Saturday Farmer's Market - In a Walden State of Mind

Created by Heather at Capricious Reader, and now hosted by Chris at Stuff as Dreams are Made on.

Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

- from: Walden: Or, Life in the Woods, Henry David Thoreau

(as are all subsequent quotes)

And time keeps moving (even when I don't) . . . 

I weed (a bit). I plan (a lot). I change things (slowly).  

I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

I also take pictures. I'm no photographer, but I do enjoy playing with my new camera in the garden.
Would you like some more pretty pictures?

The Portulaca have filled in nicely.

These are just two of the delicate little flowers filling in the bare spots of the 'mailbox bed.'

Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.

Lantana 

in red and orange

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

Lantana

in yellow

I also had Lantana in shades of pink and aqua, but they don't seem to have made it through the winter.

None of them have even broken ground yet, while these are about two feet high.

I guess I need to look into replacing them.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. 

You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.

A homemade bird bath near the mail box, made from a clay saucer on an old stump and surrounded by Fortnight Lily, Cape Honeysuckle, Sedum, and Portulaca. 

(In this picture, the Honeysuckle falls across the water and the Lily is behind it on the left.)

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us even in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. 

It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

My lovely Volunteer.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

(One of my all time favorite quotes, ever)

Another one of my little buddies. 

This Praying Mantis is about half an inch in length, but his attitude doesn't end.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

The half whiskey barrel was left near the trash cans of one of our departing neighbors, and now holds Daisies and Grasses.

Things do not change; we change.

The biggest bed holds my Lavender and is always 'buzzing' with activity.

If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal- that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. 

The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality. Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man. 

The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.

Quote of the Day

To Tame the Savageness of Man and Make Gentle the Life of This World.

Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.

- from: an impromptu speech

 delivered by (then-Presidential candidate) Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. 

April 4, 1968 (the night of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination)

Today is the Day We Commemorate, With Barbeques, Parades, and Fireworks, Our Independence Day, the Day Will Smith Fought Off the Alien Invaders and Saved Us All!

REMEMBER the immortal words of President Thomas Whitmore:
 
We can't be consumed by our petty differences anymore.

We will be united in our common interests.

Perhaps its fate that today is the 4th of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom, not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution -- but from annihilation.

We're fighting for our right to live, to exist.

And should we win the day, the 4th of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day when the world declared in one voice:

 

"We will not go quietly into the night!

We will not vanish without a fight!

We're going to live on!

We're going to survive!"

Today, we celebrate our Independence Day!

Street Art . . . for the Homeless

The sign says:

TEXT THEM HOME

Text HOMELESS to 50555 to donate $10. 

And help the 50,000 Homeless in LA find a new place to call home.

{Source}

MSG/ DATA rates may apply. Full terms at mGive.com/T and read the privacy policy. 

All proceeds will benefit the Weingart Center’s many homeless assistance programs.

{Weingart Center Website} {Weingart Center Youtube Channel}

Quote of the Day

“Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said. 'One can't believe impossible things.'

I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. There goes the shawl again!”

  - Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Now That I Can Do!

Featured Poet - Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Aimee feels that the boundary between the local and the global has increasingly been blurred and she finds herself functioning as guide, investigating, interpreting, and chronicling.

"I write with the intersection of three cultures always looming over my shoulder - Indian, Filipino, and American - providing my writing with a layering and fusion of pop culture and customs."

She is the author of four poetry collections: Lucky Fish, At the Drive-In Volcano, Miracle Fruit, and Fishbone.  

How about a few samples:

What I Learned From the Incredible Hulk

When it comes to clothes, make

an allowance for the unexpected.

Be sure the spare in the trunk

of your station wagon with wood paneling

isn’t in need of repair. A simple jean jacket

says Hey, if you aren’t trying to smuggle

rare Incan coins through this peaceful

little town and kidnap the local orphan,

I can be one heck of a mellow kinda guy.

But no matter how angry a man gets, a smile

and a soft stroke on his bicep can work

wonders. I learned that male chests

also have nipples, warm and established—

green doesn’t always mean envy.

It’s the meadows full of clover

and chicory the Hulk seeks for rest, a return

to normal. And sometimes, a woman

gets to go with him, her tiny hands

correcting his rumpled hair, the cuts

in his hand. Green is the space between

water and sun, cover for a quiet man,

each rib shuttling drops of liquid light.

from: Miracle Fruit. Copyright 2003. 

The Rolling Saint

Lotan Baba, a holy man from India, rolled on his side for
            four thousand kilometers across the country in his quest for
            world peace and eternal salvation.                                                
                                                                —Reuters

He started small: fasting here and there,

days, then weeks. Once, he stood under

a banyan tree for a full seven years, sitting

            for nothing—not even to sleep. It came

            to him in a dream: You must roll

            on this earth, spin your heart in rain,

                        desert, dust. At sunrise he’d stretch, swab

                        any cuts from the day before, and lay prone

                        on the road while his twelve men swept

            the ground in front of him with sisal brooms.

            Even monkeys stopped and stared at this man

            rolling through puddles, past storefronts

where children would throw him pieces

of butter candy he’d try and catch

in his mouth at each rotation. His men

            swept and sang, swept and sang

            of jasmine-throated angels

            and pineapple slices in kulfi cream.

                        He rolled and rolled. Sometimes

                        in his dizzying spins, he thought

                        he heard God. A whisper, but still.

from: Miracle Fruit. Copyright 2003. 

First Anniversary, With Monkeys

Periyar Nature Preserve

There is no crumbly frozen cake to thaw.

Today, we are in the jungle. I mean mosquito. I mean

tigers and elephants sludging their way

to the lake for a drink and Don’t make sudden moves

or snakes startled from an afternoon nap

will greet you fang first. I think we are lost. Too hot

for any cold confection to survive. Even my tube

of sunblock is as warm as a baby’s bottle. You get

to those places I can’t reach, those places I dared

not even whisper before I walked down the aisle

in white. You never worried if our families

would clash, if they would clang like the clutch

of pale monkeys clanging the thin branches of the treetrops,

begging for our trail mix. You never worried

about my relatives staring at your pale, muscled calves—

things not usually seen outside of the bedroom. You wore

hiking shorts anyway. And still, they lavished ladle-fuls

of food on your plate. I think we are lost. My eyes are dark

and wet as that wild deer that walked right past us,

a little off the trail. I think we are lost, but for once

I don't mind. Eventually you turn us back to a place

not on any map, but I know I can trace it back with my finger

if we ever need it again. We made it one year

without a compass and we’re not about to start now.

from: At the Drive-In Volcano. Copyright 2007. 

Are All the Break-Ups in Your Poems Real?

If by real you mean as real as a shark tooth stuck

in your heel, the wetness of a finished lollipop stick,

the surprise of a thumbtack in your purse—

then Yes, every last page is true, every nuance,

bit, and bite. Wait. I have made them up—all of them—

and when I say I am married, it means I married

all of them, a whole neighborhood of past loves.

Can you imagine the number of bouquets, how many

slices of cake? Even now, my husbands plan a great meal

for us—one chops up some parsley, one stirs a bubbling pot

on the stove. One changes the baby, and one sleeps

in a fat chair. One flips through the newspaper, another

whistles while he shaves in the shower, and every single

one of them wonders what time I am coming home.

from: Lucky Fish. Copyright 2011. 

Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia
the fear of long words

On the first day of classes, I secretly beg my students  
Don't be afraid of me. I know my last name on your semester schedule

is chopped off or probably misspelled—
or both. I can't help it. I know the panic
of too many consonants rubbed up
against each other, no room for vowels

to fan some air into the room of a box
marked Instructor. You want something
to startle you? Try tapping the ball of roots

of a potted tomato plant into your cupped hand
one spring, only to find a small black toad
who kicks and blinks his cold eye at you,
the sun, a gnat. Be afraid of the X-rays

for your teeth or lung. Pray for no dark spots.
You may have pneumonoultromononucleosis—
coal lung. Be afraid of money spiders

tiptoeing across your face while you sleep
on a sweet, fat couch. But don't be afraid
of me, my last name, what language I speak
or what accent dulls itself on my molars.

I will tell jokes, help you see the gleam
of the beak of a mohawked cockatiel. I will
lecture on luminescent sweeps of ocean, full

of tiny dinoflagellates oozing green light
when disturbed. I promise dark gatherings
of toadfish and comical shrimp just when you think
you are alone, hoping to stay somehow afloat.

Verse Daily

SOURCES: Here & Here.

After Fifty Years

- William Faulkner

Her house is empty and her heart is old,
And filled with shades and echoes that deceive
No one save her, for still she tries to weave
With blind bent fingers, nets that cannot hold.
Once all men’s arms rose up to her, ‘tis told,
And hovered like white birds for her caress:
A crown she could have had to bind each tress
Of hair, and her sweet arms the Witches’ Gold.
Her mirrors know her witnesses, for there
She rose in dreams from other dreams that lent
Her softness as she stood, crowned with soft hair.
And with his bound heart and his young eyes bent
And blind, he feels her presence like shed scent,
Holding him body and life within its snare.