SUMMER

Lovely simple gardens. Nasturtiums pepper the lawn. Ice plants. Nothing elaborate, just beauty.

MEMORIAL DAY

"A professional soldier understands that war means killing people,
war means maiming people, war means families left without fathers and
mothers. All you have to do is hold your first dying soldier in your
arms, and have that terribly futile feeling that his life is flowing
out and you can't do anything about it. Then you understand the
horror of war. Any soldier worth his salt should be antiwar. And
still there are things worth fighting for."
- H. Norman Schwarzkopf

"It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks
and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance,
more desolation. War is hell."
- William Tecumseh Sherman

Happy Days Are Here Again

Summer has begun. Roses bloom. Skies are blue. iTunes playing.

Life is good.

NATURE

Moment after moment, everyone comes out from nothingness. This is the true joy of life.

Cat Friday

New Sprung

Sumer is icumen in,
Lhude sing cuccu,
Groweth sed, and bloweth med
And springth the wude nu
Sing cuccu!

Awe bleteth after lomb
Lhouth after calve cu;
Bulluc sterteth, bucke verteth
Murie sing cuccu,
Cuccu, cuccu!
Wel singes thu cuccu
Ne swik thu naver nu.

What Is Your Feather?

when years matter
go
sell the uncommon
beating of your heart

wake to the wild journey
open
yourself to pleasure
make the deepest changes
knock in the doorway
escape

soon


******


Ask yourself what do you have that reminds you of your happiness?

The Senate

There was a compromise and the rules weren't changed. The world's greatest deliberative body remains unchanged---for now.

Beautiful Days

Warm. Clear. Joyful.

Ladies In Lavender

Slight. But worth the price of admission for the chance to see Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, and Miriam Margolyes. These women can act without moving a muscle. Their faces aren't wooden masks. They are luminous.

Roman Holiday

No one could be as young and vulnerable as Audrey Hepburn nor as handsome and strong as Gregory Peck. But it seems, in fact, that they were. Young. Strong. And in Rome... before it became just another post-mod capital.

Cat Friday

Productive Day

Lots of time cleaning, straightening, organizing, discarding. Now I'm tired to the bone. But when I awaken there will be order. Space to breathe.

Don't know why

There's no sun up in the sky.
Stormy weather.

Wave

Wave
Originally uploaded by vajra.

Where is the wave?
Where is the ocean?

TAO

In dwelling, live close to the ground.
In thinking, keep to the simple.
In conflict, be fair and generous.
In governing, don't try to control.
In work, do what you enjoy.
In family life, be completely present.

The Four Noble Truths

1. Life is suffering;
2. Suffering is due to attachment;
3. Attachment can be overcome;
4. There is a path for accomplishing this.

The Garden

If you aren't headed briskly
towards that garden,
let go of the pressure
and smell the fragrance.
Let it draw your soul to the garden.

__Mathnawi II

The Secret Sharer

The Secret Sharer
Originally uploaded by vajra.

Cat Friday

The Little Queen
Originally uploaded by vajra.

Poppy

The melting away of lovers
causes them to grow in spirit:
like the moon, the lover's face
shines afresh as he melts away.


__Mathnawi VI







Joyous
awaiting

I read the news today oh boy

Of asphodel, that greeny flower,
I come, my sweet,
  to sing to you!
My heart rouses
thinking to bring you news
  of something
that concerns you
and concerns many men.  Look at
  what passes for the new.
You will not find it there but in
despised poems.
  It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
  for lack
of what is found there.
Hear me out
  for I too am concerned
and every man
who wants to die at peace in his bed
  besides.
ams
___William Carlos Williams

Tiger

Tiger
Originally uploaded by vajra.

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forest of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And What shoulder, and what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

William Blake



Amazingly fast. Amazingly intuitive. Amazing. Apple has outdone itself. I thought Panther was all that, but I'm definitely a believer in Tiger.

Whenever I feel afraid

I hold myself erect
So no one will suspect
I'm afraid.
___Rogers and Hammerstein


It also helps to think of puffins

Still Life with Apples and a Pot of Primroses

Still Life with Apples and a Pot of Primroses
Originally uploaded by vajra.

Oh, to be there.
To see the apples round
and the primroses.

All that is missing are the books.

Ricardo Herrera

Ricardo Herrera
Originally uploaded by vajra.

Ricardo Herrera, bass-baritone, in Verdi's Macbeth, is enchanting. His voice is beautiful, and he can act. Who could ask for anything more?

Taking Notes

Taking Notes
Originally uploaded by philgyford.

Cat Friday

Mr. Blue Eyes
Originally uploaded by vajra.

Charles Eames

"Under the caste system of India the lowest form of caste would eat off a banana leaf.
The next highest would eat off a ceramic dish.
The next highest had a glazed dish.
Then perhaps a brass dish, a bell-bronze one, then a plated one, then maybe a gold one.
But then, when you got to the very highest, they ate off a banana leaf again"

Charles Eames

Among Thomas Merton's Personal Effects

Timex watch

one pair of dark glasses

tortoise frames

two pairs of bifocal eyglasses

plastic frames

two Cistercian leather-bound breviaries

one rosary

(broken)

one small icon on wood

Virgin and Child

Monday Night

A Moment of Happiness

Pink Duchess
Originally uploaded by vajra.

A moment of happiness,
you and I sitting on the verandah,
apparently two, but one in soul, you and I.
We feel the flowing water of life here,
you and I, with the garden's beauty
and the birds singing.
The stars will be watchiign us,
and we will show them
what it is to be a thin crescent moon.
You and I unselfed, will be together,
indifferent to idle speculation, you and I.
The parrots of heaven will be cracking sugar
as we laugh together, you and I.
In one form upon this earth,
and in antoher form in a timeless sweet land.

__Kulliyat-E Shams