Facepainting (The Woodlands Art Festival, April 2008) — Image by kenne
All women are wounded
Who gather berries, dibble in mottled light,
Turn white roots from humus, crack nuts on stone
High upland with squinted eye
or rest in cedar shade.
— from Praise for Sick Women by Gary Snyder
Huntington Zen Garden (March 31, 2022) — Panorama by kenne
I have lost count of the number of times I have visited the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, collections-based research, and educational institution in San Marino, California. The Huntington is like a “riprap” — loose rocks used as a foundation that a person can assemble before them.
Riprap
Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks,
placed solid, by hands
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way,
straying of planets,
These poems, people,
lost ponies with
Dragging saddles—
and rocky sure-foot trails.
Game of Go.
ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word
a creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
all change, in thoughts,
As well as things.
— Gary Snyder
Originally posted April 2011 on Becoming is Superior to Being. — kenne
“The only thing we can perceive are our perceptions. In other words, consciousness is the matrix upon which
the cosmos is apprehended. Color, sound, temperature, and the like exist only as perceptions in our head,
not as absolute essences. In the broadest sense, we cannot be sure of an outside universe at all.” — George Berkeley
Artist Along Sabino Creek In Sabino Canyon, April, 2011 — Image by kenne
View Off Wilderness Rocks Trail in the Santa Catalina Mountains (08/08/14) — Image by kenne
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In a tangle of cliffs, I chose a place –
Bird paths, but no trails for me.
What’s beyond the yard?
White clouds clinging to vague rocks.
Now I’ve lived here – how many years –
Again and again, spring and winter pass.
Go tell families with silverware and cars
“What’s the use of all that noise and money?”
— Han-shan, Cold Mountain Poems Translated by Gary Snyder
Wilderness of Rocks Trail In The Santa Catalina Mountains — Image by kenne
Piute Creek
Pipevine Swallowtail Butterfly On A Bearded Penstemon — Image by kenne
Thinking about a poem I’ll never write.
With gut on wood and hide, and plucking thumb,
Grope and stutter for the words, invent a tune,
In any tongue, this moment one time true
Be wine or blood of rhythm drives it through—
A leap of words to things and there it stops.
Creating empty caves and tools in shops
And holy domes, and nothing you can name;
The long old chorus blowing underfoot
Makes high wild notes of mountains in the sea.
O Muse, a goddess gone astray
Who warms the cow and makes the wise man sane,
(& even madness gobbles demons down)
Then dance through jewelled trees & lotus crowns
For Narihira’s lover, the crying plover,
For babies grown and childhood homes
And moving, moving, on through scenes and towns
Weep for the crowds of men
Like birds gone south forever.
— from A Stone Garden by Gary Snyder
Cloud Ripples At Sunset — Image by kenne
— Gary Snyder
A Sea of Cortez Osprey — Image by kenne
— Gary Snyder
Pusch Ridge Wilderness, Santa Catalina Mountains — Photo-Artistry by kenne
— Han-shan
Time To Rest The Feet (FotoFest 10/24/02) — Photo-Artistry by kenne
— from Praise for Sick Women by Gary Snyder
View West From Blackett’s Ridge Across Sabino Canyon — Image by kenne
— from Cold Mountain Poems by Gary Snyder
Snow In the Santa Catalina Mountains — Images by kenne
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— Gary Snyder from the Cold Mountain Poems
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Honey Bee On Elegant Lupin — Image by kenne
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— Gary Snyder
23 — from Gary Snyder’s Cold Mountain Poems
Sabino Canyon, Santa Catalina Mountains — Photo-Artistry by kenne
— Gary Snyder
Becoming is Superior to Being 