awe

Outer Space from Sander van den Berg on Vimeo.

oh my mama....

Odd times, weather-wise and otherwise. This song and all it's simple beauty was more than enough to move me this morning.




Oh my Mama
She gave me these feathered breaths
Oh my Mama
She told me use your voice,
My little bird

She said sing sing sing sing sing sing melodies
And she sang sang sang sang sang sang melodies

Oh my Mama
She did give me fancy feet
I'll be dancing on
And I'll tap tap tap my toes
Into those creaking floorboards

Oh my Mama
She took my little hand and held on tight
Oh the Mamas
Give the waters of their wells
Oh the Mamas
Give the babies this very dirt we're walking on
Oh my Mama
She gave me these feathered breaths
And your Mama
She gave you those feathered breaths too

And when the sky drops all those feathers
And when the birds sing in the morning
I'll be a mama
I'll have a daughter
I'll be a mama
I'll have a daughter

And I'll give her melodies
I'll give her melodies
(repeat)

And she'll be
My little bird
And then she'll fly
She'll fly

crackmeopen {quote to fall in love with}

from Pam Houston's novel Contents May Have Shifted:

"He tells me we've been put on earth to crack each other open, and then to stick around long enough to watch the thing that, having been cracked open, suddenly shines."

all good things are wild & free

turn your speakers up and take a break from your monday, just for a minute or two. you deserve it...


all good things are wild & free from Cass Cameron on Vimeo.

click here to see more of Cass Cameron's beautiful work.

"...and the nights will flame with fire"

“If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.”--Charles Bukowski, Factotum

via you should be out on a meadow

 Pierre Le Hors 'Firework Studies'

paradise and what my brother deserves

Just a few of the 600 photos I took on our trip to St. Thomas this past weekend. This place is absolutely incredible. The water really is that blue! 

Now I'm back in Minnesota, and it is cold, and it is so hard to imagine that St. Thomas and all those other islands exist in this same world. Kind of like when I'm watching the sunset from 30,000 miles in the air, and it's so beautiful it makes my heart physically hurt and all I can think of is how so much beauty can exist in the same world as all the terrible things, like mean people and death and war, and then I think about my brother, who joined the Army last year and is probably going to be in Afghanistan by this summer and how I wish he could see this water and these beaches, how he deserves the whole world and how I wish I could give it to him but all I can do is send him these pictures with taped on flower petals I stole from the island.  

firefly genius love magic!

Long-exposure photos of fireflies in Japan. 

Genius. 

via you should be out on a meadow

I think this is the original source and artist, but I'm no good at Japanese.  

so. tired. {and New Year's Eve in Vermont!)

Hi. I'm home from Vermont and slept almost 12 hours last night! One hour for every day in VT.... it was an intense 12 days of intellectual, emotional, creative, and social inspiration and exhaustion. And I have a lot of writing to do. I'm in my third semester of grad school! In addition to cranking out new poems and revising the not-so-new, this semester I have to write a critical thesis, which is basically a long research paper on a topic of my choice. My topic has something to do with photography and poetry...how the terms used in photography can be applied to poetry, maybe....? I need to do some research and narrow it down.

I eventually plan on sharing some quotes and things I picked up along the way from the lectures and conversations with others. I am grateful to know so many talented writers, to be able to call them my friends. For now here are some photos from the New Year's Eve lantern lighting ceremony. The photos don't do this beautiful and moving event justice, but I did what I could. Look at all those beautiful hands....

I have just one New Year's resolution:

Write more and better than last year. 

"I Heart Your Fate" (and my new goal) (and a question for you)

This is the title of the poetry collection that came in the mail yesterday. It's by Anthony McCann and I ordered it last week based on this review in H_NGM_N, which excerpted these lines, from the poem "Your Voice":

And the trees opened their shirts and stepped out of their shirts
Out of their pants stepped out of their pants
And the trees started to weep I mean rain it was raining
And stood there all human and naked and shaking

Fucking beautiful.

McCann's poems are addicting, even though I don't necessarily understand them upon first or second read. Some of them I might never understand fully, but the language is so beautiful, so musical, and the images he conjures up for me are magic, and so I'm okay with not fully understanding. His poetry is a sensory experience.

One of my new goals, so to speak, is to not get on the computer first thing every morning, but to sit with a book of poems and my journal. Some mornings I do this anyway, but other times, especially when I've just done a photo shoot, I get on the computer first thing. The big desktop computer in my office. But I don't want to do that. I want every morning to be spent quietly with words, and having my laptop out is okay for some of it, to either write up a quick blog post or begin my own poem, since I do most of my actual writing on the laptop now (the journal is for thoughts and ideas, the seeds of poems).

This morning I've been reading more of McCann's collection, published by Wave Books, and one stanza is just sticking with me, it's so beautiful. From the poem "Werther":

Soft moccasin light streams down through the leaves
Can't live a day in a world without birds!
I drag myself toward you using only my face
To see each little flower, forever, at once

...................................................................................................wow.

QUESTION: If these were your words, who is your "you"? i.e. who in your life do these lines make you think of? Who would you drag yourself toward using only your face.....?

Answer in the comments if you like. Next time I'll tell you my answer.

tonight we're the sea & the salty breeze....

While on the beach I often found myself playing this song in my head...