Since everything is but an apparition,
Perfect in being what it is,
Having nothing to do with good or bad,
Acceptance or rejection
You might as well burst out laughing!

LONGCHENPA

Sunrise

By Mary Oliver
(1935 - )



You can
die for it--
an idea,
or the world. People

have done so,
brilliantly,
letting
their small bodies be bound

to the stake,
creating
an unforgettable
fury of light. But

this morning,
climbing the familiar hills
in the familiar
fabric of dawn, I thought

of China,
and India
and Europe, and I thought
how the sun

blazes
for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises

under the lashes
of my own eyes, and I thought
I am so many!
What is my name?

What is the name
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
for all of us? Call it

whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter
fire.

here is the Bio i posted at a show that starts tonight at Java Joes...
it will be up for a month!

Artist: Karen Carmona

Karen Carmona is a contemporary painter who presently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She grew up in the rolling hills of Southern California and then moved to Washington where she earned her BFA in Fine Arts. Karen mainly does oil paintings and acrylic paintings but has tampered in sculpture and printmaking.
Currently Karen Carmona is teaching art in Santa Fe Public Schools and is involved in the healing arts as a massage therapist.

Abstract art, in which objects are not depicted in their original state but rather as shapes and colors in a non-objective way, has influenced her a lot. Most of her paintings are abstract in form and depict her freedom of expression. She mainly uses very bright and bold colors in her acrylic and oil paintings. She mostly does her paintings on canvas, yet some of her pieces exhibited here are painted on wood panels; these pieces express her intrigue with recycled materials.

Karen Carmona mainly presents images from her dreams and imagination. She allows her thoughts to flow in a free manner and that is what forms the base of most of her paintings All the paintings of Karen Carmona clearly depict her expressionism and inner thoughts. It is the artist's intention that her paintings may be hung in multiple directions. There are online shops where one can order and buy the paintings of Karen Carmona.


"My images are created from
moments: forms found in
glimpses of self-realization.
Images are fluid in experience
and created in a process from
within."...


Please feel free to contact the artist or visit her website:

www.karmona.us

(818) 857-9857

painting by beloved Bill Matthews

Anyone looking honestly at life will see that we live in a constant state of suspense and ambiguity. Our minds are perpetually shifting in and out of confusion and clarity. If we could be confused all the time, that would at least make for some kind of clarity. What is really baffling about life is that sometimes, despite all our confusion, we can also be really wise!

This constant uncertainty may make everything seem bleak and almost hopeless; but if you look more deeply at it, you will see that its very nature creates "gaps," spaces in which profound chances and opportunities for transformation are continuously flowering ­ if, that is, they can be seen and seized.

Sogyal Rinpoche

"each image painted
on the canvas of existence
is the form
of the artist himself.
Eternal Ocean
spews forth new waves.
"Waves" we call them;
but there is only the Sea."

~Fakhruddin Iraqi

He's there among the scented trees,
playing the notes he has taught you.
Too late for embarrassment, shy doe
nibbling at the forest's edge,
shawled in deep blue shadows.
He's calling you. The flower of your soul
is opening, little deer.
The river of scent will lead you
deep into the trees where he waits.
The bihanga also plays tonight --
do you hear his more distant flute?
Black bees carry the moon's luster
from flower to flower.
The rest of the grove will bloom tonight, I think.
How he looks at you, young animal.
He shames the moon with his own dark light.

Let's bow down before the young Lord,
the deep blue flowers at his feet.

~ Tagore

"Still"

I said I will find what is lowly
and put the roots of my identity
down there:
each day I'll wake up
and find the lowly nearby,
a handy focus and reminder,
a ready measure of my significance,
the voice by which I would be heard,
the wills, the kinds of selfishness
I could
freely adopt as my own:

but though I have looked everywhere,
I can find nothing
to give myself to:
everything is

magnificent with existence, is in
surfeit of glory:
nothing is diminished,
nothing has been diminished for me:

I said what is more lowly than the grass:
ah, underneath,
a ground-crust of dry-burnt moss:
I looked at it closely
and said this can be my habitat: but
nestling in I
found
below the brown exterior
green mechanisms beyond the intellect
awaiting resurrection in rain: so I got up

and ran saying there is nothing lowly in the universe:
I found a beggar:
he had stumps for legs: nobody was paying
him any attention: everybody went on by:
I nestled in and found his life:
there, love shook his body like a devastation:
I said
though I have looked everywhere
I can find nothing lowly
in the universe:

I whirled though transfigurations up and down,
transfigurations of size and shape and place:

at one sudden point came still,
stood in wonder:
moss, beggar, weed, tick, pine, self, magnificent
with being!

-A.R. Ammons

today i slid down my driveway on a cardboard box...what FUN!
May all beings try it something new today!

distractions.

so my year started a little late and better than ever: so many simple goals have been sustained and so many blessings have shined their way into my life. it is amazing how many times we can start over. some of my goals include staying away from the things that do not uplift my higher self, getting closer to the things that i love, and using better judgment. so far so good. may your year be as blessed. cheers!

Free Glitter Graphics

if i know anything, it is about starting over... and what better time then Now! May all beings follow their bliss, their heart, and their higher way.

Sitting alone in peace before these cliffs
the full moon is heaven's beacon
the ten thousand things are all reflections
the moon originally has no light
wide open the spirit of itself is pure
hold fast to the void realize its subtle mystery
look at the moon like this
this moon that is the heart's pivot

~Han-shan

He who binds himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy.
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sun rise.

~William Blake

Your world and My world,
On every side of the Star,
Fit like a puzzle.

Gaurdian Angel

* dedicated to Coach Steve Ilg
www.wholisticfitness.com

I am the bird that flutters against your window in the morning,
and your closest friend, whom you can never know,
blossoms that light up for the blind.

I am the glacier shining over the woods, so pale,
and heavy voices from the cathedral tower.
The thought that suddenly hits you in the middle of the day
and makes you feel so fantastically happy.

I am the one you have loved for many years.
I walk beside you all day and look intently at you
and put my mouth against your heart
though you're not aware of it.

I am your third arm, your second
shadow, the white one,
whom you cannot accept,
and who can never forget you.

~Rolf Jacobsen

In Loving Memory of Scooter Boy


"We Must Die Because We Have Known Them"

The Moment

And not once,
but many times over,
again and again,
how we disappeared
into that deep well
of darkness, shuddering beneath that load of silence,
clinging to our narrow ledge.

Yet the darkness, sometimes,
unfolded as light.
Our atoms dissolved in it,
each separate molecule opening
into a radiant disk of feeling.

How still we became,
witness and thing seen,
spectacle and observer,
each point admitting an untrammeled flood.

by Dorothy Walters

Doubt is not a disease but merely a symptom of a lack of what we in our tradition call the View, which is the realization of the nature of mind, and so of the nature of reality. When the View is there completely, there will be no possibility for the slightest trace of doubt, for then we'll be looking at reality through its own eyes. But until we reach enlightenment there will inevitably be doubts, because doubt is a fundamental activity of the unenlightened mind, and the only way to deal with doubts is neither to suppress nor indulge them.

~Sogyal Rinpoche

Middle of the night
Trying to express mySelf,
It's total madness.