Hello from Colorado! I’ve been there and back again, a full dance card with not nearly enough slots for everyone and everything dear to me. I took this photo and the one above at 44th and Tennyson, a gem of a neighborhood with many a fine place to eat (I had really good pizza and [...]

Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country. Anais Nin

You who never arrived in my arms, Beloved, who were lost from the start, I don’t even know what songs would please you. I have given up trying to recognize you in the surging wave of the next moment. All the immense images in me – the far-off, deeply-felt landscape, cities, towers, and bridges, and [...]

Door Yellow Breakfast Sweetness “Make something pretty while you can.” … For this project, I and my fellow bloggers explore: What makes a community? What makes my neighborhood different from others? What makes this place similar to the others I love? Kelli lives in New Jersey with her dog, Willie Nelson Ma

The answer is never the answer. What’s really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you’ll always be seeking. I’ve never seen anybody really find the answer. They think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in wh

  You were born together, and together you shall be forever more. You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days. You shall be together even in the silent memory of the universe. But let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. [...]

Let all of life be an unfettered howl. Like the crowd greeting the gladiator. Don’t stop to think, don’t interrupt the scream, exhale, release life’s rapture. Everything is blooming. Everything is flying. Everything is screaming, choking on its screams. Laughter. Running. Let-down hair. That is all there i

Not perfect Not brave enough Not willing to put up with your shit Not wanted Not smart enough Not heard Not loyal Not talented enough Not valued. Alone. Yeah, that’s me. That’s all of us. One day or another. Heartbroken. Colleen Sohn    

I don’t know what my life would be without The Doors, some cavernous gaping void aching to be filled, most likely. A lifetime of memories of and with my Dad, and countless hours listening and singing and dancing along on my own. A wild crazy love borne in the womb. So it is with great [...]

We ventured to Eugene yesterday for the Mt. Pisgah Arboretum Wildflower Festival. It was a sweet affair, with booths for selling treats of the edible, garden, and treasure variety. We ate and drank, bought some gifts, and walked the paths to spy as many varieties of wildflower as we could. We saw fourteen in the [...]

The phantom leaves traces parachutes propellers on high a tiny check mark seen at 7:18. I knew the phantom as flesh and bone raven curls eyes stolen from the sea. Letters and words over years and miles left to wither into the dead silence of space. The universe doesn’t give a whit about the phantom [...]

Being a Person Be a person here. Stand by the river, invoke the owls. Invoke winter, then spring. Let any season that wants to come here make its own call. After that sound goes away, wait. A slow bubble rises through the earth and begins to include sky, stars, all space, even the outracing expanding [...]

  I sit on the back porch, feet up, nibbling cheese. Guilty pleasure that, any variety but goat, the miserable, ever-present tang clinging to my throat, no matter what they say. It is heavy with heat and this scramble on the keyboard a break from lying prostrate with a book propped on my chest. Though [...]

Peony season is upon us a little early, thanks be to a long stint of dry and warm weather. I am wishing for rain and dreaming about horseback riding. The strawberries are ripening, but some little creature is beating us to the punch when it comes to actually eating them. We may have to start [...]

When the words stop And you can endure the silence That reveals your heart’s pain Of emptiness Or that great wrenching-sweet longing That is the time to try and listen To what the Beloved’s Eyes Most want to say. Hafiz

My baby brother visited us this past week. We drove and walked and ate ad infinitum, from mountain to sea. From Mt. Hood to Cannon Beach where we saw barnacles, star fish, sea anemones, a jellyfish, TWO Bald Eagles, a silent sea captain, old buildings and bouys hanging from trees. We ate seafood, salt water [...]

Life is short. Break the rules. Forgive quickly. Kiss slowly. Love truly. Laugh uncontrollably. And never regret anything That makes you smile. Mark Twain

Hello Everyone! Are you ready for a looong one? Portland’s had truly Spring-like weather, the absolute best I can recall in my fifteen years as a citizen, excellent for gardening, with more digging, planting, and walking. This time we actually went beyond the city limits to where John McLoughlin, also known as the 

It Felt Love How did the rose Ever open its heart And give to this world All its beauty? It felt the encouragement of light Against its being. Otherwise We all remain too frightened. Hafiz

Hello sunshine! Hello dear readers! I am celebrating two weekends worth of digging, mulching, squatting, and shoveling with photos. The little sprouts are peas. The big leaves are rhubarb. Cross your fingers that the slugs don’t devour them all! A brave gnome protects the boysenberries. The mulched area in the foregro

Hi peeps! I’ve got restaurants galore for you today. Interestingly enough, all the photos of actual food are of sweets (or their remains), which I can explain. I am the type who arrives at eating establishments hungry. I might order a cocktail to pass the time but not drink too much of it because I [...]

I am slowly reading Mark Spragg’s Where Rivers Change Directions, savoring the pulse of a life vastly different than mine, yet so much the same: friendship, hard work, the confusion of love, loss, the dynamics of family, intertwined with a rural Wyoming life, much of it spent on horseback. Normally I am a swift reader

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up [...]

My mind’s a wanderer this morning, running a zig-zag track to an unknown destination, obscured and isolated in the scrim of distance. I keep thinking about the boy who died at the Marathon on Monday, the word “peace” scribed in his learner’s hand, the face that said, “I am kind, gentle, heart-f

Take me to your trees. Take me to your breakfasts, your sunsets, your bad dreams, your shoes, your nouns. Take me to your fingers; take me to your deaths. These are worth it. These are what I have come for. Margaret Atwood  

One church bell rings Singing out to a warm bed While one mood is painted on the sky. One cat purrs and stretches Prostrating on the chair While one licks the plate clean. One flash of genius Slipping into the ether While one dreams in sighs. One bird flutters Flying into the trees While one [...]

I wonder if there is a quotation somewhere, one not revealed to my constant digging, that asks, as we pass that middle of life, if we spend near as much time reminiscing as we do in the here-and-now. Sometimes I get lodged in that past space, cozy and hateful of disturbance, moments of the fil-um [...]

You must write every single day of your life… You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads… May you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world. Ray [...]

He hears voices and bird song, oh, and aeroplanes! This was Easter, a rare Portland gem of seventy-five and sunny. Hoot and holler! To celebrate and soak up as much of the goodness that we could, we headed west to Beaverton and the Cooper Mountain Nature Park. Dear neighbors, have you ever been? Not only [...]

I love this man!