The White Hot Fire

Wow. It's been a long time.
I used to really enjoy blogging frequently. I relished the chance to spill words out on the screen and once satisfied with the result, click that "Publish" button. Not sure what happened, besides, well, "Life"...

Also, I'm not sure who would read this anymore, but I've kept thinking of my little spot on the blogging world lately, this 'Wren Row', and I guess it's for a reason.
So, here I am! ^_^  I just have one poem that I wrote in the interim between the my last post and now. it describes one of the hardest days I ever had, and what I learned from it. 

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Rusty bits of wire, barbed
torn and decayed plastics
clear, smudged glass
broken to bits by sadness, smashed by white anger. 

I took my pain out to the woods that day
I took my heart, set it in a bottle, safe
then I raised my hands, filled with glass
and hurled them against rocks
til there were only shards. 

It didn't change anything
(the world didn't rock at all)
My crying, my  screaming 

was only heard by me,
the woods, God, and the stream. 

But at the end, after everything was gone
broken to pieces at my feet
and I felt empty, very empty
finally (and strangely)
there was room for me to breathe. 

Rusty bits of wire, barbed
torn and decayed plastics
clear, smudged glass
broken to bits by sadness,
to make a way for  new peace.

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Glass is fascinating and alluring to me. I could spend hours-- no, days-- in the Cornell Glass museum and never tire of observing glass. It has so many forms, colors, shapes, and even textures. It's strong, but it's weak. It can be breathtakingly beautiful, or tiresomely plain. 
Glass is somehow a ordinary thing--sand--turned into a beautiful, useful, fragile, and oftentimes gorgeous substance.

It's melted and blown into shape. And for those brief moments, it's malleable, soft (though none can touch it) and blazing hot.

When it dries, it's cold, and clear, and no longer flexible. It can break into a million tiny pieces with one drop of the hand. Or it can shatter and yet stay intact with one car impact.

Glass is strange and to me, a real mystery... I can't understand it fully.
I guess that's why I love it.

Glass always reminds me of several Scriptures:

"Everyone's going through a refining fire sooner or later, but you'll be well-preserved, protected from the eternal flames. Be preservatives yourselves. Preserve the peace." 
(Mark 9, v. 49-50)


And this one, it's my favorite:

    Bless our God, O peoples! 
      Give him a thunderous welcome! 
   Didn't he set us on the road to life? 
      Didn't he keep us out of the ditch? 
   He trained us first, 
      passed us like silver through refining fires, 
   Brought us into hardscrabble country, 
      pushed us to our very limit, 
   Road-tested us inside and out, 
      took us to hell and back; 
   Finally he brought us 
      to this well-watered place.


(Psalm 66, v. 8-12)

Restless

"Green Fall", World's End State Park, Pennsylvania. (c) Hannah Hottenstein.

Silently,
the drops curve down,
trailing quickly,
and the leaves
quiver in their wake
(as the rain restlessly
seeks the ground.)

Words Unspoken

I tell you everything that is really nothing, and nothing of what is everything, do not be fooled by what I am saying. Please listen carefully and try to hear what I am not saying. {Charles C. Finn}

We speak careful sentences
making waves of thoughts.
Others catch the drift
but rarely drink the draught.

Charles Dodgson's Art

Maybe you know him only by the name "Lewis Carroll" (his pen name),
and maybe you don't know about him at all...

That's alright! Let me enlighten you about one of my favorite authors, poets, and photographers: Charles Lutwidge Dodgson a.k.a. Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland and the Through the Looking Glass tales & many others.

You may mentally chide me for even referencing it ( I would too!), but Wikipedia really summarizes it best:

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (pronounced /ˈdɒdsən/ dod-sən; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll (/ˈkærəl/ karr-əl), was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the Snark" and "Jabberwocky", all examples of the genre of literary nonsense. He is noted for his facility at word play, logic, and fantasy, and there are societies dedicated to the enjoyment and promotion of his works and the investigation of his life in many parts of the world, including the United Kingdom, Japan, the United States, and New Zealand.

 He really was an interesting person. I have read several biographies on him and what truly amuses me the most is just how widely all of his biographers differ in opinion on his life & person! You have everything from some claiming he was an insane, drugged-out pedophile all the way to saying that he was a genius and a saint! (Personally I don't believe either of those extremes.)

The fact that he was a mathematician is generally not known as well as his authorship. But he was indeed all those things--a man of many interests, if not many proficient talents. He was smart & witty, if extremely shy/reserved in person. He seemed to prefer the company of children rather than adults (which I can sometimes identify with quite well.) He found his lyrical, comical literary voice first through telling stories that baffled, amused and entertained his little friends...and then later the wider world.

One thing is for sure: if you are going to study literature, and especially English lit, you can't ignore Lewis Carroll. He left a mark on our world.

Now, onto the most interesting pieces of his history that I've been digging up about him...

...his photography.

In addition to being a poet, deacon, mathematician, & all those other things, Charles Dodgson was a photographer. In his time, I suppose he would have been considered just another amateur, but I think his work had a timeless, lasting & highly artistic quality about it. For a while, I couldn't seem to locate any of these photographs of his that were talked about so much, other than the one of Alice Liddell (the girl whose name & person inspired Alice from his books) leaning up against an ivy wall as a ''beggar child''.

But now....I am proud to say, I have scrounged up several more photographs that he took, and now, I present them to you here:

{Click to make some larger.}

Alice Liddell (right) and older sister Lorina (left).

Alice Liddell

young Alice Liddell

"The Beggar Girl" aka Alice Liddell

Alice Liddell as a young woman.

Self portrait of Lewis Carroll/Charles Dodgson.

Edith, Lorina & Alice Liddell (L to R)

Mrs Liddell, her girls, Charles Dodgson & another young friend.

Edith, Lorina & Alice

 

Are they not just beautiful? 

Looking at them makes me wish I had a old tintype camera to play with, and that I still had my film Canon SLR too! Ah, well. I still have my appreciation for the arts, my tiny Canon digital, and my love of photography. :) That's enough for now.

"I Will Wait for You" by Poet Janette Ikz

She's a woman and a poet and she's a Christian with a voice she's not afraid to use.
I have never been affected by a spoken-word poem like I have by this one.
You've just got to listen to it.  

Quiet Days

Quiet days.
Full of this -- and that
or -- this and that things.

Much of nothing,
nothing of much.
Soft and hard,
long and slow.
In and up,
out and down.

Quiet days.
They do so much
when we do so little.

Emotions, Thoughts, Words...

{source}

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

~ Robert Frost *

Finally, A Chance to Breathe...

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me),
It's always our self we find in the sea.
~e.e. cummings

A Tale About Alice

Life is full of surprises.   For my birthday (which was last Saturday, the 12th) I received a very special book from a friend of mine. It was a book on one of my favorite subjects: Alice, from the Alice in Wonderland book tales!
This book was a story in which the authoress, Melanie Benjamin, mixed the fact and fiction surrounding Alice Pleasance Liddell's and Rev. Charles Dodgson's (aka Lewis Carroll's) lives into a quaint, curious tale that both entertains fully as well as leaves you puzzling... "so what was the real story?"

My favorite thing about this book (besides the cover, and inside photographs of the real Alice!) was the way Benjamin wrote the tale: in the present, first-person. This is my favorite way to write and read a book, however I seldom find it used and especially not to this extent! This alone made it a very enjoyable read for me.

    Other than that all that, all you need to know before running our & buying or borrowing this book is that you probably should read up on the real story first, if you want to be able to distinguish it through the reading. Now, if that's no concern for you, and you just want it all to blend together beautifully in your head:this is the perfect story for that. :) Go right on ahead...
    Also, Melanie Benjamin really did her homework on the facts that we do know about the two families. So, if you're any sort of a historical AiW buff, you will really enjoy (like I did) all the little details carefully tucked in the story!

Just don't forget to, 

"Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop." *

~Hannah

"A Lost Chord"

From June 7,2010- My Cali Trip Photos

by Adelaide Procter

SEATED one day at the Organ,
     I was weary and ill at ease,
And my fingers wandered idly
     Over the noisy keys.

I do not know what I was playing,
     Or what I was dreaming then ;
But I struck one chord of music,
     Like the sound of a great Amen.

It flooded the crimson twilight,
     Like the close of an Angel's Psalm,
And it lay on my fevered spirit
     With a touch of infinite calm.

It quieted pain and sorrow,
     Like love overcoming strife ;
It seemed the harmonious echo
     From our discordant life.

It linked all perplexéd meanings
     Into one perfect peace,
And trembled away into silence
     As if it were loth to cease.

I have sought, but I seek it vainly,
     That one lost chord divine,
Which came from the soul of the Organ,
     And entered into mine.

It may be that Death's bright angel
     Will speak in that chord again,
It may be that only in Heaven
     I shall hear that grand Amen.


P.S.~ Poem brought to my attention by Trotwood.

If nothing ever changed, there'd be no butterflies.

, originally uploaded by H20s Photos.

Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne