B's and motels on the water...people fishing along the roadway, daytrippers snaking along the same path I had taken...a long, slow crawl heading east along the narrow roadways...the natural world spread out on both sides, so much to notice, so much that could be missed.
I am getting the urge now to make some kind of move, to step off from the crossroad, pick a path and start another journey...I am thinking about this, mulling ideas that are surfacing from somewhere far back in my head...not quite ready to become, but a stirring of the pot, a simmering and bubbling...