Poems and Ponderings

Free at last When you look up to the sky you'll see me in the clouds whispering 'I am free' When you feel the wind carressing your face you will hear me whispering 'I am free' When you feel the rain gently rolling down your cheeks you will hear me 'I am free' When you look up to the stars at night you will know 'I am free'   When you watch the eagles dancing in the sky you will know I am free at last! c J. Schulte-Zurhausen 2013

I sold my life, the life as I knew it with all the memories and attachment to things and left the country I lived in and learned to love despite or may be because of all it's challenges. Selling my house, my furniture, my memories, and only keeping a few necessities and memorabilia to start a new life in the country of my birth, a life without my husband who had just passed on. Feeling lost and lonely and drifting without direction and any support I wanted to make a new start in a country that was familiar to me, or so I thought. In short, I returned after only 9 months, together with my 15 boxes and my 2 beloved Ridgebacks that never left my side and started making a new life in a country that had become my home and that I love so much. It was not an easy time to start from scratch, falling very ill, unable to move at many days. The most upsetting part, which I only realized today how much it had hurt, was how I had been taken for a ride by unscrupulous people. Buying a hou

I love writing poetry and as with my art I have my personal favorite style. When I came across this post I thought I share it here: Jane Hirshfield is the author of seven books of poetry, including most recently Come, Thief , and the classic collection of essays, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry . Who better to ask: Why write poetry? Here are her in-depth, thought provoking answers to this two-part question: Jennifer Haupt: Why do you write poems, and why would anyone want to write a poem? Jane Hirshfield: One reason to write a poem is to flush from the deep thickets of the self some thought, feeling, comprehension, question, music, you didn’t know was in you, or in the world. Other forms of writing—scientific papers, political analysis, most journalism—attempt to capture and comprehend something known. Poetry is a release of something previously unknown into the visible. You write to invite that, to make of yourself a gathering of the unexpected and, with luck, o

Please continue reading, further down I have added my own thoughts in bold and cursive. ... From La Loba , Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With The Wolves. Pp.26-28 ....'the one that has many names. One who knows, it is the source of the feminine. The intuition, clairvoyance, who which listens carefully and has the true heart. She is the creator of the cycles,  is the life force' (Estes, 1994). And La Loba sang louder than the ground shakes digging up a bone. And then La Loba whispered all that is lost can be found, all that is dead can be resurrected. So my first task was to learn to understand within me that I should let to live and what I should let to die.  And in the process I should walk through the inner and outer worlds collecting my bones. And when my skeleton was complete, La Loba would sing about it and bring back the creature, my soul indestructible. Many nights passed until I find all my bones. Many expeditions to the underworld. Many m

For years I bemoaned the fact that I was not given the gift of a daughter. Don't get me wrong, I love both my sons and would not trade them for anything in the world! But I guess like every man wishes for a son I wished for a daughter. Someone I could pass my knowledge, everything I inherited from my mom, the good and the not so good... I love cooking, baking, decorating, frills and laces, the colour pink, dancing in the rain, listening to the thunderstorm, be mad and silly and everything that makes a woman... yet it was not to be. Today, whilst cleaning my studio,  I had  an epiphany, a light bulb went on... During my years of teaching I had so many daughters, sisters, mothers attending my classes. I had my sons girlfriends, and other beautiful young girls who grew up to be such beautiful young women, and all of them hold very special places in my heart! Every one was so very special and the one or other might even continue spreading a little part of me! What more can I ask

I can't believe it has been over a year since my last  post. Truth to be told I did not even write much... Sometimes I would take my book and pen and sat there and started scribbling and merely ended up with some diary style writing, not what I wanted. But what did I want to write about? I don't know... there are many stories I felt needed to be told and yet, who cares? Does anyone care if the stories were written, I don't think so... So back again, why write? For the past few years my little black book was my confidant, my best friend,  my soul speaking, my safety net, my tears, my tantrums, my thoughts and prayers and sometimes the only way to keep on going....! So now after every tear had been shed, every prayer had been prayed there is this emptiness, nothing more needed to be said, it is all there in my little black books; so you see writing was therapy for me.  I needed to write in order to heal and bring perspective back into my life..  And still I have