Odd Ramblings

 

“I am obscure and odd, very deeply odd.”
— Virginia Woolf

 

Am I obscure? Perhaps but then I tend towards the mistake that many have read what I’ve read tho I seen to have more of a taste for it than others. Puzzling but then I have enjoyed the company of books more often and deeper at times than the company of other people. Connections made with the writers or the beings that they write about . A character from a beloved novel invoked at 3 AM can be as powerful as any other spirit and there are many with whom I have had discourse. But then like dear Ms. Wolfe, I have no trouble admitting to my oddness.
The more I live life, the more puzzling I find certain aspects of it. Sometimes this is amazingly heartening and sometimes like the present I find it frustrating. I want to be able to fix the world or at least the parts of it that I love and yet I can see perspectives where there is no brokenness just being. Anything can be healed perhaps yet the how and why and consequences of doing so are not often available. Everything has ripples, ways in which they interact with other things that interact still more that any change to the system can change it beyond recognition. Yet still I impose my will even tho I may not know how to cause no harm. Still the I I know as me is new to this game, merely in it for a little over half a century. Maybe with time the wisdom and discernment of how to act and more importantly when will come. Until then I learn and attempt..why anything I set my mind to I suppose.
Blessings, G

 

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Colourful TorColourful Tor by G A Rosenberg

 

Ornate and Delicate WebOrnate Webbing by G A Rosenberg

 

The Moments Where We Belong

 

“I belong to quick, futile moments of intense feeling. Yes, I belong to moments. Not to people.”
— Virginia Woolf

 

In the tarot, the six of cups card represents the golden moment. The moments are those times that are few and far between where everything feels right. We know who we are and why we are and it’s all right. Ten minutes later life might descend back into its normal chaos and our heads filled with confusion that is all too common but for that moment or that day or that evening, it is perfect. We feel connected and in charge of our destiny. As much as we may love the people in our lives we don’t belong to them, each of us belongs to ourself and while we may move life itself to see our loved one’s happy, they also belong to themselves. Those golden moments tho, they are the place where our hearts live and it is there that we return when life is at its bleakest.
Blessings, G

 

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An Idyllic Place Past he Light's DistortionsAn Idyllic Place Past the Light’s Distortions by G A Rosenberg

 

Passionate JourneyPassionate Journey by G A Rosenberg

 

Our Speech and Our Silence

 

“I want to write a novel about silence. The things people don’t say.”
— Virginia Woolf

 

Some of us talk enough to fill volumes. We expound on so many different topics and fill the air around us with words. Yet so many of them are empty. We refrain from saying what’s really going on inside. When it comes to being vulnerable, we become silent at best. By this, I don’t necessarily mean that we don’t show emotion. I could talk for hours about things that make me weepy or make me angry. Those things for many are merely the scab with which we cover our wounds. So often when we cry or rage, we are not doing it about the topics that really matter. More often it means that someone has come close to a vulnerable area and we are desperately holding up signs that say “Here there be dragons” in the hope either that someone will either back off. Perhaps we have a greater hope that they won’t and that they can whether the emotional smokescreen to expose the injury beneath and thus offer healing. Yet we pull back and hold those areas in silence. Yes our speech may fill volumes but our silences can fill buildings.
Blessings, G

 

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Seduced by the ShadowdanceSeduced by the Shadowdance by G A Rosenberg

 

Calling Forth through FireEvocation by G A Rosenberg

 

Solace After Solitude

 

“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”
― Virginia Woolf

 

Too long I hid away
thinking that in solitude
I would discover meaning
I learned much
but the very things that brought me here
that I escaped
stayed unresolved
Tho I lived in peace
I was not peaceful
Too many others carried with me
in my heart.
I spoke to their echoes
but only I echoed back
Now I return
to resolve the past
to dissolve the lie
of my old lives
Only this way can outer peace join inner
and fractures start to heal.
— G A Rosenberg

 

blessings, G

 

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ObservedObserved by G A Rosenberg

 

Atomic CogsAtomic Cogs by G A Rosenberg

 

Curling Words of Smoke

 

 

“When I cannot see words curling like rings of smoke round me I am in darkness—I am nothing.”
― Virginia Woolf

 

It’s fascinating  searching through quotes about language and discovering example after example of brilliant wordsmiths who mistrusted the tools of their trade. Perhaps mistrust is not the correct word. Perhaps its that they realized the inherent limitations of language that so often can become arbitrary and what good craftsman does not? Then once we realize the limitations of the tool we see just how far we can stretch to transcend those limitations.

 
Virginia Woolf in the above quotes feels that without her words she is nothing and yet isn’t that nothingness, that space between words where true creativity comes from? Tho it does sound like a pretty awesome meditation, visualizing our words and thoughts curling like rings of smoke and then dissipating leaving us in stillness..
Blessings, G

 

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Mindfield 6Mindfield by G A Rosenberg

 

Flowers and FlamesFlowers and Flames by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – March 24 2012

“Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible.”
— Virginia Woolf

Possibly the imperceptibility of these attachments is why we allow fiction to reflect our lives more accurately sometimes than the ‘true’ stories that we tell…
Tonight I’ve been reading some of the mythological stories about Anansi, the spider, a trickster deity from West African and American folklore. Not terribly surprising, I found that a rather famous story that I’ve recounted here before, one that Uncle Remus told about Br’er Rabbit, was originally about Anansi

Anansi and the Tar-Baby

Once Mrs. Anansi had a large feed. She planted it with peas. Anansi was so lazy he would never do any work. He was afraid that they would give him none of the peas, so he pretended to be sick. After about nine days, he called his wife an’ children an’ bid them farewell, tell them that he was about to die, an’ he ask them this last request, that they bury him in the mids’ of the peas-walk, but firs’ they mus’ make a hole thru the head of the coffin an’ also in the grave so that he could watch the peas for them while he was lying there. An’ one thing more, he said, he would like them to put a pot and a little water there at the head of the grave to scare the thieves away. So he died and was buried.

All this time he was only pretending to be dead, an’ every night at twelve o’clock he creep out of the grave, pick a bundle of peas, boil it, and after having a good meal, go back in the grave to rest. Mistress Anansi was surprised to see all her peas being stolen. She could catch the thief no-how. One day her eldest son said to her, “Mother, I bet you it’s my father stealing those peas!” At that Mrs. Anansi got into a temper, said, “How could you expect your dead father to rob the peas!” Said, “Well, mother, I soon prove it to you.” He got some tar an’ he painted a stump at the head of the grave an’ he put a hat on it.

When Anansi came out to have his feast as usual, he saw this thing standing in the groun’. He said, “Good-evening, sir!” got no reply. Again he said, “Good-evening, sir!” an’ still no reply. “If you don’ speak to me I’ll kick you!” He raise his foot an’ kick the stump an’ the tar held it there like glue. “Let me go, let me go

sir, or I’ll knock you down with my right hand!” That hand stuck fast all the same. I’ll you don’ let me go, I’ll hit you with my lef’ hand!” That hand stick fas’ all the same. An’ he raise his lef’ foot an’ gave the stump a terrible blow. That foot stuck. Anansi was suspended in air an’ had to remain there till morning. Anansi was so ashamed that he climb up beneath the rafters an’ there he is to this day.
Stanly Jones, Claremont South Ann from  Jamaican Anansi Stories collected by Martha Warren Beckwith

I’ve always loved this story and for me it provides a great metaphor for what happens when we dislike something, the more we strike out at it, the harder we stick Blessings, G

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Cosmic Web Mandala by G A Rosenberg