jemac

My name is JeJe (pronounced like GiGi.)

I have not written for quite a while, but recently, events, in my life have drawn me back to it.
I enjoy all kinds of music, films, books and poetry.
A horticulturist, orchid grower and floral designer by trade. Enjoy art from all walks of life.

THE GUEST HOUSE

This human being is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

~Rumi~



THE SUMMER DAY

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean~the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down~
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, and to fall down into the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what it is you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

~Mary Oliver~


" I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance."
~Beryl Markham, West with the Night~

There is freedom that comes in loving somebody who accepts you exactly as you are. Your nuisances are not sparks that ignite arguments, but are viewed as the molten lava ... that is you. They are consumed by all of you; ---your ashes and your fire.
~ Alfa~