LISA CHUN

more random summer images

nature is so bountiful

this is my favorite place

At least right now it is, and especially on Tuesday! Hope yours is a lovely summer.

The Art of Living

How wonderfully coincidental that I JUST finished reading a book referencing the Stoics (school of thought which may be as close to my own thought as I have come across so far) and specifically this book: The Art of Living. Then the next day I get an email from this poetry list that Lynne - thank you Lynne, and thanks for reading my last poem in the way it was meant to be read, you know, with swooning as a side effect - with something from this very book which is at the top of my list to hunt down.

Caretake This Moment

Caretake this moment.
Immerse yourself in its particulars.
Respond to this person, this challenge, this deed.

Quit the evasions.
Stop giving yourself needless trouble.
It is time to really live; to fully inhabit the situation you happen to be in now.
You are not some disinterested bystander.
Exert yourself.

Respect your partnership with providence.
Ask yourself often, How may I perform this particular deed
such that it would be consistent with and acceptable to the divine will?
Heed the answer and get to work.

When your doors are shut and your room is dark you are not alone.
The will of nature is within you as your natural genius is within.
Listen to its importunings.
Follow its directives.

As concerns the art of living, the material is your own life.
No great thing is created suddenly.
There must be time.

Give your best and always be kind.

~ Epictetus ~

(Epictetus: The Art of Living a New Interpretation by Sharon Lebell.)

summer roses, summer sky

I like how some of the friends I see almost every day voluntary check my blog!
Also, these past few nights am completely getting my mind blown by this phenomenon of the moon rising then ducking behind the clouds to create this watery night-time painting effect - it's just spectacular. That plus the summer night wind, it's like dying and going straight to heaven. Light and moon and clouds and wind. If only I could take a picture of it...love and expansion incarnate. And I don't care how new age that sounds.

more gifts

Today, more surprise presents!

When I got home a bag from France hanging on my door full of super smelly cheese, provencal olives and macarons, these incredible colorful meringue cookies that I have gone at length about in the past. (Except I can't eat them right now because I'm on a sugar break. And a caffeine break. Amongst other things.)

At the post office, on a more serious and sentimental note, a cd sent to me posthumously via the assistant of a friend, Carol Cole, who was and is very much loved and though I never met her in person we corresponded for a whole lot of years. She will be very greatly missed. The cd is a remixing of songs by Nat King Cole & Natalie Cole, her relatives. I was so touched to read the notes that came with it, both from her assistant and from Carol only a few months before she passed. It impresses me and moves me that in her passing I could feel so acknowledged. Just wow. We have to love who we love while we can. Also, you never know how you will touch other people's lives.

Ah, a week of so many gifts. Let's all be grateful, grateful as we can, for how much abundance and love is all around us.

in the garden

The Cure is Simple

Today I got a surprise from the Fedex man - an expedited package. It made me laugh to open it, then unwrap it (what was inside was very nicely gift wrapped!). Seems to be one of the benefits of getting old and slowly losing your mind. It was a book my friend in California said, on two separate occasions, was being sent to me. I'd completely forgotten and so had the mysterious pleasure of receiving a thoroughly unexpected gift! My days are like this lately. Tricked by the benevolent universe.

Poetry edits are grieving me.
Forays into nature are curing me.
As are these things:
Herbs for stress working their slow magic on my adrenals.
Riding around town in the early evening with the windows open, sunset clouds streaming sun like god talking.
Piles of books from the library.
Penstemon, Russian Sage, Roses.
The comfort of the shaded room I read in, summer wind performing a wind dance, the green-blue-gold organza curtains its lovely summer dress.
Other people's little kids inviting me into their world of Transformers, Spiderman, and the way they eat things so oddly - cherries (bite into it until you see the pit, then pluck the pit out with your little fingers so as to maximize red juice effect on hands, clothes, face) and egg mcmuffins (go into the corner and find a  REALLY old one that's hard like a plastic toy and nibble all day at the different pieces of it - not if you were my kid.)
Music. Of all kinds. Sometimes falling asleep to the loveliness if it.
More piles of books from the library and afterwards walking down the dusky path with a friend trying to sing that Eddie Rabbit song. Something something rainy night.
Even morning meditation sometimes yielding jokes.

I've been simplifying, clarifying, cleaning. I say to you and to me: if the goal is happiness
let nothing obstruct its achievement.

more summer pics

These with the help of my personal assistant c. Darren Avila and his iphone. Many thanks Darren. (Hahahahaha.)

tuesday new mexico love