In order to see birds it is necessary to become part of the silence. Robert Lynd (1879 – 1949)

You are daydreaming about the future because you have not tasted the present. Start tasting the present. Find out a few moments where you are simply delighting. Looking at the trees, just be the look. Listening to the birds, just be a listening ear. Let them reach to your deepest core. Let their song spread all over your being.

~ Osho

I’m driven. I am. I’m driven for some reason. But I don’t know where I’m going. Courtney Love

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

Oscar Wilde 

foto – in ulmarra nsw

Bidh an t-ubhal as fheàrr air a’mheangan as àirde.

The best apple is on the highest bough.

http://www.hp.europe.de/kd-europtravel/gaelic/proverb.htm

APPLE-PEARS

each ninth month of the year
the buds fallen & fruit forming
copper-gold jewels a child’s round cheeks

sah-lay, we call them, the sound of new seasons
two notes plucked from a song played on strings

they came to us: Chinese fruit to a Chinese family
from wartime sailboats, Captain Blueberry
guarding cuttings in his metal chest
my parents planted it like Jack’s magic seed
in time, the fruit came like doubloons

* * *

we explain they are apple-
pears, I explain them like I explain myself:
like one thing, like another 
but neither, you must taste it to know it 

as I leave for university
the sah-lay skins are yellow and green

mother & I find two ripe small imploded moons
we peel & cut the flesh honied & crisp 
the translucence is still
on my tongue when I say goodbye:

mother’s efficient hug, brisk, her
small frame bony under my arms
father’s soft belly & tilted head
embrace, his eyes water

reaching high altitude, I recline
pocket of impossible life amidst thousands
of miles of empty air and light
dwarf nuggets hidden in
my body turn fibrous, dissolve.

© 2001, Andy Quan
From: Slant

http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poem/item/15511

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. :

Mahatma Gandhi

 

My Sitting Down Place

My Sitting Down Place by Gail Kay, Proserpine, QLD

I go down to the creek

Where the water gurgles

Joyfully

As it hurries along

Over the shining sand and pebbles

To its destiny

With the sea.

Dappled sunlight

Flits and moves

Across the water, over the creek bank,

And the birds sing happily

To the accompaniment

Of insects and crickets.

I sit in silence as I soak it all into my soul.

Peace flows

From the water

To my heart.

Whatever life brings me I now can face

Because of this,

My sitting down place!

Read more: http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/arts/my-sitting-down-place#ixzz2jlzLSCKG

 

 

“Sometimes you have to kind of die inside in order to rise from your own ashes and believe in yourself and love yourself to become a new person.”

Gerard Way

If I were to choose the sights, the sounds, the fragrances I most would want to see and hear and smell–among all the delights of the open world–on a final day on earth, I think I would choose these: the clear, ethereal song of a white-throated sparrow singing at dawn; the smell of pine trees in the heat of the noon; the lonely calling of Canada geese; the sight of a dragon-fly glinting in the sunshine; the voice of a hermit thrush far in a darkening woods at evening; and–most spiritual and moving of sights–the white cathedral of a cumulus cloud floating serenely in the blue of the sky. 

Edwin Way Teale, “On a Final Day”

http://globalstewards.org/nature-animal-quotes.htm

 

There are few pleasures like really burrowing one’s nose into sweet peas.

–   Angela Thirkell

http://www.gardendigest.com/smell.htm

Children are the sweet peas in the garden of life! 

 

 

The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”

― W.B. Yeats

“You have lost your reason and taken the wrong path. You have taken lies for truth, and hideousness for beauty. You would marvel if, owing to strange events of some sorts, frogs and lizards suddenly grew on apple and orange trees instead of fruit, or if roses began to smell like a sweating horse; so I marvel at you who exchange heaven for earth. I don’t want to understand you.”

― Anton Chekhov

Most wars are started by well-fed people with time on their hands to dream up half-baked ideologies or grandiose ambitions, and to nurse real or imagined grievances.

~Thomas Sowell

Doc Childre and Bruce Cryer, From Chaos to Coherence

Intuition does not always appear as the ingenious breakthrough or something grandiose. Intuitive thoughts, feelings, and solutions often manifest themselves as good old common sense. Common sense is efficient.

Keep your words soft and tender because tomorrow you may have to eat them.

http://www.developingteachers.com/quotes/q1.htm

“It seems that most the world is driven by the eye, right? They design cities to look great but they always sound horrible. They design telephones to look great, but they sound horrible. I think it was about time that the other senses were celebrated.”

― Björk

Do not starve your soul while you indulge your body. That is dressing the shadow.”

― Hemat Malak, Your Angels Called and Left a Message: Divine Messages to Guide You to Happiness

Worry gives small things a big shadow

SWEDEN

Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.”

– Miriam Beard

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colours. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”

― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

In my world, everyone’s a pony and they all eat rainbows and poop butterflies! Dr. Seuss

foto – butterfly house bonville nsw jan 2013

Butterfly and me

I extended my hands,
To chase, touch the butterfly.
Colours spilled on me –
As if a rainbow circled me.

I stood still in the middle,
Losing my path and senses-
This thrown off -words of solace.
As butterflies, always teach us something.

I’m still chasing my dreams- as butterflies.
Unsupported and unheard; all my actions goes vain.
Like butterflies, like rainbows – paths befuddle me.
These are true colours of life – endure it.

Sakkthi Subramaniyam

There are three schoolmasters for everybody that will employ them – the senses, intelligent companions, and books.

― Henry Ward Beecher

“Wisdom eludes me yet, but foolishness I captured long ago and to this day it is my constant companion, though many people consider me wise.”

― Kevin Hearne, Hammered

You shall create beauty not to excite the senses but to give sustenance to the soul.

― Gabriela Mistral

“Give sustenance, Allah.
Give sustenance to me.”

― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

A man should avoid these six evils: lust, anger, avarice pleasure, pride, and rashness, for free of these he may be happy. (Sanskrit).

I Came to buy a smile—today—But just a single smile—The smallest one upon your faceWill suit me just as well—The one that no one else would missIt shone so very small—I’m pleading at the “counter”—…

Source: A man should avoid these six evils: lust, anger, avarice pleasure, pride, and rashness, for free of these he may be happy. (Sanskrit). | THE OLD PROVERBIAL RECOVERY

Bunny’s Excuse. There was once a wicked old sinner Who fancied a rabbit for dinner, But the bunny he met Said: “Don’t kill me yet, For I really am still a beginner.”

My living problems also cease to be struggles.

Heaven designs to suit our trials to our strength.

Though the sun shines, leave not your cloak at home.

” The queen’s mocking laughter cut in. “This is your treasure, Lord Sheftu?”

“Aye. The greatest treasure in Egypt—a maid whose loyalty cannot be bought. Whatever bargain we make, Daughter of the Sun, must include her freedom.”
― Eloise Jarvis McGraw, Mara, Daughter of the Nile

RISE TOGETHER

ADAM T NA SPEAKER

IF DRINKING DON’T KILL ME

THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM

SMALL TRIBUTE FOR IZZY FOREAL BY PETER CARRUTHERS

RISE TOGETHER

ADAM T NA SPEAKER

IF DRINKING DON’T KILL ME

THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM

SMALL TRIBUTE FOR IZZY FOREAL BY PETER CARRUTHERS