Thank you Jamie. So many questions and a wonderful prompt to explore and step beyond what is known into the unknown. Through the glass … I think you hint at mystery which is what shrouds the whole of life and like love, can be ‘known’, but never to it’s full depth until of course we leave and return to source. To home. To love❤️
Love always wins. Thanks for reading and reaching out Alice-Ann ! I love your thoughts about mystery. Into the unknown we always go. Somehow what we see is what we get. Through the looking glass we go. Enjoy those Cotswolds 🙏❤️
The stiller we become the more we see feel hear. How does one become still. Find that clearing in the forest with its cushioned silence. Slip into the deep dark pool, become one with the trees. My current favourite phrase is from the Kybalion , the All is in us. We are in the All.
Really enjoyed that Jamie. Reminded me of my own use of the weaving metaphor. Must go search.
“the All is in us. We are in the All”. Ooh. I can feel into that one Charlie! We are the drop in the Ocean yet that whole ocean is in the drop. One of the gifts of poetry is that it allows us to play in to the warp and weft of the weave. Like a song. What sounds accompany the metaphor. What form if any? Will Soul shine through? How would the heart read it? Can it dance with the wildness of the cosmos? Thanks for being here sharing in that space. Breathing in experience. Breathing out poetry. 🙏❤️
i've been on a journey to discover WHO i am, and where i belong in this place. our origins come from beyond this world, the stars alive in us, and i think to be human is to question, and we need to probe, dig deeper into our being, and burrow down to the very essence of existence. we need to ask questions, even if they can't be answered.
Thanks so much Sam! I appreciate the restack and you living into the questions with me. The chaos of creation is beautiful poetry. Out essence a poem. See you in the spaces between the words and sounds they make. I love your poetry Sam! Blessings for 2025 and beyond! 🙏❤️
Yes... the nature of things... a very good poem to ring in the year.👍Thanks.
And from your questions: "Is knowing a dream?"
I have an old copy of a Penguin Classic by Arthur Cooper with translations of the poetry of Li Po and Tu Fu.
Li Po remembers an old story from the philosopher:
Did Chuang Chu dream
he was the butterfly
Or the butterfly
that it was Chuang Chu?...
Cooper speculates inter alia in his informative intro to Chinese poetic culture that music is a means of communication between different literate civilisations.
NB I read of two meanings for 'frenulum': moths have a lock/catch that enables the fore and hind wings unison in flight. Butterflies do not have such a structure.
Thanks Phillip for the deeper dive into the tethered words! We wear a skin of language. What lies beyond? Here is to Butterflies. To Dreams. To living into the questions. On the Wings of Words and sound bites we meet! Bless you and thank you for being here. You make it better! Happy New Year! 🙏❤️
Very good, Jamie. There is a lot I can say, but I will focus on this ancient skin that is tired and tattered.
We humans must shed the skins of false stories and false ideas that wealth and success is found by the domination of nature, by solely taking from her. We must grow the new skin of cooperation and sharing the Earth with our companion species.
We need to live by the code of love, beauty, compassion and giving. We need to look up, way above, and listen to the birds, our guides to healing and health.
I can say more, Jamie, but I will end here. Thank you for such an inspiring, poem.
Thanks Perry! I’ll meet you at that place of WE. Thanks for all your insights. I look forward to many more this year. Thanks for all of your support. See you in the spaces between the words. 🙏❤️
'frenulum' - a new word to me. I had to look it up. Thank you! So exquisite. "...as the frenulum of our existence is stretched into a sensual storm of essence attempting to pull away from body to touch soul."
Thanks Muriel. Thanks for diving deeper into the words. We are tethered to our own stories and to language. What’s out on the edges of our frenulum of experience? Thanks for reading and for reaching out. All the best for 2025! Enjoy that snow up in Grey County! 🙏❤️
These are words to keep revisiting and find new layers each visit... On first reading, John O'Donohue's description of the body being in the soul came to mind. Much to contemplate
Oooh Lizzie! Goosebumps. We are a body in a soul. The words of the great indigenous Canadians writer Richard Wagamese spoke to that so beautifully. That lens makes so much more sense to me once I heard that many years ago. Thanks for seeing through the looking glass with me. I resonate with the soul being around us versus in us. Maybe it’s both? Another skin indeed. Thanks for reading and for reaching out. 🙏❤️
I’m teleported into Joyce’s world of Chaosmos, Jim, out there on the thin edge, out where the rest of my soul exists, in the clearing in the woods, the place we can only find by first getting lost, Tranströmer’s clearing, which also happens to be my clearing, and yours - all of ours ! - I’ll meet you there. Blessings on your new year! ❤️
Thanks mate! The chaos of creation indeed! A body in a soul. Funny, I’ve got Transtromer open on my desk right now lol! Yes, that great clearing in the forest of WE. Rumi’s field. We are all speaking of the same place. Definitely meet you there. Sending big hugs for 2025. The Canada post strike is over so expect a package soon lol! Hoping it arrives 🙏❤️
So good to know Tranströmer is on your desk! Keeping everything crossed re Canadian Postal Goodies. BTW have you come across 🇨🇦 Mark Brennan’s work? Well worth checking out!
“I believe there is a subconscious interaction between all of us and the places we live. The stories of our lives and the way in which each of us connects to one another are deeply influenced by our understanding of the places and processes we come into contact with.” Mark Brennan 🇨🇦❤️
"Maybe there is another skin out beyond the perception of our senses?
Wrapped around us, yet one we cannot see." I love this, Jamie. Makes me think of a veil. The "I" and the "eye" is what restricts us most, I agree. Only the heart can feel what is true. Thanks for sharing this beautiful article!
Thanks Sadhbh! Happy new year and all the best for 2025! Thanks for reading, and for reaching out. Yes, there’s something wrapped around us. What we see is what we get. See you in the spaces between the words. It’s a journey indeed. 🙏❤️
I wrote a poem yesterday with some connected thoughts, about the human need to 'nail it down', definitively define, to box life so it won't give us any unexpected (nasty) surprises. Our attempts to do this with science and technology have merely created another layer (skin) of unpredictability. It all has to be shed. And we stand there, having let go of our 'know-it-all' mentality, to receive what's on offer from a beneficient universe. Holding and leaning into the questions with an open and humble mind seems to be the only viable option. All else is hubris. I have yet to develop a deeper sense of 'listening' on my walks. Maybe I'll even develop an ability to 'hear' music and put more 'feel' into the piano, (for which I have zero obvious skill). It's a journey and a privileged one at that.
As always very well said Josh! No gift of music here for me either. As for the listening… attending to the moment…. presence… well that’s the gift that we all might be chasing. Once we try to own it, it is gone. Keep walking. Thanks for living into the questions here with me. See you in the spaces between the words. Thank you so much for reading and for reaching out. Blessings 🙏❤️
Hi Jamie, your writing is so beautiful and evocative. How you capture the mystery, the magic, the aliveness of the worlds we know, and those we glimpse through the windows our soul and its multidimensionality, what the universe offers us. And the poem conjured the visual of a kaleidoscope of being. Thank you 🙏💜
Thanks Simone! Thank you for reading and for reaching out! A kaleidoscope indeed. Through the looking glass. Bless that ankle and enjoy the approach of mid summer! Happy 2025! Thanks for being here. A body in a soul 🙏❤️
Having just spent a lot of headspace and time over the past couple of days pondering 'spacetime', I stumble into these lines right at the beginning:
"The two “I’s - time and space.
They are the king and queen of our earthly experience."
Uncanny how our paths keep crossing in the realms of living into the questions, again and again, as we turn those prisms of shed glass around in wonder...
Thanks Jamie! So wonderful to consider that we are limited by our senses and skin…there is much to ponder just in that little piece of this wonderfully rich post. Happy new year!
Thanks Jenn! Living into the questions. Makes me realize that so many people are looking at the same thing yet see something entirely different. Thanks for painting what you see! All the best for 2025! Thanks for reading! 🙏❤️
I just happened upon a passage in a book I’m reading. “The Painting of Modern Life” by TJ Clark. Anyway, he included, as a footnote, the following quotation from a friend of the painter Renoir named Georges Rivière:
“ Renoir et ses amis”, p. 182, "This landscape which so delighted Renoir, other painters saw it in less cheerful colours. They noted only terrains vagues strewn with rubbish, scabby grass trodden by inhabitants in rags, miserable hovels and tumbledown cottages, a grey sky punctuated by tall factory chimneys belching thick black smoke. It is exactly the same place, but seen by men of different temperaments and interpreted in both cases with equal sincerity. I am thinking, in writing this, of Raffaëlli, who exhibited with the Impressionists.
"—In his pictures, Renoir said to me one day, looking at a picture by Raffaëlli, everything is poor, even the grass!"
Thank you Jamie. So many questions and a wonderful prompt to explore and step beyond what is known into the unknown. Through the glass … I think you hint at mystery which is what shrouds the whole of life and like love, can be ‘known’, but never to it’s full depth until of course we leave and return to source. To home. To love❤️
Love always wins. Thanks for reading and reaching out Alice-Ann ! I love your thoughts about mystery. Into the unknown we always go. Somehow what we see is what we get. Through the looking glass we go. Enjoy those Cotswolds 🙏❤️
The stiller we become the more we see feel hear. How does one become still. Find that clearing in the forest with its cushioned silence. Slip into the deep dark pool, become one with the trees. My current favourite phrase is from the Kybalion , the All is in us. We are in the All.
Really enjoyed that Jamie. Reminded me of my own use of the weaving metaphor. Must go search.
“the All is in us. We are in the All”. Ooh. I can feel into that one Charlie! We are the drop in the Ocean yet that whole ocean is in the drop. One of the gifts of poetry is that it allows us to play in to the warp and weft of the weave. Like a song. What sounds accompany the metaphor. What form if any? Will Soul shine through? How would the heart read it? Can it dance with the wildness of the cosmos? Thanks for being here sharing in that space. Breathing in experience. Breathing out poetry. 🙏❤️
Breath in experience breath out poetry
Breath in happiness breath out joy.
I had a break through this morning
There are no words I can use to describe it
Yet
There will be a poem.
I will wait in wonder! Break open that glass! Blessings 🙏❤️
i've been on a journey to discover WHO i am, and where i belong in this place. our origins come from beyond this world, the stars alive in us, and i think to be human is to question, and we need to probe, dig deeper into our being, and burrow down to the very essence of existence. we need to ask questions, even if they can't be answered.
i loved this pondering, Jamie.
Thanks so much Sam! I appreciate the restack and you living into the questions with me. The chaos of creation is beautiful poetry. Out essence a poem. See you in the spaces between the words and sounds they make. I love your poetry Sam! Blessings for 2025 and beyond! 🙏❤️
Indeed, blessings all round. Thank you.
Yes... the nature of things... a very good poem to ring in the year.👍Thanks.
And from your questions: "Is knowing a dream?"
I have an old copy of a Penguin Classic by Arthur Cooper with translations of the poetry of Li Po and Tu Fu.
Li Po remembers an old story from the philosopher:
Did Chuang Chu dream
he was the butterfly
Or the butterfly
that it was Chuang Chu?...
Cooper speculates inter alia in his informative intro to Chinese poetic culture that music is a means of communication between different literate civilisations.
NB I read of two meanings for 'frenulum': moths have a lock/catch that enables the fore and hind wings unison in flight. Butterflies do not have such a structure.
Thanks Phillip for the deeper dive into the tethered words! We wear a skin of language. What lies beyond? Here is to Butterflies. To Dreams. To living into the questions. On the Wings of Words and sound bites we meet! Bless you and thank you for being here. You make it better! Happy New Year! 🙏❤️
In continuo good friend.
Thank you Jaime! This post is what I contemplate in my thoughts daily about nature of things. I specifically connect with “The mirror is the door.
Everything must be emptied of its self before its Being can be revealed.” 🙏🏽
Thanks Yolanda! Through the looking glass we go. Thank you so much for reading and reaching out. All the best for 2025 🙏❤️
Very good, Jamie. There is a lot I can say, but I will focus on this ancient skin that is tired and tattered.
We humans must shed the skins of false stories and false ideas that wealth and success is found by the domination of nature, by solely taking from her. We must grow the new skin of cooperation and sharing the Earth with our companion species.
We need to live by the code of love, beauty, compassion and giving. We need to look up, way above, and listen to the birds, our guides to healing and health.
I can say more, Jamie, but I will end here. Thank you for such an inspiring, poem.
Thanks Perry! I’ll meet you at that place of WE. Thanks for all your insights. I look forward to many more this year. Thanks for all of your support. See you in the spaces between the words. 🙏❤️
Beautifully curated and expressed. A wonderful, expansive short listen for my Monday. Thank you, Jamie! Your work is of great value 🤍
Thanks Caroline! I’m glad I found your poetry too. I look forward to reading more. Thanks for stopping by to read and reach out. 🙏❤️
'frenulum' - a new word to me. I had to look it up. Thank you! So exquisite. "...as the frenulum of our existence is stretched into a sensual storm of essence attempting to pull away from body to touch soul."
Thanks Muriel. Thanks for diving deeper into the words. We are tethered to our own stories and to language. What’s out on the edges of our frenulum of experience? Thanks for reading and for reaching out. All the best for 2025! Enjoy that snow up in Grey County! 🙏❤️
These are words to keep revisiting and find new layers each visit... On first reading, John O'Donohue's description of the body being in the soul came to mind. Much to contemplate
🙏
Oooh Lizzie! Goosebumps. We are a body in a soul. The words of the great indigenous Canadians writer Richard Wagamese spoke to that so beautifully. That lens makes so much more sense to me once I heard that many years ago. Thanks for seeing through the looking glass with me. I resonate with the soul being around us versus in us. Maybe it’s both? Another skin indeed. Thanks for reading and for reaching out. 🙏❤️
I’m teleported into Joyce’s world of Chaosmos, Jim, out there on the thin edge, out where the rest of my soul exists, in the clearing in the woods, the place we can only find by first getting lost, Tranströmer’s clearing, which also happens to be my clearing, and yours - all of ours ! - I’ll meet you there. Blessings on your new year! ❤️
Thanks mate! The chaos of creation indeed! A body in a soul. Funny, I’ve got Transtromer open on my desk right now lol! Yes, that great clearing in the forest of WE. Rumi’s field. We are all speaking of the same place. Definitely meet you there. Sending big hugs for 2025. The Canada post strike is over so expect a package soon lol! Hoping it arrives 🙏❤️
So good to know Tranströmer is on your desk! Keeping everything crossed re Canadian Postal Goodies. BTW have you come across 🇨🇦 Mark Brennan’s work? Well worth checking out!
https://www.mark-brennan.com
“I believe there is a subconscious interaction between all of us and the places we live. The stories of our lives and the way in which each of us connects to one another are deeply influenced by our understanding of the places and processes we come into contact with.” Mark Brennan 🇨🇦❤️
Thanks for another introduction to a Canadian creator I never knew of! You are a true maven Will! 🙏❤️
"Maybe there is another skin out beyond the perception of our senses?
Wrapped around us, yet one we cannot see." I love this, Jamie. Makes me think of a veil. The "I" and the "eye" is what restricts us most, I agree. Only the heart can feel what is true. Thanks for sharing this beautiful article!
Thanks Sadhbh! Happy new year and all the best for 2025! Thanks for reading, and for reaching out. Yes, there’s something wrapped around us. What we see is what we get. See you in the spaces between the words. It’s a journey indeed. 🙏❤️
Thank you for taking us through the looking glass again Jamie.
Beautiful contemplations which take us to the essence of life. 💜
Thanks Jo! Thanks for reading and for being here. Sending blessings for that new home and mountain Hoka hugs at dawn. Blessings for 2025. 🙏❤️
I wrote a poem yesterday with some connected thoughts, about the human need to 'nail it down', definitively define, to box life so it won't give us any unexpected (nasty) surprises. Our attempts to do this with science and technology have merely created another layer (skin) of unpredictability. It all has to be shed. And we stand there, having let go of our 'know-it-all' mentality, to receive what's on offer from a beneficient universe. Holding and leaning into the questions with an open and humble mind seems to be the only viable option. All else is hubris. I have yet to develop a deeper sense of 'listening' on my walks. Maybe I'll even develop an ability to 'hear' music and put more 'feel' into the piano, (for which I have zero obvious skill). It's a journey and a privileged one at that.
As always very well said Josh! No gift of music here for me either. As for the listening… attending to the moment…. presence… well that’s the gift that we all might be chasing. Once we try to own it, it is gone. Keep walking. Thanks for living into the questions here with me. See you in the spaces between the words. Thank you so much for reading and for reaching out. Blessings 🙏❤️
Hi Jamie, your writing is so beautiful and evocative. How you capture the mystery, the magic, the aliveness of the worlds we know, and those we glimpse through the windows our soul and its multidimensionality, what the universe offers us. And the poem conjured the visual of a kaleidoscope of being. Thank you 🙏💜
Thanks Simone! Thank you for reading and for reaching out! A kaleidoscope indeed. Through the looking glass. Bless that ankle and enjoy the approach of mid summer! Happy 2025! Thanks for being here. A body in a soul 🙏❤️
Thanks Jamie 🙏💜. Your post opened the wonderment of where else our soul dwells, just knowing the probability of it is enough 🤩
Having just spent a lot of headspace and time over the past couple of days pondering 'spacetime', I stumble into these lines right at the beginning:
"The two “I’s - time and space.
They are the king and queen of our earthly experience."
Uncanny how our paths keep crossing in the realms of living into the questions, again and again, as we turn those prisms of shed glass around in wonder...
Wishing you a wondrous New Year 2025, Jamie xxx
Thanks Veronika! All the best for 2025 as we lean into the symbiocene! Beyond time and space! Meet you there. Blessings 🙏❤️
Thanks Jamie! So wonderful to consider that we are limited by our senses and skin…there is much to ponder just in that little piece of this wonderfully rich post. Happy new year!
Thanks Jenn! Living into the questions. Makes me realize that so many people are looking at the same thing yet see something entirely different. Thanks for painting what you see! All the best for 2025! Thanks for reading! 🙏❤️
It is so interesting, how many ways a thing can be seen by so many different individuals. Thanks for sharing your vision!
I just happened upon a passage in a book I’m reading. “The Painting of Modern Life” by TJ Clark. Anyway, he included, as a footnote, the following quotation from a friend of the painter Renoir named Georges Rivière:
“ Renoir et ses amis”, p. 182, "This landscape which so delighted Renoir, other painters saw it in less cheerful colours. They noted only terrains vagues strewn with rubbish, scabby grass trodden by inhabitants in rags, miserable hovels and tumbledown cottages, a grey sky punctuated by tall factory chimneys belching thick black smoke. It is exactly the same place, but seen by men of different temperaments and interpreted in both cases with equal sincerity. I am thinking, in writing this, of Raffaëlli, who exhibited with the Impressionists.
"—In his pictures, Renoir said to me one day, looking at a picture by Raffaëlli, everything is poor, even the grass!"
Ever has it been!