Let all of life be an unfettered howl. Like the crowd greeting the gladiator. Don’t stop to think, don’t interrupt the scream, exhale, release life’s rapture. Everything is blooming. Everything is flying. Everything is screaming, choking on its screams. Laughter. Running. Let-down hair. That is all there is to life.
Vladimir Nabokov
Tags: Gardening + Nature, Quoting
Not perfect
Not brave enough
Not willing to put up with your shit
Not wanted
Not smart enough
Not heard
Not loyal
Not talented enough
Not valued.
Alone.
Yeah, that’s me.
That’s all of us.
One day or another.
Heartbroken.
Colleen Sohn
Tags: Poetry
I don’t know what my life would be without The Doors, some cavernous gaping void aching to be filled, most likely. A lifetime of memories of and with my Dad, and countless hours listening and singing and dancing along on my own. A wild, crazy love borne in the womb.
So it is with great sadness that I bid adieu to Ray Manzarek, keyboardist extraordinaire.
Break on through, Ray, and say hello to Jim.
photograph by Michael Ochs
Tags: Music
We ventured to Eugene yesterday for the Mt. Pisgah Arboretum Wildflower Festival. It was a sweet affair, with booths for selling treats of the edible, garden, and treasure variety. We ate and drank, bought some gifts, and walked the paths to spy as many varieties of wildflower as we could. We saw fourteen in the wild and countless others on educational display, which I wish I had looked at before hiking around, so I would not have gotten quite so close to the poison oak. Thankfully this silly goose only touched the flowers!
That’s Camas pictured above
Columbian Larkspur
This tree was more than 400 years old when it met its demise. The hubster is 6’1″ for reference – the awe of creation!
The Oak Savannah
Wild Hyacinth
Tiny and yellow – I wish I knew the name.
Oregon Iris
Siberian Candyflower
Bracken Fern Fiddleheads
Wild Yellow Pea
Aster
Crab Spider on a Daisy
The hubster teased me for defying the principles of the Prime Directive by knocking the spider off the blossom. Anything for the bees…
Snowberry
Thimbleberry
Cow Parsnip
Straight Beaked Buttercup
Red Columbine
Tags: Oregon
The phantom leaves traces
parachutes
propellers on high
a tiny check mark
seen at 7:18.
I knew the phantom as flesh and bone
raven curls
eyes stolen from the sea.
Letters and words over years and miles
left to wither
into the dead silence
of space.
The universe doesn’t give a whit about the phantom
nor me
nor you.
It hurtles us
into each other
into stellar bodies
into nothing at all.
I knew the phantom for an instant
flashes of bicycles
shaved legs
tender smiles.
Now
only silence
tied
but drifting
straining that fine thread.
The phantom’s cares
fear? aversion? revulsion?
cloaked
unknown.
The universe’s cares as open as sky
casting stones that burn through atmospheres
toxic interstellar clouds
brilliant stars now deathly black holes.
Don’t let us be a black hole, dear phantom.
Don’t let us disappear
not while we still have breath.
Speak
speak of fear
speak of wonder
speak of sky
speak of waves
speak of any thing
just speak
before you can’t
before I can’t
before the universe
renders us two dust motes in the cosmos
unremembered
unbound.
Colleen Sohn
Tags: Poetry
Being a Person
Be a person here.
Stand by the river, invoke the owls.
Invoke winter, then spring.
Let any season that wants to come here make its own call.
After that sound goes away, wait.
A slow bubble rises through the earth and begins to include sky, stars, all space, even the outracing expanding thought.
Come back and hear the little sound again.
Suddenly this dream you are having matches everyone’s dream, and the result is the world.
If a different call came, there wouldn’t be any world, or you, or the river, or the owls calling.
How you stand here is important.
How you listen for the next things to happen.
How you breathe.
William Stafford
I sit on the back porch, feet up, nibbling cheese. Guilty pleasure that, any variety but goat, the miserable, ever-present tang clinging to my throat, no matter what they say.
It is heavy with heat and this scramble on the keyboard a break from lying prostrate with a book propped on my chest. Though the reading could be better. I vacillate between two lesser books that also happen to be the favorites of people dear to me. I hate that, hate that I see their earnest faces and kind eyes in the midst of my dislike. And now, an invocation of whatever spirit will make my next read so wholly captivating that I read until my eyes ache and pulse quickens.
A trio of hummingbirds competes for our garden, and I marvel at the fierceness, the fantastic fluttered wing spirals and wild chirps of battle.
A crow breaks a cracker in the bird bath, some snack gleaned elsewhere and slowly savored here. She is quiet and delicate in her work, and I marvel at the fact that she does it all without hands. Her onyx feathers gleam, and she watches me, coyly perhaps. We are friends but not that kind, not yet, her penetrating eyes intent on me as I speak to her, of her beauty, mucky messes, and occasional early wake-up calls. She’s finished eating and scratches her head with her left foot, even considers a bath, lightly splashing with her beak, no matter the diminutive size of the vessel in relation to her body.
A squirrel is five feet away from her, hoovering every last remnant the finches and sparrows and jays messily toss out of the feeder, some silent agreement, perhaps. Another claws madly in a wild dash up the neighbor’s sequoia.
Paris is stretched on the concrete of the patio, five feet from me, wholly unaware of the life that surrounds her, pretending she is some Egyptian, I think, so regal is her posture.
I hear the bushtits flit about and a robin chirp in the distance. Children rough house nearby and the steady thrum of traffic drones in the distance, though sometimes I cannot hear it and am elsewhere, some fine elysian field, where all that I love lasts and there is no rush to capture it for another hour.
…
Happy Birthday, Allison!
Tags: cars
Peony season is upon us a little early, thanks be to a long stint of dry and warm weather.
I am wishing for rain and dreaming about horseback riding.
The strawberries are ripening, but some little creature is beating us to the punch when it comes to actually eating them. We may have to start getting up earlier.
My palms are sweaty.
I hurt my wrist, gardening, of all things, so rather than practice yoga and re-injure myself, I have been walking, complete with wide-brimmed hat or parasol. Though this morning, I danced, a wild thunder of stomps and shakes.
Listening to the Black Angels and Devendra Banhart. Happiness.
My favorite little boy visited on Wednesday, and as we were eating lunch, he moved quite close and said, “You aren’t old, but you have a lot of old hairs on your head.”
That same day, in related not-old news, I flew a kite!
When the words stop
And you can endure the silence
That reveals your heart’s pain
Of emptiness
Or that great wrenching-sweet longing
That is the time to try and listen
To what the Beloved’s
Eyes
Most want to say.
Hafiz
Tags: Quoting
My baby brother visited us this past week. We drove and walked and ate practically ad infinitum.
From Mt. Hood
to Cannon Beach
where we saw barnacles, star fish, sea anemones, a jellyfish, TWO Bald Eagles,
a silent sea captain,
old buildings
and bouys hanging from trees.
We ate seafood, salt water taffy, and fudge.
We saw Ferraris!
They drank beer.
We saw Mt. Adams
and tall trees on Sauvie Island.
And an old advertisement on Fremont.
And chatted late in the evening and early in the morning. And napped and sat under an azure canopy in the back yard.
Life is grand…
Welcome to Under a Red Roof.
I’m Colleen Sohn, writer, poet, dreamer.
I like to take pictures.
I’m a bit silly, love yoga, eating, and good stories, because bad ones are a bummer.
Thanks for stopping by…
