CONTACT ME &
SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS
BEAUTY ONLINE:
My best "Girl Geek" Posts
& Online Design Resources
| www.flickr.com |
This is a space to celebrate beauty - not just the beauty of form, but also those patterns of essential wholeness that go beyond the visible.
Wholeness dissolves the illusion that life and work are separate. So, while this is a "professional" blog in that I design online communications for a living and often write about design, communications & technology, it's also about everything else I see (in the world and in myself) when looking through a beauty-lens.
~ David Whyte, from "The Painter's Hand"
The essence of my Summer Solstice celebration, as I have come to know it, is to take a few days every year at this time to be immersed in nature – both inner and outer, to acknowledge the gifts I've received in the last cycle of the sun, and to contemplate what's mine to give back as I go forward into the next cycle.
I do this in community, within a circle held by the good folks at Resonance, supported by those at Pathfinders & Heartland. A circle with beauty at the center, always - this one an evolving work of art created by the translucent Sue Blondell:
At its core my Summer Solstice ritual is a commitment ceremony, and I want to share these words from Ken Carey's Return of the Bird Tribes that convey the strength a clear commitment can give:
"Creation does not take place
where there is a scattering and dissipation of energies.
Creation requires a gathering together and focusing
of your power within a circle of commitment —
like a seed, an egg, a womb or a marriage.
Consider wisely the ways in which you would
use your power and then around those ways
draw the sacred circle of commitment.
In the warm atmosphere of that circle, the power
of love builds like a storm above the wet summer
prairie until suddenly the circle can hold no more
and explodes in the conception of the new.
This fire is more powerful than any one of you."
And so I speak my commitment for this next year into the circle of this larger community, that holds me too:
In this next cycle of the sun I commit to hold myself lightly and speak my truth with confidence; to joyfully take leaps of faith when they are called for; and to continue to hone and refine the craft that carries our voices out into the world and nurtures connection and love between us.
If you too held the time of Summer Solstice in such a way, what would be your commitment for this next cycle of the sun?
It's Summer Solstice in the northern hemisphere today, the sun comes full circle and begins its cycle anew. I'm off celebrating among redwoods in the Santa Cruz mountains, enjoying my yearly ritual with friends old and new.
I'll no doubt have lots of stories to share when I return, but I wanted to have something here to greet you on this day. So I found this great photo on Flickr (God, I love Flickr!), taken by "Simon & Vicki": Greeting the dawn at last year's Solstice celebration in the great circles of Stonehenge.
Lovely, isn't it?
I was watching American Beauty last night and found myself once again mesmerized by that perfect scene where the young videographer-next-door shows his new love the "most beautiful thing" he's ever seen... footage of a plastic bag whirling in the wind, dancing with a pile of leaves.
Apparently it was this very image, which he experienced in real life, that inspired Alan Ball to write the screenplay, and Ball's words, Rick telling Janey about shooting the scene, carry the sensation:
"It was one of those days, when it's a minute away from snowing. And there was this electricity in the air. You could almost hear it. And this bag was just ... dancing ... with me. Like a little kid, begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. That was the day when I realized that there was this ... entire life ... behind things. And this incredibly benevolent force who wanted me to know that there was no reason to be afraid. Ever.
Sometimes there is so much ... beauty ... in the world. It's like I can't take it. And my heart is just going to cave in."
The sensibility that went on to provide us with five seasons of Six Feet Under (probably one of the most profound treatises on death American popular culture has ever produced) ends his debut film script with an echo of this moment in a voice-over from Janey's dead father Lester, who's just been shot:
"I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me. But it's hard to stay mad when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once and it's too much. My heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst. And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it. And then it flows through me, like rain. And I can't feel anything but gratitude."
I'm struck by the experience Ball describes twice in his film - of expanding with emotion, almost to the point of collapse - juxtaposed with this ephemeral image, which is repeated in the dying father's visual sequence as well.
It's like he's trying to make visible, audible, the sheer, unpredictable, and almost-impossible-to-bear beauty at the very heart of life.
On my morning walks lately I've noticed more and more vegetables showing up amongst the flowers in my neighbors' gardens.
One neighbor, Grover, has been a leader in this movement for many many years with a whole front garden full of peas, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, carrots, beans, squash, onions, potatoes, kale and chard in constant rotation throughout the year. But now his influence appears to be spreading.
Right across the street from him, folks have built raised beds in the narrow strip of ground between sidewalk and street and planted corn and tomatoes in them. And they're just one example of the front-yard vegetable gardens popping up all over the area.
Whether it's an instinctive response to the rising gas prices or the beginning of a zeitgeist shift back to basics, it feels real good to have food in the neighborhood.
Las night I went to hear the legendary poet Mary Oliver read. It warmed my heart to see the hall packed for this white-haired woman whose philosophy after all is so simple - kindness and attention to beauty are its main principles.
When asked about her daily practice, Oliver said she wakes every morning to witness (my word) the dawn and give thanks for another day, then she eats breakfast, takes a walk with her dog Percy, and works for 3-4 hours, at which point she is tired. Hers sounds pretty much like a perfect life to me.
Mary Oliver is one of those old-fashioned wordsmiths who doesn't use a computer - she writes her drafts and revises them on a notepad before transcribing the finished work on a series of old typewriters (if they stop working she lets them rest under her chair for a few weeks, when, she says, they are almost always miraculously healed and ready to go again).
From her latest volume, Red Bird, "Invitation":
Oh do you have time
to linger
for just a little while
out of your busy
and very important day
for the goldfinches
that have gathered
in a field of thistles
for a musical battle,
to see who can sing
the highest note,
or the lowest,
or the most expressive of mirth,
or the most tender?
Their strong blunt beaks
drink the air
as they strive
melodiously
not for your sake
and not for mine
and not for the sake of winning
but for sheer delight and gratitude–
believe us, they say,
it is a serious thing
just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in this broken world.
I beg of you,
do not walk by
without pausing
to attend to this
rather ridiculous performance.
It could mean something.
It could mean everything.
It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:
You must change your life.
The red bird motif runs through this sweet book of love like a red thread of inspiration, ending finally with the poem Red Bird Explains Himself.
Most commonly an image is used to illustrate text, but in this case I think the image is the main event, and anything I could write would be secondary (click on it to see a larger version).
Is it speaking to you too? What do you hear?
For those who know and love John O'Donohue, a blessing has arrived to help ease the shock and grief of his recent loss. His posthumous To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings has been released.
It is a slim volume of his graceful voice offering its blessing upon the world and all things within it. Birthdays, death, marriage, exile, addiction - nothing is too joyous or too sad to receive a blessing from O'Donohue, patron saint of beauty and kindness.
Here is his blessing for the Artist at the Start of Day (and here's one from me):
May morning be astir with the harvest of night;
Your mind quickening to the eros of a new question,
Your eyes seduced by some unintended glimpse
That cut right through the surface to a source.
May this be a morning of innocent beginning,
When the gift within you slips clear
Of the sticky web of the personal
With its hurts and its hauntings,
And fixed fortress corners.
A morning when you become a pure vessel
For what wants to ascend from silence,
May your imagination know
The grace of perfect danger,
To reach beyond imitation,
And the wheel of repetition,
Deep into the call of all
The unfinished and unsolved
Until the veil of the unknown yields
And something original begins
To stir toward your senses
And grow stronger in your heart
In order to come to birth
In a clean line of form,
That claims from time
A rhythm not yet heard,
That calls space to
A different shape.
May it be its own force field
And dwell uniquely
Between the heart and the light
To surprise the hungry eye
By how deftly it fits
About its secret loss.
The desert is a delicate animal at this time of year. Like a snake shedding its skin it’s fragile, vulnerable, in a state of emergence.
If I were making a list of the 100 things I want to do before I die, visiting the desert in bloom would certainly be among them.
So when my friend Bridget mentioned that she goes to Anza Borrego every year around this time and suggested I might want to come with her and photograph the beauty, I jumped at the chance (Bridget is an exceptionally talented green architect and landscape designer and also a client of mine – look for an announcement of her site and blog at bridgetbrewer.com soon)!
Recent Comments