If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.
Dalai Lama XIV
ice cream
bright
numbers
splash
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, two sons, 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. Her blog is 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.
Eduarda Schroeder is a curious, visual creature who believes all pictures tell a story. She hails from Mozambique, via Portugal and New Jersey, and is now a desert rat living with her husband and two teenage daughters in Chandler, Arizona. Her blog is Midnight Train.
Wife and Mom to a houseful of boys in sunny San Diego; word geek and all-kinds-of writer; maker of things both creative and useful. Sue is now blogging again at no-bad-days.
Teresa lives in Massachusetts with her husband, college aged daughter and two crazy cats. She is a creative spirit who tries to find the lesson, blessing and humor in everything and she blogs at Laughter Among Tears.
Tags: One Community
Early evening and I ache for sleep. A day filled with errands and doing, doing, doing.
Laundry, crisp from the line waits to be put away.
The plum tree drops jewel bombs helter skelter on the lawn, a deliciously mad race with dribbles on our chins.
Wind whispers through the birch while the hubster drums wildly at the piano keys.
Milo prostrates in the sun and Paris snores from the center of the room, not to be forgotten.
This and that, all of it home.
My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird —
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,
which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.
Mary Oliver
Tags: Poetry
That first sip of liquor
nibble of cake
bead of blood under the sharp blade
is our remembering.
Remembering
that first time
we belonged; we were perfect; we had a modicum of control.
That first sip of liquor
nibble of cake
bead of blood under the sharp blade
is our forgetting.
Forgetting
that we hover on the periphery,
flawed and powerless.
The second sip,
the second bite,
the blood sluicing,
is our punishment,
our loathing,
our attempt at escape.
We do not see
that we do belong
to ourselves
to the world
that we are every wild glimmer of forefathers and mothers,
the stars, the mountains, the bees.
So we sip and chew and cut (and more),
receding into the ether that was once us,
that was once love,
only to awaken,
with a renewed sense of failure
that we are NOT
those who belong
those who are perfect
those who command.
We are the cast-offs,
clasping meager suitcases, crestfallen,
while the golden ones, in their gleaming gilded chariots,
depart for greener pastures,
smiling.
And so we crumble into nothingness,
hidden amongst the din
of the multitudes that are not us
and sip and bite and cut anew.
Colleen Sohn
...
Alternate title – “After Watching Too Much Mad Men“
Tags: My Poetry
