“Life is painful.
It has thorns, like the stem of a rose.
Culture and art are the roses that bloom on the stem.
The flower is yourself, your humanity.
Art is the liberation of the humanity inside yourself.”
― Daisaku Ikeda
Photography
“When we are alone on a starlit night, when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children, when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet, Basho, we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash — at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the “newness,” the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, all these provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance.” ~ Thomas Merton
“The mind can go in a thousand directions, but on this beautiful path, I walk in peace.
With each step, the wind blows. With each step, a flower blooms.” ― Thích Nhất Hạnh
“Peace is always beautiful.” ― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
The Lioness
Elizabeth Gasperecz
Such sweet
Untainted innocence
Pure
As snow quilted plains
Oh,
Do these eyes deceive?
Beneath placid gems
Hidden
Under shadow
Beats the heart
Of a lioness
Luring in the unsuspecting
Irresistible control
Over unassuming prey
Drawn in by gentleness
Ensnared
By warmth
Of darkness
Victims
Of her sweet
Untainted Innocence.
Largest Tiffany glass dome in the world – Chicago Cultural Center.
“Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet born.” — Joseph Addison
Lauritzen Gardens – Omaha Botanical Center
Henry Doorly Zoo Desert Dome
Heart and Mind (1944)
Edith Sitwell
SAID the Lion to the Lioness-‘When you are amber dust,-
No more a raging fire like the heat of the Sun
(No liking but all lust)-
Remember still the flowering of the amber blood and bone,
The rippling of bright muscles like a sea,
Remember the rose-prickles of bright paws
Though the fire of that sun the heart and the moon-cold bone are one.’
Said the Skeleton lying upon the sands of Time-
‘The great gold planet that is the mourning heat of the Sun
Is greater than all gold, more powerful
Than the tawny body of a Lion that fire consumes
Like all that grows or leaps…so is the heart
More powerful than all dust. Once I was Hercules
Or Samson, strong as the pillars of the seas:
But the flames of the heart consumed me, and the mind
Is but a foolish wind.’
Said the Sun to the Moon-‘When you are but a lonely white crone,
And I, a dead King in my golden armour somewhere in a dark wood,
Remember only this of our hopeless love
That never till Time is done
Will the fire of the heart and the fire of the mind be one.’
“Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye.” — H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
Flash Of Fire
by Marina Gipps
Here is the photograph
I snapped of you unawares
Before we even met.
A dragonfly dizzied
By its confusion for escape.
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Traveling… so today and tomorrow’s posts are post dated during my absence.
Maverick Mist 