Lights

Perhaps words later...

Sign at Computer: Gone Mobile...

Wow! After much research that was, naturally, inconclusive, when I saw the HTC Touch, I succumbed. Almost instantly, but when you're ready, you're ready. I used a Pocket PC for years, so this seemed natural, and I found a good plan, 200 min a month, unlimited local calls after 6pm, unlimited browser, no system access fee, the price of the phone affordable, a 3-year agreement. Oh, so what if the Canadian cell phone market has been de-regulated and prices should drop in 2008, I needed it now. It's time for a new computer and I really would like the new iMac rather than a MacBook and this phone seems an ideal mobile device - tiny, discreet, but with amazing capabilities. So I've been having fun all weekend, between putting up our tree and watching movies on IFC, exploring this little contraption. On which I'm posting now in a coffee shop listening to jazz. Too bad I can't get up and boogie!

Burning Brightly in the Night

Because this poem is under consideration for publication, I have encrypted it so as to keep the comments intact and as something easy for me to find in the great archiver Blogger is.

Encrypted poem.

Vishnu on Chinese New Year

blue lines, watchers, boxes

.......................martial arts
a whole room jumping, jabbing
kicking, cutting air

falling gold bands

then the red

......vision, blood, shirts on the backs of

floating discs, cut, fresh green

.....eyes that see
...................everything

horizontal lines raised

red banners, orange tigers

blue bricks, pink band, luminous
candles, prison

control your destiny


labyrinth, blue-black hair
smoke, the floor disappears

a dragon of virtue

immensity of primordial waters

jump from stone to stone


on the ying-yang, muscles flying

bells

opening of the passage
incense, the moon


the hooded men
striped tigers, white satin

red dragon
blue god

entryway to the past
.......................opens

......create the future




Vishnu Visvarupa, Preserver of the Universe, Represented as the Whole World | Unknown
19th century | watercolor on paper | 15 1/4x 11 in/38.7 x 28cm |Victoria & Albert Museum, London UK

Early Snowfall

Snow drifts from the sky whitely combing
the red and golden yellow leaves;
when it melts,
bare limbs climb into the sky.
I want to lie on those whorls of wood,
like mastheads of stately Nordic goddesses
or my tender frozen ancestral grandmothers,
dreaming of Daphne, firey gowns
stripped by solar winds to stark
nude greys of Winter.
Thick ridges of weather
carved rivulets
in the bark.

_____
Visit Riverside Rambles for the 18th edition of the Festival of the Trees, where this little poem is included among many great entries.

Magnolia Stellata

A desolation out of which writing comes. An emptiness of words. The streets are dark as I walk. Perhaps love is not fullness but the absence itself.

'Despair....invokes beauty only to pour the void into it. The emptiness of the soul is so vast, its cruel advance so inexorable, that any resistance to it is impossible. What would be left of paradise if it were seen from the viewpoint of despair? A graveyard of happiness.' E.M. Cioran, Tears & Saints.

We cannot merge. Are we are in love with each other's absence? Our holy madness is our love, founded on renunciation.

I am emptied in my love for you. I have no desire to possess you - desire emphasizes lack. Even in this violent wrenching towards each other where we are alienated and jubilatory. When we are empty of ourselves we take joy in the sweetness of the other.

If I could tell you a story, I would. There are no avenues of magnolia trees here, though I wish there were.

'Loneliness means I am at last whole.

Only with him could I be lonely. Open up to him. Completely open, completely for him. Welcome him completely into myself. Surround him with the labyrinth of shared happiness. I know it is you.' Peter Handke, Wings of Desire.

I am alone with he who is alone. Seul á seul.

I'm looking for the essence
that I can drop on my tongue,
until I am suffused with the
scent. Until my kisses are
magnolia,
........soft white petals of perfume.

Imagine the magnolia trees where Venus is born aloft on the shell blown by Zephyr.

Where writing comes to an end and sinks into its
emptiness.

Only then.

Rubies In Crystal - a new template

A new design. You noticed, thank you, Jean. I resurrected my old Rubies In Crystal banner (of 27 layers, my first real attempt at creating a composite image in Photoshop, it took forever) and decided to make the post titles a deep red, you know, to match - like pillows on the couch with the heavily brocaded curtains of rich rubies and Merlot, the, ahem, 'Tibetan red.' I struggled with the html in the template (which uses 3 numbers for colour, not 6 or the RGB code that I could easily access in Photoshop Elements), a template which I'd already fiddled with quite a bit, and wished I'd taken courses in webdesign, and finally saved the whole mass of computer jargon in a word file just in case, and took the leap into the "new" and easier templates Blogger offers. Along the way I discovered that any photos you post to your blog are automatically saved in a file at Google's photo site, Picasa, which is neat, and where they remain unlisted unless you choose to make them public. Google is creating a marvelously integrated package, with Gmail, Documents, Reader, Calendar, and Groups, plus lots of other stuff - I love Google and its increasing array of offerings.

Rubies In Crystal is a reference not only to mystical caves of jewels that are the colour of the vibrant life force but to wine and the full enjoyment of life as expressed in Sufism, and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, one of my geologist/geochemist/scientist father's favourite books (perhaps I'll try to elaborate in another post sometime). I like the simplified look of the site now, the ease of the addition of the red accents as well as the ability to put the banner in a red background, and the way the font appears. The template still needs tweaking - like why are there question marks before the archived posts (which seem to work nevertheless)?

Forays into html for another day...

:-)