the gracefullest last movement

"By My Bedside" ~ Photo By: Roselle Quin

"You are always new. The last of your kisses was even the sweetest; the last smile the brightest; the last movement the gracefullest. "~ Oscar Wilde

No such word as "gracefullest" but leave it to Wilde to toss it in anyway! And I like the quote - like really like it! because my week didn't go as planned in my mind with all the smooth breezy peacefully dewdrop days of trickly peace and sunshiney' planting. Lots of sunshine ok, but no planting. And something upsetting forcefully rocked my inner sanctum  resulting to that night of gnashing, I suppose I can call it for letting lose  my quivering insides, haha! It wasn't chichi' and gawd' wish I could take back that pivot of an hour that despoiled my week. tsk! tsk! Nevertheless, there was fun and much basking in artsy energy as the hub and I visited a gallery and immersed our senses in a play of  panoramic landscape photography.

So here I am still with a smile, extracting sunshine from a cloudy day and fully resolved to make things pretty this week. You are always new, Oscar quips!

And the days will be a whippy "coconut delight" for me! Why not eh? Who's to stop me from my own brand of happy? Slopping up other people's gloom won't serve me any and I truly ought not allow bad vibes rant me up. One thing about negativity is it rides people and hops from one carrier to another - like a virus. You meet someone who met someone who was sneezing and soon enough you sneeze a bug too.  What better than to start  my week with an inoculation ritual, haha!

Surrounding myself with white light and a boost of Prism energy -- all colors at play in my day! Oh yes, that's it definitely-- the goal is to be a pendulum of energy, to infuse the minutes with color and vibrance and my own style of living.

Naturally, there could be glitches, and honestly even right now I'm not all that uppity about things. But I believe in something --  we are never alone, our muse and loving guides are here to cuddle and prod and lift us on. I believe this.

And with this in mind, I head off to write the plans that are whispered just for me. No comparing myself to others. No judging myself and saying why am' not like someone I perceive to be better - tis' a lie. And specially no judging of other people's ways and beings, but always a whispering of good thoughts and prayerful blessing sent out. Be me the smile of a flickering flame, dancing, alive and mysterious  making the darkest corners beautiful --  till the last movement of the last second of the last minute of this week closes at its gracefullest.

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Hear this....

"In My Neighborhood" 

~ Photo By: Roselle Quin

"Many of us have made our world so familiar that we do not see it anymore. An interesting question to ask yourself at night is, What did I really see today?" 

~ John O' Donahue, Anam Cara, A Book of Celtic Wisdom

Now and again when I walk the path leading out of our leafy lined subdivision, I am  inclined to stare at this house wishing it were mine. I could do so many things with a gate like that: maybe hang a gigantic flowery wreath, maybe paint it cream or white or a kind of patina green, maybe put in an ornate bronze knocker. It looks familiar actually, and it just occurred to me why.

Yes, I remember when as a child I would visit my "Papa Lolo's" house ( my late grandfather's elder brother) and the gate was a beautiful massive woodwork that looked very much like the photo I took.  Tucked beyond the imposing gate was a handsome garden home - in all manner and sense of the word garden! I'm not talking manicured lawns or dainty scented florals or delicate herbs. No. My grandfather's bother, just like him, was a truly ardent and very gifted gardener -- both possessed that perennial green thumb magic and could fashion what could pass for forests! Abundant fruit bearing majesty of trees, nothing less!

During visits, the gate would dramatically be opened and visitors were welcomed to a surprising oasis of a tropical forest garden with the house in all its red shingled bungalow Spanish splendor wrapped covetously around its wild green grounds. Mesmerizing! The lushness was opulent; the house itself so uniquely married to the luxuriant scene with its old fashioned red clay flooring, tall wooden walls, open wood beams and supported by a stone walled foundation resplendent in rustic romance. Everything was an enthralling splash of all possible hues of green, brown, rust, earth and nature --> complete with cats. A lot of cats!

It was an expansive home with no modern conventional door. Instead,  the house ushered you first into a porch, and then inside pine wax scented confines through a slate wooden sliding entrance that stayed open to the sight of Eden, more or less throughout the day. It was quite literally like living smack dab in the woods.  Very enchanting. The drone of a hum-drum world outside was drowned by chirps and rustles and cicadas. The ordinary road with its wonted living ceased to ostensibly exist, and one might in drinking in the impressive change of scenery, be taken to think of fairy elementals commonly (and quite seriously) regarded as a living part of nature in those days. 

And those days are gone. 

And it makes me wonder what became of the forest home of my grandfather's brother. All relatives have migrated to different parts of the cold western hemisphere and last I heard the house had been sold. Nobody lives in the old town anymore. Ah, but anyway, that picture above, it gives back precious memories of charming childhood days and transports me to an era when I could so casually wander and lose myself under the canopy of garden trees. Leaves quite a cheerful gentle feeling really.

And this is what I see...

Taking from what I just wrote, I know how my week will go by -- soothing, gentle, refined and angelically revealing.  I feel assured and guided, full and powerful. I have traveled a distance and arrived.  There will be matters to think of, but answers will manifest and peace will prevail. There will be plenty of sunshine to grow plants and dreams. And in the late late afternoons deliciousness will waft from my kitchen. And in the evenings there will be good food and stories and merriment around my table. And before late into the evening a spot of peace with me and my book. This is my garden of a life. This is my Lady Prism living. 

sexy lingerie, cat bites, listening to your heart, green creatures and this demented world

Alice Neel Painting from Pinterest

 Don't let yourself feel worthless: often through life you will really be at your worst when you seem to think best of yourself; and don't worry about losing your "personality," as you persist in calling it: at fifteen you had the radiance of early morning, at 20 you will begin to have the melancholy brilliance of the moon, and when you are my age you will give out, as I do, the genial golden warmth of 4 pm. 

~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

I open Facebook and I am welcomed by entrancing pictures, enlivening quotes, and dearsome' messages ( as do my pinterest, haha!) 

 -- To me, it's all about the visual impetus of basking in a planetary cyber fusion of poetry, fashion, cookery, architecture - art. It quickens, enlivens, suffuses my creative cerebral with muscle strength for beauty. A coiffed cupcake teases my eyes, animates my senses, and suddenly it isn't a mere sweet sponge blob anymore - FB frosted it with royal "respect."  My heart goes dub-dub and I walk buoyant to face my day poised in inspiration and mild exuberance, that quite often flourishes as the hours roll by. 

And then, there are the Facebook cats, of course. And the honest intimation of friends, always and forever endearing no matter how forthright or prosaic. Such is the pulse of affectionate living.

Lately however, screaming between  artsy' updates, (and far more frequently for comfort)  is a glaring stream of what is wrong, terribly horribly hideously wrong with the world: crime, injustice, perversion, brutality, you name it! I'm no Pollyana, I know there's always something putrid going on. But as one who refuses to be intimate with traditional media, I'm aghast that atrocity, a hundred notch higher, now haunts even my closeted cyber realm. The world is toying with insanity and no escaping how it fugs' real bad. Wormy travesty would surely eat my insides ill if I'm not careful.

Why, just before heading here, I read a post about a h-e-i-n-o-u-s crime committed a step away from where I live, while in a parallel part of the globe, an assault of the same nature at the same time. Oh why can't evil people collectively foam in the mouth and die! 

If I were a morbid cynical fundamentalist  I'd say everyone's gone bonkers. The world needs to go for therapy - breathe, talk things over, relax, get a grip, hah!

It's NOT all cruddy of course, and by tomorrow's early morning lemon juice I'd be up with a whiff of hopeful refreshing once again. After all,  joie' de vivre' still taps in spite of what seems to be galactic maelstrom.

There is still the rising of the sun, the chirpy no cares of birdies, oh thank God for birds, really! And there are still kisses and hugs and little sweet choco- cupcakes and raspberry tea and vintage stores in the oddest corners where I get my secret stash of old fashioned I'm- the- only- one- who - has - this - sexy lingerie. And there are fresh Tuesday blooms at my fave flower shop which I buy cheap. So if at this moment like me you refuse to listen to the drone of this thorny world then --->

Listen to your heart. If you can;t hear what it's saying in this noisy world, make time for yourself.

Yes, make time for yourself. I used to think it was selfish to do so and I wallowed in a darky corner of my doing, sniffling and smug and sucking my smile in. Not anymore. 

The other day I set off pretty early for my cat bite injection ( stepped on the fanged mother cat)  and consequently, walked past the city park where the prettier cafe's are. I spied a fancy one open (and it wasn't even 8 am), so asked myself if I should indulge a cuppa' at double the price of a 24 hour McCafe.  It was a beautiful day, and the moment was worth a fancy velvet frilly place ( ah, at 8 am with only me). I love that I did that, plus the capricious impromptu ( little) shopping too. Red rosy dress, oh yes! 

I love this creature, the earth,  no matter how harangued, bizarre and demented it can seem sometimes. With all it's pockmarks of wars, crimes and other bulbous boils of botheration, there exists what is real:  family, friends, pets, plants, poetry, books, quiet coffee corners and grilled oysters! Yes, we all make it still -- a wonderful world! 

kissing the earth

Stone Steps To The Dormitory

"Walk as if you are kissing the earth with your feet." ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Had I not slipped through that spiral blackhole ( I'd like to call it) this early month of September then I wouldn't posses the gift of this spring of refreshing inside me. Light again!

Last night he said ( over a bowl of favorite clam soup) how I looked - softer. I know what he meant - that I had glided back to the calmer, serene, tender shores of me.

♥ It was a beautiful affectionate evening kindled alight with the sentimental glow of candles - quite like the special ones I prepare, only last night charm charitably primed its own - perhaps it was the grandmother moon, (looking in from out my window), graceful and mysterious, who blessed and eased and gifted my soul with her soft glow...perhaps.

♥Enjoy your own company. Let your mind wonder among the stars.

- Which reminds me how the other night when sleep wouldn't bid my flutters and finally, throwing aside my old cotton covers I gave  in to wakefulness and stepped out into the night. Barefoot on solid ground, kissing the earth in my little garden with feathery grass cool to the feet - I felt like a child delighted! It was a chance endowment, a fortuitous adoration to have looked up to the clear vastness and witnessed how brilliant and pulsating alive the theatrical night sky was! At play it was dazzling!

And I wondered, how many could possibly be looking heaven up this same moment that I am? Could there be - someone? Because I tell you, if I sift through the fun and excitement of this life I'm living, none doth' ( i just have to use doth) compare to the mesmerizing experience of looking to the stars; a happy solitary, worshiping of twinkles at 2:48 am - assisting in the birth of a newborn morning. ♥

of miracles

People usually consider walking on water a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either in water or thin air, but to walk on earth. Everyday we are engaged in a miracle we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black curious eyes of a child -- our own two eyes. All is a miracle. ~ Thick Nhat Hanh

my art

But why so much inner chaos within me the past few weeks?  I trudged with tears the rolling weight of rocks, and with a liquid of loneliness that bore through the soupy marrows of my being, and with a wild child tantrum clawed around the cartilages of my bones.  It was a different woman I had no recognition of that walked the way of my body those days. Life was a spiraling blur.

-- and to Answer: I had left myself open unprotected from the vile of this world! Like a gate unhinged, every prowler seeking entry was free to do so. Vulnerable, I allowed myself to absorb all the fear, the anger, the mindless chatter of a world absorbed in negativity. It is a weakness or a strength that I easily imbibe ( with a heightened sense) the intoxicating energy of a place ( or person), pulp bits of joy and felicity or -- fitful virulent impulses, the latter so lately contagious.

But I am grateful to my angels. They are all around me, these refined creative souls who reassure, ground and center time and again. Their healing potions tucked within the power of their words, splashes of pigments, composition and sound recapture what so genuinely resides within -- miracles, magic and charm, my belief. I am most grateful for their reaching out. I am not alone. Ever.

The Beautiful Life

Find out where joy resides,
and give it a voice far beyond singing. 

For to miss the joy, is to miss all. ~ Robert Louise Stevenson

How to make a beautiful life.

Love yourself. Make peace with who you are and where you are at this moment in time.

Listen to your heart. If you can;t hear what it's saying in this noisy world, make time for yourself.

Enjoy your own company. Let your mind wonder among the stars.

Try. Take chances. Make mistakes.

Life can be messy and confusing at times but it is also full of surprises. 

The next rock in your path might be a stepping stone.

Be happy. When you don't have what you want, want what you have.

Make do. That's a well kept secret of contentment.

There aren't any shortcuts to tomorrow, you have to make your own way.

To know where you're going is only a part of it.

You need to know where you've been, too.
And if you get lost, don't worry.
The people who love you will find you. Count on it.

Life isn't days and years.
It's what you do with your time and with all the goodness and grace that's inside you.
Make a beautiful life.

The kind of life you deserve.

~ From Quotebites.com

gathering enligtenment

Source: google.com via Lady on Pinterest

Source: flickr.com via Lady on Pinterest

   
My soul, my heart, my core is scab blistered. But before going on it feels I have to apologize to the ether for carrying on in such a bickering whinny' way the past posts ( and currently as well, wow, haha!). Then again to whom should I apologize? This is threatening to be even more "soap operatic" because literally the past days have proven my innate callousness stamped proven beyond reproach. My insides are knotted, my face tired and drawn, my spirit heavy with the conviction that I have "issues"; grave and must be faced squarely.

To look the monster eye to eye and let it know that it's unwelcome clingy'clutch is  dealt with is perhaps, part victory.

I hate it when this mangled fanged motion called anger takes a grip of my body and I am launched uncontrollably into a tirade of spite. Indeed, I am, I do, I admit it all. Shame wallows me and I walk the walk of the drunken burdened who sways and swoons whatever way.

Awhile ago I came upon this quote, and no better time could it have been for me to read:

It is wisdom to know other;
It is enlightenment to know one's self.
~ Tao te Ching

Hear ye' hear ye! Couldn't be truer and more appropriate. Tis' best and maybe brave to paint one's self honest. Humbled.

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t

waiting

He will turn 23 next month, and here I am still up, waiting, waiting for him to be home -- safe and sound well in bed in what will most likely be the wee' fresh breath morning of a Sunday. That is how it is, this whole twang of being a mother, no matter the age of your child, the being up, here, there, PRESENT, even if it be annoying ( to them, the young 'uns, yes, because I was specifically told before he stepped out at 9 to NOt wait UP) or ignored, nevermind. It is an impulse, automatic, a reflex, the body resisting rest, quivering in wakefulness as if the very cells of me are jolly occupied in a party of coffee - caffeinated energy at 1 am. Fine.

Life happens in stages.

Someday soon they will be on their own..and I will think back to this...the wake-full-ness...and I know I will be thankful that LIFE was kind enough to grant me these someone's that are etched in my heart, to wait for them, when they were young...and still in this home...

perhaps I will miss..the waiting.