Like Walt Whitman, Hopkins makes a fascinating play of language — where his word picks stack and accrue into an incantational pressure. A genius gesture, because after a spell you aren’t quite sure what you’re reading and translating, but you don’t care. It just feels good.

And so you read his poem again (and again).

And then, in the end, the lid of your head comes off and all the grandeur and the beauty and the space and the mystery comes tumbling in.

Try it!
 

Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
 

Painting: Monk by the Sea by David Friedrich

I know, it’s been awhile, right?

Whenever I need to paint I start mixing music together (rather than paint). If only to lubricate the muse.

I have an art opening in less than two weeks and the mojo matrix first needs tweaking and seducing to welcome me with open arms. That might read like it’s a complex process, but really it’s fun. And sort of a ritual/tradition for me.

In art shows from my past, and even in the acknowledgments for my first book, I listed music playlists in the artist’s statement. It only seemed fair. Art begets art.

The title for this 51-minute Cosmix is lifted from Beck‘s song Motorcade, it seems fitting given the tenor of our times.

These toys are all lifeless
The armor’s worn off
The shadow of a shadow
Is the ghost of a bomb
Skyscraper standing
In a desert alone
A helicopter searchlight
Is searching for no-one

We’re all pushing up the tin can mountain top
The smokestack clouds with glory attached

Enjoy!
 

My mom turns 85 this year. And she is still a raucous, vibrant, glinting gem. It’s interesting to me that when I hear her voice on the phone she sounds like she is in her 40s.

I’m grateful that both of us lived this long to move into a phase of our relationship that is so relaxed and friendly. (I think 30 plus years of counseling, therapy and spiritual practice — on my end –might have helped with that).

Too, it’s peculiar how as I age I seem to be catching up to my mom. Like the time gap is closing, the parent child matrix falling apart.

Gurdjieff once noted that we don’t really understand or can know what it feels like to be truly alone in life until our mother has passed; and more and more I sense the truth in this sentiment. Which fuels more of my gratitude.

To all the moms out there. Thank you!

“At the moment of supreme tension, there will leap into flight an unswerving arrow, a shaft that is inflexible and free.” — Albert Camus

“A perfect square configuration…represents a tight linking of two kinds of consciousness-building processes…which produce four 90 degree aspects…and leads to a very thorough and exhaustive type of clearing-up activity.” –Dane Rudhyar

Plato said the soul is a circle. But how do squares and circles come together? Imagine the difficulty of fitting a square peg into a round hole. Right?

The notion is annoying, but if you talk to most anyone (yourself included) I think you’ll agree that the concept — the blending of a circle and a square — is apt, especially now. Everyone is registering the twists and turns, the psychic torsion of the decade’s most significant astrological happening: The Grand Cardinal Cross of 2014.

But what is it? What does it portend? How long does it ‘last’? And how can you ride this particular tiger?

We’ll get into all of that in this essay.

I’ve loved the anticipatory build-up to the Grand Cardinal Cross (GCC) and how the term has actually entered the Zeitgeist. Everyone is talking about it, even the incredulous.

Essentially, this is an astronomical event that astrologers have claimed for themselves because it is a significant pivot point that resolves in 2015, with the final square between Uranus and Pluto.

Too, the term is elegant and beautiful. It’s also charged with an air of mystery and, for those so inclined, an Armageddon-taint (a misguided notion, but then consider the applicants.) Read more

I must have looked at 2 million photographs of the recent “Blood Moon” eclipse that took place during the Libra Full Moon the other night. I forget which night, but it was recently. I think two days ago, maybe three. (What year is this?)

Vashon had been clear all day, before the eclipse, and then the goddesses got moody and cloud cover slowly moved in from the east. By 10pm there was nothing but complete overcast; mist and a slow spitting drizzle.

But I was still rewarded because today I discovered this gorgeous time-lapse of the Blood Moon taken by photographer Nick Franchi.

He has made prints available from his website and I would recommend that you pick one up. Think how wonderful it will look in your home, a constant homage to lunar light (the reflected light from Sun) intermixed with a color we associate with being alive, vital and human.

(And no, I wasn’t going to say Mars — though of course guess where Mars was on the night of the Blood Moon? In Libra).

Enjoy.