pleasure

creation is a selfless selfie

 

Echoes from Emptiness: Photo by Miriam Louisa Simons - Lanzarote aquascape

 

the seeing of It:

the ripples and reflections
the surface and the cool depth
the sun-snatching edges and the calm continuo
the tones, textures, colours

 

the watching of It:

the naming and the recalling
the emotional embroidery, the visceral memories
(pain and pleasure both flushed my cheeks
on that windswept isle in the Canaries)

 

the knowing of It:

all that unfolds before, behind, within and throughout me
as this world I call ‘mine’
shimmers fluidly in a center-less, owner-less
wideawake Aware-ing

 

I am Not,
but the Universe is my Self.
– Shih-T’ou, A.D. 700-790

 

Image – swimming pool reflections captured on a long-ago vacation; Lanzarote, Canary Islands

 

snakes and ladders and heaven and hell

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The backyard Butcherbird was first up this morning.  It was still quite dark when the trills of its morning overture sounded outside the sanctuary.  Now he (or is it she?) is standing on the bird-bath.  It’s the young one, so probably it has yet to learn that Willy Wagtail bathes first.  There will be scolding, for sure.

Blessed rain has fallen over the holiday weekend: heaven for the locals with their parched gardens, hell for the holiday-makers in their sodden tents.

There’s not one thing in the world of phenomena that isn’t potentially either heaven or hell.  Once things are split up into me and not-me, good and bad, right or wrong, the Game begins.

It reminds me of the ‘Snakes and Ladders’ dice game we played as kids.  Back then there was the innocent thrill of whether chance would see one gobbled by a snake or saved by a ladder on the way to the finishing point.  The adult version sees us clambering up the ladders chasing pleasure and being gobbled by disappointment when life doesn’t oblige; perhaps we should rename the board, and call it The Grace Game …

~