Tag: Charles de Lint

Head Crowded but Cozy

 

“I finally figured out that I’m solitary by nature, but at the same time I know so many people; so many people think they own a piece of me. They shift and move under my skin, like a parade of memories that simply won’t go away. It doesn’t matter where I am, or how alone–I always have such a crowded head.”
― Charles de Lint

 

If we’ve had a conversation or have known each other for a time, the chances are I carry you in my head. If you said something that struck me, I’ll carry your words and have conversations with them letting them challenge me anew. So many people have offered me encouragement and during the times I need it most when I am happy with the work I do I hear you cheering me on. Others have discouraged me and told me their doubts. They too I have conversations with. You don’t even have to be real. So many fictional characters from books and movies are in their too and occasionally you talk together with me as silent spectator. The theatre in my mind runs day and night. Luckily at times I can leave it behind but it can be very useful. Atheists and people who’s beliefs cover every spectrum debate. Scientists and mystics and right hand path and left hand path, Conservatives, Liberals and Socialists all share in the debate and I can be witness or participant as need be. Oh it may get crowded in here but thanks to meditation I can leave from time to time and come back refreshed. As I said it may be crowded but at least its cozy.
Blessings, G

 

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Haunted by Memories of Home LostHaunted By Memories of Home Lost by G A Rosenberg

 

Mauve and Green ReflectionsMauve and Green Reflections by G A Rosenberg

Echoes of a Beating Drum

 

“I do know that the gardens of the first lands are still lying there, right under the skin of the world- pulsing the way our heartbeat drums under our own skin. And I believe that there’s a connectedness between everything that gives some people a deep and abiding affinity to a certain kind of place or creature.”
“Like totems?”
“Maybe. Or maybe something even more personal- something that’s impossible to articulate with the vocabulary we have at the moment.”
“This is too weird.”
Annie shrugged. “What can I say? It’s getting late, the stars are out. Once the sun sets, I tend to embrace whatever wild spirits are running around in the darkness, talking away to each other. I leave the logic of streets and pavement and cars and tall buildings behind and buy into the old magics that they’re whispering about. Sometimes those little mysteries and bits of wisdom stick to the bones of my head and I carry them right out into the sunlight again. They’re like Jack’s stories, true and not true, all at the same time. They don’t exactly shape my life, but they certainly colour it.” She glanced at him, “I wouldn’t like to live in a world where everything’s as cut-and-dried as most people think it is”
― Charles de Lint

 

The drumbeat calls
as I wander towards it
My road has been dark
with many missteps along the way
For too long my inner voice has felt silent
Yet now I hear a pounding beat
and there is an answering echo inside
It’s calling me in moonlight
and I long to strip off my clothes
and dance naked beneath the stars..

 

Stripped of clothes and reason
I follow awkwardly
to inner rhythm
the beat within
I hear it louder now
there are others dancing here
are they spirits called
by the drumming sound
or travellers like myself
Is there a difference?
I see faces out of memory and dream
they all move in and out of rhythm
in and out of beat
I slowly feel the flow
and get lost
I still to the drum’s sound
as my own silences

 

Dawn comes
as the drumming slows
The other dancers fade except a few
one stays with me
and we watch the sun come up together
and rest in each other’s arms
we fall asleep together
When we awake
we may love to the beat
that still echoes within
— G A Rosenberg

 

Blessings, G

 

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Glowing Baby Meets The Insect QueenGlowing Baby Meets the Insect Queen by G A Rosenberg

 

Atomic FrostAtomic Frost by G A Rosenberg

 

Have You Had Your Magical moment today?

 

“Life’s an act of magic, too. Claire Hamill sings a line in one of her songs that really sums it up for me: ‘If there’s no magic, there’s no meaning.’ Without magic- or call it wonder, mystery, natural wisdom- nothing has any depth. It’s all just surface. You know: what you see is what you get. I honestly believe there’s more to everything than that, whether it’s a Monet hanging in a gallery or some old vagrant sleeping in an alley.”
― Charles de Lint

 

Have you had your magical moment today? I have known many people who have times in their life when they are in a pretty dark place. You know where everything looks like 3 PM on the 3rd rainy grey day in a row, smells like sewage and tastes like cigarette ash? I have been there myself more than once. At some point I learned a way to find my way out of those moments and vastly shorten them. I look for and find the magic moment. Oh it exists in almost any situation. It may be the dog or cat making a funny face. It could be the way the sun hits the window. It could even be that you notice an angle on your landlady’s face that’s beautiful even as she’s yelling at you or perhaps you have seen as she walked away that she thought of something that made her happy and smiled. If I can’t see it I look around until I can. There is always something going on outside my immediate self that can make me smile. Perhaps someone is helping another person who shows their gratitude. Perhaps a dandelion is growing in the middle of a parking lot. Collecting those magic moments and sharing them has kept me from wallowing in the grey areas.
Blessings, G

 

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Star FlowerStar Flower by G A Rosenberg

 

Cascade2Cascade by G A Rosenberg

Rewriting Anew Tale….

 

“I suppose the other thing too many forget is that we were all stories once, each and every one of us. And we remain stories. But too often we allow those stories to grow banal, or cruel or unconnected to each other.We allow the stories to continue, but they no longer have a heart. They no longer sustain us.”
― Charles de Lint

 

Writing a new tale
with new ink
on a page that has never been written on
yet the story’s shape seems way too familiar
i need to break this mould
and twist a plot more to my liking
and write myself storied
in a new image
one that expresses the becoming me….

 

Blessings, G

 

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Blessing of the Triple GoddessBlessing of the Three Goddesses by G A Rosenberg

 

Blessing of the Triple Goddess (I)Blessing of the Three Goddesses with Altered Colours by G A Rosenberg

 

Spinning Fan BladesSpinning Fan Blades by G A Rosenberg

Rewriting Anew Tale….

 

“I suppose the other thing too many forget is that we were all stories once, each and every one of us. And we remain stories. But too often we allow those stories to grow banal, or cruel or unconnected to each other.We allow the stories to continue, but they no longer have a heart. They no longer sustain us.”
― Charles de Lint

 

Writing a new tale
with new ink
on a page that has never been written on
yet the story’s shape seems way too familiar
i need to break this mould
and twist a plot more to my liking
and write myself storied
in a new image
one that expresses the becoming me….

 

Blessings, G

 

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Blessing of the Triple GoddessBlessing of the Three Goddesses by G A Rosenberg

 

Blessing of the Triple Goddess (I)Blessing of the Three Goddesses with Altered Colours by G A Rosenberg

 

Spinning Fan BladesSpinning Fan Blades by G A Rosenberg

My Place of Worship

“Why did men worship in churches, locking themselves away in the dark, when the world lay beyond its doors in all its real glory?”
― Charles de Lint

 
Walking through the woods towards the shore
I look out on the ocean
the first place of worship
and honour each step
Invocation of the spirits around me
In awe of the great mother the sea
and the sun
I reach a quiet receptive place
and receive the grace and power offered
with awareness and gratitude
for the existence I know.
It is a perfect moment
and one I know I can recapture
when I wish.
This shall be my place of worship
and in my heart a home.
— GAR

 

Blessings, G

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Ink Blot MandalaInk Blot Mandala by G A Rosenberg

 

Fractal Space MandalaFractal Space by G A Rosenberg

We Are All Magical Stars

“The faerie represent the beauty we don’t see, or even choose to ignore. That’s why I’ll paint them in junkyards, or fluttering around a sleeping wino. No place or person is immune to spirit. Look hard enough, and everything has a story. Everybody is important.”

― Charles de Lint

 

“Every Man and Every Woman is a Star”

— Aleister Crowley

 

Touched at sunrise
your hand in mine
as we gaze at new day’s promise
reflected in water.
At noon, the homeless man
helps a young woman
carry a burden.
The burden shared
along with something sacred.
In the evening
Shooting stars
Everyone looks up
the driver stays aware enough
so the puppy can cross the street safely
At night we make love
another piece of magic
that completes the day as it began..

— G A Rosenberg

 

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Alien DreamsAlien Dreams by G A Rosenberg

 

CentredCentred by G A Rosenberg

We Are All Magicians

“Not only do we all have magic, it’s all around us as well. We just don’t pay attention to it. Every time we make something out of nothing, that’s an act of magic. It doesn’t matter if it’s a painting or a garden, or an abuelo telling his grandchildren some tall tale. Every time we fix something that’s broken, whether it’s a car engine or a broken heart, that’s an act of magic.

And what makes it magic is that we *choose* to create or help, just as we can choose to harm. But it’s so easy to destroy and so much harder to make things better. That’s why doing the right thing makes you stronger.

If we can only remember what we are and what we can do, nobody can bind us or control us.”
― Charles de Lint, The Mystery of Grace

 

Have you created anything today? Have you written a poem or filled the air with music? Have you raised a smile on someone’s face where there wasn’t one before? Have you drawn a picture or made a mud pie or established a business transaction? Congratulations if you have done any of these or about a million other things than you are a magician. You have created something out of nothing and that kicks ass. It’s amazing the number of things we can bring into this world that can make it a better place. There is also negative magic where we create something that is intentionally harmful and unfortunately many of us do this without realizing our power. It’s amazing the amount of power we have for happiness or sorrow. So often we feel powerless and all too often that is an excuse because we are frightened of just how much we wield.
Blessings, G

 

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Volcanic ThoughtsVolcanic Thoughts by G A Rosenberg

 

The Tower From BelowThe Tower From Below by G A Rosenberg

Shadow Dragons in a Crowded Head

“I finally figured out that I’m solitary by nature, but at the same time I know so many people; so many people think they own a piece of me. They shift and move under my skin, like a parade of memories that simply won’t go away. It doesn’t matter where I am, or how alone–I always have such a crowded head.”
― Charles de Lint

At times I feel like a combination of memories and people I know. Their voices and beings rolling around inside of me. They are all myself, as Walt Whitman said “I am large. I contain multitudes” and we all do. Sometimes I believe that we draw people into our lives who express all the different aspects of our being. We can even see which aspects we’ve neglected by the type of people we are currently encountering and how we feel towards them. In my experience, the people who get to me are those who exhibit aspects of myself that I have yet to reconcile. Behaviour that I’ve either balanced or haven’t needed to I can pretty much shrug off. In this way, people who irritate or infuriate me often become my most appreciated teachers as they point the way to those parts of myself I don’t want to face.
Blessings, G

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ProjectionProjection by G A Rosenberg

 

Snakes on a PlaneSnakes on a Plane by G A Rosenberg

Strange Child Dreams

“Don’t start brooding about that, too,” she says. “Everybody’s got a piece of stranger inside them. It’s what lets us surprise ourselves and keeps things interesting.”
— Charles de Lint

 

Stranger Self
Shadow self
Part of me left on the shelf
hidden back on the rack
behind that old paper stack
The part of me I never knew
the part of me I outgrew
so I had thought
so I was taught
tho the Dreamer has come through

 

When I was a kid, there were very few things I was closed off to. At night I would have visions and dreams and speak to all manner of beings. Was it in my imagination? Perhaps tho quite often the dreams would end up coming true in ways that were to surprise me.
Not all the visions were comforting ones. I dreamed my parents divorce way before it happened. Some of the dream beings I would talk to were a bit intimidating. As kids we take it all in and don’t look so much at good and bad, positive and negative as much perhaps as calming and frightening.
Still, at a certain point those visitations went away. Oh I still get some interesting answers tho the channels are not quite as clear as they once were tho clearer than they’ve been in years. Imagine tho how great it would be to open up the way we did when we were kids while keeping the experience, knowledge and wisdom we’ve gained since…
Blessings, G

 

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Shadow PoolShadow Pool by G A Rosenberg

 

Yes One Nears InfinityYes One Nears Infinity by G A Rosenberg