-Christine Valters Paintner @ Abbey of the Arts (photos from the Salmon Homecoming Festival 2008 in Seattle) * Make sure to visit this week’s Poetry Party *

In honor of the Harvest Moon tonight, images of autumn’s abundance:    -Christine Valters Paintner @ Abbey of the Arts (images of dahlias taken in Volunteer Park in Seattle)

Lake and Maple  I want to give myself utterly as this maple that burned and burned for three days without stinting and then in two more dropped off every leaf; as this lake that, no matter what comes to its green-blue depths, both takes and returns it. In the still heart that refuses nothing, the world is twice-born — two earths wheeling, two heavens, two egrets reaching down into subtraction; even the fish for an instant doubled, before it is gone. I want the fish. I want the losing it all when it rains and I want the returning transparanence.

The words are coming slowly for me this week so time for me to rest in some visual expression.  These photos were taken in Jurmala on the coast of Latvia, a beautiful place where the thick forest meets the Baltic sea, and the land where my father was born.  He died twelve years ago and today would have been his 76th birthday.  Happy birthday Daddy, may you find yourself dancing among trees and swimming in a vast sea of love.  May you encounter a healing from the dark and difficult wounds of your earthly life and now be dazzled into a vision beyond all of

It’s great to live only by the spirit, to testify day by day for eternity only to the spiritual side of people. But sometimes I get fed up with my spiritual existance. … Instead of forever hovering above I’d like to feel there’s some weight to me To have a fever, to have blackened fingers from the newspaper to be excited not only by the mind but, at last, by a meal by the curve of a neck by an ear. -words spoken by the angel Damiel in the film Wings of Desire (images of angels from churches in Vienna) (c) Christine

“At the entrance, my bare feet on the dirt floor, Here, gusts of heat; at my back, white clouds. I stare and stare. It seems I was called for this: To glorify things just because they are.” -Czeslaw Milosz (most of these photos have appeared on this blog before, but the quote inspired me to group them together)  -Christine Valters Paintner @ Abbey of the Arts ** Come back on Monday for our 21st Poetry Party  **

    When I die, I want your hands on my eyes: I want the light and wheat of your beloved hands to pass their freshness over me once more: I want to feel the softness that changed my destiny. I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep. I want your ears still to hear the wind, I want you to sniff the sea’s aroma that we loved together, to continue to walk on the sand we walk on. I want what I love to continue to live, and you whom I love and sang above everything