Seven types of ordinary happiness

From Leunig - 2013 Calendar

Suspended animation

Creativity stifled and a life compartmentalised...
Wife, friend, mother, sister, employee, and lover.

The face we turn to the world
reflects what we want them to see.
The hidden depths carouse deep
in our veins' pulse, or otherwise if negated,
sink unused to sluggish murky depths
as one drifts through commonalities and banalities,
without spark and without light,
half asleep and living a waking dream.

There is beauty, when viewed unshielded, is blinding.
I knew that, have I forgotten? Am I only half awake?

© Jennifer Phillips (All rights reserved)

Sun over skin's hill © Jennifer Phillips

One making

You came in the night,

pulsing.

Like a panther in the sun

Haunches raised,

poised above me.

Energy potential.

The touch …

filled by you,

enclosing you,

shouting your name to the heavens,

in glorious ecstasy.

© Jennifer Phillips (All rights reserved)

© Jennifer Phillips

Thou art the sky and thou art the nest as well

Thou art the sky and thou art the nest as well. 
Oh, thou beautiful, there in the nest it is thy love that encloses the soul with colours and sounds and odours. 

There comes the morning with the golden basket in her right hand bearing the wreath of beauty,
silently to crown the earth. 

And there comes the evening over the lonely meadows deserted by herds, 
through trackless paths, carrying cool draughts of peace in her golden pitcher from the western ocean of rest.

But there, where spreads the infinite sky for the soul to take her flight in, 
reigns the stainless white radiance. 

There is no day nor night, nor form nor colour, and never never a word.

by Rabindranath Tagore

At Mount Duval near Armidale N.S.W. Australia © Jennifer Phillips

Two small quotes about relationships

"You come into a relationship as two blocks of wood and you have these corners. Those corners make friction and bring sparks. You make a fire with those or you allow your corners to be knocked off."

Toni Childs quoting two gay friends in a long-term relationship.

"We all need comfort. But for a couple, of course, it has its dangers ... we all want to live with desire, with passion, with evolution. When you are in a habit of things, can you survive if you don't lie to yourselves?"

Juliette Binoche

Frosted glass

I see your breath as it frosts my window - 
your words snake like water droplets
down the back of my neck.

I look around, but I cannot see you
out there in the dark, skulking in my yard.

Thoughts like copper coins occupy my mind,
spin in the lamp's light, burnished they cascade
and disappear forever, like water droplets in the sun.

Dream tendrils in the night sway, the world's shared breaths.
I breathe out, another breathes in, mingled on the winds.

You have gone now and I see clearly the stars
winking instead, and frosting my window.
I stand strangely connected, through a glass darkly.

© Jennifer Phillips (All rights reserved)

Flower's centre © Jennifer Phillips

Saudades

Tinpan Orange performing “Saudades” at the Quiet Music Festival 2010

There's a word, for longing,

For someone, or something,

That can't be found, in our language.

It's a type of anguish, our words don't know.

'Cause love goes,

Like a gypsy shawl.

Like an arrow,

Love is fast, and life is slow.

Like a jet plane,

Like a single day.

It comes, 

And goes away.

I loved him, I love him still,

Perhaps I never did, perhaps I always will.

But I walked away, and he turned his back,

Now all I'm counting is all I lack.

'Cause love goes,

Like a gypsy shawl.

Like an arrow,

Love is fast, and life is slow.

Like a jet plane,

Like a single day.

It comes, 

And goes away.

There's a word, I've been searching for,

That in my language goes unsaid.

It's him, that I've been longing for,

Now a memory in my head.

Because love goes,

Like a gypsy shawl.

Like an arrow,

Love is fast, and life is slow.

Like a jet plane,

Like a single day.

It comes, 

And goes away.

by Tinpan Orange

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Rocks at Sorrento © Jennifer Phillips