water

Morning Trip (80)

/ Elisa / 4 Comments

“I lounge on the grass, that’s all. So
simple. Then I lie back until I am
inside the cloud that is just above me
but very high, and shaped like a fish.
Or, perhaps not. Then I enter the place
of not-thinking, not-remembering, not-
wanting. When the blue jay cries out his
riddle, in his carping voice, I return.
But I go back, the threshold is always
near. Over and back, over and back. Then
I rise. Maybe I rub my face as though I
have been asleep. But I have not been
asleep. I have been, as I say, inside
the cloud, or, perhaps, the lily floating
on the water. Then I go back to town,
to my own house, my own life, which has
now become brighter and simpler, some-
where I have never been before.”
– Mary Oliver

Outside of My Window

/ Elisa / 9 Comments

Liquid A

Liquid B

Liquid C

Liquid D

Images are the property of Elisabeth Connelley and Purple Shoe Photography.

They are offered in limited numbered prints.

Please send inquiries to: elisa58t2sugarless@yahoo.com with Purple Shoe Photography in the subject line.

Morning Trip (65)

/ Elisa / 3 Comments

“All the Hemispheres

Leave the familiar for a while.
Let your senses and bodies stretch out

Like a welcomed season
Onto the meadows and shores and hills.

Open up to the Roof.
Make a new water-mark on your excitement
And love.

Like a blooming night flower,
Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness
And giving
Upon our intimate assembly.

Change rooms in your mind for a day.

All the hemispheres in existence
Lie beside an equator
In your heart.

Greet Yourself
In your thousand other forms
As you mount the hidden tide and travel
Back home.

All the hemispheres in heaven
Are sitting around a fire
Chatting

While stitching themselves together
Into the Great Circle inside of
You.”
– Hafiz
The Subject Tonight is Love
translated by Daniel Ladinsky

Gratitude for When God Says NO!!

/ Elisa / 4 Comments

When I began to sprout this blog, I was making chicken salad for lunch and was greatly pleased with my ability to cook with what I’ve got at times when money is uhm tight. I’ll call it tight. How I got a bowl of salad and a few plates of food with the ingredients that I had, I really cannot say. It’s also delicious and a menu item from a place where I helped to do catering cooking.

An image I took when I was visiting the Tree Place just prior to the main flooding when I was confused as to why the road was closed to the bridge in Montoursville.

Montoursville Bridge Prior to Flooding Crest--elisabeth connelley

I’ve been debating putting up images of raging flood waters from the recent flooding in my area, especially since the Tree Place was involved. I do not like GIANT focus on disaster and devastation. While being very glad not to have been primarily affected in my home, those all around me within a mile or two were being evacuated. I have been greatly puzzled as, well I haven’t been in this area during such a flood event in the past. The one year was bad, I recall, but I didn’t have a car so, I could not see and comprehend the losses. It can even be physically impossible to see outside of one’s box, go figure! All of the roads around here, to my knowledge are not yet opened. Many bridges and entire highway surfaces simply torn away. It is difficult to imagine such power!

The first lesson that encouraged me to post today came from a thought that a friend passed to me and asked me to consider as I learned to understand, utilize, and modulate my own energies and anger. To keep the lesson short, I used to LOVE to throw things, the heavier the better. I worked backwards from furniture to rocks, glass to eggs and so on and so forth. On my insides I’d still throw things. He said, “Rocks are hard, water is patient.”

It took me a very long time to see and to witness what this meant. It’s a work in progress. The slow and steady working away of stone, by the smallest of drips. I used this teaching to learn to bend and not to break. I used this feeling to let things wash over and through me. Inside, I must admit I would have loved the ability to grind things and people with it, to wash them away, to make all in my own perception–clean. I do not think that with my hand feeling water current rushing by in cool clear water that I really ever did understand the power in water.

Here is the cute little house, that I could not really understand why no one resided in it, and hoped to be able to offer the farmer what would be a lower rent, knowing the small stream nearby might flood up onto the porch from time to time. I am glad I was not granted my fervent wish.

Caption and Source: MARK NANCE/Sun-Gazette
A farm between Williamsport and Montoursville is inudated with floodwaters Thursday morning.

It is the red house with the white-edged roof, next to the white building with red roof, up near the portion of road still able to be seen. I am not a flood victim today, because God said NO.

Here is an image that shows a potential outcome of such power, though I somehow imagine, not it’s upper limit of ability.

Caption and Source: MARK NANCE/Sun-Gazette
Route 973 now ends abruptly at the Slabtown Bridge, where a raging Loyalsock Creek has washed away the roadway and part of the bridge.

I think somehow inside that I equated patient with softness, lack of damage, lack of reaction. This is NOT true. Now, to know what I need to do with this. Who knows if I even yet comprehend the entire lesson.

Strength

/ Elisa / 2 Comments

A ‘No’ uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a ‘Yes’ merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble.

Mohandas Gandhi

What will you do with the energy that rolls forward from the waves of each action of your existence? What do you say with it?


What do you do with it?

How many faces can it have within it? Do you take the time to see them all?