These are the Clouds

Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff

Re: These are the Clouds

Postby Cordelia » Fri Mar 22, 2019 7:28 am

"Every day that I wake up I think to myself you are still here and woke up again for a reason.
Make the best of today because who knows what tomorrow will bring.
Love your family and friends. Make sure they know it."


^^^Thanks for posting this Karmamatterz, it's a beautifully written reminder, especially meaningful to me right now.

Love And Death

What time the mighty moon was gathering light
Love paced the thymy plots of Paradise,
And all about him roll'd his lustrous eyes;
When, turning round a cassia, full in view,
Death, walking all alone beneath a yew,
And talking to himself, first met his sight:
"You must begone," said Death, "these walks are mine."
Love wept and spread his sheeny vans for flight;
Yet ere he parted said, "This hour is thine:
Thou art the shadow of life, and as the tree
Stands in the sun and shadows all beneath,
So in the light of great eternity
Life eminent creates the shade of death;
The shadow passeth when the tree shall fall,
But I shall reign for ever over all."

~ Alfred Lord Tennyson ~

Image

'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.


~ Tennyson ~
The greatest sin is to be unconscious. ~ Carl Jung

We may not choose the parameters of our destiny. But we give it its content. ~ Dag Hammarskjold 'Waymarks'
User avatar
Cordelia
 
Posts: 3697
Joined: Sun Oct 11, 2009 7:07 pm
Location: USA
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: These are the Clouds

Postby Cordelia » Sat Mar 23, 2019 10:28 am

Image

Image


Courage is the price that
Life exacts for granting peace.

The soul that knows it not
Knows no release from little things:
Knows not the livid loneliness of fear,
Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear the sound of wings.

Nor can life grant us boon of living, compensate
For dull gray ugliness and pregnant hate
Unless we dare
The soul's dominion.
Each time we make a choice, we pay
With courage to behold the resistless day,
And count it fair.


~ Amelia Earhart ~

Image
The greatest sin is to be unconscious. ~ Carl Jung

We may not choose the parameters of our destiny. But we give it its content. ~ Dag Hammarskjold 'Waymarks'
User avatar
Cordelia
 
Posts: 3697
Joined: Sun Oct 11, 2009 7:07 pm
Location: USA
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: These are the Clouds

Postby Cordelia » Thu Mar 28, 2019 7:24 am

Image

There are psychologists who think that consciousness accompanies brain processes and is determined by them but doesn't itself exert any influence on them. Something like the reflection of a tree in water; it couldn't exist without the tree, but it doesn't in any way affect he tree.

~ W. Somerset Maugham ~ The Razor's Edge

Image

Epiphenomenon

I spend a long time considering pillowcases.
Which pillowcase does my head want for rest?
A lace edge so that the cheek does not grow bored?

All night the face turns on its pillow,
bridging the day gone with its divination of tomorrow.
The brain sleeps but the body twitches and kicks,

lashes out, steals the sheets, twists the blankets
into thick, furred knots. Thomas Huxley believed
the mind’s shrill whistle contributed nothing

to the locomotive body; Plato, that the mind
knows great truths while the body lives in shadows.
What I know is how sleep releases the body

from me telling it where to put its feet, its fingers,
how the tongue should roll its Rs, when the teeth
may bite or gnash. I give it my consideration

of pillowcases, of lotions and textures it may like,
or farther afield—an actual field—clover against
the skin. The sound of insects rising as the sun sets,

the head leaned back into a cradle of hands,
how the head adores the hands though they
are separated by so much and the jealousy of arms.

Body, I will lay you down beside
another body you have grown to love.
I will bid you still in the moments before sleep

and then I will hand you the keys to the house
and let you spend the night plying all the locks.
In the morning I will wash you with care

and lead you around and treat you kindly
and if there is sobbing it is not my sobbing
and we will both pretend not to hear it.

~ Karen Skolfield ~


Image
The greatest sin is to be unconscious. ~ Carl Jung

We may not choose the parameters of our destiny. But we give it its content. ~ Dag Hammarskjold 'Waymarks'
User avatar
Cordelia
 
Posts: 3697
Joined: Sun Oct 11, 2009 7:07 pm
Location: USA
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: These are the Clouds

Postby Cordelia » Tue Apr 02, 2019 7:19 am

A Baby Asleep After Pain

As a drenched, drowned bee
Hangs numb and heavy from a bending flower,
So clings to me
My baby, her brown hair brushed with wet tears
And laid against her cheek;
Her soft white legs hanging heavily over my arm
Swinging heavily to my movements as I walk.
My sleeping baby hangs upon my life,
Like a burden she hangs on me.
She has always seemed so light,
But now she is wet with tears and numb with pain
Even her floating hair sinks heavily,
Reaching downwards;
As the wings of a drenched, drowned bee
Are a heaviness, and a weariness.

~ D. H. Lawrence ~

Image
~ Paula Modersohn-Becker ~


“Don't you find it a beautiful clean thought, a world empty of people, just uninterrupted grass, and a hare sitting up?

~ D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love ~


Image
The greatest sin is to be unconscious. ~ Carl Jung

We may not choose the parameters of our destiny. But we give it its content. ~ Dag Hammarskjold 'Waymarks'
User avatar
Cordelia
 
Posts: 3697
Joined: Sun Oct 11, 2009 7:07 pm
Location: USA
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: These are the Clouds

Postby Cordelia » Mon Apr 08, 2019 10:40 am

Image

Misses of the Swaying Light Bulb

See the misses of the swaying light bulb?

In all goodbyes there is the snap of the fresh, young branch.

Like our once speckled dreams, breathing in the deep of our lakes
reat-Grandma, cut off at a pale instant, has advised, “For the mass of us.”

She has advised, “For the none of us,” hiding behind the barrel of spices.

Be relieved to know, we have feasted in the fields, catching the scribble
of the great hummingbird.

We enact a no-closer-possible union.

A braid of fumes sly into our noses.

~ Haesong Kwon ~

Image
Image
The greatest sin is to be unconscious. ~ Carl Jung

We may not choose the parameters of our destiny. But we give it its content. ~ Dag Hammarskjold 'Waymarks'
User avatar
Cordelia
 
Posts: 3697
Joined: Sun Oct 11, 2009 7:07 pm
Location: USA
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: These are the Clouds

Postby Cordelia » Wed Apr 17, 2019 7:20 am

Image

Giorno dei Morti

Along the avenue of cypresses,
All in their scarlet cloaks and surplices
Of linen, go the chanting choristers,
The priests in gold and black, the villagers. . . .

And all along the path to the cemetery
The round dark heads of men crowd silently,
And black-scarved faces of womenfolk, wistfully
Watch at the banner of death, and the mystery.

And at the foot of a grave a father stands
With sunken head, and forgotten, folded hands;
And at the foot of a grave a mother kneels
With pale shut face, nor either hears nor feels

The coming of the chanting choristers
Between the avenue of cypresses,
The silence of the many villagers,
The candle-flames beside the surplices.

~ D.H. Lawrence ~

Image
The greatest sin is to be unconscious. ~ Carl Jung

We may not choose the parameters of our destiny. But we give it its content. ~ Dag Hammarskjold 'Waymarks'
User avatar
Cordelia
 
Posts: 3697
Joined: Sun Oct 11, 2009 7:07 pm
Location: USA
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: These are the Clouds

Postby Cordelia » Tue Apr 23, 2019 10:19 am


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlaH55lu80c

Leaves of Grass, Flowers of Grass

Leaves of grass, what about leaves of grass?
Grass blossoms, grass has flowers, flowers of grass
dusty pollen of grass, tall grass in its midsummer maleness
hay-seed and tiny grain of grass, graminiferae
not far from the lily, the considerable lily;

even the blue-grass blossoms;
even the bison knew it;
even the stupidest farmer gathers his hay in bloom, in blossom
just before it seeds.

Only the best matters; even the cow knows it;
grass in blossom, blossoming grass, risen to its height and its natural pride
in its own splendour and its own feathery maleness
the grass, the grass.

Leaves of grass, what are leaves of grass, when at its best grass blossoms.

~ D.H. Lawrence ~

Image
Image
The greatest sin is to be unconscious. ~ Carl Jung

We may not choose the parameters of our destiny. But we give it its content. ~ Dag Hammarskjold 'Waymarks'
User avatar
Cordelia
 
Posts: 3697
Joined: Sun Oct 11, 2009 7:07 pm
Location: USA
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: These are the Clouds

Postby Cordelia » Sat Apr 27, 2019 10:25 am

ImageImage

...she moved about in a mental cloud of many-coloured idealities, which eclipsed all sinister contingencies by its brightness.

Image

Rain on a Grave

Clouds spout upon her
Their waters amain
In ruthless disdain, -
Her who but lately
Had shivered with pain
As at touch of dishonour
If there had lit on her
So coldly, so straightly
Such arrows of rain:

One who to shelter
Her delicate head
Would quicken and quicken
Each tentative tread
If drops chanced to pelt her
That summertime spills
In dust-paven rills
When thunder-clouds thicken
And birds close their bills.

Would that I lay there
And she were housed here!
Or better, together
Were folded away there
Exposed to one weather
We both, - who would stray there
When sunny the day there,
Or evening was clear
At the prime of the year.

Soon will be growing
Green blades from her mound,
And daisies be showing
Like stars on the ground,
Till she form part of them -
Ay - the sweet heart of them,
Loved beyond measure
With a child's pleasure
All her life's round.

~ Thomas Hardy ~

Image
The greatest sin is to be unconscious. ~ Carl Jung

We may not choose the parameters of our destiny. But we give it its content. ~ Dag Hammarskjold 'Waymarks'
User avatar
Cordelia
 
Posts: 3697
Joined: Sun Oct 11, 2009 7:07 pm
Location: USA
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: These are the Clouds

Postby Cordelia » Sat May 04, 2019 7:34 am

Today the heavens are sealed with clouds and blind,
A leaping madman comes the pathless wind,
The rains of deluge flee, a storm-tossed shade,
Over thy breast of gloom. Loud and dismayed
Thy lost enormous chant rolls purposeless
Seeking its end in an unregioned space.
O come, thou great mad sea, O surging come!
My breast defenceless mates thy dolorous foam.
Darkness the heavens, the wind doom’s signal breath,
I shall float on through thee or sink in death.

~ Sri Aurobindo ~



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK090W_sKpA


Image
The greatest sin is to be unconscious. ~ Carl Jung

We may not choose the parameters of our destiny. But we give it its content. ~ Dag Hammarskjold 'Waymarks'
User avatar
Cordelia
 
Posts: 3697
Joined: Sun Oct 11, 2009 7:07 pm
Location: USA
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: These are the Clouds

Postby Cordelia » Mon May 27, 2019 10:22 am

To The Clouds

O painted clouds ! sweet beauties of the sky,
How have I view'd your motion and your rest,
When like fleet hunters ye have left mine eye,
In your thin gauze of woolly-fleecing drest;
Or in your threaten'd thunder's grave black vest,
Like black deep waters slowly moving by,
Awfully striking the spectator's breast
With your Creator's dread sublimity,
As admiration mutely views your storms.
And I do love to see you idly lie,
Painted by heav'n as various as your forms,
Pausing upon the eastern mountain high,
As morn awakes with spring's wood-harmony;
And sweeter still, when in your slumbers sooth
You hang the western arch o'er day's proud eye:
Still as the even-pool, uncurv'd and smooth,
My gazing soul has look'd most placidly;
And higher still devoutly wish'd to strain,
To wipe your shrouds and sky's blue blinders by,
With all the warmness of a moon-struck brain,--
To catch a glimpse of Him who bids you reign,
And view the dwelling of all majesty.

~ John Clare ~

Image

Image
John Clare Cottage, in Helpston, between Stamford and Peterborough
The greatest sin is to be unconscious. ~ Carl Jung

We may not choose the parameters of our destiny. But we give it its content. ~ Dag Hammarskjold 'Waymarks'
User avatar
Cordelia
 
Posts: 3697
Joined: Sun Oct 11, 2009 7:07 pm
Location: USA
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: These are the Clouds

Postby Cordelia » Sat Jun 01, 2019 10:07 am

Image

I Am

I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest- that I loved the best-
Are strange- nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil'd or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below- above the vaulted sky.

~John Clare~



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5NCCtptwfY

The journey's over; another's just begun
Beneath moonlight, but by the warming sun
I seek to hold you in sunshine or rain
Beneath the heavens, I'm coming home again

So far we drifted, like ships upon the sea
Horizons fading, we lost to destiny
Storm clouds hover; our vanity like pain
Which held back the winds that bring us home again

Could I see, now, the swallows in their flight
Watch the moon dance on oceans in the night
The trees reach upward to help the birds to fly
And of the creatures who'll hear them when they cry

We walk the hillside like lost souls in the night
And in the darkness, we're searching for the light
And in the morning, like freshly fallen dew
Much like a moon's breath, I'm coming home to you

This journey's over; another's just begun
Beneath moonlight or by the warming sun
For I remember that if my heart be true
Just like an eagle, I'm coming home to you
The greatest sin is to be unconscious. ~ Carl Jung

We may not choose the parameters of our destiny. But we give it its content. ~ Dag Hammarskjold 'Waymarks'
User avatar
Cordelia
 
Posts: 3697
Joined: Sun Oct 11, 2009 7:07 pm
Location: USA
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: These are the Clouds

Postby Cordelia » Sat Jun 08, 2019 10:17 am

Image
~Andy Warhol~


Rorschach

Snow patches along the creek bank.
Too simple. Wings melting there.

The tops of two maples
beside the window of my childhood bedroom.

Stain on a linen napkin left by lip-
stick—why it's called that. Go on.

A man's tattered bow tie
put through the wash cycle—by accident.

A dress, haunted by the child who wore it,
standing by itself in the center of a room.

A face. Whose? A woman's face, lathered up
with soap except around the eyes.

A fluke. A flute? A fluke
with two eyes on one side of its head.

The cigarette ground into the floor
by Bette Davis in All About Eve.

Next. A house that can't be seen
from the road—no, what hides it.

Graffiti of the nearsighted
painted by mouth.

And if I say "tree"?
I'd say—death by wood.

Cabinet? Casket.
Tell me again.

A map. A map of the island
where I asked to be born.

~Jeanne Marie Beaumont~

Image
~John Sargent~
The greatest sin is to be unconscious. ~ Carl Jung

We may not choose the parameters of our destiny. But we give it its content. ~ Dag Hammarskjold 'Waymarks'
User avatar
Cordelia
 
Posts: 3697
Joined: Sun Oct 11, 2009 7:07 pm
Location: USA
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: These are the Clouds

Postby Cordelia » Tue Jun 11, 2019 10:08 am

The greatest sin is to be unconscious. ~ Carl Jung

We may not choose the parameters of our destiny. But we give it its content. ~ Dag Hammarskjold 'Waymarks'
User avatar
Cordelia
 
Posts: 3697
Joined: Sun Oct 11, 2009 7:07 pm
Location: USA
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: These are the Clouds

Postby chump » Sat Jun 15, 2019 1:38 pm

User avatar
chump
 
Posts: 2261
Joined: Thu Aug 06, 2009 10:28 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: These are the Clouds

Postby Cordelia » Sun Aug 04, 2019 11:00 am

Original Sin

You could probably convince me to take off my glasses

and rise from the ocean at dawn. We’d need to hash

out the details before I gave my consent – but I could say

“Hmmmm, maybe” and you could watch the snow squalls

disintegrate off my body as I whisper “Bon Voyage.”

Some incandescent man could tell us not to climb on

the ropes, which would be disappointing as a bottle of

Mountain Dew left spinning in the air. There’s this inner

core of anguish and our misplaced optimism is but

a diaphanous membrane disguising the black hole that

engulfs my bedside table and fills our champagne

glasses with embarrassing Google searches. We all know

owls are phantoms but, holy moly, this wind… You could

probably convince me they’re just twenty dollar bills

spilling out of your back pocket and into the valley

below. I’ll think about that tomorrow as we fill each

others’ mouths with ice and snow and melting.

Right now I’m in an Uber, watching the trees go wild.


~Elizabeth Young~

Image


I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe.
Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Time to die.

~Roy Batty~

Image
The greatest sin is to be unconscious. ~ Carl Jung

We may not choose the parameters of our destiny. But we give it its content. ~ Dag Hammarskjold 'Waymarks'
User avatar
Cordelia
 
Posts: 3697
Joined: Sun Oct 11, 2009 7:07 pm
Location: USA
Blog: View Blog (0)

PreviousNext

Return to General Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 59 guests