Toothpick Architect

Scott Weaver's Rolling through the Bay from The Tinkering Studio on Vimeo.

Where is your attention

"Often we find our minds darting off in many directions and not in the present moment.  There are times when we need to plan for the future, or briefly revisit the past, and it becomes necessary to have your attention concentrated in these directions.  That is a form of wise attention.  What I am referring to is “unskillful attention” and where you can become more mindful of it.  For example, if you find yourself in conversation with someone difficult, there is a tendency to selectively ignore them.  Your attention becomes quite fragmented.  This can be a form of aversion or shutting down to avoid dealing with something you may not have fully developed the skill set to be with.  Also, desiring something intensely can create a tremendous challenge for our attention because we become completely enraptured with what we want.  It becomes more powerful than our capacity to be present.

I encourage you to pose the following questions: read more here

'love song'

http://www.craigandkarl.com/

LOVE SONG
The night is painted by your dream
Your perfume fills my lungs to extreme

You are a feast for my eyes!
All shapes of woe you belie
 
As the body of earth is washed by rain
From my soul you cleanse all stain!
 
In my burning body you are a turning gyre
In the shade of my eyelashes you are a blazing fire.
You are more verdant than a wheat field!
More fruit than golden boughs you yield!
To the suns you open the gate
To counteract dark doubt’s spate
With you there is nothing to fear
But the pain of joyful tear
This sad heart of mine and profuse light?
This din of life in the abyss of blight?
The glance in your eyes is my field
And with it my eyes are sealed
Before this I had no other image
Or I would not but you envisage
The pain of love is a dark pain
Going and demeaning oneself in vain
Learning against people with black sight
Defiling oneself with the filth of spite
Finding in caresses venom of wile
Finding villainy in friend’s smile
Handing gold coins to the marauding band
Getting lost in the midst of the bazaar land
With my soul united you will be
From grave you will raise me
Like a star on wings decked with gold
You come from a land untold.
You alleviate sorrow’s pang
Flooding my body with embrace’s tang
You are a stream flowing onto my dry breast
My bed of my veins with your water is blest
Within a world which on darkness does feed
With every step you take I proceed
Underneath my skin you go!
There like blood you flow
Burning my tresses with a fondling hand
Flushing my checks with an urging demand
You are a stranger to my gown
An acquaintance with my body’s lawn
You are a shining sun that never dies
A sun that rises in Southern skies
You are fresher than first light
Fresher than spring, a luster sight
This is no longer love: this is pride
A chandelier that in silence and darkness died
When love did my heart entice
I was filled with a sense of sacrifice
This is no longer me, this is no longer me
My life with my ego amounted to a null degree
My lips your kisses prize
Your lips are the temple of my eyes
In me your stir a great rhapsody
Your curves are an attire on my body
O how I crave to sprout
And my joy with sorrow shout
O how I wish to rise
And my eyes with tears baptize
This forlorn heart of mine and incense perfume?
The music of harp and lyre in a prayer room?
This void and these flights?
These songs and these silent nights?
Your glance is a wondrous lullaby
Cradling restless babes thereby
Your breath is a transcendental breeze
Washing off me tremors of unease
Finding in my morrows a place to sleep
Permeating my world deep and deep
In me the passion for poetry you inspire
Over my lays you cast instant fire
You kindled my passionate desire
Thus setting my poems afire.
Forugh Farrokhzad, Another Birth, Selected Poems Translated by Ismali Salami Zanbankadeh Publication Modern Persian Poetry Page 20 ISBN: 964-6117-36-8

'Another Birth'

Digital Photo by Roger Hume

Another BirthPersian : Tavalodi DigarAudio Files: Tavalodi Digar
My whole being is a dark chant
which will carry you
perpetuating you
to the dawn of eternal growths and blossoming
in this chant I sighed you sighed
in this chant
I grafted you to the tree to the water to the fire.

Life is perhaps
 a long street through which a woman holding
 a basket passes every day

Life is perhaps
a rope with which a man hangs himself from a branch
life is perhaps a child returning home from school.
Life is perhaps lighting up a cigarette
in the narcotic repose between two love-makings
or the absent gaze of a passerby
who takes off his hat to another passerby
with a meaningless smile and a good morning .

Life is perhaps that enclosed moment
when my gaze destroys itself in the pupil of your eyes
and it is in the feeling
 which I will put into the Moon's impression
 and the Night's perception.

In a room as big as loneliness
my heart
which is as big as love
looks at the simple pretexts of its happiness
at the beautiful decay of flowers in the vase
at the sapling you planted in our garden
and the song of canaries
which sing to the size of a window.

Ah
this is my lot
this is my lot
my lot is
a sky which is taken away at the drop of a curtain
my lot is going down a flight of disused stairs
a regain something amid putrefaction and nostalgia
my lot is a sad promenade in the garden of memories
and dying in the grief of a voice which tells me
I love
your hands.

I will plant my hands in the garden
I will grow I know I know I know
and swallows will lay eggs
in the hollow of my ink-stained hands.

I shall wear
a pair of twin cherries as ear-rings
and I shall put dahlia petals on my finger-nails
there is an alley
where the boys who were in love with me
still loiter with the same unkempt hair
thin necks and bony legs
and think of the innocent smiles of a little girl
who was blown away by the wind one night.

There is an alley
     which my heart has stolen
     from the streets of my childhood.

The journey of a form along the line of time
inseminating the line of time with the form
a form conscious of an image
coming back from a feast in a mirror
And it is in this way
that someone dies
and someone lives on.

No fisherman shall ever find a pearl in a small brook
which empties into a pool.

I know a sad little fairy
who lives in an ocean
and ever so softly
plays her heart into a magic flute
a sad little fairy
who dies with one kiss each night
and is reborn with one kiss each dawn.

Happiness

I also believe happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings.

 And... once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it ~Elizabeth Gilbert

Transformation through Decay

When  it rains, most birds head for shelter; the eagle  is the only bird that, in order to avoid the  rain, starts flying above the  clouds...


An  amazing tidbit about the Eagle's eyesight:   The eagle can probably identify a rabbit moving  almost a mile away. That means that an eagle  flying at an altitude of 1000 feet over open  country could spot prey over an area of almost 3  square miles from a fixed  position.


No  wonder God wants us to spread our wings and soar  with eagles.