Throw your dream into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.

Anais Nin

You who never arrived in my arms, Beloved,

who were lost from the start,
I don’t even know what songs would please you.

I have given up trying
to recognize you in the surging wave of
the next moment.

All the immense images in me –

the far-off, deeply-felt landscape,
cities, towers, and bridges, and unsuspected turns in the path,
and those powerful lands that were once
pulsing with the life of the gods–
all rise within me to mean you,

who forever elude me.

You, Beloved, who are all
the gardens I have ever gazed at, longing.

An open window
in a country house,

and you almost stepped out, pensive, to meet me.

Streets that I chanced upon,
you had just walked down them and vanished.
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors
were still dizzy with your presence and, startled,

gave back my too-sudden image.

Who knows?

Perhaps the same
bird echoed through both of us
yesterday, separate, in the evening…

Rainer Maria Rilke

Door

Yellow

Breakfast

Sweetness

“Make something pretty while you can.”

…

One Community is a monthly photo project in which participants photograph their homes and community with a theme in mind. The theme varies by month. The goal is to both showcase similarities and differences in our communities worldwide – and bring us all closer together in understanding through art.

Kelli lives in New Jersey with her dog, Willie Nelson Mandela, and her boyfriend, Dutch. A native Arizonan, she is enamored by the lush landscape, and looking to build community. She is a novelist, public health advocate and United Methodist. She blogs at African Kelli.

Sarah is a life-long Missourian who shares her home with her husband, one (soon to be two) son(s), and an old, grumpy dachsund. Like every good Midwesterner, she can (and will) talk to you at length about the weather. Sarah blogs at:Beauty School Dropout.

Rebekah lives in Kilkenny, Ireland with her husband. An American by birth, she’s discovering what it means to be an expat on the Emerald Isle. She blogs at: Honeysuckle Life.

Kara is a cheerful nerd living in downtown Phoenix, AZ with her law-studying husband and an anxious pound puppy. She works full time in the mental health field but in her off time enjoys sunshine, great food and the occasional craft beer. She blogs at:Sunshine Cupcakes.

Stephanie is a lifelong Wyomingite with ranch girl roots.  She has her own marketing and graphic design business, and in her free time, she enjoys knitting, fishing with her boyfriend, and team roping.  Her blog is Now I Can See the Moon.

The answer is never the answer. What’s really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you’ll always be seeking. I’ve never seen anybody really find the answer. They think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.

Ken Kesey

…

Happy Birthday, Mom!

You were born together, and together you shall be forever more.

You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.

You shall be together even in the silent memory of the universe.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another, but make not a bond of love;

rather let it be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Sing and dance together and be joyous,

but let each one of you respect the other’s individuality.

Kahlil Gibran

]]> http://www.underaredroof.com/twenty-2/feed/ 0 http://www.underaredroof.com/howl/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=howl http://www.underaredroof.com/howl/#comments Thu, 23 May 2013 11:21:38 +0000 Colleen http://www.underaredroof.com/?p=6563

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

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

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

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

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