January's Poetry: Morning Walks

Roselle Quin

“My work is the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird - equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums...” ~ Mary Oliver, Thirst

Roselle Quin

Instead of the news, which bleeds the heart and dehydrates the soul to parchment pieces, there is walking and poetry- in the mornings - early - then back with a luminous offering for the day: Mary Oliver assuredly knows about this for she happens to be my soul companion. I search for the "terror breath" amidst the soil and moss and find it, my end of the world. Her eyes, ears, nose and skin are as mine searching, welcoming, open and introspective to the details of  nature. 

Roselle Quin

Unlike Mary, who literally employed herself to the valiant bountiful and available woods of her life, I need to take a hundred steps to discover mine. 

Living in a harsh, chaotic modern city is not the ideal of places to find walking trails littered with trees, birds or flowers - but God be blessed, I am always planted at places most conducive to the soul propitious for meanderings. 

Today, there is much to write about, which in itself is balm for my mind. There are words un-uttered, phrases un-tried, patois to discover and one's own parlance to cultivate as of a dried field awaiting the inauguration of rain.  I write my own poetry too.

(✿◠‿◠)The Sunflower Bench✿

Roselle Quin

“Sometimes since I've been in the garden I've looked up through the trees at the sky and I have had a strange feeling of being happy as if something was pushing and drawing in my chest and making me breathe fast. Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing. Everything is made out of magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us. In this garden - in all the places.”~ The Secret Garden

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The afternoons are of no use - it rains. It rains - a - lot. No space for garden work during the monsoons when the 'noons are drenched in pettite' pours and shimmie' plops at precisely indeterminate timings. It's here, it's not - simply no telling when the skies will water except that it happens after lunch! --- No, this isn't my garden, heeha! :D

Roselle Quin at Sonya's Garden

These pics were taken last summer when friends and I went 'summering' in Sonya's Garden. A pretty garden to roam in still, but the presence of too much folks, compared to the first I strolled the place, was quite off putting. - Nevertheless, my sweet glams and I  savored the moment spent and had  the time of our lives taking turns photographing each other, haha!

What I adore in Sonya's garden, are the little twisty paths that tempts one to explore. As a profound lover of paths and inner dirt roads be it stone cobbled, pebbled or grassed, these twinee' diversions are lavish enticements to me. 
"Come, take a step, get lost in life and find another," it murmurs. Reality taps on my shoulder reminding, "there isn't time." 

Agh, there isn't time, always the time! I turn to a leaf and instruct it to be till time creates the occasion for another visit. I sit down for one last shot in the Sunflower Bench, a sublime throne of flower power. 

-- An ardor  of petal-ish' joy overpowers my senses.

What a pleasant attack, I feel! 

Nature assaults most  juicily. 

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How To Make a Smashing Week

Roselle Quin photo:
"Tea by the Pool"

Write it on your heart
that every day is the best day in the year.
He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day
who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.

Finish every day and be done with it.
You have done what you could.
Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in.
Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day;
begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit
to be cumbered with your old nonsense.

This new day is too dear,
with its hopes and invitations,
to waste a moment on the yesterdays. 

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Felicitations to a new week! 

My best brightest self welcome's Monday with a favorable juicy feel for the positive. Major compelling realizations have popped and  shape shifted in my mind. I am soaked in plans and dreams and decisions. The heavens will be my guide, my inspiration, my connection. Yes, no  mortal muse can entice me.  My plans are as a big and venturous as never before!

There is work to do, but make no mistake dear me, there is no room for drab or dreary. Labor will be intensive but suffused with relish and recreation. One must be in love with one's work. One must be in love with one's days - the minutes, hours and seconds not left to dawdle by itself - there is harm in that. 

How does one make a smashing week? 

Specially after having dealth with the naughtiness of  past weeks gone? Why,  by blessing the what-not's of  troubles a - visiting and thanking them all for lessons learned, stamina built and new hopes aroused. If it were not for the challenges of the past weeks, I wouldn't have had this vision for a future I desire to experience. I can almost feel it. I am almost there. 

Much to scribble, even more to scrawl and I am compelled to begin. This particular rumination, I bring to conclusion with the burning thought that I should write it upon my heart that each day is the best day of the year. 

Alive. Daring. Brave.

Do visit: Roselle Quin's Fine Poetry

Bodhiccita Lady ~ Mindful Realizations To a Path of Bliss

Roselle Quin

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⊰✿░S░W░E░E░T░✿░B░L░E░S░S░I░N░G░S░⊰✿

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Bodhicitta, mindful & ripe with the juiciness of awakened existence, is a semantic energy I hooked from a Buddhist book my husband recently gifted me. The concept of going through life's motions in meditated movements dedicated to the conscience of lifting every act holy for the good of "one, some and all" is very precise in its Christian notion of renunciation... of "doing unto others" and offering unto God all the dutiful, mundane tasks that at times even inwardly cause suffering. So injected I am with this crystalline intention, that a seizure of illumination zipped through my spinal consciousness - A life of Dharma - spiritual purposefulness for the whole of the Sangha - the community.

Bodhicitta is pineapple for the soul,  spiritual saccharine that oxidizes our inner being with scentsy wisdom pulps, venturing us to live in this earthly plane on higher ground! All actions, however simple, however ordinary, however piddling becomes a stepping stone to N-I-R-V-A-N-A if consummated through  gratitude and generosity. The whole of man's existence becomes suffused with majesty & regal with meaning -- the meaning one endows by the charity one  devotes to all sentient beings.

For what is heaven, but the state of being free, truly free from ignorance and loathing! Hate is vulgarity of living, while Heaven is to exist in uncomplicated rapture - easy joy - metta.  "For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy,"  Romans 14:17 ~  To be in bliss is to live sane, and to be joyful is to ascend as a supreme being walking in the divine ground of existence ( streets of gold), released from the bondage of an odious ego. To be enlightened is to be a child of God. Venerable.

Our destiny is not far yonder a mythical physical material hope in an afterlife of moneyed riches, but the attainment of a present  imperturbable stillness of mind after the hell fires of intemperate desire, aversion, delusion have been extinguished.

I have much to work on to be what I want but inspiration has spoken.

This quote inspires me:

We need to transform our mind, to rid it of ignorance, hatred and attachment. Transforming our mind means that even if we are in a very difficult situation or place, as long as our mind is happy, everything will be fine.~ Namdrol Rinpoche

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And my life? Well,  let me see...I have no excuses! None at all! 

I have to live my life from the abyss of my crystal soul and not chipper away the bright bits of my spirit for no account at all but procrastination + fear. Hell of a combination, hah! My Lady Prism me has morphed into a tangle of ta' - do's and must- do's and have - ta'- do's and have - ya' - done - it, and not yet done, and be done with it and do more today, dammit!  A ballistic tornado days spent desperately tidying rogue minutes and batty seconds while keeping groggy' monkeys of distraction and anxiety at bay till I succumb to impatience, frustration and a tear of vexation. 

Too much to do, there just isn't time to create, to paint, to go to that pottery class, to take the beaded workshop, to meditate, to study alchemy, to wish, to dream, to spew magic, to nuke a spell.
                                                                I am a  litany of excuses.  This is my tale. Woe is me! 

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Not very Disney, noh? I mean, my tale. Nothing very fairy about it. But I'm  done with all the this shindig drama I've heaped on myself and taking my Honey Doo's advice to --> chuck it. Stop hogging'  everything and get on with what you want, he always would remind me. 

There's always the "do wants" for me, I figure, maybe before I unfold the new longings of my soul,  I need to specify what exactly --> I don't want.

I DON'T WANT

1. I don't want to be busy picking up other people's mess, whoever they are. 

2. I don't want to feed other people's monkeys.

3. I don't want to pet other people's monsters of complaints, expectations and distractions.

4. I don't want fear of what other's may say or how I'm viewed or perceived define me.

5. I don't want to starve my creative soul. No. 

I WILL NOT BE DISTRACTED BY NOISE, CHATTER AND SETBACK. I KNOW WHAT I WANT AND IT'S ALL MINE. 

WHAT I DO WANT

I want to --> not be shy.  I want to --> not be tepid, lukewarm, unsure, awkward. 

 I want to --> not see cracks, limits and impossibilities. I want to --> not be swayed towards accepting baggage heaped on me. I want to enjoy - period.  I want to accept my radiance and take relative good care of myself without trepidation or vanity. I want wisdom. I want to nurture and feed my talent. I want to give expression to my inner spirit. I want to be gallant towards my body respectful of my feelings. 

And why do I want all these? 
Heck, I want it all because my greatest wanting is to GIVE! 

And so that's that..and this is this..and I thank the Divine for these spanks of wisdom plunked in my cerebral. A bit of shaking and sweet thumping from heaven's nirvanic realm, reminding me to take charge, get my Bodhi selfie groove in loop, and walk my bliss. Nothing less. 

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⊰✿░S░W░E░E░T░✿░B░L░E░S░S░I░N░G░S░⊰✿

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Those who haven’t yet given birth to precious Bodhicitta,

May they give birth,

Those who have given birth,

May their Bodhicitta not lessen

but increase further and further.

~ His Holiness Gyalwang Drukgpa