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Photo on 2011-07-12 at 17.21

~

Inside I am the ocean

Rolling over mountains

Water and salt fill my bones

Until the rain leaves softer footprints

~

There’s a physical sensation that I’m emptying myself onto these pages.  I walk through a doorway into a room to see I’ve walked into three doorways into three rooms with more doors. The words carry me along.

Verb tenses are confusing but I like them better than nouns. I’m trying to avoid adjectives…I don’t need any more excitement. What I need is to go deepest into my questions while webs are being spun.

I’m here at the still point. The center of my being.

~

 

 

 

112 responses

  2. Thanks for visiting my blog. I like your description here… yes, sometimes, we need no more excitement. 🙂 Look forward to more blog exchanges. Thanks again, and all the best!

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  8. You had me at…well, I was going to say you had me at “Inside I am the ocean” but the whole damn quatrain blew me away. Truly, I think we speak a similar tongue. I greatly look forward to more of your words.

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    • I’m very grateful for your response ShimonZ. I started writing because I have this ongoing argument with the English language. Words don’t exist for many of the things I want to say and poetry, as a form of communication, has been a negotiation of sorts. To hear that some of these attempts have touched you is good to hear !

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    • Thank you Debb, what an honor you thought of nominating my blog for an award. And congratulations yourself ! It’s a fun aspect of blogging, but in truth, one I’m not personally receptive to. But again, thanks for the consideration!

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    • Thank you KBT…and congratulations yourself! Awards are great fun for some, and appreciated acknowledgement for sure, but I’m fine with the relationship created through commenting and getting to know other bloggers work. Rewards aren’t part of my WP experience. Thanks anyways!

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    • Thanks for the read, K.W. I appreciate your enthusiasm.
      People operate in every sort of way. I’m all about when situations evolve through relationship. Organic distribution. A momentary simultaneous blip. It happens…happy happy! Cheers!

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  33. Your poetry is interesting, J.H. And yes, to be clear, adjectives are best sacrificed to gods of the imagination and used very sparingly, if at all. Your style, tone and light touch is very reminiscent of the ancient poetry which came out of the Far East. Enjoyable.
    You may find the writing of a Scottish compatriot of mine interesting in its general brevity, Norman McCaig (unfortunately he died a number of years ago) but his poetry endures; he is considered one of Scotland’s greatest poets of the 20th century. But he preferred the short poem.

    Cheers!

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    • Thank you for your kind words and for introducing me to the poems of Norman McCraig. He casts beautiful images. I wasn’t surprised to see his quote about fishing.
      I began writing longer ruminating poems as I stirred up the muck. Now the brief glimpses of insight seem more fitting. Glad you found something here.

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  36. Ohh! It has been awhile since I’ve read these lines…four of the most exquisite lines that have ever gripped my heart:

    “Inside I am the ocean

    Rolling over mountains

    Water and salt fill my bones

    Until the rain leaves softer footprints”

    Thank you for showing us the way it should be done. Thanks also for taking the time to drop by http://Randalane.wordpress.com and for liking some of my haiku. Much appreciated! ** 🙂 **

    Ron

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  37. Hallo,
    Lovely poetry…I would like to share something too.
    Thank you and Good luck!

    “The courage was kept into a crystal globe.It broke and new ideas ,new
    emotions came alive.Opening a new chapter,which is your new life.
    Some people tell a story coming from their soul,some people tell a song ,which resonance you hear even from far away.The distance is a strong connection,that keep the love above.Because the best thing to hold onto in life is each other.”

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    • Thank you for the perfect quote this morning, Alina.

      I woke wrapped in thoughts about community.
      With perfect timing …your quote, like an echo, answering my questioning….!

      Peace to you too Alina….

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  38. Awww…thank you.I love to leave a positive message in people lives.I write poetry too.And I like to share as much as I can.If you don’t mind.Thank you.x
    “The world without light has no colour
    And a heart without light has no life.
    When you find that light,
    Keep it tight in your heart,
    And share it with the worldwide.”

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    • I’m honored Rachel…thank you for considering this blog and congratulations on your own nomination. I guess it’s time I posted that I’ve chosen to be an award free blog though. Thanks anyway!

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    • Thank you Meg….I feel the same about yours! I’ve begun reading ‘Beatitude Point’ but am going away for the week…sans computers….so look forward to more time with it. Glad we found each other!
      Jana

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  49. Love your enticing blog title Poetry of Light.
    You make me chuckle with your questioning of overexciting adjectives. (overexciting being an adjective). I need to pare back my overexciting, abundant, excessive, unnecessary, light, dark, squelchy adjectives!!!

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  51. It (the like button) says that I have indeed already liked this, yet my memory of such events is completely vanished. Feels lovely here, looking foward to following along 🙂

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  53. Well hello Jana – you are really good at all these various things you do. I appreciate your work something fierce, as well as your attention/interaction with my own work (thank you!). I guess this was simply an outburst of appreciation and cheers.

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    • You crack me up Nathan….and thanks for the encouragement, the appreciation and the cheers. And that “something fierce”? It’s how I tilt towards Laramie and Alias. Isn’t this weird? It’s as if life hangs on those two, just listening for clues which way things are going to go.
      You shouldn’t be so brilliant Nathan..(or is it vulnerable?) People would comment more. LOL. Thanks for the visit!

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    • A fine puzzle this morning Nathan….if friendship “may in fact be” a condition for the exercise of thought or creation, what might it be otherwise? Does thought generate creation or is thought itself then creation? A humdinger, Nathan…

      I looked up Deleuze for clues. I’d need to learn the language to really understand what he was about, but I like what I understood. But you are proposing this puzzle, and our connection is through Laramie and Alias, so perhaps I’ll try to address it by illustrating what it prompts in me rather than trying to decode its exact meaning.

      In the natural order of 10,000 things ( has a ring to it, no?) perception itself, all perceiving (let’s make it a verb) is fundamental and explicit within relationship/friendship. This “activity” of perception, this ever fluid dynamic of perceiving, is the continuing “language” of an intelligent world remembering, balancing and creating within itself where all elements are equally relative to the whole.

      As humans we like to think of ourselves as thinkers and observers. We are self reflective. “Measuring” all we “think we perceive” and determining where our place is in the natural order has become the accepted dynamic of a consensus (solely) human perception….an illusion actually replacing the collective acknowledgement of our relationship within the whole we can never actually be separate from.

      In my experience friendship is one of the strongest currents of this connection. Within friendship we are more likely to truly “acknowledge” our personal vulnerabilities giving us the opportunities we need to develop any strengths we may be lacking. It can be a rough road. I’ve found that friendship accelerates clarity.

      I have a very dear friend I’ve known my whole adult life. We became friends during a time of traumatic and violent chaos in both of our lives. She told me once on a rare visit,since we now live 1000’s of miles from each other, that when we see each other she remembers who she is. I had to grow into understanding what she meant. It seemed a little abstract at the time. It wasn’t that I reminded her of events that we’ve shared but of the whole of herself, who she is….all of it. We ground each other in our connection and it makes it clearer that this goes beyond ourselves.

      Thank you, Nathan, for the puzzle and the friendship! …. Jana

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      • Thank you Jana! I very much resonate with your friends’ statement around “when we see each other she remembers who she is.” I also have a couple of dear friends 1000s of miles away for all of my adult life – and have always sensed that the most of my becomings are welcomed in those relations. Your accounting for our experiencing participant within world also resonates with me. I believe for Deleuze, et. al., thought is creativity generating between human individuating and all the live-long world, and I leapt from his “friendship” comment to Mikhail Bakhtin’s sense of dialogue – that all that the Other is able to see in relation to me, and offer as commerce over the bridge of language between us is both constituting and eliciting the “more-than’s” and becomings that are my/our potentialities – many things we are unable to self-reflect or perceive in our limited organismal ways? Or something like that? Bakhtin lands significantly on RESPONSE-ability with one another – your respondings and ability to respond to, say, Laramie and Alias, began to craft interaction that stimulates in me intimations of friendship. I’d put my email here so that correspondence needn’t be delimited to public discourse, but am uncertain. Yesterday I read a piece addressing Giorgio Agamben’s approach to language or languaging…and that also put me in mind of friendship and the potentialities of interaction and the sharing / creation of language / thought. All best, always. – N

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  55. Your subtitle, the resonant velocity of words, really touched me in a new way. I never thought of words as having a velocity; instead, a sense of weight/gravity/impact. But I love to add the context of velocity to my understanding and experience 🙂

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    • It makes me so happy to hear you say this, Annette! You are right though….Words usually do have a sense of weight/gravity/impact don’t they? Written down, cast in ink and stone.
      I became interested in aural culture after reading David Abram’s illuminating book “Spell of the Sensuous”. He beautifully explains how before the development of the written word, we had a completely different experience with language. Words were more alive… There was no other way to remember anything. Contemplating this changed the way I view language and I began to look for ways to incorporate this relationship with language in my own life.
      Congratulations Grandma! My oldest grandchild just turned 13 this past week. The youngest is turning 3 soon. Life spins in wondrous ways. I’m a soft touch with the wee ones myself! All the best to you and yours!

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      • Thank you, Jana – becoming a grandmother defines a new phase of our life and what an opportunity for celebrating new life without the sleep deprivation this time 🙂
        I will look for D. Abram’s book. I am very interested in how visual images, kinesthetic experience and words overlap, or inform each other. Having worked as a therapist and using art therapy techniques, I am keenly aware that words are a secondary production, following the primary experience that takes place within our body, our senses.

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    • ” the interplay between light and dark.” There is something about it, isn’t there… Black and white photography, charcoal drawings…I love the contrasts. We wouldn’t have the one without the other with the interplay, tensions and commingling that is so interesting. Thank you for visiting, Marje!

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    • Hola Deborah! I’ve been away from wi-fi and what a trip to come back and see you have been visiting! It is so nice to visit this page, meet a new poet, and reacquaint myself with my roots in poetry. Thank you for this! And your own site is now at the top of my reading list. Mesmerizing is a great word…that I’ll take it into my day!

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