Posted in Body, Bones, Essay, Growing Older, Life, Practice, Seasons, Wake Up, tagged aging, Bob Chrisman, red Ravine Guests, the process of aging, writing about growing older on May 9, 2008 | 22 Comments »
By Bob Chrisman
Last fall, determined to catch the color changes in the leaves, I watched them turn from green to yellow, orange, and red. I would sit on the window seat in the front room and write about the colors.
One day…suddenly it seemed…the leaves had all turned. When did it happen? I had been watching [...]
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Posted in Body, Bones, Culture, Death, Haiku, Holding My Breath, Obituaries & Epitaphs, Photography, Place, Poetry, Practice, Seasons, Spirituality, Wake Up, tagged Babyland, cemeteries, changing seasons, Chinese Community Memorial, gateways, history of Minneapolis, Lakewood Cemetery, Minneapolis, promise of Spring, the practice of haiku on May 9, 2008 | 4 Comments »
Gateways, Lakewood Cemetery near Lake Calhoun, Minneapolis, Minnesota, May 2008. Spring blooms in Babyland, near the Chinese Community Memorial. Photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
white-belled bleeding hearts
spring sweeps through silent gateways
cemetery pause
-posted on red Ravine, Friday, May 9th, 2008
-related to post, haiku (one-a-day)
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Posted in Art, Body, Bones, Culture, Death, Photography, Practice, Relationships, Seasons, Spirituality, Structure, Vision, Wake Up, tagged changing seasons, circles, coloring as practice, Coloring Mandalas, mandalas, Marija Gimbutas, Susanne F. Fincher, The Great Round, Wheel of Life on April 30, 2008 | 8 Comments »
April draws to a close in a few hours. Though it snowed last Saturday, the light of April’s last day is clear and blue. The front yard is bursting with new life: erratic shoots of thick, green grass, day lilies skyrocketing out of tender wet ground, red-stemmed dogwood buds, one purple bloom in the [...]
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Posted in Body, Bones, Death, Life, Nature, Personal, Seasons, Skies, Writing Practices, tagged April full moon, changing seasons, Frog Moon, Pink Moon, spring in Minnesota, the practice of writing, writing about the moon on April 29, 2008 | No Comments »
I was torn. Pink Moon, Frog Moon, Moon of the Greening Grass. I liked Flower Moon and Broken Snowshoe Moon. I imagined fumbling out of a leather strap on an antique snowshoe, ice jamming the buckle, stepping out just long enough to sink knee-deep into what’s left of Winter. But it is the Frog Moon [...]
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Posted in Body, Bones, Culture, Death, Haiku, Life, Nature, Photography, Place, Poetry, Practice, Seasons, Silence, Spirituality, Taos, tagged 1 Year Anniversary of Virginia Tech, anniversaries, black & white photography, Georgia O'Keeffe, homage, Mabel Dodge Luhan House, Morada Walk, New Mexico, Penitentes, Taos Mountain, the practice of haiku, white cross on April 16, 2008 | 10 Comments »
Morada Walk, Taos Mountain in the background, white
cross Georgia O’Keeffe painted, Taos, New Mexico,
January 2003, Tri-X black & white film print, photo ©
2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
gusty April winds
ruffle brambled shoots of green
Spring bounds from behind
anniversaries
separate fiction from fact
squeeze light from the dark
photosynthesis
through veins of a single leaf
gives life to the world
-posted on red Ravine, [...]
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I look in the mirror before I start writing but I can’t hold my own gaze. My nose is red from crying, eyes small. My skin is blotchy, and I am critical of my hair. It seems to get pulled straight by its own weight. I want my curls back.
Dad tells me this morning that [...]
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Posted in Body, Bones, Death, Dreams, Family, Growing Older, Life, Obituaries & Epitaphs, Personal, Place, Politics, Practice, Topic Writing, Vision, Writing Practices, tagged cemeteries, honoring the dead, Martin Luther King, Maya Angelou, mirrors, the practice of writing, the process of aging, visiting graveyards, writing about growing older on April 11, 2008 | 22 Comments »
I’m looking at my ruddy face in a small, round, silver mirror. I look older than I remember. Thick eyebrows, salt and pepper hair; it looks the grayest to me right after a haircut. There is something about the way it lays across the black plastic smock, and falls in shredded pieces on to the [...]
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Posted in Art, Body, Death, Growing Older, Life, Quotes, Vision, Writing Topics, tagged aging, centenarians, longevity, writing about growing older on April 3, 2008 | 11 Comments »
Sarah (Book of Genesis), gouache on wooden board retablo,
painting © 2008 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.
You can’t stop it. The tick-tock of the clock.
Once I heard someone say that time doesn’t pass (as if we’re standing still and time flows on by); instead, we pass through time.
Perhaps you don’t want to stop the passage of time. [...]
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Posted in Art, Body, Bones, Culture, Labyrinths, Maps, Photography, Place, Practice, Relationships, Spirituality, Structure, Vision, Wake Up, tagged circles, coloring as practice, Coloring Mandalas, Labyrinths, mandalas, Susanne F. Fincher, The Great Round, walking the labyrinth, Wheel of Life on March 31, 2008 | 12 Comments »
I’m cutting it close on the March mandalas! In a few hours, it will be April. Though you would not know it by the 9 inches of blizzard outside the window. The Great Round: Stage Three mandalas follow one of my favorite forms — the labyrinth.
These have been the most fun for [...]
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Posted in Body, Death, Essay, Family, Gratitude, Jugular, Love, Personal, Photography, Practice, Relationships, Writing, tagged Bob Chrisman, death of a mother, hands, honoring death, red Ravine Guests, writing through pain on March 27, 2008 | 28 Comments »
By Bob Chrisman
I took a photograph of my mother’s hands before the visitors arrived at the funeral home. When she was well, she cared for her hands and nails everyday, but that stopped in the nursing home when she lost the strength in her hands and arms. Her nails grew long and dirty. That bothered [...]
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Posted in Body, Bones, Culture, Death, Family, Growing Older, Laughing, Life, Memoir, Obituaries & Epitaphs, Personal, Photography, Place, Writing Topics, tagged ancestors, cemeteries, epitaphs, excavating memories, family history, names, researching memoir, Shirley Ellis, the name game, what's in a name, writing about names on March 13, 2008 | 42 Comments »
I continue to pore through photographs and tapes of my trip to Georgia and South Carolina last summer.
“What’s taking you so long?” Monkey Mind yells from the wings (grabbing every opportunity to scratch his haunches).
“It’s a slow process, excavating the past,” I soberly reply. “Don’t rush me.”
Family history rises from the rich, black compost - memories, stories, [...]
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Posted in Art of Rebellion, Body, Culture, Dreams, Growing Older, Practice, Recall, Secrets, Topic Writing, Writing Practices, tagged body piercings, writing about tattoos on March 10, 2008 | 15 Comments »
What I know about tattoos I learned from D___. His entire right leg was tattooed, and most of his left leg. Both shoulders, all around his neck, most of both arms. His tattoos were serpents and Japanese letters and blues and purples, some red, beautiful tattoos, and I would examine them, lifting his leg while [...]
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Posted in Art of Rebellion, Body, Culture, Growing Older, Labyrinths, Life, Personal, Practice, Topic Writing, Writing Practices, tagged mandalas, memories, Tattoo You, writing about tattoos on March 10, 2008 | 12 Comments »
I thought about getting a tattoo. In my 40’s. I changed my mind at the last minute. It was going to be a lynx. Yeah, the puffy jowls that look like Kiev’s. When you brush her hair back, her face is thin and pointy like Chaco’s. But naturally, it’s wider at the edges than it [...]
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Posted in Art, Art of Rebellion, Body, Culture, Maps, Photography, Practice, Relationships, Writing Topics, tagged body art, history of tattoos, Otzi the IceMan, Tattoo You, tattoos, writing about tattoos on March 3, 2008 | 15 Comments »
Do you have a tattoo? Otzi the IceMan has 57 of them. His 5000-year-old body was discovered in 1991, on a mountain between Austria and Italy, by German tourists trekking the Oetz Valley. The IceMan is one of the best preserved Neolithic corpses ever found.
He was still wearing goatskin leggings and a grass [...]
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Posted in Art, Body, Bones, Family, Maps, Practice, Silence, Skies, Spirituality, Structure, tagged Bliss, circles, coloring as practice, Coloring Mandalas, mandalas, Marija Gimbutas. Goddess energy, Susanne F. Fincher, The Great Round, Wheel of Life on February 28, 2008 | 17 Comments »
These are our February mandalas for The Great Round: Stage Two - Bliss. Again, we used Crayola markers and colored pencils. The feel of coloring the Stage 2 mandalas was very different than The Void mandalas of January. I pay attention to the colors I am drawn to when I sit down with the circles. My [...]
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Posted in Art, Body, Haiku, Poetry, Practice, Topic Writing, Writing, tagged Mano Poderosa, Omnipotent Hand, writing about risk on February 26, 2008 | 22 Comments »
Mano Poderosa (Omnipotent Hand), gouache painting and etching
on wood, retablo © 2008 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.
heart to head to hand:
what am i willing to bleed?
the risk of writing
-related to post, haiku (one-a-day)
-related to post, WRITING TOPIC - TAKE A RISK
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Posted in Body, Bones, Culture, Life, Nature, Personal, Practice, Seasons, Secrets, Skies, Writing Practices, tagged Bone Moon, cabin fever, February Full Moon, Lunar Eclipse, Nature's secrets, Raccoon Moon, Snow Moon, winter in Minnesota on February 25, 2008 | 19 Comments »
The Full Snow Moon was bright, then blood red, the last Total Lunar Eclipse until 2012. There are many names for February’s Moon: Sleet Moon, Goose Moon, Coyote Moon. I even found a reference from the Sioux, Raccoon Moon. I thought of our resident raccoon. I bundled wool over exposed skin, stood outside in no [...]
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Posted in Body, Bones, Nature, Personal, Practice, Seasons, Things That Fly, Topic Writing, Writing Practices, tagged feathers, Great Greys, osprey, raptors, writing about feathers on February 16, 2008 | 8 Comments »
The last feather I saw was a curved downy fluff next to Mr. StripeyPants on the bed. The two comforters are filled with the down of the goose. One is cinnamon, new and soft and fresh. The other, faded pink, old and wearing thin. We have patched the mauve one several times. But alas, there [...]
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Posted in Body, Bones, Haiku, Holding My Breath, Nature, Photography, Poetry, Practice, Seasons, tagged cattails, the practice of haiku, winter in Minnesota on February 13, 2008 | 11 Comments »
Cattail Sun, -25 wind chilled February day, Minneapolis, Minnesota, photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
ears red from the wind
snow flies off frozen boot tips
cattail fluffs her hair
-posted on red Ravine, Wednesday, February 13th, 2008
-related to post, haiku (one-a-day)
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Posted in Body, Growing Older, Personal, Practice, Recall, Writing Practices, tagged body hair, Christine Swint, Desmond Morris, hair, Persian threading, The Naked Ape, writing about hair on February 12, 2008 | 32 Comments »
By Christine Swint
Whatever grows out of this pen, the ink, the spidery words trailing across the page, grow out of me like the hair sprouting from my scalp. The words are connected to my brain only in the instant the pen touches the paper, the same way that my hair is a part of my [...]
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Posted in Body, Bones, Haiku, Holding My Breath, Nature, Photography, Place, Poetry, Practice, Seasons, Skies, Wake Up, tagged moonrise, the practice of haiku, winter in Minnesota on February 10, 2008 | 13 Comments »
Quarter Oak Sky, -25 wind chilled February day, Minneapolis, Minnesota, photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
quarter oak moonrise
behind a sliver of sky
holds bonechilling peace
-posted on red Ravine, Sunday, February 10th, 2008
-related to post, haiku (one-a-day)
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Posted in Body, Bones, Haiku, Nature, Photography, Poetry, Practice, Secrets, tagged midwinter blues, Northwestern Casket Arts Building, the practice of haiku, where safety hides on February 9, 2008 | 7 Comments »
Safety Hides, Northwestern Casket Arts Building wall sign, Minneapolis, Minnesota, November 2007, photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
tree swing rocks the snow
blizzard swirls on the blue deck
no safe place to hide
-posted on red Ravine, Saturday, February 9th, 2008
-related to post, haiku (one-a-day)
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Posted in Body, Essay, Family, Growing Older, Memoir, Practice, tagged hair, memories of hair, red hair, redhead, writing about hair on February 8, 2008 | 26 Comments »
By Robin
There’s a story about my birth that was told fairly often when I was growing up. It’s a short story, and involves hair.
When my mother was pregnant with me, my father was asked by a friend what his preference was: a boy or a girl? His answer was that he didn’t care if it [...]
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Posted in Body, Culture, Family, Film / TV / Video, I Don't Remember, Personal, Practice, Topic Writing, tagged curly hair, hair, memories of hair, writing about hair on February 1, 2008 | 13 Comments »
I have brown curly hair. I am the only one in my family with curls. Not just waves, but corkscrew curls. People asked throughout my childhood: Who has curls in the family? The answer to strangers was: Her grandmother had wavy hair. To friends and one another, we joked: Her father was Zorro.
Zorro is what [...]
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Posted in Body, Culture, Family, Growing Older, Life, Personal, Practice, Secrets, Topic Writing, Writing Practices, tagged hair, hair phobias, hairstyles, memories of hair, writing about hair on January 31, 2008 | 18 Comments »
I can’t stand loose, grubby hair on the bottom of my socks. I either go barefoot, or wear slippers around the house. But I rarely go barefoot (tender feet). So we’re back to the slippers. My slippers are (were) Minnetonka Moccasins I had for the last, oh, probably, 20 years. They finally wore through at [...]
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Hair, pen and pencil doodle © 2007 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.
Maybe it’s the wind today. It’s a hair-raising wind. The kind of wind that would blow off a toupee or at the very least make the curly-headed among us look like we’ve been electrocuted.
Maybe it’s all the sickness around these days. Days spent in [...]
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Posted in Art, Body, Family, Maps, Practice, Silence, Spirituality, Structure, tagged circles, coloring as practice, Coloring Mandalas, mandalas, playing with color, quality time, Susanne F. Fincher, The Great Round, The Void, Wheel of Life on January 27, 2008 | 25 Comments »
We finished up our January mandalas for The Great Round: Stage One - The Void. We used Crayola markers and colored pencils with names like Tomato Red, Inchworm Green, Pinky Pink, Little Boy Blue, Small Potatoes, Sunwave Yellow, Green Sprout, Coral Orange, Gnarly Purple, Pipeline Green, Black Shades, Chocolate Chip, Blueberry, and Hang Ten Purple. [...]
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Posted in Art, Body, Bones, Family, Labyrinths, Maps, Photography, Practice, Quotes, Spirituality, Structure, Wake Up, tagged circles, coloring as practice, Coloring Mandalas, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, mandalas, mandalas for kids, Ouroboros, Sacred Circles, Susanne F. Fincher, The Great Round, Wheel of Life on January 26, 2008 | 47 Comments »
Coloring Mandalas, A Few Snapshots, Minneapolis, Minnesota, January 2008, all photos © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Relaxing Saturday winter night. Liz and I are coloring mandalas and watching a documentary on Beat Generation poet, Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Liz bought a book on Coloring Mandalas by Susanne F. Fincher. It contains 48 sacred circle [...]
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Posted in Animals & Critters, Body, Bones, Death, Dreams, Gratitude, Life, Personal, Practice, Seasons, Wake Up, Writing Practices, tagged Bat medicine, feeling frozen in my tracks, January Full Moon, January in Minnesota, realizing your dreams, totem animals, winter, Wolf Moon on January 23, 2008 | 23 Comments »
The January Wolf Moon was wide and full, smeared across the morning sky the way an artist rubs a chalky finger across gray charcoal on paper. It was Liz that pointed it out to me, half asleep in the kitchen making coffee. By the time I got to the window, she was already out the [...]
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Posted in 25 Things, Body, Bones, Books, Haiku, Labyrinths, Nature, Photography, Place, Poetry, Practice, Quotes, Seasons, Silence, Structure, Wake Up, Writers, Writing, tagged Basho, Beginner's Mind, Clark Strand, Ghost Ranch, haiku (one-a-day), haiku as practice, haiku walk, how to write haiku, meditation, Natalie Goldberg, Seeds from a Birch Tree, walking the labyrinth on January 15, 2008 | 303 Comments »
Skin Of A River Birch, Minneapolis, Minnesota, August 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
haiku (one-a-day)
This post was created for a very specific purpose: writing a haiku a day. Some of our readers have expressed an interest in haiku. And some have left haiku in our comments on various posts. I wanted to [...]
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Posted in Art, Body, Gratitude, Haiku, Photography, Place, Poetry, Random, Seasons, tagged darkness, snow goddess, the return of light, time, winter on January 10, 2008 | 15 Comments »
Snow Goddess, Minneapolis, Minnesota, taken Christmas Day, December 2007, photo © 2007 by SkyWire Alley. All rights reserved.
Dark when I left work,
then closing my eyes for sleep
the weatherman chimed,
“In the great Midwest
we’ve gained 8 minutes of light
since Winter Solstice.”
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Posted in Body, Bones, Culture, Jugular, Life, Personal, Politics, Practice, Relationships, Topic Writing, Wake Up, Work, Writing Practices, tagged emotions, emotions in the workplace, hormones, politics and emotions, the gender gap, the politics of body on January 10, 2008 | 45 Comments »
There is a lost feeling that comes over me this time of year. In the gap between New Year’s and whatever happens next in my life. That’s not specific enough. Lost is a feeling. And a place.
Specifics. Next gains in employment. Which aspects of moneymaking do I add to the writing agenda? How do I [...]
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Posted in Animals & Critters, Body, Bones, Books, Death, Growing Older, Holding My Breath, Home, Life, Love, Photography, Place, Poetry, Practice, Quotes, Relationships, Silence, Structure, Writers, Writing, tagged December (Christmas Box), Fitzgerald Theater, Galway Kinnell, Josephine Dickinson, MPR Talking Volumes, Silence Fell, Strong Is Your Hold, Where Were You When I Came In From The Evening Milking, Writers Hands, Writers reading their work, writing through grief on January 9, 2008 | 28 Comments »
Writers Hands VI, Josephine Dickinson, Fitzgerald Theater, St. Paul, Minnesota, April 2007, all photos © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Josephine Dickinson read her poetry at the Fitzgerald Theater last April, sharing the stage with her mentor, Galway Kinnell. She met Galway at a poetry reading at Morden Tower in Northumberland. She was drawn to [...]
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Posted in Animals & Critters, Art, Body, Bones, Laughing, Photography, Quotes, tagged Deborah Butterfield, horses, Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, sculpture, The Horse Colors, Woodrow on January 6, 2008 | 8 Comments »
Woodrow, Deborah Butterfield sculpture, bronze, 1988, Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, Minneapolis, Minnesota, January 2008, all photos © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
I was thinking of Novelty Pets when photographing this Deborah Butterfield sculpture at the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden yesterday. When she created the sculpture in 1988, she named the horse, Woodrow.
The inscription on the plaque [...]
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Posted in 25 Things, Body, Bones, Death, Dreams, Family, Life, Love, Personal, Photography, Place, Practice, Relationships, Structure, Taos, Topic Writing, Vision, Writers, Writing, Writing Practices, tagged Jeanie Bernard, Katherine Reynolds, letting go, Melissa Studdard, Petroglyph Practitioners, petroglyph rock, red Ravine Guests, Sally Sontheimer, the practice of writing, writing community, writing groups, writing process on December 18, 2007 | 13 Comments »
Petroglyph Rock II, Mabel Dodge Luhan House, Taos, New Mexico,
February 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
The Petroglyph Practitioners are four women — Jeanie from North Carolina, Melissa and Katherine from Houston, and Sally from Rome, Italy — who write, alone and together, following the rules of Writing Practice. They tell [...]
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