drawn from the river
It’s time. Time to consider direction and conception, where we are headed, and how we do what we do.
“Full Fathom five thy father lies,
Of his bones are coral made,
Those are pearls that were his eyes,
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change,
into something rich and strange,
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell,
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them, ding-dong, bell.”
Shakespeare, The Tempest
It’s time to get out and chase the snow.
oil pastel on paper
“Quick”, she growls quietly. “what’s that?!” I walk to the window with her and we in the quiet light of dawn watch a bushy tailed fox dance a loop in the snow in front of us. Noel, my dog, has never seen a fox before. A beautiful moment to watch. And then as quick as she came she runs across the bridge and up the trail in front of us. Good morning!
I have recently been reminded of the root of the word courage. From the French corage, which means heart. When we love deeply, we find our courage. Today I am in the place of corage.
The spirit of New Orleans seeps into you if you give it a chance. It’s the reason visitors want to gather T-shirts and coasters and voodoo dolls, trinkets and beads and any other talisman before returning home, where their courage must be weak. New Orleans has a spirit of hopefulness beyond ordinary hope. It is a place where commitment and perseverance shine, where value of place and it’s specificity winds together with people and environ to make something that is not repeatable anywhere else . It is a place where tragedy is worn beside hope, and love next to hate, peace outshines war. It is a place where all that is good in us pushes back against all the potential negatives.
New Orleans shines with our humanness. As a place, it deeply contrasts my home of Montana, Which is why I value any visit here. It reminds me that beauty comes in all forms, that wildness so easily visible in the mountains and rivers and grasslands still survive within us as we stand up for our beliefs of what daily living should be like – and what we should commit to for the long haul.
Being here requires gumption expressed in many ways. Look into Bourbon street and recognize it’s bacchanalian presence. Early in the morning the night before is washed and swept away, and the stain of disregard remains. It only takes a walk to the next block to be deep in the neighborhood of respect and care, where sidewalks may be cracked and old, but are clean and free. In New Orleans a cordiality still remains as people cross paths, walk their dogs, say hello to strangers , contribute to the street with beautiful flowers cascading from baskets and balconies.
The point of all this life, is not to judge in relation to good, to single out, or hope that the bad May disappear. This hope is an unrealistic idealistic condition we should all recognize as impossible when we think about the qualities we hold within. The point of all this life, the place called New Orleans, is the manner in which it exists given the struggle of life . I feel in New Orleans a rise beyond good and bad, a rise of culture that’s potential moves toward the good in spite of the bad. To move beyond our strife toward a belief through courage and commitment to move toward grace.
We can see New Orleans in pictures. We can imagine, we can accept or judge. It may be a place that pushes against our beliefs , our senses, our taste at the tongue. But what I love about New Orleans is that it is real, striding, gathering, grasping, pushing on. Making itself new every morning yet remaining it’s singular self, giving me courage as it seeps Into me.
Rising out of the valley where I live I could see the lights below dot the floor if the Earth, Making 60,000 residents momentarily visible before we moved across the mountains .
Rising even with the horizon …The sun slit open the sky, Ripping the mountains from the darkness, the Horizon resting on jagged peaks, The Blackness of the clouds giving way to grey then dusty blue.
Not long after the sharpness of the orange, snow squalls float at mountain tops blurring the line and dulling the color until the sky was just a dusty beige. A momentary fade of earth to sky in shades of grey. And a clearing again to the early blue sky of morning .
The plane speeds along for the moment ahead of the sunrise making the transience of flying brilliant as the sun rises continually over the mountains coming and going along the horizon, then disappearing behind the atmosphere that lies between.
late summer harvest
Order upon the land bristles agains the wilderness we cannot see just beyond the horizon, the farmers collecting their hay before the change of the season.
Difficult to remember, so important to happiness.
how are we living
Wishing everyone a most brilliant day!
Artemis, protector of the wild
How you understand the World has a lot to do with your personal mythology. A fact I didn’t think of specifically until I met Sambo Mockbee. He had many lessons to teach, more than just the necessity of architecture. One of these lessons was how his active imagination passed through his personal narrative, his own mythology that resulted in how he lived his life. Sambo, if you spoke to him much, would let you know, life all came down to the mother goddess.
From his vivid mythology I began to recognize my own. And I also recognized the importance and empowerment of living my mythology. From living our mythology our Truth comes alive. A few years after this recognition I came upon the need to mark the earth, to leave a name, a call to being. This call was the need to create notification for the non-profit I was founding. It did not take me long to determine it’s name: Artemis Institute.
Depending which era you rely on for the classical gods and goddesses, Artemis has a different role in the World. I choose the ancient and original responsibility she was given. Artemis, while she has expansive responsibilities, is the protector of the wilderness. She is not the Roman’s Diana, the protector of the Hunt, or those who are hunting. Artemis is deep in the woods, soft in the moss, hanging in the leaves, blue in the sky, watching for all the living creatures…remembering for us what today we forget and ignore: the need for the wild, the need to retain our own wildness. She is a protector, she is the magic that lies in our ancient memories of life before roads, buildings, and timekeeping. If we choose to honor and protect the wild, the wildness and the wild in ourselves – we are living the myth of Artemis. We are making real the magic of an idea of how to be in the world.
between here and there 