The Habit of Being as if Never Before

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
~ Aristotle

 

How could I resist this quote for feeling better about repeating a post?

Well, it’s not exactly the same as before. Then what ever can be?

 

Autumn Crocuses in my garden in 2012

 

 

Now the light is more diffused, colors faded.

Autumn Crocus in my garden two days ago

 

Another year of restlessness like standing still, growth from withdrawal and revealing in one way and another. 

Autumn Crocus in my garden this morning, the first day of Autumn

 

Survival in the habit of being as if never before.

Copyright 2015 by DM Denton

There is a memory here, planted moments before it was too late.

It’s not what it seems. These are not the spring variety, waking from frigid dreams, wooed by what is to come, green showing warily yet buds often opening too soon.

These are not flowers fraught with anticipation. They’ve already been revealed, lost their clothes in the crowd, withdrawn to regrow and regroup before winter. These latent lilies are a law unto themselves, having done it all before, bending this way and that, exploding unashamed into sunshine and tears, inviting their withering surroundings to dance before the mystery of dying.

For here is immortality.  Everywhere.  And so the generous age offered a handful of corms for drilling into years she might or might not have ahead, too deep to be forgotten.  

 

Writing note: The autumn crocus actually isn’t a crocus—it’s in the lily family (crocuses are in the iris family), flowering in the fall. Autumn crocuses send up their leaves in the spring but they die back by summer, the flower stalks rising and blooming quite indecently in fall. Some common names are: naked ladies and mysteria. Mine were given me many years ago by an older neighbor friend of my mom’s, Sue Drilling, a farmer’s wife, who was fiercely independent as well as extremely intelligent and artistic, living alone into her 80’s (no one knows for sure, as she would never tell her age…) in a large Frank Lloyd Wright style house where she had a very wild but wonderful perennial garden. The new owners have since dug it all up and replaced it too neatly with shrubs and lawns, less to care for and enjoy.

©Artwork and writing, unless otherwise indicated, are the property of Diane M Denton. Please request permission to reproduce or post elsewhere with a link back to bardessdmdenton. Thank you.

 

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The Perfection of Reclusion

Daffodil buds were growing out of the mud. Pastoral views overlooked what I had come to walking so far with one who would leave me that youthful February of awkward rendezvous and sixteen aging years with glimpses of sun in-between the clouds. Something to go back to even if I never could.

Copyright 2015 by DM Denton

A story emerging from the memory of my imagination has, more than once, become my life. Well, that was when I thought I was the story. Now I know I’m just the teller of the tale, a balladeer singing the music of silence. A freeing realization and, perhaps, a necessary one for my evolution into a writer whose most creative stimulation is as an onlooker, a solitary soul, a lover of love without a lover, a childless woman with many offspring, a traveler going nowhere and so anywhere. An elusive chanteuse more comforted by ghosts and longings than is good for me, I prefer possibility over certainty and need to disappear for the words to appear—often in conflict with these striving, competitive and extroverted times, but never without a vision, interest or objective in hope of satisfying my muse.

I recently came across an opinion that the perfection of Emily Dickinson’s “art” was the perfection of her reclusion. Another way of putting it might be that the perfection of her “art” was her lack of distractions. Like striving and competition. Like thinking what her poetry should be.  Like wondering if anyone would ever know it lived. She asked if her poems breathed and was told they weren’t publishable. How very fortunate her lack of participation in what she called “the auction of the mind” didn’t prevent her breathing into eternity.

What motivated her to write nearly 2000 poems when no one was waiting for her fragmented and faint scribbles on scraps of paper, envelope flaps, and even a chocolate wrapper? Some creative individuals need an incubating space around them—a chrysalis as William Du Bois described it—for longer than others, even forever; like Emily Dickinson, her spirit perpetually on the verge of emergence into its winged perfect state.

For me, that is the essence of creativity no matter what medium it finds its expression through or whether anyone but its creator is involved in it: always in a state of metamorphosis, within its cocoon seemingly inactive while preparing for birth. The timing is its own, for it knows when it is ready to fly, very few eyes noticing its colors in flight all the more beautiful when unconscious of being noticed or not.

Like those daffodils that weren’t there and then they were—reaching up, opening, sighing, and shriveling down—not for me or anyone else, not for anything defined by ego or expectation, not for anything but the earthly and unearthly breath of being.

Copyright 2015 by DM Denton

 

Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them. ~ Anaïs Nin

 

©Artwork and writing, unless otherwise indicated, are the property of Diane M Denton. Please request permission to reproduce or post elsewhere with a link back to bardessdmdenton. Thank you.

Simply a Memory

I think of you in song.

Also, in stillness, when
you were alone with your thoughts that
may or may not have been of me; when
you gazed into my heart as you looked elsewhere; when
the music wasn’t yours but was
your friend.

You stood beside the pavilion
striking a pose that set you apart until
you made a space for me in your smile.
What more is there to think of than that?

 

Copyright 2012 by DM Denton

©Artwork and writing, unless otherwise indicated, are the property of Diane M Denton. Please request permission to reproduce or post elsewhere with a link back to bardessdmdenton. Thank you.

Foxed mirrors

I found this online: ‘Foxed glass refers to the worn, antiqued look that
you find either due to aging of a glass object or even created intentionally to emanate that vintage look. Foxed glass mirrors may not serve their usual practical purpose of reflecting a clear image, but instead reflect an air of antique romance.’ http://houseofshe.blogspot.com/2013/02/foxed-glass-mirrors.html
And so this lyrically detailed and poignant reflection from ‘A’ is entitled …

Inspiration Awarded

A sound, a scent, a sight,
a hope, a dream, a memory,
creative tunneling towards the light;
one word, then two and three,
a poem, a page or more of prose
set out on a never-ending journey;
there’s loss, there’s love, not less
than the unsettled heart should need
to imagine how it is doomed and blessed;
the stars, the sun, the moon,
a breeze and, oh, the stillness, too
give the birds and composer’s hand a tune;
a brush, a lens, a thought,
what is known and never can be
explained except as inspiration sought.

Copyright 2012 by Dm Denton

I want to thank onwindydays for recently nominating me for the Very Inspiring Blogger Award!  Such a lovely gesture. I am humbled and it makes me very happy to play it forward!

First (this is rule I almost didn’t follow) I am supposed to offer seven things about myself … 

1. I have a milestone birthday this year.
2. I have been writing stories and poems since I could write.
3. I have had nineteen cats, two dogs and a budgerigar named Billy.  
4. I worked as a gardener on a large estate.
5. I lived in a medieval abbey.
6. I live in a log cabin.
7. I believe in reincarnation.

The blogs I nominate (in no particular order as I am inspired by them all, and a few more than ‘the rules’ require) are:

Journey into Poetry journeyintopoetry.wordpress.com

Ina inaweblogisback.wordpress.com

Countingducks countingducks.wordpress.com

By the Sea www.ingebrita.net

Rae Spencer www.raespencer.com

Caddo Veil caddoveil.com

frommymusings2u frommymusings2u.wordpress.com

Martin Shone – Silence Happens theearthneedstobreathe.wordpress.com and likethesunshone agapintheclouds.wordpress.com

Linda willows lindawillows.wordpress.com

Margaret griffin margaretgriffin.wordpress.com

Bodhirose’s Blog bodhirose.wordpress.com

Seasonings raindancepoetry.wordpress.com

Contemplative Moorings contemplativemoorings.wordpress.com

The Tale of My Heart  justsimplyinlove.wordpress.com

Kiwsparks kiwsparks.wordpress.com

LScott Poetry lscotthoughts.com

Pitching Pennies Poetry smzang.wordpress.com

Poems From Oostburg, Wisconsin ellenolinger.wordpress.com

For those nominees, here are the rules, certainly your option to follow or not.

* Display the award logo on your blog

* Link back to the person who nominated you

* State seven things about yourself

* Nominate 15 other bloggers for this award and link to them

* Notify those bloggers of the nomination and the award’s requirements

Blessings to all for continued inspiration! Follow your bliss!

©Artwork and writing, unless otherwise indicated, are the property of Diane M Denton. Please request permission to reproduce or post elsewhere with a link back to bardessdmdenton. Thank you.

Nature Insight (Repost): Crocus at Last (and Forever)

They have appeared again, those autumn crocuses that never cease to amaze me. And so (I have to admit, because I am a little pressed for time, with apologies for all the blogs I am behind on visiting) I have decided to share this post once more. I have added a photograph, taken just this morning, after some heavy rain, so these autumnal burst of spring look a little bedraggled but no less magical. 

Copyright 2011 by DM Denton

There is a memory here, planted moments before it was too late.

It’s not what it seems. These are not the spring variety, waking from frigid dreams, wooed by what is to come, green showing warily yet buds often opening too soon.

These are not flowers fraught with anticipation. They’ve already been revealed, lost their clothes in the crowd, withdrawn to regrow and regroup before winter. These latent lilies are a law unto themselves, having done it all before, bending this way and that, exploding unashamed into sunshine and tears, inviting their withering surroundings to dance before the mystery of dying.

For here is immortality.  Everywhere.  And so the generous age offered a handful of corms for drilling into years she might or might not have ahead, too deep to be forgotten.  

Writing note: The autumn crocus actually isn’t a crocus—it’s in the lily family (crocuses are in the iris family), flowering in the fall. Autumn crocuses send up their leaves in the spring but they die back by summer, the flower stalks rising and blooming quite indecently in fall. Some common names are: naked ladies and mysteria. Mine were given me many years ago by an older neighbor friend of my mom’s, Sue Drilling, a farmer’s wife, who was fiercely independent as well as extremely intelligent and artistic, living alone into her 80’s (no one knows for sure, as she would never tell her age…) in a large Frank Lloyd Wright style house where she had a very wild but wonderful perennial garden. The new owners have since dug it all up and replaced it too neatly with shrubs and lawns, less to care for and enjoy.

Wishing everyone a blessed autumn!

©Artwork and writing, unless otherwise indicated, are the property of Diane M Denton. Please request permission to reproduce or post elsewhere with a link back to bardessdmdenton. Thank you.

Nature Insight: Crocus at Last (and Forever)

Colchium Autumnale

There is a memory here, planted moments before it was too late.

It’s not what it seems. These are not the spring variety, waking from frigid dreams, wooed by what is to come, green showing warily yet buds often opening too soon.

These are not flowers fraught with anticipation. They’ve already been revealed, lost their clothes in the crowd, withdrawn to regrow and regroup before winter. These latent lilies are a law unto themselves, having done it all before, bending this way and that, exploding unashamed into sunshine and tears, inviting their withering surroundings to dance before the mystery of dying.

For here is immortality.  Everywhere.  And so the generous age offered a handful of corms for drilling into years she might or might not have ahead, too deep to be forgotten.  

Writing note: The autumn crocus actually isn’t a crocus—it’s in the lily family (crocuses are in the iris family), flowering in the fall. Autumn crocuses send up their leaves in the spring but they die back by summer, the flower stalks rising and blooming quite indecently in fall. Some common names are: naked ladies and mysteria. Mine were given me many years ago by an older neighbor friend of my mom’s, Sue Drilling, a farmer’s wife, who was fiercely independent as well as extremely intelligent and artistic, living alone into her 80’s (no one knows for sure, as she would never tell her age…) in a large Frank Lloyd Wright style house where she had a very wild but wonderful perennial garden. The new owners have since dug it all up and replaced it too neatly with shrubs and lawns, less to care for and enjoy.

©Artwork and writing, unless otherwise indicated, are the property of Diane M Denton. Please request permission to reproduce or post elsewhere with a link back to bardessdmdenton. Thank you.