Golden Blue Morning

I can't let this morning go by
without saying that the weather
forecast today was all wrong.
Instead of four hours of snow
as predicted, we have this
ridiculously magnificent
powder blue sky and just a
speckling of snow. It feels
like the sky is melting into
the sun and the towering
pines and lower maples
are draped in a golden glow
too

heavenly to name.
I never tire of staring
into the sky and wearing
my baby blue mala beads
around my neck while
meditating over a candle.
And let me end by saying
that when I woke up and
saw the forecast I wanted
so desperately to see a
blue sky I thank the cosmos
for this dazzling and unexpected
blessing.

Adventures in Blue

To begin, you are lying in bed, at least you think you are, your eyes are closed and you are feeling calm. You are breathing steadily and in front of you is a warm sea of heavenly blue green water, you can smell the salt, you can hear the crush of waves over and over again on the beach, you walk through the warm golden sand and kneel down and dig into it with both hands, and soon you are sitting cross legged at the edge of the sea, the pale blue sky filling you with sun, and you are infinitely grateful to be alive. Without thinking, you inhale a big breath of fresh ocean air and you exhale and you are infinitely grateful for an infinite number of things, starting with your breath and the world around you. 

You open your eyes and as you do you humbly ask for help from the angels and all ascended beings up in heaven and they come flying through the cosmos and land in a sparkling dancing ring of light all around you.   Close your eyes, they say, and do not open them again until we tell you to. They proceed to help you up from bed, robe you in powder blue, and lead you to the kitchen where you make a cup of delicious coffee.

Then they guide you to your meditation pillow. They help you sit down cross legged and it is at this point one of the angels whispers, “OK, you can open your eyes now,”and you do, you smile, because you are back in familiar territory, you will spend the next 45 minutes observing your breath, your thoughts, your body, your mind. To begin, you take a few big breaths in and out, you center yourself in the now, your soul begins rising no matter that there continues to be a red hot fire lurking somewhere, threatening at any moment to snuff out the light and close the blue road right down.

Your blue this time is the ethereal air, a heavenly place you are always aspiring to, and the angels continue to whisper in your ear.

All the while in the face of that scary red threat, you once again make a plea to heaven, you ask to be lifted up and out of your ego. Once again you feel the angels and ascendant beings circling you, this time they only need whisper the word ‘remember!’ And they circle you right there, you do remember that in every moment you have a CHOICE, in each moment you can turn toward the light, observe, observe and observe, sit there and let everything be what it will, accept the world the way it is, there will always be the red hot fire, just accept the fact that red is steady, just like blue, just watch it all, keep remembering you have FREE WILL, and in each moment, in every NOW, you can align yourself with the DIVINE, the HEAVENLY BLUE FORCE THAT EMPOWERS ALL EXISTENCE. Over and over again, you choose to focus on gratitude, thanks for this sister who is healing, thanks for that grandchild who is flowering, thank you for this house that is so beautiful, and on and on you make a list.

After a while, you get up from the meditation mat, and the day begins. You take out your exercise mat, and you do your yoga and when you get to the tree pose, which is your very favorite posture (making you think that you were a tree in a past life) you smile. Your adventure in blue has brought you to a peaceful place, where you can stay the rest of the day.

A Vast Rose Lighting up the Night Sky

This beautiful sky object, called the Rosette Nebula, sits in the constellation Monoceros, the Unicorn.  The nebula, which measures some 130 million light years in diameter, consists of a cosmic cloud of gas and dust that lies approximately 5000 light years away from earth. It resembles a rose. Massive stars at its core have exploded a hole in the cloud of material. In what looks like the petals, new stars are being born.

You don't have to be an astronomer to appreciate this spectacular formation. Just close your eyes and set the image squarely in your imagination. Try to fathom its size or for a real challenge, its distance from earth. I find that it lifts my spirits just to know that it exists here in the universe. You could say that it puts things in some kind of grand perspective.

Magnificent Artwork by Kellie Meisl

My friend Kellie Meisl is an extraordinary artist. Look at this mermaid sculpture:

And here is another piece I adore, called "Flow." The red and the blue are almost too beautiful to behold!

And of course, Kellie did the piece that crowned my second novel, Seeing Red. In Kellie's original, the red background was purple.

Kellie does a lot of walking.

She has a blog called "Walk."

She collects odds and ends on her walks. Sometimes she uses these in her artwork.

Visit "Walk," it's well worth your while!

Breathing Poetry

The on-line literary blog site Two Drops of Ink has published my poem, "A Cup of Poetry."

She asked me to open the blue box and let the monarch butterfly go free.

I told her I would do that, gladly.

She asked me how it is that I write poetry so often.

I told her that I breathe and let the words billow up like autumn leaves and then I just lay them casually on paper.

She asked me to show her how to do it.

How to breathe? I asked.

No, how to get the words to billow up.

Oh that part.

So I told her to start each day with a few yoga poses. Start each day watering flowers and green plants. Spend time being grateful for seeing, hearing, touching, smiling. Say prayers for those you love. Lift your eyes skyward and thank God for the gift of life.

But above all, I said, go outdoors with a silver cup and meditate.

Yes and then? She asked. How long am I supposed to wait?

You must be the one to decide that, I said. But it doesn’t help to be impatient.

What I didn’t tell her is that I go outside every day and sometimes a shower of golden words fills the cup.

And sometimes the cup remains bone dry. On those days, I breathe slowly, and watch myself feeling scared of being empty.

It passes, and then the words come, and they run on and on and on.

I just opened the blue box, and immediately the orange and black monarch rose up in flight.

And then I sat down to write this poem.

Solstice Explosion

On a day
when
winter
makes its
arrival
and it is
raining
a grey
drenching rain,
thank God there
is paint that explodes
out of tubes onto
canvas.

Sunlight gratitude prayer

Soft light is starting to unfold over the meadow.

The hillside glows and the sky steadily turns more blue.
So many miracles every day to be grateful for, starting with
the night stars and the morning sunrise.
Thank you for the beauty that fills my eyes, and the love that fills my heart.
Thank you for bringing my sister back to life.

Thank you for giving us the strength to endure this awful trial.
Thank you for all the friends and family who have stood by us, praying.
Thank you for all the gifts we have, too numerous to name.
Or maybe, we should try to come up with a few.
For food, for light, for sight, for family, for mobility, for love, for flowers and

my new lemon tree.
For poetry and painting, for magic and music, for laughter and tears,
for good health and good times.
May we enjoy happy holidays and a health HAPPY NEW YEAR!

DREAM PAINTING

In the dream, the ocean and the golden sand came right up to the door of my old house.

and the house itself was a newer place, rebuilt in a modern way.

And the last thing I saw before I woke up was a

magnificent painting, the likes of which I cannot describe

except to say there was a heavenly blue color in the background

and a combination of yellow and white and silver and gold and a bit of grey.

I have been holding that image in my mind, and the other day

I laid down the blue capturing the hue

more or less.

But

today

when I tried to press the yellow and white

into the canvas,

I lost sight of the dream.

So now I will close my eyes and visualize

once again, the painting from heaven.

And when the time is right

I’m going to paint

a canvas of celestial light.

December 18, 2018

So how can we possibly know that no two snowflakes are alike?

I wore my blue gloves when I went walking in the snowstorm the other day.

I kept lifting my hands, 

watching the snowflakes land.

So many snowflakes.

So many of them perfectly formed crystals. 

Watching the flakes melt on my gloves, I got to wondering this: how can we possibly be sure that no two snowflakes are alike?

Later I went skating across the web looking for information. I found a site called LiveScience and here’s what it said:

The old adage that "no two snowflakes are alike" might not hold true, at least for smaller crystals, new research suggests.

Aha!

Physicist Jon Nelson at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Japan, has studied snowflakes for 15 years.

"It is probably safe to say that the possible number of snow crystal shapes exceeds the estimated number of atoms in the known universe," Nelson said. 

Still, while "no two snowflakes are alike" might hold true for larger snowflakes, Nelson figures it might ring false for smaller crystals that sometimes fall before they have a chance to fully develop.

"How likely is it that two snowflakes are alike? Very likely if we define alike to mean that we would have trouble distinguishing them under a microscope and if we include the crystals that hardly develop beyond the prism stage—that is, the smallest snow crystals," Nelson said.

"Good luck finding them though," he added. "Even if there were only a million crystals and you could compare each possible pair once per second—that is, very fast—then to compare them all would take you about a hundred thousand years."

One more thing about snowflakes: they play an incredibly important role in climate change:

“Scientists investigate how snowflakes form because of the possible influence they may have on global climate. In addition, researchers now believe ice crystals in the atmosphere, which typically are snow crystals too small to fall to the ground, play a key role in ozone depletion, possibly by acting as a catalyst to break down ozone.” 

Who knew snowflakes were so  important?