Juniper Hills and a Sagely Brush

When you build your house on babel, before long, all your friends are gone. And none spoke your language anymore. Then, whether mystery or history come knocking at your door, open. To a world most musical at dusks and dawns, alighting and rising as the butterfly's song. Quick, silver as mercurial pools, your eyes flicker and flit in lovely apprehension. Touch, and you'll ripple the lake-heart of calm, pierce the surface tension. Dainty the dawn, dulcet the dusk, halcyon the heavens between. Patient the whisper, shy as the fawn, the susurrus of wind new life brings.


Driving into the mountains last friday, the sun began to set. The steep cones of central oregon appear as shadow jaws against the horizon, and the ghastly remnants of trees are ashen memories of forest fires, crowding the hills like whispering ghosts, dull-eyed and plaintive. Charcoal lines of distant slopes form a sinister skyline underneath the golden moon, low and heavy over the treetops. The grasping trees stoop over the road, and I feel both protected or assaulted by their leaning limbs.
A chill on the air smells of winter, carrying a biting breathlessness and a hint of juniper, intoxicating as gin on the wind, greeting our entrance into Bend, the high desert.
Where man began and nature ends, I know not. Perhaps man's is a tentative hold on that sagebrush land, rugged lovely standoff against those volcanic sisters whose tempers may erupt on a slight. Patience, I'll linger not long. I'll miss the leaves and trees of my land, though this sweet juice of juniper pacifies my soul and imparts its wisdom - a brush with sage.

Turn my glass soul upside-down, gentle snow comes falling down
a bus, a school, a one house town
a child skips 'long an empty street,
snow builds high around his feet
before a while my crystal soul, is silent
silent
and winter full
place me down and soon I'll be, a dust reminder of frozen things
timeless attic memories, a photo treasure
misplaced mysteries

Weekend in Bend

I'm not particularly a fan of purchasing things. The only thing worse than buying things, is buying things for myself. Unfortunately, I dropped my laptop this weekend. It was almost 4 years in living, and,well, I'm sad it's gone, but things happen. I went to Bend, Oregon this weekend, and it was beautiful.


Fall flowers blooming on trees
in shapes of leaves, falling
Penciled shadows pantomime
a skyline, a mountain, the shadow lines
of a forest ash-white, ember scathed
rigid peaks are fossils of fire forgot
toothsome and proud,
a looming, jagged shark's maw
open onto plains of juniper,
sagebrush greens and desert browns
sisters sinister three, grinning dang'rously

I'm super exhausted. I broke my laptop, played board games all weekend with marvelous guys, ate too many silly, salty snacks, slept less than ten hours (it doesn't help when everyone goes to bed at 3 and you wake at 7. Or earlier), drove into the mountains and out, and probably will not have the opportunity to see A this weekend as hoped. On top of that, J and S got engaged (hooray!), NaNoWriMo approaches, tomorrow is work without a lappy. The ice is thin heading into this week, as a turbulence of emotions patters my emotional shields in devastating volleys. But it's a good sort of emotional barrage.

Oh, how my fight fails me now. I've run on endorphins long enough, and my hope-adrenaline drops like a rock from heaven, burning and crashing its way towards a salty ocean. Hopefully someone gets a wish out of this, if not me.

Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty

What is beautiful? You are. The most beautiful.

I read, once, about how in China for a long time (almost a thousand years), culture valued the smallness of feet as standard for beauty.  At a young age, the girl's feet were bound, and toes were frequently broken in an attempt at inhibiting growth. The whole process is quite gruesome, and wikipedia discusses it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_binding) in miserable detail. All delicate attraction was tiny feet.
I have naturally small feet - not a benchmark of beauty in America - and I don't believe my beauty, or the beauty of anyone, is wholly reliant upon the the size of feet, the symmetry of face, stars in the eyes, in cheekbones high and prominent, chest, legs, or hairy heads. Of course I believe in a beauty of the heart, the spirit, the mind - or want to believe. Well, at the end of the day, at least you are beautiful.
I'm a perfectionist. I'm not perfect. What is beautiful? Sometimes I catch myself thinking beauty is everything in a bubble around me, exclusive.

no sound falls from the morning sky
no sound wrinkles the evening pool
~ Maya Angelou

There is so much that needs doing. Loving, living so tightly bound, around our hearts, ours and mine. A diffidence of difference, where's the line? The eager ember golden coin of sunlight burrows through these blinds, today's surprise, I suppose. Where are the grey skies? The writing weather, wherefore art thou, Raineo?
I'm trekking into the center of Oregon, tomorrow and this weekend. I've made posts nearly every day for a long while. It's strange to be missing some. Maybe I'll sneak some in.

rose petals falling
beneath an autumn red moon
will not adorn your unmarked graves
~ Maya Angelou

I'm full to bursting with life and everything. Struggling to learn things that I'm naturally lousy at, and suffuse them through my livelihood, and then pulling off the balance act of community that ever threatens to tip one way or the other. There's a gray pallor over the heart, a fractal of cumulus clouds with rains and sun-breaks. The ventricles central still hammer the same, the anvil forge beating a rhythm of being, crimson beneath skies of slate, and blue oceans of spent life-rivers, trudging the waterways. Full to bursting, my lungs say, but it's a contented burgeoning, a joy contained that ticks time behind a cage. Beat along, beat alone, beat a tone of silent survival beneath the dingy day. For twilight, well, may steal your breath away.