This is how you will 'go to seed' and I will try and recover from seeing this. Try and close my jaw which has dropped open. Try and recover from never imagining this as a solution to your propagation. I will think of water and winter and weeds in parking lots in late February. I will need to shake that thought off a bit and remember it is July. It is July.
and she realized all that color blindness was a blade that stabbed again and again.
and she realized all that color blindness was a blade that stabbed again and again.
Our Lady of Victories
A giant amazonian woman in armor, wielding both a weapon and an olive branch. On a deeply personal note only, she lent me great fortitude this morning. And that reaction too, I will need to examine.
Our Lady of Victories
These are the fallen flowers of a black locust tree in my neighborhood...
These are the fallen flowers of a black locust tree in my neighborhood. These trees appear as towering long limbed arabesque dancers. This makes it clear I am not a science writer.
Anyway, it is native to northeastern latitudes and grows well on degraded soil contributing to soil fertility by partnering with a bacteria to fix nitrogen. What a relationship.
It's sweet flowers are sought after by pollinators.
Its timber can remain rot free for a century.
In my neighborhood. Have walked by this grove of trees for literally 40 years.
Thank you Anne Madden, for opening my eyes and mind to these complex microbial relationships right before my eyes.
Peering into your web I entered an unexpectedly celestial world, untethered by what I think I know...
Peering into your web I entered an unexpectedly celestial world, untethered by what I think I know. And the parking lot disappeared as did that other photographer on the next wharf over and the parked truck and the debris from the welders shop. Poof. A portal. Without all the mystical hubris that chases that word.
Being between a hard place and a rock was not always undesirable.
Being between a hard place and a rock was not always undesirable.
Another excerpt from TRANSIENCE by Kenneth W Beek:
Another excerpt from TRANSIENCE by Kenneth W Beek.
'The meeting with my new caseworker might have lasted an hour, which left three hours to kill before dinner. I sat and read. I was reading Nietzsche’s ​Beyond Good and Evil​ at the time. That’s a heavy book, especially when you’re reading it in a crowd of crazy people.
That may seem like an insensitive thing to say, but it would be far more insensitive to pretend it isn’t so. There were hordes of people yelling, arguing, fighting. This is the perpetual Preble Street scene. About every five minutes someone is robbed and every half hour or so you see somebody assaulted. I’ve seen people hit with bricks, boards, canes, bottles, bags; I’ve seen shootings and stabbings, seizures, suicides, OD’s, heart attacks, bad trips, people lit on fire, people pissing and shitting and fucking right on and around the galvanized benches in the resource center’s courtyard.'
Truth teller. Writer. Witness. Thank you Kenneth W Beek.
Here's a link to his book:
https://mainernews.com/transcience/
A friend of Kenny's.
Reed and Reed and Reed
Reed and Reed and Reed
Even the elephants in the room wore masks.
Even the elephants in the room wore masks.
'Here, on the edge of what we know, in contact with the ocean of the unknown...'
'Here, on the edge of what we know, in contact with the ocean of the unknown, shines the mystery and beauty of the world. And it's breathtaking.' - Carlo Rovelli, Italian theoretical physicist and author of SEVEN BRIEF LESSONS ON PHYSICS
I might stand outside our six foot boundary and look in and let my heart fill and I would feel you hold me up.
I might stand outside our six foot boundary and look in and let my heart fill and I would feel you hold me up.
You were leaving messages, dropped like crumbs...
You were leaving messages, dropped like crumbs, most of which had been scooped up in the beaks of gulls. Whether I would eventually arrive at that gingerbread house or not was uncertain.
And the words that stay in my head are the words of a man I know from the streets...
I go from my kitchen which is heated to my bathroom with running water. I change the sheets on my bed and fluff the comforter. I crack the window a bit to bring in fresh air. I notice the generous pile of books I have bedside that I will devour like candy.
And the words that stay in my head are the words of a man I know from the streets who said recently, huddled over, enveloped beneath his hood, in a quiet broken voice 'I just wanna go home.'
The audience was blown away.
The audience was blown away.
He's a new Maineworks employee. I knew I recognized him but I had never photographed him.
Dear Anonymous,
He's a new Maineworks employee.
I knew I recognized him but I had never photographed him. He walks over to me before the MaineWorks Circle and reminds me. There it is. I remember. I know him from the streets. My worlds intersect.
He thanks me, and in doing so thanks Dear Anonymous.
'You kept me alive. I was going to kill myself. Had a plan. But you'd give me a coffee card. Say good morning. I'd sit and have coffee and change my plan. Most mornings that's what made the difference...
I knew I was gonna die if I didn't climb out. I called a friend; got connected to a sober house and got some help with the first month rent which I didn't have. Then they recommended employment at MaineWorks and here I am.'
And he is. He looks great. If not tender and aware that he got out by the skin of his teeth and that his path is tremulous and vulnerable. But he did it. Against all odds. I ask him over and over, 'How did you do it?' How did you find the energy and resources to leap off the street with heroin and alcohol snarling like mad dogs at your heels? It's so difficult.
Ever wonder if a coffee card can save a life? Wonder no more.
Thank you Dear Anonymous.
It seems some days a trail of endless despair. Of dead ends.
Dear Anonymous,
It seems some days a trail of endless despair. Of dead ends. Of deep mental confusion and a collective abandonment of reason. Somehow a cog broken in the gears of cause and effect. Wandering and grasping and belonging nowhere.
Some days it feels weary. Never enough. Do you have more? They stole everything.
My backpack was taken...again.
Somedays eye contact seems impossible. The weight on the back of necks like a shackle, like a heavy pendulum that can no longer swing.
Do you have.
I need.
A wide mouthed insatiable maw.
The only place I can operate is in the moment.
And it's a dropperful of dirty water in a desert.
This is not a place easily marked out in progress. Or evolution.
Cold? Here's a coat. I have one today.
Here's a coffee card. I have one today.
I don't know about tomorrow. Do you?
Meanwhile as some hearts may soften on either side of an equation I cannot make sense of, the world and our human behaviours continue.
Ruthless.
Desperate. Loving.
And likely there will never be enough at the same time that there is plenty.
Beyond any plan I may have had. Your stalwart allegiance to this moment.
Beyond any plan I may have had. Your stalwart allegiance to this moment.
Spirit Rising. On a breath. Cold enough to burn.
Spirit Rising. On a breath. Cold enough to burn.
The Fortune Teller
The Fortune Teller