existence

Morning Trip (95)

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“We gaze with perplexity at the highest part of the spiral of force that governs the Universe. And we call it God. We could give it any other name: Abyss, Mystery, Absolute Darkness, Total Light, Matter, Spirit, Supreme Hope, Supreme Despair, Silence. But we call it God, because only this name – for some mysterious reason – is capable of making our heart tremble with vigor. And let there be no doubt that this trembling is absolutely indispensable for us to be in contact with the basic emotions of the human being, emotions that are always beyond any explanation or logic.”
–the Greek author Nikos Kazantzakis

One Shoot Sunday and The Sun Sighed at the Earth Today–Purple Profundity: Poetry by Elisabeth Connelley

/ Elisa / 20 Comments

Good Morning! It’s One Shoot Sunday again! The following is quoted to attribute the photographer and the site that supports and encourages The Poetry Challenge of One Shoot Sunday.

“This week, One Stop showcases the work and insights of Scott Wyden, a portrait and travel photographer from New Jersey specializing in landscape and commercial/fashion work. A talented photographer, his name is attached to numerous projects – including creation of the now-sold photowalklist.com, as an editor on HDR Spotting, and as a guest writer for several photo-related websites.”

~Chris Galford

Image by Scott Wyden

The Sun Sighed at the Earth Today
The sun sighed at the Earth today, the sound,
Lost among voices,
Rushing from the streets

She reached down to caress the Earth,
I felt her fingers trailing through my hair

The sun sighed at the Earth today
Her tears splashed,
Another soul lost in the well

The sun sighed at the Earth today
Her reflection in the moon
A small cool spark, clasped tightly in my hands

The sun sighed at the Earth today
Her breath of desperation
My breath of joy
While shattering the glass surface of the well
The droplets arching down
Each one a thousand stars upon itself

Children’s laughter patters down
I reach
The droplets, watering the iris of my mind’s eye
I reach into the sun
And she sighs at the Earth today

–by elisabeth connelley

Morning Trip (50)

/ Elisa / 4 Comments

“The man who promises everything is sure to fulfil [sic] nothing, and everyone who promises too much is in danger of using evil means in order to carry out his promises, and is already on the road to perdition.
Carl Jung”

“The road to perdition has ever been accompanied by lip service to an ideal.
Albert Einstein”

And now this, to express the other morning ponderers within…
“The early hours of morning; you still aren’t writing (rather, you aren’t even trying), you just read lazily. Everything is idle, quiet, full, as if it were a gift from the muse of sluggishness,

just as earlier, in childhood, on vacation, when a colored map was slowly scrutinized before a trip, a map promising so much, deep ponds in the forest like glittering butterfly eyes, mountain meadows drowning in sharp grass;

or the moment before sleep, when no dreams have appeared, but they whisper their approach from all parts of the world, their march, their pilgrimage, their vigil at the sickbed (grown sick of wakefulness), and the quickening among medieval figures

compressed in endless stasis over the cathedral; the early hours of morning, silence — you still aren’t writing,

you still understand so much. Joy is close.”
– Adam Zagajewski
Without End

Joy within, even in Perdition.

Morning Trip (19)

/ Elisa / 3 Comments

“As with events, so is it with thoughts. When I watch that flowing river, which, out of regions I see not, pours for a season its streams into me, I see that I am a pensioner; not a cause, but a surprised spectator of this ethereal water; that I desire and look up, and put myself in the attitude of reception, but from some alien energy the visions come.

Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its focus. From the mountain you see the mountain. We animate what we can, and we see only what we animate. Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them. It depends on the mood of the man, whether he shall see the sunset or the fine poem. There are always sunsets, and there is always genius; but only a few hours so serene that we can relish nature or criticism.

It is very unhappy, but too late to be helped, the discovery we have made, that we exist. That discovery is called the Fall of Man. Ever afterwards, we suspect our instruments. We have learned that we do not see directly, but mediately, and that we have no means of correcting these colored and distorting lenses which we are, or of computing the amount of their errors. Perhaps these subject-lenses have a creative power; perhaps there are no objects. Once we lived in what we saw; now, the rapaciousness of this new power, which threatens to absorb all things, engages us. Nature, art, persons, letters, religions, — objects, successively tumble in, and God is but one of its ideas. Nature and literature are subjective phenomena; every evil and every good thing is a shadow which we cast.

Thus inevitably does the universe wear our color, and every object fall successively into the subject itself. The subject exists, the subject enlarges; all things sooner or later fall into place. As I am, so I see; use what language we will, we can never say anything but what we are.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson