Solitude

Snowwolf,s Woodland Nook

Solitude.

I love the stillness of the wood:
I love the music of the rill:
I love to couch in pensive mood
Upon some silent hill.

Scarce heard, beneath yon arching trees,
The silver-crested ripples pass;
And, like a mimic brook, the breeze
Whispers among the grass.

Here from the world I win release,
Nor scorn of men, nor footstep rude,
Break in to mar the holy peace
Of this great solitude.

Here may the silent tears I weep
Lull the vexed spirit into rest,
As infants sob themselves to sleep
Upon a mother’s breast.

But when the bitter hour is gone,
And the keen throbbing pangs are still,
Oh sweetest then to couch alone
Upon some silent hill!

To live in joys that once have been,
To put the cold world out of sight,
And deck life’s drear and barren scene
With hues of rainbow-light.

For what to man the gift of breath,
If sorrow be his lot below;
If all the day that ends in death
Be dark with clouds of woe?

Shall the poor transport of an hour
Repay long years of sore distress—
The fragrance of a lonely flower
Make glad the wilderness?

Ye golden hours of Life’s young spring,
Of innocence, of love and truth!
Bright, beyond all imagining,
Thou fairy-dream of youth!

I’d give all wealth that years have piled,
The slow result of Life’s decay,
To be once more a little child
For one bright summer-day.

Lewis Carroll
Artist Unknown

There’s Nothing more Dangerous than a Woman Like This.

Maybe the most dangerous, radical thing we could ever do is to be ourselves. 

I strive not to hide in my words
But to be revealed there
Naked and shaking
Holding my treasured truth with a crooked smile and tears streaming down my face
Looking like I’m up to no good
Because I know there’s nothing as dangerous as a woman
Who hears the pulse of her own heart
And dances to it
Who knows the song of her truth
And sings it out loud
Who drums on the thick flesh of her hips
Unashamed to be loud and spacious in her body
Not caring who hears
Only caring about loving the naked ecstasy when she doesn’t care so much
As she writhes and shouts to the flooding rhythm of her own story.

There’s nothing as dangerous
As a woman
Who is utterly free
From the jail of her own soul
From self-doubt and the fury of silence and suppression slicked on by society,
For she crackles like a flame
While she sits still
In the stage four hurricane eye of her voice
Her power, her story—
Blowing gusts of whipping winds over every city in the country
Wisdom spilling from her lips like honey
Unapologetic
She is
Held to no billboard beauty standards.

She wears truth beautifully,
For it is all she is draped in
It is all she can stand to feel on her supple skin
No more cheap polyester lies
Freeing gusts of honestly only
For they go through sparkly surface skin
To puncture bone
And the rapturous magic of her ruby heart drips out—
One trembling word at a time.
One gasping breath at a time.
One confused, tearful smile at a time.

Real is here to stay.
Bullsh*t can go home.
It can run off with he-said, she-said gossip
And trying too hard to be liked
And chasing boys who don’t see a trace of her worth
She’s had enough of it for one life
She’s breathed it, lived it
Made a mask of it all
Empty.
Empty.
Empty.
Now she knows—

There’s nothing more deliciously dangerous
than a woman who is comfortable
in her own skin.
Who basks in the soulful crispness of her identity
And knows the unstoppable magic she is,
Letting the fullness of her heart spill over her jeans
Cellulite—gasp!
She cares more about being love.
Spreading hope.
Listening to the gentle whispers of the earth
And the fertile knowing of her own body.

Ear perched to the hot, pulsing ground,
She comes alive in the mud and sh*t and pain of it all
A mosaic of patterned experience, good and bad, terrible and beautiful, traumatic and tantalizing
She comes alive when every hope seems to die
The ember inside her lights
Ignites
Fights
For
What’s right
What’s real
What’s true
What’s sensual
Vulnerable
And healing.

‘Cause there’s nothing more dangerous
than a woman who knows
that the universe flows through her
and through her and through her…
That she is birth and death
Fire and water
Love and pain
A magnificent masterpiece of
Crumbling endings and tiny buds of new beginnings.
She pulls from darkness and reaches out hard for light
Velvety black midnight and milky jam sunrise
Equally necessary
She falls head over heels for both
And walks between worlds
Seamlessly.

There’s nothing more dangerous
than a woman who remembers
the magic she is
A woman who knows that her tears and truth make the world more beautiful
A woman who knows that the universe flows through her and through her and through her…
For eternity.

~

Author: Sarah Harvey

Marmalade yoghurt cake

Yoghurt and orange are a great combination in this moist cake recipe. It will also keep for several days in an airtight container if you can resist eating it all at once!

Ingredients

For the cake

• 125g/4½oz full-fat Greek-style yoghurt
• 50ml/2fl oz vegetable oil
• 1 lemon, zest only
• 1 orange, zest only
• 3 free-range eggs
• 125g/4½ caster sugar
• 200g/7oz plain flour
• 2 tsp baking powder

For the glaze

• 75g/3oz marmalade
• 1 tbsp orange juice

To serve

• Greek-style yoghurt

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Grease and line a 450g/1lb loaf tin.
2. In a large bowl beat together the yoghurt, vegetable oil, lemon and orange zest and eggs until light and fluffy. Sift in all the dry ingredients and mix until just combined.
3. Spoon the mixture into the loaf tin and bake for about 45 minutes. (Test the cake by inserting a skewer into the centre. If the skewer comes out clean, the cake is done.)
4. Remove from the oven and leave to cool a little in the tin.
5. Meanwhile for the glaze, warm the marmalade and orange juice until the marmalade melts. Pour the glaze over the cake and set aside to cool completely.
6. Remove the cake from the tin and serve with lashings of Greek-style yoghurt.

https://www.bbc.com/food/recipes/marmalade_yoghurt_cake_97760

Ode to a Powerful Woman—You

You came into this world dancing—
Dancing to earth-beat,
moon-beat,
heartbeat.

Your feet did not
whisper apologies,
but stomped
defiantly
a message of strength:

“I am here,”
your body declared,
“And I will take up
no less space
than what I am.”

You
are a powerful woman.

You set fire
to convention
and bury limitations
beneath the fertile soil
of your soul;

You flood
their expectations
in the fury
of your blood,
and scatter
their pretensions
with mocking laughter
in your voice.

You
are a powerful woman.

You bow to no one
but the earth
and the moon
and the wisdom of trees.

You reside
in your heart,
in your body,
in your power in your heart;
in your power,
you abide…

You
are a powerful woman.

Your toes
are roots,
stubborn.

Your voice
is thunder,
bold.

Your heart
is soil,
life-giving.

Your sweat
is ocean,
healing.

Your life
is earth-beat,
moon-beat,
wing-beat—

Sweet
uncompromising
presence
in power—
in presence
in power, in power, in power.

You,
friend, sister, goddess,
are a powerful woman,
and we are
so glad
you’re here.

~

**Author’s note: dedicated to one particular, powerful sister-friend. Written for all.

~

AUTHOR: TOBY ISRAEL

IMAGE: AUTHOR'S OWN

EDITOR: YOLI RAMAZZINA

Philosopher Martin Buber on Love and What It Means to Live in the Present

“Love is the quality of attention we pay to things,” poet J.D. McClatchy wrote seven decades after the brilliant and underappreciated philosopher Simone Weil observed that “attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”

The type of attention that makes for generous and unselfish love is what the Austrian-born Israeli Jewish philosopher Martin Buber (February 8, 1878–June 13, 1965) examined in I and Thou (public library) — the 1923 existentialist masterpiece in which Buber laid out his visionary relation modality that makes us real to one another.

Martin Buber

Echoing Tolstoy’s insistence that “love is a present activity only [and] the man who does not manifest love in the present has not love,” Buber extends his distinction between the objectifying It and the subjectifying Thou into the most intimate domain of relation, and writes:

The present, and by that is meant not the point which indicates from time to time in our thought merely the conclusion of “finished” time, the mere appearance of a termination which is fixed and held, but the real, filled present, exists only in so far as actual presentness, meeting, and relation exist. The present arises only in virtue of the fact that the Thou becomes present.

[…]

True beings are lived in the present, the life of objects is in the past.

Love, Buber argues, is something larger than affect — not a static feeling, but a dynamic state of being lived in the present. In a counterpoint to the Proustian model of love, he writes:

Feelings accompany the metaphysical and metapsychical fact of love, but they do not constitute it… Feelings are “entertained”: love comes to pass. Feelings dwell in man; but man dwells in his love.

Art by Jean-Pierre Weill from The Well of Being

In consonance with psychologist turned pioneering sculptor Anne Truitt’s definition of love as “the honoring of others in a way that grants them the grace of their own autonomy and allows mutual discovery,” Buber writes:

Love does not cling to the I in such a way as to have the Thouonly for its “content,” its object; but love is between I and Thou. The man who does not know this, with his very being know this, does not know love; even though he ascribes to it the feelings he lives through, experiences, enjoys, and expresses… Love is responsibility of an Ifor a Thou. In this lies the likeness — impossible in any feeling whatsoever — of all who love, from the smallest to the greatest and from the blessedly protected man, whose life is rounded in that of a loved being, to him who is all his life nailed to the cross of the world, and who ventures to bring himself to the dreadful point — to love all men.

Half a century after naturalist John Muir observed that “when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe,” Buber adds:

We live our lives inscrutably included within the streaming mutual life of the universe.

I and Thou, which explores what it means to expand the boundaries of the self and grant others the dignity and sanctity of Thou, is a superb read in its entirety. Complement this particular portion with Adrienne Rich on how honorable relationships refine our truths, Erich Fromm on what is keeping us from mastering the art of loving, and a lovely illustrated meditation on the many meanings and manifestations of love.

Being Spiritual

Snowwolf,s Woodland Nook

 

“To me, being spiritual means…
whispering to trees,
laughing with flowers,
falling in love with sunsets,
consulting the water and worshipping the stars. 
One hand to my heart.
One hand to the Earth.
And sparkles.
Tons of them.”

By Tanya Mark
Art Kari-Lise Alexander

Love

Sandy Karl

"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage." ~ Lao Tzu

Have a happy Saturday!