seventeentimes

Those of you who enjoyed the big cow may also like this BBC story.

I have a movie about a camel waiting in my netflix queue. It’s worth clicking on this link just to hear the soundtrack…

It makes me miss Mr. Evan Cagle very much. He was in love with a camel and probably still is because he is a good man. 

ooohoooohooo I’m so excited. These images are wonderul.

www.ianjameswood.co.uk

They are also

1. Circle pictures

2. images that capture something of the other way of seeing things I was describing

3. Connecting, by being embodiments of what I was describing.

They also therefore 4. make me think of a movie which my Aikido sensai told us about this morning called, ‘The Secret’ which is about how the things you focus on are the things you create in your life. He hadn’t actually seen it. I guess I’ll let you know what I think of it.

image by ianjameswood

how much of our lives are about the feeling of connection and disconnection? How much of what makes us feel  emotionaly charged, excited, driven, deeply peaceful, deeply moved, is caused by a sense of connection, by something which challenges our idea of ourselves as separate, boundaried? ok, so the rhetorical questions are annoying but I haven’t really developed a sophisticated enough writing style to know how to describe something that is neither question nor statement. Anyway. Emiko sent me this picture. Isn’t it beautiful? In a way you can’t quite put a finger on? It feels SO GOOD when people listen. When people say, ‘yes and’. I’m bad at it myself because I procrastinate. (in re-reading this I find I just broke the rule I wrote in my new journal about 30 minutes ago. So, in correction: I am pretty darned good at ‘yes and’ too, which i guess is why I’m noticing it and thinking about it. The reason I’m correcting instead of just erasing, is to show myself it’s ok to be honest with you.) Emiko is great at it. I think you can see it here. My wonderful friend Todd wrote some entries on his MySpace site which really helped me this week. He is a man I would describe as wise and he has learned how to say things so that others can learn from him. The things that happened to him last week, burst out of him in screeching tree branches full of cherry blossoms, and I caught the scent in the air and opened my arms and flung them as wide as I could. Can you imagine it? My friend Todd, grinning face to the sky, his body the trunk of a lithe tree shooting out into space, laughing, flowering, moving. On the other side of the world Emiko is beaming - literally beaming. Cool, warm light shining out of her, flowing from her gently, unceasing, flowing across the room, bathing her family in light, dancing with the rainbows of her children, the warmth of her husband. out through the bricks, across the town, touching everyone she knows, across the surface of the earth - yellow candlelight. In my room it causes a glow and I feel her presence. In the light, the bursting tree branches - this is my home, where I am lucky enough to live. This world, laptop, sofa, walls, is real. But not more real than what you mean to me. Not more real than a mother who is also a treasure chest discovered in the attic on an English summer’s afternoon to the sound of birdsong and a distant airplane, full of stories and buttons and scarves and toys and pictures. Or a father who is a lesson, a key, a walk through a sacred forest, the taste of clear mountain water, who is love (the verb). Or a brother who is a favourite armchair, and just - laughter. the best laughter in the world. This fairy tale, this map, this is my life. it is easier to see. for me. thank you for sharing, all of you who I shared with this week. emails, phone calls, thoughts about you you don’t know I had.