my daughters just made me an inedible magic dough cookie with an x and an o on it, and it was tasty, in the way inedible magic things are.

thomas ravenscroft's melismata wasn't the reason I chose the title of this blog or identified with the word so immediately when I found it (along with qualia, another beloved resonance) in some book I've forgotten. but when I saw it, I realized it suited me for many reasons I won't bore you too much with, and when I saw the three ravens in there, well.

one day, I will print it out, and paint it, and learn to sing the songs.of course, that might be a someday too far in the future to see now. but I'm in no particular hurry. I'll get to it eventually, I expect, and if I don't, well. I'll be so involved in something else I don't imagine I'll miss this one idea unfulfilled.

so many of my particular fancies seem to be coalescing this year. and there's often a temptation towards forcing the pieces to fit, internal and external pressures bearing down, the instinctual urge to push and the voices pleading, encouraging, demanding. it's difficult sometimes, knowing what and who to listen to, and knowing when to close my ears and eyes and be still enough to follow the only voice that flows from the authentic and original source, whatever it is or wherever it flows from, or to.


do I believe I've lived before? sometimes, yes, I indulge that particular fancy. sometimes it makes sense. sometimes the pointlessness of everything, the unknowableness of purpose, paralyzes me. sometimes everything is so amazing I doubt my doubt, or I believe in both doubt and god. and god would be many forms, the face is a personal thing, whether it's the lion's head in tree bark or the long aching note held in the throat, or the old bearded man, abandoning me to a life of perplexity and choice, the way all parents do. my middle daughter sings about a god that created everything, she didn't learn that song from me, but who am I to stop it from flowering in her heart?

which does and doesn't have anything to do with anything, but you know the way these things go. the pattern often isn't seen until the weaving is completed and even then who says when enough is enough and it's time to rest? the choice to cut that particular apron string, to lean your back against the thorn and birth yourself out of whatever trouble you've gotten yourself into, that choice goes way back, past the fruit and the tree, past the wings, past the chaos at the root of nothing.

so in the face of that, what do I do? take pictures of honey in a green cup, of course.