Cleaning House

I just deleted a number of blogs that I had bookmarked. Some I never went to and couldn't recall why I had bookmarked them. Some I felt I should visit but never did. Some were blogs that hadn't been updated in a while. So my list of blogs is cleaned up a bit.

Note to self: Do this again next week. It's good for you.

Memory of Tulips

ENLIGHTENMENT

Your enlightenment rests on your own shoulders.
__Dalai Lama

Cat Friday

Parker

Sacred Space

LABYRINTH

coil,
complexity,
complication,
convolution,
entanglement,
intricacy,
jungle,
knot,
mesh,
morass,
perplexity,
problem,
puzzle,
riddle,
skein,
snarl,
tangle,
web

The Labyrinth is an archetype, a divine imprint, found in all religious traditions in various forms around the world. By walking a replica of the Chartres labyrinth, laid in the floor of Chartres Cathedral in France around 1220, we are rediscovering a long-forgotten mystical tradition that is insisting to be reborn.

The labyrinth has only one path so there are no tricks to it and no dead ends. The path winds throughout and becomes a mirror for where we are in our lives. It touches our sorrows and releases our joys. Walk it with an open mind and an open heart.

There are three stages of the walk:

Purgation (Releasing) ~ A releasing, a letting go of the details of your life. This is the act of shedding thoughts and distractions. A time to open the heart and quiet the mind.
Illumination (Receiving) ~ When you reach the center, stay there as long as you like. It is a place of meditation and prayer. Receive what is there for you to receive.
Union (Returning) ~ As you leave, following the same path out of the center as you came in, you enter the third stage, which is joining God, your Higher Power, or the healing forces at work in the world. Each time you walk the labyrinth you become more empowered to find and do the work you feel your soul reaching for.
Guidelines for the walk: Quiet your mind and become aware of your breath. Allow yourself to find the pace your body wants to go. The path is two ways. Those going in will meet those coming out. You may "pass" people or let others step around you. Do what feels natural.

The Tao

The Tao is called the Great Mother:
Empty yet inexhaustible,
It gives birth to worlds.

It is always present within you.
You can use it any way you want.

I'll Fly Away

R.I.P.

Tonight is the last episode of Six Feet Under. I'm on pins and needles, hoping against hope that it will be a great episode. Like other HBO series (Sex And the City, The Wire, The Sopranos, Deadwood), I've grown hopelessly addicted to the program. I have opinions and attachments to the characters,and strong opinions about plot iines. For example, I'm terrified that Brenda's baby will have a birth defect. I understand that Brenda is a character but I'm still worried...

If an individual has a calm state of Mind, that person's attitudes and views will be calm and tranquil even in the presence of great agitation.
Dalai Lama

Cat Friday

Isabella
Originally uploaded by vajra.

Caption Anyone?

Swear not by the moon.

Phase of the Moon on 17 August: waxing gibbous with 94% of the Moon's visible disk illuminated.

The hollow man

Salon.com | The hollow man


The Hollow Men

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.


II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom


III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.


IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.


V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Thomas Stearns Eliot


******
and this:

"And maybe this is the part I find most distancing about my president, not his fanatic heart - the unassailable sense he projects that God is on his side - we all have that. But that he seems to lack anything like real remorse, here in the third August of Iraq, in the fourth August of Afghanistan, in the fifth August of his presidency - for all of the intemperate speech, for the weapons of mass destruction that were not there, the "Mission Accomplished" that really wasn't, for the funerals he will not attend, the mothers of the dead he will not speak to, the bodies of the dead we are not allowed to see and all of the soldiers and civilians whose lives have been irretrievably lost or irreparably changed by his (and our) "Bring it On" bravado in a world made more perilous by such pronouncements.

Surely we must all bear our share of guilt and deep regret, some sadness at the idea that here we are, another August into our existence, and whether we arrived by way of evolution or intelligent design or the hand of God working over the void, no history can record that we've progressed beyond our hateful, warring and fanatical ways.

We may be irreversibly committed to play out the saga of Iraq. But each of us, we humans, if we are to look our own kind in the eye, should at least be willing to say we're sorry, that all over our smaller and more lethal planet, whatever the causes, we're still killing our own kind - the same but different - but our own kind nonetheless. Even on vacation we oughtn't hide from that."

Thomas Lynch

Belief and Science

- Welcome to the Tablet

Why?

Why is it that you always have to turn HBO up and the other stations down?

My Church

You scored as Mystical Communion Model. Your model of the church is Mystical Communion, which includes both People of God and Body of Christ. The church is essentially people in union with Christ and the Father through the Holy Spirit. Both lay people and clergy are drawn together in a family of faith. This model can exalt the church beyond what is appropriate, but can be supplemented with other models.


What is your model of the church? [Dulles]
created with QuizFarm.com

CELADON

Celadon, a famous type of ancient Chinese stoneware, came into being during the period of the Five Dynasties (907-960). It is characterized by simple but refined shapes , jade-like glaze, solid substance and a distinctive style. As the celadon ware produced in Longquan County, Zhejiang Province, is most valued, so it is also generally called longquan qingci.
Its Chinese name, qingci, means "greenish porcelain." Why then is it known in the West as "celadon?" Celadon was the hero of the French writer Honore d'Urfe's romance L'Astrée (1610), the lover of the heroine Astrée. He was presented as a young man in green and his dress became all the rage in Europe. And it was just about this time that the Chinese qingci made its debut in Paris and won acclaim. People compared its colour to Celadon's suit and started to call the porcelain "celadon," a name which has stuck and spread to other Countries.
Now, new products of Longquan qingci have been developed to radiate with fresh lustre; they include eggshell china and underglaze painting.

There is also blue celadon which is more difficult to find. Jane says it is now her mission in life to use celadon as a scrabble word.

Cat Friday

What To Do With Books

If I keep my books to show something about me, if I give the books away, am I still me?
What is the point of keeping them?
How many will I ever open again?

Modern

Whenever I take a "style" test it usually comes up "modern" or "contemporary." Which is weird when I look at the furniture and other things in my house. Of course, much of what I have is inherited so the only part I have in it is acceptance. The décor just grew over time. I like it but it isn't crisp. Maybe that's why I like contemporary.

The Long and Winding Road

The long and winding road that leads to your door,
Will never disappear, I’ve seen that road before
It always leads me here, leads me to your door.
The wild and windy night that the rain washed away,
Has left a pool of tears crying for the day.
Why leave me standing here, let me know the way.
Many times I’ve been alone and many times I’ve cried,
Anyway you’ll never know the many ways I’ve tried, but
Still they lead me back to the long and winding road,
You left me standing here a long, long time ago.
Don’t leave me waiting here, lead me to your door.
Da da, da da –

Lennon and McCartney

A Day Short

It was warm today. Beautifully warm and clear. Sun in Leo . But the flowers are looking blowsy and overblown. Some leaves are bleached. Uncut grass ripening to seed. Days growing imperceptibly shorter. Summer may be the saddest season, so frail and short. Memories of youth that never was. The sea lapping endlessly as it devours the coastline although we don't see it. Erasing footsteps and castles. Goodbye, Nate.

Summer Days Are Fleeting

I've enjoyed this summer so much. Particularly because of my cameras. I find myself looking at the season through the camera lens; everything is enhanced, more interesting, and more intimate. I understand the desire for recording every moment. I have to remember that even the most beautiful rose is evanescent.

Cat Friday

Summer is so brief. So beautiful.
This past week has been glorious. Warm with a slight breeze. Virtually cloudless.

Anthropologie Is Right-Wing

pw: philadelphia weekly online

Brass Band

Printers

From time to time my printers, which are on my network, start to act up. It happened again tonight. The computer is unable to access the Epson drivers. And the networked Canon wouldn't print. After several hours of troubleshooting, I discovered someone was piggybacking on my wireless connection. After I installed a firewall, the outsider was dropped, and I could use the Canon. The internet connection also sped up. Interestingly, I still can't get the Epson printer to work. Tomorrow I will reinstall the drivers from the Tiger DVD. sigh.