Pain

“…My point is, most of our pain is derived from some wrong way we perceived (usually under fire) how to preserve our own dignity and self-respect but ironically lost it all in our desperation to come out on top…”

 

It’s no coincidence that many languages use the same word for poet and prophet.

Dark things

I have never considered myself to be a dark person. Maybe it is the secrets that have been exposed throughout my life that inexplicably draw me to the dark side. Maybe it is the terrible terrible things that I have done and been exposed to that make the dark side of humanity comfortable and familiar. Nonetheless, I have a penchant for things that reveal the inner demons in the human psyche in a twisted and surreal way. I believe it is cathartic to participate in the viewing and the attempt to understand these very dark things. 

How good it feels for me

Nighttime

I am a night owl. Maybe it is because nighttime is the realm of dreams, and to me to live in a dream is seemingly better then living in reality. It is the endless possibility of dreams. The mystery of dreams intrigue me in ways that may never be explained. 

The last two lines in these two stanzas of Edgar Allen Poe’s poem are words that echo within me.

A Dream Within a Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

…We are the clay, and You our Potter, and we all are the work of Your hand. Isaiah 64:8 

One of the most recent experiences that has had a heavy impact on who I am as a person has been a trip to Israel. My eyes have been opened to things that I had previously been blind to. I am a new person, a changed person. A better person. Like a rude awakening to my old way of life I have been jolted out of bed by a loud sound, the sound of GOD? I am not sure, but the half dreams of before seem more dreamlike, and the dream-like state of my reality has shifted into something that is filled with much more clarity, a crystal clear sense of being alive, a wakeful life with more potential for purposefulness then ever before. I feel as though on my life path I am on a mission. I do not fully understand my mission, I do know that I have strayed more then once on my spiritual journey and it is at times a very hard journey. I am determined though, to follow the spiritual path that has been laid out for me. In fact, this path may need to be trail-blazed, it may be a road less taken sort of path, and there may indeed be miles to go before I sleep. 

Here are two beautiful poems by Robert Frost that I heard as a little girl, and have stayed in my mind all these years.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 

 

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

the hands

In life we hear the nature/nurture debate. Well, I know that many events in my life have made me who I am, and  the person I am today is a result of a combination of all those past events. This place will be a celebration of the culmination of things that have shaped me, inspired me, motivated me, or even traumatized me in my journey of LIFE. I am an artist, and a creator, and as I create, I too, have been created, by the hands that mold me.