In the flow...

It's been too long since I've posted here. Sorry for the gap, or mind the gap as they say... So much has been going on. The show up in Sylva, which was so very lovely with the nicest group of folks... the reading/show and tell down in Atlanta with Laurence, also really special... then a couple of unexpected trips back down to Atl to see His Holiness the Dalai Lama... and then some out of town company at home for a minute... then it was off toward Highlands, NC for a workshop with Janisse Ray incorporating a wonderful event at the Bascom Center, to unveil a painting the Wilderness Society commissioned from artist, Robert Johnson, where Janisse and Brent and Thomas presented also. And of course my wheels haven't stopped even after all that with other points along the road I had to get to this week.

WHEW.......

I am ready to be still and absorb the good vibrations of all these glorious fall colors, though the wind last night moved a bunch of it around and it's getting cooler as I type.

I am still processing the experiences of last week, and so won't write about it here for now, except to say that I feel really lucky to have been able to do all that, and I send gratitude to Doug and Pat and Cyndi and Marcella and Adam for helping me get to a couple of these things. The mysterious void continues to support me in the directions that feel right, and this is golden.

In the meantime, here are a few images from last week that I took closer to home in one of my favorite swimming spots (no, not this time of year...). Enjoy!

Holden and Woodard Art & Poetry Show and Tell

Those of you in Atlanta, please come out to Sycamore Place Gallery in Decatur this Friday night from 7-9pm for some wonderful poetry and art with Laurence and me. Laurence's poems just get richer and deeper and we'd like to take you into our landscapes and down our rivers.

Here is a sample of Laurence's poetry and art:

LESSON #1: HOW TO LISTEN TO A BIRD SING

Take off all
your clothed and
clammy thoughts.

Sit awhile.

Make nothing up
between the intervals of silence,
but listen to them.

Between each breath
is a song you’ve forgotten,
is always calling us
to gather to this wild
and shocking world.

This music happens to us
before we can ever think about it

this song happens in us
before we can ever say it’s impossible

to listen before we speak
of nothing or everything.

-Laurence Holden, 3/09

Also, I will have some copies of the Les Aretes Editions Broadsides available at this event.

Please join us at Sycamore Place Gallery in Decatur, located at at 120 Sycamore Place, at the intersection of Commerce Drive, by Fellini's Restaurant. The gallery consists of gallery space, courtyard, children's work area, a kiln, and thirteen working artist studios. More info on the right side, under News and Events...

Published in France (and a (very) few copies available here)

This summer I enjoyed collaborating with poet and author Thomas Rain Crowe on a small broadside published by Les Aretes Editions in France. I used some of my new photography works as a backdrop for Thomas' poem, "May It Continue," which is a call to acknowledge many fragile elements of our world and a plea to their continued existence. Sandrine at Les Aretes Editions made a fine little broadside, complete with outer covering. Take a look at her blog. Thanks, Thomas, for inviting me to do this collaboration with you, and thanks Sandrine for making such a beautiful publication! When I have a little more time, I will snap a photo of the broadside and add it here.... I have a very limited number of collectible copies - let me know if you wish to purchase one.

Thank you to Brent, Thomas, Riverblaze and all who attended the show in Sylva

Last Friday's show in Sylva at The Wilderness Society was really lovely. There was a wonderful group of folks there, including some new fhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifriends and some I hadn't seen in quite a while. The goodies from Riverblaze were delicious (as always) and the poetry was special. Big thanks to Thomas and Brent for sharing their poems and stories. I look forward to seeing Thomas' upcoming book and also another book that will be a collaboration between Thomas, Brent and Barbara Duncan. Thanks also to Brooks for helping me get the work up to Sylva. Good friends are golden. I will try to figure out how to put a video on here of one of Brent's poems.

Please click on Thomas and Brent to see (and buy!) some of their published books, and go to tws.org to join The Wilderness Society! And check out Riverblaze Bakery in Franklin, NC for your baked goods or catering needs...

Brent, reading his poem "Vapor Light":

Weaving the web...

I was sitting in a sunny spot out in my yard the other day, leaning on a stump and doing a little reading, and I noticed a tiny spider weaving her tiny web. It was a circular web and she had a ways to go yet. She was working on the circular part - the spiral. Around she was going, in the counter clockwise motion, picking up the spokes as she went round the web.

She continued in this fashion until she made it to the center, where she rested in wait for some small thing to find its way into her spiral creation. It conjured for me the notion of winding something up - of building energy by using a spiral and then having it coiled and ready.

It also made me think of time and the clock - that maybe her spiral represented some backwards in time preparation that would allow the forward motion of time to play out in a certain way - as if winding the web backward in time like rewinding a tape, only the tape hasn’t been played yet, but starts when she is at center.

Then this made me think that being “centered” is here also a crucial aspect in the web of life, and that when we are centered, the whole web of mystery is open to us and ready for whatever is coming or we are creating for it.

Also, in relation to the time spiral thoughts, I recently heard someone talking about a spider who weaves a new web each day (or maybe all spiders do this?), and when I was thinking about the counter clockwise spiral as a time keeper, that it is wound back and throughout the day winds forward until it must be wound again for another day. The spider weaves each day anew, as if dreaming it forward...

Are we each dreamweaving our days anew, and are we ready and “centered” in our great web of mystery, to greet this new day?