Katie Berggren - Fly

This is available from Katie, along with a beautiful collection of art:

http://www.artfire.com/modules.php?name=Shop&op=listing&product_id=2223657

I'm Here

I got my brother
I can feel him now
He might not be here,
but he's still mine

I know he still loves me


Got my hands
Doin' good like they're suppose to
showin' my heart
to the folks that I'm close to.

Got my eyes
Though they don't see as far now,
They see more about how things really are.

I'm gonna take a deep breath.
I'm gonna hold my head up.
Gonna put my shoulders back,
And look you straight in the eye....

I'm gonna sing out.

I believe I have inside of me
Everything I need to live a bountiful life,
With all the love alive inside of me
I'll stand as tall as the tallest tree.



-The Color Purple (revised...a little)

Serenade/The Proposition

Merry Merry

May your best gift be "immaterial"

Here we go a wassailing...

It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.  ~Charles Dickens

Dreamers Martyrdom

Let Christmas not become a thing
Merely of merchant's trafficking,
Of tinsel, bell and holly wreath
And surface pleasure, but beneath
The childish glamour, let us find
Nourishment for soul and mind.
Let us follow kinder ways
Through our teeming human maze,
And help the age of peace to come
From a Dreamer's martyrdom.
~Madeline Morse

dancing snowflakes

Like snowflakes, my Christmas memories gather and dance - each beautiful, unique and too soon gone.  ~Deborah Whipp

eclipse -- the real kind...

Happy Winter Solstice

All You Need is Love

Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.  ~Author unknown, attributed to a 7-year-old named Bobby

What a time for the oven to break...

This is Christmas-Camilli String Quartet

Free music - This is Christmas

Simon's Cat in 'Santa Claws' 1280x7200

holst - oslo girls choir

Santa Lucia

in celebration of light

Lucia Bread

11 T. butter
6 c. flour
2/3 c. sugar
3 pkg. dry yeast or 1 2/3 oz. fresh yeast
2 c. milk
1 gr. saffron -OR- 1/2 t. cardamom, 15 drops yellow food color
1/2 t. salt
1/2 c. raisins
1 egg

The Pickwick Papers

Christmas was close at hand, in all his bluff and hearty honesty; it was the season of hospitality, merriment, and open-heartedness; the old year was preparing, like an ancient philosopher, to call his friends around him, and amidst the sound of feasting and revelry to pass gently and calmly away.

Yo-Yo Ma;Alison Krauss - The Wexford Carol - pause player

St Nicholas' Day

Lucky me,the girl who found this glory growing in her garden

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.



William Shakespeare

donations..best done BEFORE you go broke on gifts that bring you praise

Instead of being a time of unusual behavior, Christmas is perhaps the only time in the year when people can obey their natural impulses and express their true sentiments without feeling self-conscious and, perhaps, foolish.  Christmas, in short, is about the only chance a man has to be himself.  ~Francis C. Farley


https://shop.stjude.org/GiftCatalog/donation.do?cID=13522&pID=18290&fnl=FaceWthDrop

King's College, Cambridge "What Sweeter Music" - press pause on player

snow following

Hans Christian Anderson

Thousands of lights were burning on the green branches, and gaily-colored pictures, such as she had seen in the shop-windows, looked down upon her. The little maiden stretched out her hands towards them when--the match went out. The lights of the Christmas tree rose higher and higher, she saw them now as stars in heaven . . .

Thanksgiving

It is literally true, as the thankless say, that they have nothing to be thankful for.  He who sits by the fire, thankless for the fire, is just as if he had no fire.  Nothing is possessed save in appreciation, of which thankfulness is the indispensable ingredient.  But a thankful heart hath a continual feast.  ~W.J. Cameron

nevertheless, thanks...given

The Pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts.  No Americans have been more impoverished than these who, nevertheless, set aside a day of thanksgiving.  


~H.U. Westermayer

Free Will

be energized by the signs of
creeping benevolence and waxing intelligence.


be motivated to give yourself with confidence to the specific
role you can play in manifesting the ultimate goal: to create a heaven on
earth in which everyone alive is a healthy, free, self-actualized, spiritually
enlightened millionaire dedicated to living sustainably.

crazy-gaping void

Pretty

When I was just a little girl, I asked my mother  “What will I be? Will I be pretty? ” Will I be pretty? Will I be pretty?  What comes next?  Oh right, will I be rich  which is almost pretty depending on where you shop.  And the pretty question infects  from conception  passing blood and breath  into cells.  The word hangs from our mothers’ hearts in a shrill of fluorescent floodlight of worry.  “Will I be wanted? Worthy? Pretty?  But puberty left me this funhouse mirror add:  teeth set at science fiction angles, crooked nose, face donkey-long, and pox-marked where the hormones went finger-painting  my poor mother. “How could this happen?  You’ll have porcelain skin as soon as we can see a dermatologist.”  “You sucked your thumb. That’s why your teeth look like that! ”  “You were hit in the face with a Frisbee when you were six,  otherwise your nose would have been fine! ”  Don’t worry; we will get it all fixed she would say, grasping my face, twisting it this way and that as if it were a cabbage she might buy.  But, this is not about her.  Not her fault she, too, was raised to believe the greatest asset she could bestow upon her awkward little girl was a marketable appearance.  By sixteen I was pickled by ointments, medications, peroxides.  Teeth corralled into steel prongs,  laying in a hospital bed.  Face packed with gauze,  cushioning the brand new nose the surgeon had carved. Belly gorged on two pints of my own blood I had swallowed under anesthesia,  and every convulsive twist,  like my body screaming at me from the inside out “What did you let them do to you? ”  All the while, this never ending chorus groaning on and on  like the IV needle  dripping liquid beauty into my blood.  “Will I be pretty? ”  Will I be pretty like my mother, unwrapping the gift wrap to reveal the bouquet of daughter her $10,000 bought her?  Pretty? Pretty. And now I have not seen my own face in ten years. I have not seen my own face in ten years,  but this is not about me!  This is about the self-mutilating circus we have painted ourselves clowns in.  About women who will prowl thirty stores in six malls to find the right cocktail dress, but haven’t a clue  where to find fulfillment  or how to wear joy,  wandering through life shackled to a shopping bag,  beneath those two pretty syllables.  This, this is about my own some-day daughter.  When you approach me, already stung-stayed with insecurity,  begging,  “Mom, will I be pretty?  Will I be pretty? , ”  I will wipe that question from your mouth like cheap lipstick  and answer no. The word pretty is unworthy of everything you will be, and no child of mine will be contained in five letters.  You will be  pretty intelligent,  pretty creative,  pretty amazing,  but you will never be merely “pretty.”  Katie Makkai

I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
Henry David Thoreau

said the three weird sisters...

Eye of newt, and toe of frog, 
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog, 
Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting, 
Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing, 
For a charm of powerful trouble, 
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble. 



William Shakespeare

Longfellow

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sand of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solenm main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us then be up and doing, 
With a heart for any fate; 
Still achieving, still pursuing, 
Learn to labor and to wait. 

So dreams the Sicilian

JVI

My grandfather met my brother in a dream last night.  Giancarlo was there to lead him home.  After 99 years on earth, it is hard to think of him, his laughter, his bravado, his love of family, and think of his passing as a loss.  He was here, and for a long time.  There are just too many happy memories gained to use the word "loss" - it is simply incompatible.  I love you, Pal.

blessed

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.
Kahlil Gibran 

John Muir

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

© Mary Oliver

quivering gold

moving day

Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.


James Baldwin

G&Grace @ Frye Art Museum

Frye Art Museum Promo, taken last February

Air Tap

to enjoy this, remember to pause the automatic player at the bottom of the page before you hit play!

Death Be Not Proud

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not soe,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill mee.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.
  

- John Donne

strange days

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

fare una levataccia

born June 30 - sweet babies to heal my broken heart - happy birthday

The runt -- and bravest of them all -- you go girl

St Martin's in the Field, London, May, 2010

the apocalypse is now, so let's dance.

if there was any left...

"Wait" just for now

I keep hearing from everybody, asking me to use my sweet G's lyrics on this blog. He was an artist and a philosopher and I know you are eager for his words. Well, ladies and gentlemen, my brother was on an unfinished path.  I can lay the stone, and will be walking the path, his words on the tracks he left behind, and, I know, he will be holding my hand.  It'll be an epic journey, and I will be wishing he was with me, but I will have his voice.  Thank GOD.  So hold on, let me get his words protected and see how they will ultimately be shared with the universe.  This part, I can do.

For now I'll ask you all, to "Wait"

Feel I'm on the verge of some great truth 
Where I'm finally in my place 
But I'm fumbling still for proof 
And it's cluttering my space 
Casting shadows on my face 

I know I have a strength to move ahead 
I can hardly leave my room 
So I'll sit perfecty still 
And I'll listen for a tune 
When the mind is on the moon 

And if I stumble 
And if I stall 
And if I slip now 
And if I should fall 
And if I cant be all that I could be 
Will you, will you wait for me 

Cause everywhere I seem to be 
I am only passing through 
I dream these days about the sea 
Always wake up feeling blue 
Wishing I could dream of you
 
So if I stumble 
And if I fall 
And if I slip now 
And loose it all 
And if I can't be all that I could be 

Will you, will you wait for me
Please wait for  me




Alexi Murdough

bye bye blackbird

49 days, give or take

Have you ever fed a lover with just your hands?
Closed your eyes and trusted, just trusted?
Have you ever thrown a fist full of glitter in the air?
Have you ever looked fear in the face and said, "I just don't care"?

It's only half past the point of no return
The tip of the iceberg
The sun before the burn
The thunder before the lightning
The breath before the phrase
Have you ever felt this way?

Have you ever hated yourself for staring at the phone?
You're whole life waiting on the ring to prove you're not alone
Have you ever been touched so gently you had to cry?
Have you ever invited a stranger to come inside?

It's only half past the point of oblivion
The hourglass on the table
The walk before the run
The breath before the kiss
And the fear before the flames
Have you ever felt this way?




There you are, sitting in the garden
Clutching my coffee,
Calling me sugar
You called me sugar


Have you ever wished for an endless night?
Lassoed the moon and the stars and pulled that rope tight?
Have you ever held your breath and asked yourself will it ever get better than tonight?
Tonight 




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