“One can no more approach people without love than one can approach bees without care.
Such is the quality of bees…” ― Leo Tolstoy
Photography
“Butterflies can’t see their wings. They can’t see how truly beautiful they are,
but everyone else can. People are like that as well.” ― Naya Rivera
•*´*•.ƸӜƷ♥
“Often, when we say, “I love you” we focus mostly on the idea of the “I” who is doing the loving and less on the quality of the love that’s being offered. This is because we are caught by the idea of self. We think we have a self. But there is no such thing as an individual separate self. A flower is made only of non-flower elements, such as chlorophyll, sunlight, and water. If we were to remove all the non-flower elements from the flower, there would be no flower left. A flower cannot be by herself alone. A flower can only inter-be with all of us… Humans are like this too. We can’t exist by ourselves alone. We can only inter-be. I am made only of non-me elements, such as the Earth, the sun, parents, and ancestors. In a relationship, if you can see the nature of interbeing between you and the other person, you can see that their suffering is your own suffering, and your happiness is their own happiness. With this way of seeing, you speak and act differently. This in itself can relieve so much suffering.” – Thich Nhat Hanh
This nine-ton sculpture by Peter Lundberg takes its name from a Rumi poem. The piece is made of concrete and stainless steel, and the stainless steel has been ground with circular patterns by the artist. Lundberg is widely acclaimed for his monumental concrete and steel sculptures, and also respected for his leadership in bringing sculpture to the public. His initiative and energy have resulted in the establishment of several new sculpture parks. “I think of my sculptures as a view into my unconscious mind, a landscape of very primitive things, rudimentary elements of life, nature, science, spirituality and passion. For both the maker and viewer, sculpture, like music, carries a beat, a pulsing motion directed to and from the soul that when reveled in takes us into dreamlike states of mind.” *
“I am the dragonfly rising on the wings of unlocked dreams on the verge of magical things.”
– Aimee Stewart
“Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity,
and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.” — Henry David Thoreau
“Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up,
it knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed.
Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up.
It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re the lion or a gazelle-
when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.” — Christopher McDougall
“Imperfection is beauty,
madness is genius
and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.”
— Marilyn Monroe
I Sing the Body Electric
(excerpt)
by Walt Whitman
I sing the body electric,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.
Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves?
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?
And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul?
And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?
“Although most flowers have a multitude of symbolism, the cleome flower only has the one. These flowers have stuck with their old-fashioned expression that asks the recipient to elope, or run away with the giver. Although these flowers can be presented as a proposition between new lovers,
they are also a unique gift that can be traded between long married couples –
asking each other if they would leave the world behind and get married once again.”
“And when you appear all the rivers sound in my body,
bells shake the sky, and a hymn fills the world.” — Pablo Neruda
Maverick Mist 