Haiku One

frosty roofs gleam sun
Blue sky moon milkiness wanes
passengers shiver

slope ridge line light

Photography –a medium I first explored over three decades ago and now find myself coming back to again, is compelling. It is the appearance or illusion of what was seen –not seen by the naked eye but by the camera, as Garry Winogrand so aptly noted as he discussed photography while being filmed himself for a documentary on photography.

We can look at photography in another way, not the way the camera ‘looks’ at the world in the split second aperture opening, but the way the human being and the human eye explores and glances, focusing or not focusing at something. Each photograph I take asks, if it can be said that way, to be looked at differently. In the photo above, for the body/brain there is a gestalt here. There are worlds within worlds in this image in the way I experience it. There is abstract beauty, there is light, dance, majesty, tenderness, softness, a deep relax. I love what seems to me the visitors, the trees high up on the ridge drawing my attention and intersecting the ridge line, riding the slope of this arid mountainside.

I love the scale shift in detail from the foreground to the very distant space of the ridge on into the sky. The feel of the day that drew me out into its changeability is touched here in this photograph, for me. Something breathes more easily within me in the presence of this light and shadow illusion of a land and cloud scape. So where might we say this landscape exists?

As invisible

as an updraft, the eye soars

as the osprey’s flight

Relocating Teeth and Other Things

Over the past six months or more I've purposely been dislocating my teeth in my upper bite from where they've been seated in my mouth for the past several decades. It's as if I've been dislocated in my nervous system prior to this and now I'm going through another kind of dislocation in order to re-locate.  I have guides assisting me in this re-location. There are always guides available for location, dislocation, re-location. Have you noticed?

If I had a story about this it might go like this:

Once upon a time, there was a girl whose mouth and all her teeth were none of her business, but of course they were, but they weren't because there are people in the world who used to think that children had no say in what happens to and with their bodies. It's as if the common assumption was shared that there are many people in the world that seem to know what is going on in other people's bodies, teeth, and other personal manifestations of their existence and there are others left out of the conversation.

In this world of that time, people are thinking in ways that things either fit into something called 'right' or something called 'wrong.' Different words can be substituted here, maybe words more fitting to the times and also possibly to the role of the people involved. The minds of people have been made up by things that they don't even see or know about. When the word small is used synonymously with insufficient, certain judgments prevail and those who are in the position of holding the conversation, directing actions accordingly move within the limitations of their perspective. Such is life. Such is life?

"Your daughter's mouth is too small for all her teeth."
    "What do we do about that?"
"We can extract some of her teeth. Not all her teeth are necessary."

From here on out in the story, I notice I don't want to make the rest of it up. I was party to having some of my baby teeth extracted and later four more adult teeth were extracted from my mouth. Was this something other than 'good' or 'bad?' Where could, would, did, does this story go?

Several years ago my system tested for opening up my bite, as my teeth had settled on touching down in a specific way such that my nervous system was getting stuck whenever I bit down or closed my jaw. Do you know how many times a day the bite settles? Too many to count basically. A bite appliance was made for my teeth so that my jaw could move freely and not just get stuck in that one position. I had been grinding my teeth, which was evident from the looks of some of my teeth.

My body responded positively to having this bite appliance made. This time around I asked my body and listened to what it was saying. Resting in this way over a few more years, again, my body called for another adjustment, this time the upper bite was asking to be shifted from the inside out. Now teeth in motion, upper and lower in some kind of consort. A different story was in the making after 30, almost 40 years of another way. A story without needing a story, perhaps?

Moon rises, reflects

The watercourse way, fulfills

Over under through

Water Tower

It is, what is called a water tower.
It stands alone on a green field on the east slope of my mountain.
Now with brown-gold legs, higher up ferruginous sides.
No longer any cattle here, no reason for water service.
This well rusted watering can looks across to rolling coastal foothills.
A little green ball crowns the tower’s cap.

^^^^^     *******     ^^^^^     

mountain water tank
man’s labor left to picnics
four leggy shade tree

^^^^^     *******     ^^^^^

mountain lion and fall light (from an email to aimee on wednesday at 7:57 am on 10-10, waning moon)

got food poisoning on monday, still feel wacked a bit from it. my friend is getting prepped to be shortlisted on the heart transplant list, helping her, trying to remember to pray from my gratitude and presence  instead of worry from my place of fear. had a weird dream last night i was talking to her and she was giving all her money to help bury others in her family. her family was being meaner than usual (which is a feat), and i roared and made a sound that was almost inhuman and very relieving (stress relief through roaring in a dream, thank you lion people, thank you cougar people)...

in the dream, the sound comes out of my whole being, verberant. true. i open my mouth and the mountain lion starts (now, a siren in the distance coming closer can’t touch it). it goes on and on, as if though mountain is in me, and i am just a tube a pipe organ of gruff shimmer loud rage. in the dream i worry will this hurt my friend this loud sound that goes on and on longer than breath could last. she looks present but unafeared. in the dream others are more present, less reactive. finally the sound coming through me ends, and my fibers and cells feel relieved. 

in the dream i decline war reminiscence with a uniformed man who wants to smoke a cigar together (?? I think I might have been a vet in the dream) and i am hanging out with a memoir writing group my recuperating friend is it turns out actually leading in some kind of hospital/hospice/care home. i don't know how to walk in the careful helpful orderly way they are, i don't open the door for the next person far enough then do but the wrong way too far. i don't fit here. i move too quickly, thinking to slip through. there is no slipping through here where everyone has falcon eyes and attends with care. someone makes a randy joke and light laughter ripples. this is a group in tune. i am in the center but in the outs. they belong through becoming a larger being. i skid past. the light is coming slantwise, fall light, through the windows to the left.

what i remember, beside roaring, is the sadness, and the light.