marisa-ramirez:
amparo de la sota

a song for falling leaves

"The bad news is you’re falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is there’s no ground."

 

--Trungpa Rinpoche
(via goldlionaz)

Hope is the thing with feathers

Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm.

 I’ve heard it in the chillest land, And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me.

-- Emily Dickinson

Jesse Mockrin

Jesse Mockrin

Balance Beam Basics

Ryan McGinley

Falling (and a fall) by Ryan McGinley

"It’s all about falling in love with yourself and sharing that love with someone who appreciates you, rather than looking for love to compensate for a self love deficit." 

-- Eartha Kitt

Falling

This tree keeps falling over. I prop it up,
it falls again. And the rain falls
day after day like a broken wet record.
Here are the birds—tiny, smaller

than birds. And like fresh butcher’s
paper, the light so bright it hurts.
So the birds are paper and so is the sky.
It will be easiest if I draw you a picture,

each of us a different shade of gray.
What goes right is an accident. It can’t
be blamed on us. What goes wrong

is almost impossible to see. How quickly
it disappears, like someone’s hand
into someone else’s pocket.

—Matthew Thorburn.

(Image found here.)

Sunday Tune

Sunday Tune

Saturday Poem

On The Pulse Of Morning

A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Mark the mastodon.
The dinosaur, who left dry tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.

But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,

But seek no haven in my shadow.
I will give you no hiding place down here.

You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness,
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.
Your mouths spelling words

Armed for slaughter.
The rock cries out today, you may stand on me,
But do not hide your face.

Across the wall of the world,
A river sings a beautiful song,
Come rest here by my side.

Each of you a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
Yet, today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more.

Come, clad in peace and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I
And the tree and stone were one.
Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your brow
And when you yet knew you still knew nothing.
The river sings and sings on.

There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing river and the wise rock.
So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew,
The African and Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek,

The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the tree.

Today, the first and last of every tree
Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the river.
Plant yourself beside me, here beside the river.

Each of you, descendant of some passed on
Traveller, has been paid for.

You, who gave me my first name,
You Pawnee, Apache and Seneca,
You Cherokee Nation, who rested with me,
Then forced on bloody feet,
Left me to the employment of other seekers—
Desperate for gain, starving for gold.

You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot…
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru,
Bought, sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare
Praying for a dream.

Here, root yourselves beside me.
I am the tree planted by the river,
Which will not be moved.
I, the rock, I the river, I the tree
I am yours—your passages have been paid.
Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced with courage,
Need not be lived again.

Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.

Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands.
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts.
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.

The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out upon me,
The rock, the river, the tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.

Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes,
Into your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.

-- Maya Angelou

Saturday Cartoon

LOVE this!

“When Alice Walker explained that meditation took her back to the way she had been as a child, crawling around eating sweet-smelling earth, knowing love and loving, she concluded, “So that’s the paradise that’s lost, that feeling of being one with everyone and everything.” Loss of childhood is loss of the spiritual kingdom within.”

—   Akasha Gloria Hull, Soul Talk (via bellahugo)(via yearningforunity)

Friday!

Have a lovely one. Try not to get caught up in the things you are worrying about. Worry is a misuse of your imagination.

(gif found here)

Fabrizio Corneli

Light sculptures by Fabrizio Corneli

“The World Traveler”

Here are the snapshots from Horor Vacui
That’s me jumping off a cliff!
That’s me throwing a lit match in a forest of drought!
That’s me standing in the rain with a lightning rod!

Of course, all of these are doubly exposed.

Oh, Look, Here I am, trying to take a steak from a Doberman.
Oh Look, Here’s a cute one; me taking a poke with boxing gloves at the local heavyweight.

I’m alive and well in Horor Vacui.
I have no time for visitors.
There is always a flurry of excitement.

Sometimes,

it is so quiet, I can hear,

my vertebrae connecting.

—Ina Chadwick Wilde, “The World Traveler”
(image Bloodpool by Kiki Smith)

Light sculpture from Fabrizio Corneli

inner monologue

“Learn Sia’s Chandelier Dance with Ryan Heffington” by Andrea Sisson - NOWNESS from NOWNESS on Vimeo.

contraction

Love this!

"There is this one exercise I do in my movement class where you allow your body to move and then you interrupt it and move in a different way, either in the opposite way, or incorporate a body part that's not being activated. It is so simple, but it is really challenging to keep responding differently, to break patterns and not create habitual behaviors. I thought about this this morning when I was thinking about the energy right now. It is really powerful to have the truth come up - identify it - have our wounds and our shadows triggered and then CHOOSE to respond differently; to fight the urges that come from a place of habit, or wanting to be comfortable. What would happen if you responded in the opposite way? It is uncomfortable at first, but ultimately it is incredibly empowering!"

 -- Lauren Spencer King

he he he...

know yourself

“Because of high injury rates and the fact that these poses are not ancient and time-tested, I came to the conclusion that we all must take a look at yoga asana (positions) and assess their biomechanical value…it is vitally important that the essence of yoga- know yourself- is not lost in a physically-based practice that makes no biomechanical sense.” 

-- Michaelle Edwards 

(Quote from here via this brilliant blog post...go read it)

Found here

"I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were.

[…]

It is a good idea, then, to keep in touch, and I suppose that keeping in touch is what notebooks are all about. And we are all on our own when it comes to keeping those lines open to ourselves: your notebook will never help me, nor mine you."

--Joan Didion, On Keeping a Notebook

(found here)

Two Hands

From the sea came a hand,
ignorant as a penny,
troubled with the salt of its mother,
mute with the silence of the fishes,
quick with the altars of the tides,
and God reached out of His mouth
and called it man.
Up came the other hand
and God called it woman.
The hands applauded
And this was no sin.
It was as it was meant to be.

I see them roaming the streets:
Levi complaining about his mattress,
Sarah studying a beetle,
Mandrake holding his coffee mug,
Sally playing the drum at a football game,
John closing the eyes of the dying woman,
and some who are in prison,
even the prison of their bodies,
as Christ was prisoned in His body
until the triumph came.

Unwind hands,
you angel webs,
unwind like the coil of a jumping jack,
cup together and let yourselves fill up with sun
and applaud, world,
applaud.

-- Anne Sexton

images found here