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

 

Click on images to see full-sized:

 

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

Up Pompeii

 

Then spoke the thunder
Da
Datta: what have we given?
— T. S. Eliot

 

And Now the Prologue… (Points for anyone who gets the reference)
Yesterday we docked in Naples and toured the ruins of Pompeii. Afterwards I went and explored Naples while the rest of my group toured Herculaneum.
Pompeii has a very strange sense of history to it. Parts are very well preserved and you can walk through the (restored) houses, stores, temples and businesses of people who lived close to two thousand years ago.
It is an amazing gift to be on this trip with people I love seeing these sites but for me the most awesome part is walking in places I have only read about and experiencing the people and architecture there. Each city has its own heart beat and if you are open you can feel it. Naples is a city in which I could easily live. It is busy enough to be Metropolitan yet it has that laid back seaport feel.
There is a magic that happens when I find myself in a strange city where there is little English spoken. After passing the beautiful seaport Fortress and several pizza places, I found the beautiful shopping centre that the Pompeii tour guide had mentioned. Turning the corner there were many more stores, most but not all of them international chains. Continuing walking, I found a small art gallery that featured the t painting “The Martyrdom of St Ursula” by Caravaggio (one of my favourite artists) which was the last painting that he had finished (around a month before he died). They had several other painters of that style and that vintage and I spent a wonderful 20 minutes there.
For me, it is finds like that gallery and watching people living their lives as much and maybe even more so than the sites in any particular place that brings me the most enjoyment. Being able to balance the two this trip has been amazing.
Blessings, G

 

Click on images to see full-sized:

 

PompeiiPompeii

 

Pompeii RuinsPompeii Ruins

 

Streets of NaplesStreets of Napoli (Naples)

 

Napoli CastleNapoli Castle

 

 

“Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together,but do so with all your heart.”
― Marcus Aurelius

 

I have been working on full acceptance of the people and situations that enter my life. Not that everyone and everything is pleasant or what I would wish it to be but then it is in those negative spaces that the lessons live. The more uncomfortable or irritated someone makes me, the more I can learn from them. Even if the lesson is how to be more patient and less irritable. I fully believe that this physical existence is a classroom. Not that people are problems to be solved as such but from others comes a greater understanding of myself and of the universe I find myself in. Each person I encounter shows me a greater understanding of the whole.
Blessings, G

 

Click on images to see full-sized:

 

Empowering TransformationEmpowering Transformation by G A Rosenberg

 

Chapel Perlious AwaitsChapel Perilous Awaits 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

Click on images to see full-sized
ProjectionProjection by G A Rosenberg

 

Snakes on a PlaneSnakes on a Plane by G A Rosenberg

Random Poetic Ramblings… and some non-attributed quotes

What does it mean to be open to the miraculous?

its strange, how one day you can want to understand everything and then something clicks and you realize that you will understand when it is time
which doesn’t mean don’t open yourself to learning

it just means lose attachment at needing to know until you realize that you already do.

➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪

Finding the spot
not marked by an x
all kinds of emotions flowing through
clearing, cheering,

music that reaches for my pen and starts my heart to writing
ideas unnoticed yet wanting to be heard
soul’s echo in song
and expresses in colour

what words can i give that will help the click
i will take a hand in my own salvation
and set my sights on home

➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪

funny, how few concrete ideas come by
just whispers suggestions from life’s underside

feelings of heaviness…thoughts…still the joy is there yet clouds cover
learning more and more how much i have yet to learn

Can one be in a corrupt society and still evolve?

➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪

my being wanders down the corridors of certainty
finding nothing to keep it here
yet finding myself wistful
I see so many here who have made their home
Where i have questions, they KNOW
where my path meanders all over the place
a bit here, a bit there
they seem to have a vector course that races ahead
I know the destination’s the same
and yet…
my path remains a wandering one
one where I learn from all
giving what i can and accepting what is given
and when I lose my way
when I believe I lose my way (smiles)
its just shadows i cast obscuring
the path is still there
sticking closer than Peter Pan’s shadow
with much less need of needle and thread…
and as much as i kid myself
tell myself that little lie
until i half believe it
I do know

➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➨➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪➪

Unattributed quotes (mainly because I don’t know who said them) (Thanks to Shivaji and Bedouin)

“any particular state remains as long as one feeds it, as soon as one ceases to feed it it will then cease to be what one experiences to be ones own reality. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, it just doesn’t exist for you ”

“if we are too afraid to face the facts of the world we live in then we shall not transform ourselves while being a part of it”

‎”People were created to be loved. Things were created to be used. The reason why the world is in chaos, is because things are being loved, and people are being used.”