THE GREEN WONDER OF JUNE, the molten hand of VENUS & "...the covenant of duskbirds..."

I don't think the SuperMoon will be our entree tonight. I'll check it again at midnight.  The sky is like thick custard--I offer you instead some dessert:  the surface of Venus and this exquisite poem by Stacie Cassarino:

The way the sky looked in Charras today

                                                                   Summer Solstice

                                               I wanted to see where beauty comes from

                                              without you in the world, hauling my heart

                                                across sixty acres of northeast meadow,

                                                      my pockets filling with flowers.

 

                                                               Then I remembered,

                                                      it’s you I miss in the brightness

                                                      and body of every living name:

                                                       rattlebox, yarrow, wild vetch.

 

                                                   You are the green wonder of June,

                                                    root and quasar, the thirst for salt.

                                            When I finally understand that people fail

                                              at love, what is left but cinquefoil, thistle,

                                                    the paper wings of the dragonfly

                                         aeroplaning the soul with a sudden blue hilarity?

                                        

                                             If I get the story right, desire is continuous,

                                                    equatorial. There is still so much

                                                    I want to know: what you believe

                                                      can never be removed from us,

                                                 what you dreamed on Walnut Street

                                            in the unanswerable dark of your childhood,

                                                      learning pleasure on your own.

                                           

                                              Tell me our story: are we impetuous,

                                          are we kind to each other, do we surrender

                                               to what the mind cannot think past?

                                               Where is the evidence I will learn

                                                          to be good at loving?

 

                                              The black dog orbits the horseshoe pond

                                             for treefrogs in their plangent emergencies.

                                                           There are violet hills,

                                               there is the covenant of duskbirds.

                                              The moon comes over the mountain

                                             like a big peach, and I want to tell you

                                            what I couldn’t say the night we rushed

                                       North, how I love the seriousness of your fingers

                                                  and the way you go into yourself,

                                                  calling my half-name like a secret.

 

                                               I stand between taproot and treespire.

                                                        Here is the compass rose

                                                      to help me live through this.

                                                 Here are twelve ways of knowing

                                               what blooms even in the blindness

                                                  of such longing. Yellow oxeye,

                                           viper’s bugloss with its set of pink arms

                                                      pleading do not forget me.

 

                                                     We hunger for eloquence .

                                                     We measure the isopleths.

                                         I am visiting my life with reckless plenitude.

                                          The air is fragrant with tiny strawberries.

                                            Fireflies turn on their electric wills:

                                            an effulgence. Let me come back

                                          whole, let me remember how to touch you

                                                         before it is too late.

  - Stacie Cassarino

 

 

A Murmuration of Starlings

 

 

Some Doves at Dusk

 

Created from data from the Magellan Spacecraft - apod.nasa.gov/

 

Space in Space - Sammy Atherton, 2nd

 

 

 

 

AMOR FATI - Galloping Towards ...

Solstice d'été - Summer Solstice

From "Femmes Eternelle" Jardins du Luxembourg -Weeki Wachee, Fla - Olivier Martel

"I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer."                                  Nietzsche from "The Gay Science"

Weeki Wachee, Florida - Toni Friselle 1947

AMOR FATI - Love of one's own Fate

Michel de Montaigne - Bordeaux Maire 1581-1585

After I set fire to the rain it got hotter than blue blazes! So K&I took the train to Bordeaux to celebrate my birthday -- no longer "une femme d'un certain age", rather "a woman of certain TGV réductions."  We often say to each other that we can't seem to wrap our arms wide enough around this country, there is so much to embrace and our arms aren't long enough. But we made a special effort in Bordeaux.  I wanted to visit Montaigne, one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance.
He preferred the stoic "Amor Fati" to religious absolutism, deploring the righteous cruelty of those with undoubting convictions saying:  "It is putting a very high price on one's conjectures to have someone roasted alive on their account."

In her book,  How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer, Sarah Bakewell takes this to be an allusion to the spate of witch-hunting which accompanied the religious wars. Sixteenth century life in Bordeaux was crammed with massacres and vindictive repressions.   As Maire, Montaigne was courageous and somewhat successful in playing a reconciling role.  Wonder what he would make of Guantanamo Bay?

Unchained Catalytic Converter - Memorial Fountain, Bordeaux

There's usually a starchy breeze riffing off the Gironde river & plenty of cafes for desultory people watching.  Plus my favorite fountain:  the Monument Aux Girondins, built in the early twentieth century as a memorial to the Girondists, originally part of France's legislative assembly who supported the French Revolution, becoming political martyrs when executed in 1793. 

Monument Aux Girondins, Bordeaux

Another view of the Fountain

The spray coming out of the horses nostrils was so refreshing.  There were some buck naked kids cavorting in the fountain, but I'm not going to display those shots, just in case the kiddie porn police inspect my laptop at the airport. 

Besides these horse sculptures, I've been seeing loads of real horses and donkeys all over the Charente lately. It began right after my dear friend Jeanne from southern Ca. (an extraordinary artist and resident expert on all things mythic) wrote about EPONA, the Celtic horse goddess, the protector of horses, donkeys and mules.  Here is what she said in part:  "She is the one drinking at the fresh stream's edge at Glastonbury, standing there on the shore.  She is known to travel across realms.  The Romans, the Gauls honored her. The Gemini Moon, Epona's Moon.  A time for playful, delightful opportunity, blending opposites, balancing polarities, walking in balance, galloping toward the coming summer..." J. Benion

Scouring of the White Horse (Epona) at Uffington

Maybe a Celtic Horse Goddess in a field near Marthon

Glastonbury's Temple of the Stars - Landscape Zodiac

 From "The High History of the Holy Grail" - K.E. Maltwood

 "...now the Holy Thing is here again Among us brother...That so perchance the vision may be seen by thee and those, and all the world be heal'd."
                                                                                       Tennyson's Holy Grail

I grew up with horses. I'm a two-legged horse. I think I was "foaled"-- daydreaming in the hayloft and sleeping on the straw next to my horse Toby.  I wanted to become a jockey when I grew up--to ride like the wind.  The closest I got was working at Arlington Race Track, tacking and grooming & walking the steaming horses after the races, around and around and around.

Horses - St. Laurent des Hommes

Donkey friend - Domaine in Dirac

Epona is also associated with the Welsh goddess, Rhiannon and the ancient Egyptian Goddess Isis

Isis & Epona (sidesaddle) - Pompei, Campana, Italy - Engraving from Wall

It could be a Nereid seated on a hippocamp, but whoever it is you have to be a good rider to ride sidesaddle!  Maybe it was EPONA in the legend of Lady Godiva?

Lady Godiva, John Collier, 1898

No wonder she was so popular!  Her fame spread across Europe, along the Danube frontier, in northern Spain where she was called Epane and all the way to Greece, Turkey and Africa.  Many of her artifacts were found on the European continent and there is speculation that her cult actually began in the lands around northern France.

Epona - Musee Lorrain 3rd c.AD Freyming, Moselle Fr.

The Romans celebrated Eponalia by giving each horse, donkey & mule a day of rest

Ever the guardian and protector she offers passage between the worlds.  Her image appears on ancient gravestones throughout Europe.  Not only the bringer of life, but a "psychopomp" - She and her horses led the souls in the afterlife ride. She also guides soul-flight travelers across the thresholds of the mysterious realms, for purposes of healing or seership.

Two donkeys - Sers, France

Baby Donkey - Feuillade, France

Another passage with Connemara pony, Ireland 

May Epona shower her blessings upon you; be your guide & companion on the journeys that your soul craves.

Epona - Circus Maximus, Rome

Dark Goddess Tarot - Ellen Lorenzi-Prince

Transformational Tarot - Arnell Ando

                                           

Ellen Lorenzi-Prince's Divine Dark Goddess deck will be released in the "not too distant future wherein all these Goddesses exist"..you can visit the website, www.darkgoddesstarot.com to pre-order or learn more about this gorgeous deck of 78 cards, each with a mythical female figure.

Arnell Ando's Six of Wands from her Transformational Tarot deck is based on the legendary Goddess, Lady Godiva.  You can go to www.arnellart.com to order this one and see other stunning decks by Arnell.  There are many glowing reviews of the TT deck, but I especially like this excerpt from Diane Wilkes' review for Amazon:  "filled with exquisite and cohesive images that allowed you to enter each card wholly. As a lover of Pre-Raphaelite art, I was delighted with the beauty of the deck and bought it for that reason." 

Summer Solstice - Stonehenge 2013, 6 hours ago

This Cherub played a song for me on his lute

June 6th, mon anniversaire:

"For all those who walked this strange road with me, and held out their hands when I faltered. This is a ship of our own making."
--"The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a ship of her own making" -Catherynne M. Valenti. 

Thank you to all my cherished friends & family who remembered my birthday. To be remembered is one of the greatest gifts! 

VI "The Lovers", Gemini's tarot card, this one by Johfra Bosschart.

And these beautiful handmade birthday cards from:

Lisa de St. Croix - www.lisadestcroix.com

Nerieds Riding the Waves - Jeanne Benion

P.S. Take a moon bath under the SUPERMOON, June 23rd -  Keep your hooves on the ground, but fly with the West Wind & Shine On!

THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON: A piece for lunatics

"The motion of the soul is circular"  - Plotinus
from "Green Man, Earth Angel" - Tom Cheetham

Unknown

Oh, that Penumbral Lunar Eclipse on the 25th of May....    Hang on Sloopy!                             

May 25, 2013

 “Everyman is a moon and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody"
              Mark Twain

Clair de Lune Espagnol, France 1909 - 2 minute film

Broken hearted Pedro leaves a boisterous cafe after a jealous quarrel with his sweetheart and is picked up by a flying machine that takes him to the moon.  Pedro and the Moon battle and after Pedro is given a pardon by three stars, he is dropped back to earth into the arms of his sweetheart who is glad to see him.  
                               Synopsis -  Clair de Lune Espagnol -  Emile Cohl, Director

You can watch the film on YouTube, totally fun, worth 2 minutes of lunacy. 

Three Stars Tattoo by Chances

O na hôkû no na kiu o ka lani - Hawaiian proverb
                            The STARS are the SPIES of Heaven 


Pink Floyd's 1973 album, "Dark Side of the Moon", original concept had to do with the pressures of modern life, travel, money etc., but turned into a "meditation on insanity". 

Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd, analysis Vincent Amendolare

I was never a fan of their music, but I like some of their lyrics, especially the first & last two cuts: 

Breathe:  "...and all you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be..."

Brain Damage:"...the lunatic is on the grass, the lunatic is on the grass, remembering games and daisy chains and laughs, got to keep the loonies on the path."

Eclipse (Waters): "All that you touch, And all that you see, All that you taste, All you feel, And all that you love, And all that you hate...And all that you slight, And everyone you fight, And all that is now, And all that is gone, And all that's to come, And everything under the sun is in time, But the sun is eclipsed by the Moon."

For the past month from eclipse to eclipse, I've felt a bit like a LUNATIC (and I'm not alone!). But lunatic doesn't mean the same thing in french. It just means "moody."  In our little village the French refer to our Deputy Maire as a "lunatic".  I took french lessons from him for about a year & have to agree.  Tres moody! He spoke no English, had an Occitan accent I could barely understand...maybe that is what made him so moody.                                                                                                                                                                     
Lunar eclipses are disturbing to peace of mind, affecting the emotions like a slippery eel swimming inside the chambers of your heart. But they are also cosmic opportunities. The eclipse closes a phase, endings are inevitable, but that means there can be new beginnings.

"When Jaguars ate the Moon: and Other Stories"

Beaucoup de mythology surrounding lunar eclipses. The Egyptians believed that the moon was being swallowed by a sow for a short period of time.  The  Mayans believed that a Jaguar ate the Moon. Hati in Norse mythology was a wolf who swallowed the moon. Some thought the moon had been eaten by a dragon and in certain cultures, the moon was being swallowed by demons. They believed that curses and throwing stones would bring the moon back and rid the night sky of the demons.

Maria Cristina Brusca & Tona Wilson - 1995

  "So the self under the eye, lies
                                                                                        attendant and withdrawn" --

Sarah Moon

If your birthday is today make a wish upon your "Pole" (North) STAR

Tiffany Mays

It is said that those born on the 31st of the month ruled by the number 4 (3+1=4) and the planet Uranus, can be difficult to fathom.  They can have a propensity for sudden and explosive changes in mood.  Their tarot card is "The Emperor", stable and wise, but sometimes stubborn and tyrannical.

Look your emotional problems square in the eye.  Soften the hard edge when you can.  Avoid arguments, they are just a waste of your energy. Drop all Self-Doubt & expect to have a good time, "remembering games and daisy chains and laughs"...

Joyeux Anniversaire - Be a LUNATIC!

George Kelly of G. Kelly Pie & Mash Shop - Eel Pie Island, London

"AND ALL YOU TOUCH AND ALL YOU SEE IS ALL YOUR LIFE WILL EVER BE."
Pink Floyd - The Dark Side of the Moon

"I SET FIRE TO THE RAIN" - Besieged, A State of Grace, Pushing Daisies & Seven Streams

"I set fire to the RAIN,  and I threw us into the flames
  where I felt somethin' die..."  Adele

I Set Fire to the Rain - Nik Helbig

Set Fire to the Rain & Assassin Creed Jump - Secr3TDesign

THUNDERBOLTS & BIRD SONG--

For weeks, Zeus & Thor have been hurling thunderbolts and creating massive downpours. The wettest year in France in 40 years--they keep telling us.  Zeus, the God of Sky & Thunder, won all his battles with the help of the thunderbolts forged for him by his uncles, the Cyclopes and his son the smith-God Hephaistos. The mighty Thor, Norse God of Thunder, used his Giant-slaying magic hammer to win his battles. Thor even created the tides by drinking down part of the sea.

The biblical rains keep coming and the birds keep singing.  It seemed to me that they were singing louder & more sweetly the harder it rained. Turns out some of the volume is related to mate selection as the little fellows have to go to greater lengths to show their worth in uncertain climates. But another thing that happens to bird song in the rain is similar to the effect raindrops have on light waves. Like the rainbow effect, as rain drops take light and twist the spectrum into components, so do the rain drops take the sound waves of the bird song and distort them. And, as a drop of water will magnify an image, the rain drop will amplify the sound of the bird’s notes.  The result is that what we think we hear really isn’t what it is. 

Wren singing his heart out in the Rain - Kreations by Kerri

 So if people sing in the rain, do our voices & songs sound distorted?
 What we think we hear really isn't what it is?

Clockwork Orange - Singin' in the rain

Sometimes I wish my life were a Musical - Nabigator

But no one was singing anyway...

Everyone around me felt soggy, out of sorts & BESIEGED

The SEVEN of CUPS kept showing up

 

The Seven of Cups can stand for the waters of delusion, the clouds of intoxication, the emotional waters rotting in the depths of destiny.  They have fallen from the grace of Tiphareth, the center of The Tree of Life.  Seven of Cups talks of the human desire to experience the unknown, the subconscious & the wish to escape the plain old reality to find a better world somewhere in fantasy.  Promises unfulfilled, drunkenness, violence, selfish dissipation, deception in love and friendship, success often gained, but not followed up.  The emotions are out of balance; some deep disappointment has not been resolved.  Oh, doom & gloom.  Recognize and accept your own shadow.

Brocante - Chateau de Charras

My Shadow - Long in the Orchard

" Besieged is how most people feel most of the time: by events, by people, by all the necessities of providing, parenting or participating and even by the creative possibilities they have set in motion themselves, including, especially, a success they may have fought for over long years...As creatures we define ourselves through belonging or not belonging, we cannot help but make commitments to people, places and things, which then come looking for us. Conscious or unconscious, we are surrounded not only by the vicissitudes of a difficult world but even more by those of our own making...Little wonder that men and women alternate between the dream of a place apart, untouched by the world and then wanting to be wanted. But we live best at the crossroad between irretrievable aloneness and irretrievable belonging, and even better, as a conversation between the two where no choice is available...Nel mezzo, in the midst of everything, as Dante said, to be besieged - but beautifully, because we have made a place to stand - by the people and the places and the perplexities we have grown to love, seeing them not now as enemies or a force laying siege, but as if for the first time, participants in the drama, well known friends, familiar and surprising, privileged to knock on our door so that we may see them and sit down with them again, perhaps for a very last time."

Begun in a tiny Paris hotel room - but gifted with a balcony for coffee, and an undeserved and glorious view of the Eiffel tower - after waking and starting to think about Buddha’s mythical and miraculous declaration, supposedly said at the moment of his birth.
Heaven above; earth below,
I alone and sacred

Excerpted from essay, Besieged-- David Whyte's  Reader's Circle Essays 2011-2012

 Under the Lime Tree, Cellefrouin, Fr.

But then it rained some more and the grass kept GROWING

Back of the Chateau

Lime trees next to the Orchard

On Thursday, Ascension Day, it was whispery still--the house in blue shadow; we lit candles and reveled in all the shades of blue in the room, in the sky, shifting from Cerulean to Azure, Midnight Blue, Alice Blue, Prussian Blue, Persian Blue, Egyptian Blue, Maya Blue and best of all, Indigo, the  color of "seeing".  I felt like having a "Seance on a Wet Afternoon", with Kim Stanley and Richard
Attenborough--remember that spooky movie? 

Indigo Sky

the erratic light, the willful clouds, scarlet poppies, a lazy bumblebee
at the edge of a lavender just planted, & the ubiquitous CUCKOO
announcing Spring's courtship made me feel dizzy, ditzy and alive.

Now the clouds look like grey butterscotch rolling along

 Here comes the "Grace" part: Quelle beauté, & I couldn't trap it on paper.

My words leaped like spring lambs, but not onto the page!  Days were filled with half started emails and scraps of notes flitting through the elementary air...hopscotching between via positiva & negativa while the soppy spring offered its tender blossoms festooned on every fruit tree...it will be a good year for the bees.  Fat bees on lilacs spotted on evening walk.

Lilacs in the Mist

Apple Tree - Verger

This year's blossom, last year's fruit

I fell into GRACE:  Had some amazing Tarot events,
transcendent readings at La Charrue & Le Marquisat.  I am grateful to be a small piece of the puzzle for change to take place in someone's life.  One woman said she woke up from a dream that told her to go to Les Gardes Ponteroux (the hamlet where I was reading) on her way to Paris, she had never heard of the place and showed up at my table with a bewildered look on her face. The cards revealed a key to resolve a massive decision for her and she left with tears of gratitude.  It was very intense and wonderful to see that kind of transformation.  At La Charrue I read for a whole family, mother, father, son.  Amazing to see the trinity of their cards & destinies intertwined.  Ça m'a plu - That pleased me!

grace (v.)

c.1200, "to thank," from Old French gracier, from grace (see grace (n.)). Meaning "to show favor" (mid-15c.) led to that of "to lend or add grace to something" (1580s, e.g. grace us with your presence), which is the root of the musical sense in grace notes (1650s). Related: Graced; gracing.

grace (n.)

late 12c., "God's favor or help," from Old French grace "pardon, divine grace, mercy; favor, thanks; elegance, virtue" (12c.), from Latin gratia "favor, esteem, regard; pleasing quality, good will, gratitude" (source of Italian grazia, Spanish gracia), from gratus "pleasing, agreeable," from PIE root *gwere- "to favor" (cf. Sanskrit grnati "sings, praises, announces," Lithuanian giriu "to praise, celebrate," Avestan gar- "to praise").

Today is "Whit Monday"  - Lundi de Pentecote - Pentacost Monday - It's still raining.

Pushing Daisies - Via Positiva

"Pushing Daisies" Season 1, Episode 7 Quote:

Vivian - "I think it is brave to try to be happy"

THE SEVEN STREAMS

Come down drenched, at the end of May

with the cold rain so far into your bones

that nothing will warm you

except your own walking.

And let the sun come out at the day's end

by Slievenaglasha with the rainbow's doubling

over Mullock Mor and see your clothes

steaming in the bright air.

BE A PROVENANCE OF SOMETHING GATHERED,
a summation of previous intuitions, 

let your vulnerabilities walking on the cracked sliding limestone

be this time, not a weakness, but a faculty

for understanding what's about to happen.

STAND ABOVE THE SEVEN STREAMS

letting the deep down current surface

around you,

then branch and branch as they do,

back into the mountain

and as if you were able for that flow,

say the few necessary words

and walk on, broader and cleansed

for having imagined.

David Whyte

from "River Flow" 

Pushing Daisies - Via Negativa

The Seven Streams - The Burren, County Clare