I love this so much! I was just contemplating how one’s reality is shaped by one’s viewpoint…newsfeed…and what one is exposed to by choice and also covertly. And then there is so, so much more. I love how you speak of words and painting with them and how sometimes the journey to get somewhere requires a lot. For me, sometimes it feels messy.
So many words, and twists and turns when I write as the canvas itself unfolds as I go. Maybe that is just how it is for some of us when we try to navigate infinity?
Thanks for this Jamie. I am in Forest Row, Emerson College, just outside London. I sit in a pretty dining room in a building that used to be used to train Waldorf teachers. Since I arrived a beehive has been moved from a tree outside. There are glass window sculptures with soft light glowing through them I desperately want to buy. The artist explained how the glass is colored with natural things…like it was in the past. But a place to hang them continues to evade me. 😉💕
Yes Terra, I completely agree. I can see from my newsfeed where my current setpoint is. I love that Jamie touches on imagination, for imagination and consuming can not happen at the same time.
Terra, thank you for your comments. You are definitely a world traveler! I agree sometimes the words come so dense that it’s hard to find my way through the twist and turns. Those glass sculptures will find a home one day. Follow that light. Thanks for being here. 🙏❤️💫
I struggle so much with too many words and stories. I hope at some point, I can learn to be succinct. Yes...those sculptures will find a home and in a way, I am floating through home now, and it is quite lovely in so many unexpected ways.
Dear Poet, thank you so much for letting your hair down! For the beauty, wonder, surprise of your words this morning are naming something I’ve always known deep in the marrow of my bones … that poetry, imagination and metaphor aren’t just embellishments in my life, but the very language and tools my psyche turns to whenever factual words can’t hold what’s true. Art does the same for me, it touches something on the inside.
As a poet myself, I know that I've been rescued more than once by an image that arrived truer than any literal one … often it was the only way to name what my younger self/selves had no language for. Once, for me, ("Mother, How Dark the Night Is" p.81) it was my metaphorical neck on the chopping board beside the onions … a child’s terror translated into the only metaphor she could carry at the time.
What you write about imagination as medicine and metaphor as the rope we climb back up with, touches something so deep and true in me! That line in your poem … "let down your hair" … feels mythic in the best way, a "Rapunzel" moment where expression becomes the very bridge between isolation and connection. I recognise that instinctively … how a single image can become a lifeline, a way out of the tower of silence, a way back into one’s own life.
For poetry is how I rescue myself. How I let others in. How I too climb out of my tower.
Do you see what you've done here, Jamie? You put words around the unspeakable. Thank you again for spreading the word, the love and for firing our imaginations with such poetic wonder.
Love and gratitude always, your poet friend, Deborah 🙏💖✨🔥
Dear Poet. Thank you. Yes to art. For me sound and smell seem to trump vision to create those multiple images from imagination. Metaphor comes from marrow. A deeper dive beyond time and space to touch place. Another language. As you so beautifully do in your poetry.
Sometimes in that longing for expression I layer too much into word-ing. Yet thats my way inside. Its nice to share it here. Far from performing- more for the art of connecting. To set metaphor free. To live into the questions of the unspeakable. Ropes indeed. Words are tools. Doors. Hair to let down. A lifeline.
And just when I thought you are already the most philosophical poet I know, you spiral even deeper into the layers of words. This post is amazing, Jamie. I know I need new words, because amazing and beautiful are not even beginning to describe what your words do for me. You understand to put complex thoughts into poetic prose that reaches my heart and bypasses my mind. Your poetry the cream on top of the cake of wisdom. Carrying me home to my heArt. Thank you. I meet you at the crossroads one day.
Hey thank you so much! At times I get too poetic yet its a door for me to that space between what is and what can be. Presence. Poetry bypasses the mind and gets to heart. I still believe ego has to open the door. Sometimes ego just won’t let go of logic. Our realities do get dressed in survival. Perspective and perception dance in a circle. See you at those crossroads. 🙏❤️
Dear Jamie, this is a poem radiating with truth and beauty. Not too many words or layers, lost without words, yet lost for words. The words that allow us to transform this reality, from which we need to escape at times, on the wings of imagination because life can feel too unbearable at those times.
Thank you for reminding us that "Far from escaping reality, poetry rescues us from reality."
and that "metaphor un-names knowledge" ~ some things can only be said in metaphor, because the words describing the facts are simply not enough to capture the experience.
Thank you for letting your hair down from the tower of words, allowing us to climb up and join you in the trap, which may also be an inner sanctuary, inviting us to glimpse truth in the dark, which is where imagination lives, birthing metaphor, to shine a light on those forgotten places and bathe them in love.
Thanks Veronika. Words. Wings. Poetry rescues us from reality! Metaphor opens deeper doors of communication with words in a language that at times has become a monologue. Imagination creates that space where reality can let its hair down. Thanks for being here. In this flight of words. Transforming. Bless you. 🙏❤️💫
Hi Jamie, l love how your words and reflections stretch into what we sense but don’t quite know … the portal of which is imagination, to feel beyond the words … that you manage to do so well, with words.
We create our reality … and aren’t we better for having poetry as a gateway into our expansiveness. “The way truth arrives in the dark … to tenderly touch the places l forgot to love.” Thank you 🙏🏼 🌀💖
Yes Jamie, poetry is spiritual medicine 🙏🌀✍🏻💖 and an invitation into imagination … a portal of curiosity. Thank you for your musings and wonderful poetry 😊
“Far from escaping reality, poetry rescues us from reality.” This speaks of beauty and truth . 💛And I can’t get over how gorgeous your photo is. Can I ask where it is?
Words travel far 'in the margins of time', yours' are an evocation, felt before comprehension, calligraphy by touch, more than a metaphor in your hand. A brush of air on water is an image comes to my mind.
In the background...
Philosophy runs deep. That paper on imagination, 'Possible worlds...' requires quite some study! They take a model of the brain and and a species evolution to claim a molecular base for responsive evocation, our past and future. I think.
Some stray thoughts...
i did a brief check to be sure, and modern English oddly lacks the European-wide distinction between 'Le connaissance' and La savoir', let alone the ancient Greek. I wist not.
You travel far. I needed to check as I never made it... the past and again, your brilliant capture, Alhambra! Calligraphy and imagination within walls if we get close up.
PS Running in my background these last few days, thoughts, Martin Shaw's modern telling of 'Psyche and Eros', yearning and conception; I guess questions for another time.
Thanks Phillip! Your responses are always so poetic and invoke a deeper sense of transformation. I really enjoyed the paper that I shared. Imagination definitely transforms reality. Thanks for looking into the questions here. 🙏❤️💫
Hi Jamie, Thank you for your real -eyesing. Love your poetic deep dives. That is why we are all here in this community. We feel the same. You put it to words, to poetry and metaphor. Oh yes I love a good metaphor myself! Every day I reach for metaphors as a way to see beyond what is. To perhaps find a deeper truth.
That Mary Oliver quote is a goodie eh. I've used it in a couple of things I have produced recently - not on Substack.
Thanks Jo! Thanks for being part of this wonderful community of words and metaphor and imagination. Thanks for helping open doors to a deeper truth. The picture is Alhambra Granada Spain snapped just before dusk. Thanks so much for being here and for always diving deep. 🙏❤️💫
Thank you for offering a glimpse into the underworld chamber where metaphor is born.
The way you describe it -- as density, as dimension, as the attending of a deeper noticing -- is it exactly. Poetry doesn't explain; it reveals. It opens the door to the colors inside, the ones logic can't touch. Where tears rise before I even understand why, because it meets me at a depth I didn't know I was lingering in.
Your words about metaphor un-naming knowledge, about symbol weaving new ways of seeing, about poetry transforming reality -- that's the ancient craft. The witchcraft of language. The Soul's own alchemical language.
I love this so much! I was just contemplating how one’s reality is shaped by one’s viewpoint…newsfeed…and what one is exposed to by choice and also covertly. And then there is so, so much more. I love how you speak of words and painting with them and how sometimes the journey to get somewhere requires a lot. For me, sometimes it feels messy.
So many words, and twists and turns when I write as the canvas itself unfolds as I go. Maybe that is just how it is for some of us when we try to navigate infinity?
Thanks for this Jamie. I am in Forest Row, Emerson College, just outside London. I sit in a pretty dining room in a building that used to be used to train Waldorf teachers. Since I arrived a beehive has been moved from a tree outside. There are glass window sculptures with soft light glowing through them I desperately want to buy. The artist explained how the glass is colored with natural things…like it was in the past. But a place to hang them continues to evade me. 😉💕
Yes Terra, I completely agree. I can see from my newsfeed where my current setpoint is. I love that Jamie touches on imagination, for imagination and consuming can not happen at the same time.
Yes...kind of like laughing and seriousness. I love that "imagination and consuming can not happen at the same time."
Terra, thank you for your comments. You are definitely a world traveler! I agree sometimes the words come so dense that it’s hard to find my way through the twist and turns. Those glass sculptures will find a home one day. Follow that light. Thanks for being here. 🙏❤️💫
I struggle so much with too many words and stories. I hope at some point, I can learn to be succinct. Yes...those sculptures will find a home and in a way, I am floating through home now, and it is quite lovely in so many unexpected ways.
Sounds wonderful! I look forward to reading all about it 💫
Dear Poet, thank you so much for letting your hair down! For the beauty, wonder, surprise of your words this morning are naming something I’ve always known deep in the marrow of my bones … that poetry, imagination and metaphor aren’t just embellishments in my life, but the very language and tools my psyche turns to whenever factual words can’t hold what’s true. Art does the same for me, it touches something on the inside.
As a poet myself, I know that I've been rescued more than once by an image that arrived truer than any literal one … often it was the only way to name what my younger self/selves had no language for. Once, for me, ("Mother, How Dark the Night Is" p.81) it was my metaphorical neck on the chopping board beside the onions … a child’s terror translated into the only metaphor she could carry at the time.
What you write about imagination as medicine and metaphor as the rope we climb back up with, touches something so deep and true in me! That line in your poem … "let down your hair" … feels mythic in the best way, a "Rapunzel" moment where expression becomes the very bridge between isolation and connection. I recognise that instinctively … how a single image can become a lifeline, a way out of the tower of silence, a way back into one’s own life.
For poetry is how I rescue myself. How I let others in. How I too climb out of my tower.
Do you see what you've done here, Jamie? You put words around the unspeakable. Thank you again for spreading the word, the love and for firing our imaginations with such poetic wonder.
Love and gratitude always, your poet friend, Deborah 🙏💖✨🔥
Dear Poet. Thank you. Yes to art. For me sound and smell seem to trump vision to create those multiple images from imagination. Metaphor comes from marrow. A deeper dive beyond time and space to touch place. Another language. As you so beautifully do in your poetry.
Sometimes in that longing for expression I layer too much into word-ing. Yet thats my way inside. Its nice to share it here. Far from performing- more for the art of connecting. To set metaphor free. To live into the questions of the unspeakable. Ropes indeed. Words are tools. Doors. Hair to let down. A lifeline.
Thanks for poeting here with me Deborah 🙏❤️💫
And just when I thought you are already the most philosophical poet I know, you spiral even deeper into the layers of words. This post is amazing, Jamie. I know I need new words, because amazing and beautiful are not even beginning to describe what your words do for me. You understand to put complex thoughts into poetic prose that reaches my heart and bypasses my mind. Your poetry the cream on top of the cake of wisdom. Carrying me home to my heArt. Thank you. I meet you at the crossroads one day.
Hey thank you so much! At times I get too poetic yet its a door for me to that space between what is and what can be. Presence. Poetry bypasses the mind and gets to heart. I still believe ego has to open the door. Sometimes ego just won’t let go of logic. Our realities do get dressed in survival. Perspective and perception dance in a circle. See you at those crossroads. 🙏❤️
Dear Jamie, this is a poem radiating with truth and beauty. Not too many words or layers, lost without words, yet lost for words. The words that allow us to transform this reality, from which we need to escape at times, on the wings of imagination because life can feel too unbearable at those times.
Thank you for reminding us that "Far from escaping reality, poetry rescues us from reality."
and that "metaphor un-names knowledge" ~ some things can only be said in metaphor, because the words describing the facts are simply not enough to capture the experience.
Thank you for letting your hair down from the tower of words, allowing us to climb up and join you in the trap, which may also be an inner sanctuary, inviting us to glimpse truth in the dark, which is where imagination lives, birthing metaphor, to shine a light on those forgotten places and bathe them in love.
Thanks Veronika. Words. Wings. Poetry rescues us from reality! Metaphor opens deeper doors of communication with words in a language that at times has become a monologue. Imagination creates that space where reality can let its hair down. Thanks for being here. In this flight of words. Transforming. Bless you. 🙏❤️💫
Hi Jamie, l love how your words and reflections stretch into what we sense but don’t quite know … the portal of which is imagination, to feel beyond the words … that you manage to do so well, with words.
We create our reality … and aren’t we better for having poetry as a gateway into our expansiveness. “The way truth arrives in the dark … to tenderly touch the places l forgot to love.” Thank you 🙏🏼 🌀💖
Thanks Simone. Yes to imagination. To step into another language. Poetry is spiritual medicine. Believing is seeing! Thanks for creating here. 🙏❤️💫
Yes Jamie, poetry is spiritual medicine 🙏🌀✍🏻💖 and an invitation into imagination … a portal of curiosity. Thank you for your musings and wonderful poetry 😊
I don't think there is such thing as too poetic 🤣💕 everything is poetry my dear ⚘️
“Far from escaping reality, poetry rescues us from reality.” This speaks of beauty and truth . 💛And I can’t get over how gorgeous your photo is. Can I ask where it is?
Thanks Grace! The Alhambra Granada Spain. Thanks for being here. 💫🙏❤️
Words travel far 'in the margins of time', yours' are an evocation, felt before comprehension, calligraphy by touch, more than a metaphor in your hand. A brush of air on water is an image comes to my mind.
In the background...
Philosophy runs deep. That paper on imagination, 'Possible worlds...' requires quite some study! They take a model of the brain and and a species evolution to claim a molecular base for responsive evocation, our past and future. I think.
Some stray thoughts...
i did a brief check to be sure, and modern English oddly lacks the European-wide distinction between 'Le connaissance' and La savoir', let alone the ancient Greek. I wist not.
You travel far. I needed to check as I never made it... the past and again, your brilliant capture, Alhambra! Calligraphy and imagination within walls if we get close up.
PS Running in my background these last few days, thoughts, Martin Shaw's modern telling of 'Psyche and Eros', yearning and conception; I guess questions for another time.
Thanks to you and all the other commentators.
Thanks Phillip! Your responses are always so poetic and invoke a deeper sense of transformation. I really enjoyed the paper that I shared. Imagination definitely transforms reality. Thanks for looking into the questions here. 🙏❤️💫
Imagine... what’s real?
Ivy, ivy towers, I?
Poems, presence, life?
Thank you Marisol
Tween what is and what can be
Into poetry
Thanks for being here 🙏❤️💫
Hi Jamie, Thank you for your real -eyesing. Love your poetic deep dives. That is why we are all here in this community. We feel the same. You put it to words, to poetry and metaphor. Oh yes I love a good metaphor myself! Every day I reach for metaphors as a way to see beyond what is. To perhaps find a deeper truth.
That Mary Oliver quote is a goodie eh. I've used it in a couple of things I have produced recently - not on Substack.
Where is the photo taken Jamie? Gorgeous.
Thank you for what you do. xx 💖
Thanks Jo! Thanks for being part of this wonderful community of words and metaphor and imagination. Thanks for helping open doors to a deeper truth. The picture is Alhambra Granada Spain snapped just before dusk. Thanks so much for being here and for always diving deep. 🙏❤️💫
I always love listening to you read your work, Jamie--you have such a smooth, calming presence. My favorite musing in this poem:
"What about imagination? Creativity transforms reality."
Being here with you now deepens wonder, imagination and creativity--a well I can dive into again-and-again. Thank you!
Thanks so much Robin! 🙏❤️💫
Dear Jamie,
Thank you for offering a glimpse into the underworld chamber where metaphor is born.
The way you describe it -- as density, as dimension, as the attending of a deeper noticing -- is it exactly. Poetry doesn't explain; it reveals. It opens the door to the colors inside, the ones logic can't touch. Where tears rise before I even understand why, because it meets me at a depth I didn't know I was lingering in.
Your words about metaphor un-naming knowledge, about symbol weaving new ways of seeing, about poetry transforming reality -- that's the ancient craft. The witchcraft of language. The Soul's own alchemical language.
Thank you for sharing this beauty! XO
Thanks so much Danielle. “The witchcraft of language”. I love this! Alchemy indeed. Thanks for diving deep here! 🙏❤️💫