Vernal Equinox Sunrise

 

Summer Solstice

 

Sunrise on the Fall Equinox at Dzibichaltún

 

Winter Solstice

 

 

Sunrise by Mary Oliver

 

You can
die for it-
an idea,
or the world. People
have done so,
brilliantly,
letting
their small bodies be bound
to the stake,
creating
an unforgettable
fury of light. But
this morning,
climbing the familiar hills
in the familiar
fabric of dawn, I thought
of China,
and India
and Europe, and I thought
how the sun
blazes
for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises
under the lashes
of my own eyes, and I thought
I am so many!
What is my name?
What is the name
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
for all of us? Call it
whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter
fire.

 

 

You may check here to see when the sun rose on the first day you were here on the planet.

 

Happy new day friends! Love you!

 

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For those who want to participate copy and paste everything underneath the asterisks so other people who chanced upon your blog will know what's going on.  Hi, this is my Gaia Holidays Giftgiving blog.  You can give gifts to me for the holiday season by posting your gift on the comments section.  For more information how you can set up your own, please read Samme's blog.  Don't forget to tag your blog with "gaiaholiday".

 

 

 

 

My wife and her best friend emailed this to me tonight, I think it's an omen!!!
(Twilight Zone music) Lol!

I had a thought this morning (danger! Lol!) about gift giving. What I thought was that instead of wracking my brain to try and discover the thing to buy for each person on my list that A) they need or B) actually want, I'd like to do something a little different. While I’m all in favor of stimulating the economy by spreading cash around I’m also aware that charitable organizations are going to be the first to suffer in a down economy. While I might shed a tear that Mervyns is closing, going chapter 7, I’m more concerned that non-profit organizations might not be able to carry out their missions because of lack of capital.

Hey, do I really need another tie or even a gift certificate to Barnes and Noble?

Nah, I’m giving up ties and the book I can get at the local library, assuming it’s still there tomorrow!

As for my own gift giving I think I might do all my shopping at the following sites. If you have more please post them here as a comment.

 

Give an Acre of Las Californias

 

Sponsor a rescue horse at RedWings

 

Buy art from NIAD (National Institute of Art and Disabilities)

 

Feed someone

 One year when I was a boy I received a walky-talky as a gift and one night I was just talking into white space and someone talked back! Whoa they were like 30 or 40 miles away and were bridging the gap with their HAM radio set. My walky-talky was good for a few miles under the best circumstances! I was so exciited to be speaking to this person so far away and we starting asking each other questions like where are you?
The conversation didn't last long and I was never able to reconnect with this person or anyone else that far away with my walky-talky. Hey, I wanted something bigger and better like a HAM radio! Well I never did get a HAM radio and forgot about bridging distances with technology.

This afternoon I went to SFMOMA to see a show of Martin Puryear work and while I was lost looking for that show I ran across a room where "Hole in Space" was being displayed on two huge monitors that faced each other. The room was dark and there were people in the videos shouting and holding up signs like "Ivan are you there?"


Galloway, Kit; Rabinowitz, Sherrie
Hole in Space

Hole in Space was a Public Communication Sculpture [for three days]. On a November evening in 1980 the unsuspecting public walking past the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, and «The Broadway» department store located in the open air Shopping Center in Century City (Los Angeles), had a surprising counter with each other. Suddenly head-to-toe, life-sized, television images of the people on the opposite coast appeared. They could now see, hear, and speak with each other as if encountering each other on the same sidewalk. No signs, sponsor logos, or credits were posted—no explanation at all was offered. No self-view video monitors to distract from the phenomena of this life–size encounter.

Hole–In–Space suddenly severed the distance between both cities and created an outrageous pedestrian intersection. There was the evening of discovery, followed by the evening of intentional word-of-mouth rendezvous, followed by a mass migration of families and trans–continental loved ones, some of which had not seen each other for over twenty years.

(source: Kit Galloway/Sherrie Rabinowitz, http://www.ecafe.com/getty/HIS/index.html)

Ivan are you there?

Halasana 29 3/4" X 35 1/2 " Bee's wax and pigment on wood braced canvas 2005

Surrender, neck bent
ass in the air
nothing
watching my feet on the mat
although I'm just remembering
from something
before
feeling a heartbeat,
mine
and in that moment
it doesn't matter
who loves me
or
not
like all flowers are striped
to the bare
stem
of a single heartbeat
and maybe this is the last
day
to notice
my nails need to be cut
my right arm
refuses to release
it's somehow in a plot
with my left leg

I think they alone
saw to it
that I would never
be able to endure
sitting in some zazen intensive
Because they know
something about me
that even I refuse
to release to

It's me
and a me that is somehow
not just this body
bent like a pretzel
neck bent
ass in the air vulnerable

How come I can feel you here
where I can barely breath
and I love you so much more
on that day
I think it might
all end?