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 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 Maps, Nature, Place, Practice, Seasons, Things That Fly, Topic Writing, Wake Up, Weather, Writing Practices, tagged midwinter blues, mind maps, navigating winter, where safety hides on February 9, 2008 | 18 Comments »
Walking with my friend around a shadowed pond, -25 wind chills. We talked and talked and talked, ate tomato soup out of two ceramic cups while the wind floated snow between icy gusts. And then we slowly walked, holding crimson ears with the palms of our hands, ungloved to take a photograph of a tuft [...]
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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 25 Things, Art, Dreams, Family, Gratitude, Holidays, Labyrinths, Life, Love, Maps, Personal, Photography, Place, Practice, Silence, Spirituality, Structure, Topic Writing, Vision, Wake Up, Writers, Writing, tagged community as witness, end of the year rituals, Labyrinths, making a Gratitude List, New Year's resolutions, prosperity, reflecting on the past, the ABC's of Gratitude, The Places I've Walked, the power of Gratitude on December 31, 2007 | 30 Comments »
The Places I’ve Walked, walking a brick labyrinth, Martinez, Georgia, June 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved
It’s New Year’s Eve (almost a whole New Year, ybonesy!). I’m working on the black-eyed peas and rice post. And I’ve got to say the orangutan’s butt is a pretty hard act to follow! But I’m [...]
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Posted in Essay, Family, Fotoblog, Gratitude, Love, Maps, Photography, Place, Quotes, Relationships, Skies, Travel, Writers, Writing, tagged American history, birthdays, Chrysler Building, E. Elise, Ellis Island, Emma Lazarus, Empire State Building, Going To New York, historical places, New York City, NYC photoblog, original Liberty flame, red Ravine Guests, Statue of Liberty, The New Colossus, writing by young authors on December 26, 2007 | 27 Comments »
By E. Elise
Liberty’s Torch, visit to New York City, August 2007, photo © 2007 by R3. All rights reserved.
It’s my Granddaddy’s birthday. We were going to New York by train. In New York we’re going to see the Statue of Liberty, and the “Vampire State Building” as my cousin, Isaac, used to call it.
My family [...]
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Posted in Authors, Bones, Books, Dreams, I Don't Remember, Maps, Quotes, Random, Vision, Wake Up, Writers, Writing, tagged commitment, Goethe, Mountaineering In Scotland, Providence, Quotes, The Scottish Himalayan Expedition, W. H. Murray on November 21, 2007 | 11 Comments »
I write often about the movement of Providence. She is tied to Goethe’s dreams, but she is not Goethe. Each time I write of Providence, I can’t remember the quote that stands behind my words. They are the words of Scottish expeditionist, W. H. Murray.
So I don’t forget:
But when I said that nothing had been [...]
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Posted in Maps, On the Road, Photography, Place, Skies, Things That Fly, Vehicles, tagged airplane shots, airports, cell phone camera, palm trees, rental car centers on October 15, 2007 | 26 Comments »
I’ve been here before.
Said to live for hundreds of years.
Yet, you need agua to live, and where is theirs?
More beautiful in mythology than in person.
Although, the new Rental Car Center is like a museum.
I wonder if Dumbledore knows where I am (was).
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Posted in Books, Culture, Death, I Don't Remember, Life, Maps, Photography, Place, Practice, Reading, Structure, Wake Up, Writers, Writing, tagged Hennepin Avenue, independent bookstores, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Orr Books, Reading, Uptown, Writers, Writing on October 7, 2007 | 11 Comments »
3043 - What’s Left Behind, inside what used to be Orr Books, Hennepin Avenue, Uptown, Minneapolis, Minnesota, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
While walking to dinner in Uptown a few weeks ago, I snapped a few photos of the shadowy insides of 3043 Hennepin Avenue, last location of the (almost) 40-year-old Orr Books.
The [...]
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Posted in Authors, Bones, Culture, Holding My Breath, Life, Maps, Money, Nature, Personal, Place, Poetry, Practice, Relationships, Seasons, Silence, Spirituality, Structure, Travel, Vision, Wake Up, Work on June 30, 2007 | 3 Comments »
It’s the end of June. ybonesy and I will be traveling over the next two weeks. Different times and separate destinations. Expect slight delays, possible blasts of summer rain, seeds of a sunset poppy, the beat of a gyrfalcon.
Tonight I feel like poetry. Away from home, there is ground in the simple. A blinding light [...]
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Posted in Gratitude, Maps, Vision on June 28, 2007 | 16 Comments »
Hey, for the past day-and-a-half, red Ravine has been featured as “Blog of the Day” on FuelMyBlog, a fairly new directory of blogs.
FuelMyBlog is one of our favorite blogging social sites, and not just because they gave us some free press. The blogs registered there are from all over the world, many newcomers to the blogosphere. So far, [...]
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Posted in Bones, Culture, Essay, Family, Gratitude, Great Places To Write, Growing Older, Home, Life, Love, Maps, Memoir, Nature, Personal, Photography, Place, Practice, Relationships, Topic Writing, Travel, Writing, tagged ancestry, Augusta, Clarks Hill, Eve Street, Georgia, history, Memoir, Savannah Indians, Savannah River, The South, Travel, water, Writers, Writing on June 17, 2007 | 10 Comments »
-Savannah River from the Bridge, Augusta, Georgia, June 8th, 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
“It seems I have always lived near rivers and trains.”
The day we went to Eve Street, I remembered I hadn’t taken any photographs of the Savannah. I had zipped off a couple of shots of the 5th Street [...]
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Posted in 25 Things, Body, Dreams, Holding My Breath, Jugular, Life, Maps, Memoir, Nature, Personal, Photography, Place, Politics, Practice, Relationships, Topic Writing, Travel, Wake Up, Work, Writing, Writing Practices, tagged Boquillas Canyon, Death Valley, desert, Gila River, memories of water, Mimbres River, mimbresman, New Mexico, Pouder River, Puget Sound, red Ravine Guests, writing about water on June 15, 2007 | 12 Comments »
By mimbresman
Kayak Beach, photo © 2007 by mimbresman. All rights reserved.
Winter 1977/78 – Mimbres River, NM:
I wanted to explore the Cook’s Range with my Jeep CJ-5. I get to the lower Mimbres River which was flooding due to warm rain melting snow in the mountains. On the far bank of the river was a sign [...]
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Posted in Bones, Family, Maps, Memoir, On the Road, Photography, Place, Random, Relationships, Travel, Writing on June 11, 2007 | 5 Comments »
-The Last Magnolia, June 9th, 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Found on the grounds of Richmond Academy in Augusta, Georgia. My mother went to high school there. School had long been out. And we were taking one last drive around Augusta before leaving for home. I picked up this giant magnolia leaf [...]
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Posted in Body, Bones, Culture, Family, Life, Maps, Memoir, On the Road, Personal, Photography, Place, Practice, Relationships, Structure, Travel, Writing, tagged exhaustion, Georgia, Memoir, Pennsylvania, research, rivers, Susquehanna River, Travel, Writers, Writing on June 10, 2007 | 17 Comments »
-Sweet William, Sunday, June 10, 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
We completed the 11 hour drive from Georgia to Pennsylvania at midnight last night. We took our time driving, soaking in the Blue Ridge Mountains, whizzing under the green sign for Virginia Tech, stopping at the Waffle House and Cracker Barrel for slow, relaxing [...]
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Posted in Bones, Culture, Family, Gratitude, Growing Older, Home, Labyrinths, Life, Love, Maps, Memoir, Nature, On the Road, Personal, Photography, Place, Practice, Relationships, Seasons, Spirituality, Structure, Travel, Wake Up, Writing, tagged ancestors, Augusta, brick, Family, fathers, geocaching, Georgia, history, Labyrinths, mothers, The South on June 8, 2007 | 12 Comments »
-Edges, labyrinth in Martinez, Georgia, June 7th, 2007, all photos © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
It was 96 degrees at 5pm. Mom and I did a quick geocache in Martinez, Georgia, right off of Columbia Road and Buckboard Drive. Geobrother, who has logged more than 1000 caches, gave us a few tips. I have [...]
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Posted in Bones, Culture, Death, Family, Growing Older, Home, I Don't Remember, Life, Maps, Memoir, On the Road, Personal, Photography, Place, Practice, Relationships, Structure, Travel, Writers, Writing, tagged ancestors, Augusta, Broad Street, cemeteries, Georgia, history, landmarks, Memoir, research, St. James Church, Victorian on June 7, 2007 | 24 Comments »
-Great, Great, Grandfather & Grandmother on Cassie’s Porch 1876, copy shot June 5th, 2007, Augusta, Georgia, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
-Cassie’s House 1876, copy shot June 5, 2007, Augusta, Georgia, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
We spent the day driving around Augusta, looking for landmarks, visiting cemeteries and churches. The [...]
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Posted in Body, Bones, Culture, Family, Great Places To Write, Growing Older, Home, Life, Maps, Memoir, Music, On the Road, Personal, Place, Practice, Relationships, Secrets, Structure, Topic Writing, Travel, Writers, Writing, tagged Augusta, daughters, Georgia, GRITS, Memoir, mothers, Music, research, Savannah, The South, Writers, Writing on June 6, 2007 | 29 Comments »
A train whistle howls in the distance. I hear it every night at the same time. A night owl growl out the window. It comforts me. A ritual I’ve come to expect. Hearing. Ears. Sights. Smells. The smell of the sweatshirt I’m wearing, a combination of both me and Liz.
The taste of the sweet tea on [...]
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Posted in 25 Things, Body, Bones, Culture, Death, Family, Gratitude, Growing Older, Home, I Don't Remember, Life, Love, Maps, Memoir, Money, On the Road, Personal, Photography, Place, Politics, Practice, Relationships, Travel, Work, Writers, Writing, tagged ancestors, Augusta, Broad Street, Clarks Hill Dam, daughters, Georgia, history, King George the Third, Magnolia Cemetery, magnolias, mothers, researching memoir, the things I carry on June 4, 2007 | 19 Comments »
-Magnolia, June 3rd, 2007, Augusta, Georgia, all photos © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
The magnolias are blooming in Georgia. And the mimosas, wisteria, Spanish moss. I don’t have to dig all that deep. Everything falls into place the minute I ask. My body is tired; I am holding all this in my brain. The [...]
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Posted in Bones, Dreams, Family, Growing Older, Home, I Don't Remember, Love, Maps, Memoir, On the Road, Personal, Photography, Place, Relationships, Skies, Things That Fly, Travel, Writing, tagged aerial photographs, Chesapeake Bay Bridge, flying home, researching memoir, view from the sky on May 30, 2007 | 13 Comments »
-Puzzle Pieces, May 29th, 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Arrived safely into Baltimore after an hour delay in the flight. I had the very last window seat on the left side of a plane filled with chatty middle school kids, a toddler, and a screaming baby one aisle over. I’m not complaining. [...]
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Posted in Family, Maps, On the Road, Personal, Photography, Place, Random, Skies, Things That Fly, Travel, Wake Up, Writing, tagged aerial shots of Wyoming, Minnesota, Rattlesnake Mountain, view from the sky on May 29, 2007 | 4 Comments »
-Leaving the Land of 10,000 Lakes, photo © 2007 by Liz, all rights reserved
Inspired by ybonesy’s Arriving Albuquerque From Seat 21A and Leaving Portland From Seat 21A, I wanted to post Liz’s aerial shots from her trip last week from Minnesota to Wyoming. I wrote about the Minnesota puddles above in Shadow Of A Dragonfly. The two shots below are Wyoming from [...]
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Posted in Animals & Critters, Death, Family, Life, Love, Maps, Nature, Personal, Photography, Place, Seasons, Skies, Things That Fly, Travel, Wake Up, tagged dragonfly, gardens, hunting, shadow of a dragonfly on May 27, 2007 | 10 Comments »
-Shadows, May 26, 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
She planted the deck flowers: tickseed, Meadow Cranesbill geraniums, Oranges and Lemons, red poppies, Fragoo Pink strawberries, and leaf lettuce in the garden. In between: cloudy gray rain, fall gusts, striated slats of sun, stunned clouds propelled by 25mph winds. It doesn’t feel like [...]
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Posted in Haiku, Maps, Photography, Secrets, Topic Writing, Wake Up, Work, Writers, Writing, tagged Haiku, I Spy, jobs, monkey wrench, Practice on May 24, 2007 | 5 Comments »
-I Spy, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey, all rights reserved
Job Haiku
sprawling pecan tree
rusty monkey wrench
1 fixed, 1 adjustable
Thursday, May 24th 2007
-from Topic post, Job! What Job?
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Posted in Authors, Bones, Books, Culture, Gratitude, Great Places To Write, Home, Life, Love, Maps, Money, Nature, On the Road, Personal, Photography, Place, Skies, Spirituality, Things That Fly, Topic Writing, Travel, Wake Up, Writing on May 18, 2007 | 7 Comments »
I spent much of today on planes and in airports trying to get back home from a short trip. I was in transit longer than the time I spent at my destination.
It was dark and bumpy flying into Albuquerque tonight, but it gave me peace of mind knowing el Rio Grande was below me. (The photo [...]
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Posted in Culture, Family, Family Recipes, Food, Maps, On the Road, Place, Random, Secrets, Travel, tagged Amelia's cherry pie, Betty's Pies, Minnesota, Pies Across America, places to find great pie, Two Harbors on May 17, 2007 | 13 Comments »
I love homemade cherry pie. I remember when I was growing up, there was nothing like the smell of Amelia’s homemade cherry pie with the criss-cross lattice, cooling in the kitchen window.
When Liz and I were up at Lake Superior in Duluth a few months ago, we were longing for the extra energy to take [...]
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Posted in Culture, Dreams, Growing Older, Home, Life, Maps, Memoir, Money, Music, Nature, Personal, Place, Relationships, Secrets, Skies, Things That Fly, Topic Writing, Travel, Work, Writers, tagged Culture, flannel shirts, Goodbye Old Missoula, Home, Levi's, Minneapolis, Missoula, Montana, mountains, Secrets, sense of place, support of the arts, The Midwest, weird jobs, Willis Alan Ramsey on May 15, 2007 | 23 Comments »
For 8 years I lived in a sleepy little western town called Missoula. I was 22 when I arrived, 30 when I left. In between, I was a dental tool sharpener at American Dental on Reserve Street (now defunct), a clerk at a Husky gas station behind Ruby’s Cafe (on the strip near Malfunction Junction), [...]
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Posted in Death, Family, Gratitude, Growing Older, Holidays, Home, Life, Love, Maps, Memoir, Nature, Personal, Place, Practice, Relationships, Seasons, Topic Writing, Travel, Weather, Work, Writing Practices, tagged bicycle tours, Big Bend, camping, escape, Family, fathers, healing, loss, mimbresman, Place, red Ravine Guests, sons on May 11, 2007 | 11 Comments »
By mimbresman
Little place: (physical, the bike, the trailer, the country)
Big place: (culture, family, etc.; my head)
Everything has its place: food, water, extra clothes. It is Christmas Day 1997, and I am packing my bike for a 5-day bicycle tour in the backcountry of Big Bend National Park. The weather is cold for Big Bend, near [...]
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Posted in Art, Books, Culture, Doodling, Maps, Photography, Politics, Spirituality, Structure, Taos, Wake Up, Writing on May 8, 2007 | 14 Comments »
I’ve been wanting to do a post on the power of journals for some time now, ever since I read this article in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers. It’s about Brian Singer’s 1000 Journals Project. Here’s the gist: one thousand journals are sent into the world. Some are sent to friends. Others are [...]
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Posted in Great Places To Write, Labyrinths, Maps, Photography, Place, Practice, Spirituality, Wake Up, Writing, tagged Minnesota, St Paul, walking the labyrinth on March 28, 2007 | 1 Comment »
spring walk, March 26th, 2007, entrance to labyrinth, St. Paul, Minnesota, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
-related to post, labyrinth walker
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Posted in Body, Culture, Death, Family, Labyrinths, Life, Maps, Personal, Place, Practice, Relationships, Seasons, Spirituality, Structure, tagged meditation, Sisters of Saint Joseph of Carondelet, walking the labyrinth on March 27, 2007 | 5 Comments »
I walked the labyrinth yesterday. It was 83 degrees in the Twin Cities on a March 26th. Shirts were off, motorcycles tuned, potholes exposed. The temperature threw me. Three weeks ago, we were knee deep in the worst blizzard in 25 years.
I took off my Land’s End quilted moccasins, stripped off my wool socks, rolled [...]
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Posted in Authors, Books, Gratitude, Great Places To Write, Labyrinths, Maps, Personal, Place, Practice, Quotes, Spirituality, Structure, Vision, Writers, Writing, tagged Alice Walker, Amazon Women's Bookstore, Chartres Cathedral, Jean Shinoda Bolen, journals, meditation, mentors, The Same River Twice, walking the labyrinth on March 18, 2007 | 6 Comments »
The Labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral, from Alice Walker’s book, “The Same River Twice, Honoring the Difficult”
I walked the labyrinth many times last year as part of my practice. In the year-long writing Intensive the three of us attended in Taos with Natalie Goldberg, we were encouraged to keep and log our practice. Every day – [...]
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Posted in Authors, Books, Culture, Essay, Great Places To Write, Growing Older, Holidays, Home, Laughing, Life, Love, Maps, Memoir, Nature, On the Road, Personal, Place, Relationships, Structure, Things That Fly, Travel, Writers, Writing, tagged CliffsNotes, Cupid, Essay, heart, Kool-Aid, Midwest writers, Nature, Nebraska, Nebraska writers, Platte River, sandhill cranes, Ted Kooser, Valentine, Valentine's Day, Vise-Grip, Willa Cather, Writers, Writing on February 14, 2007 | 2 Comments »
Around 3000 people live in the city of Valentine. If you fired up your GPSr, programmed in 42 degrees, 52′, 25″N, and 100 degrees, 33′, 1″W, slid the homing gadget into the plastic grip Velcroed to the dashboard, and drove in the direction of the crosshair blips on your map of light, you’d arrive at [...]
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Posted in 25 Things, Architecture, Doodling, Great Places To Write, Maps, On the Road, Place, Practice, Seasons, Silence, Taos, Topic Writing, tagged Artisan's, Bent Street, Dwellings Revisited, Harwood Museum of Art, Ledoux Street, Paseo de Pueblo Norte, Taos Gems & Minerals, Taos New Mexico, The Parks Gallery on December 9, 2006 | 1 Comment »
Silent in Taos, map of Taos, NM, doodle © 2007 by ybonesy. All
rights reserved.
Bent Street: The quaintest street of Tourist Taos.
Dwellings Revisited: A couple talking. One the proprietor, the other an old friend. I can tell this is their daily custom–sitting, talking, gesticulating as if building a castle in the air. I am grateful for [...]
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