november 1

rain clicking on night glass

somewhere a tree is walking

into my dream

**

Today is Mindful Writing Day

The idea: to start November by dedicating some minutes to mindful writing

& sharing this moment with others.
Over 1000 joined already.

 To join, take some minutes to pay proper attention to one thing and write it down.
Share this moment ("small stone") by posting it on your blog
and on Twitter (using #smallstone) or Facebook -
make sure to add your blog link, too, if you want.
(more here)

**

more smallstones in this blog

october / november

(this is a pre-post for the Mindful Writing Day tomorrow, more below)

last day of october:

going through photos

of previous novembers

i find the things we forget

and remember

**

The first ever Mindful Writing Day

will happen tomorrow, on November 1st

The idea: to start November by dedicating some minutes to mindful writing

& sharing this moment with others.
Over 1000 joined already.
(more here)

looking forward to tomorrow

s/now, or: Change of Season

update.. 24 hours later: sunday morning,

a touch of snow &sun, and the forecast:

autumn to return next week

saturday and it's sudden snow:

a drop of twenty-five centigrade turning

into a white weather tale -

the dahlias from the garden
a memory of yesterday's blue sky

more changing sesaons in this blog

*

inspired by the snow and by photo friday's new theme "Change of Season"   

8 days to November

overcast day. everything: both dimmed 

& vibrant with the memory  

of a season about to end

 

8 days to November, and the sky turning.
a good day for some garden time, to prepare winter.
i cut the late blooming summer flowers that can't stand the frost
to bring them inside, to keep them into November.  

homesun

This warm embrace

Of a home sunrise

After days on the road

**

more: life as a journey along smallstones

wild yellow

______________in between
the wrapping up
_______________________the catching up forward
______a singular moment
____________  __of wild yellow
------------------------------------blue sky

on the way I & II

1
on the way
to the train station:
a riot of full fall


 

2
in the t/rain
patterns
crossing

---
more smallstones here
more shared smallstones on twitter

yellowred

end of September
the sunrises turning yellowred
like the autumn leaves

**

more: life as a journey along smallstones

ti/me, or: Sea, Thievery, and Small Stones

In August, Aubrie Cox at Yay Words wrote: "I will take small poems until Saturday, September 15th about the sea and/or thieves/thievery. As I have with other projects, I will take up to 5, and I’ll at least take one."

i noted the words down: Sea / Thievery, and wanted to send something early - but ended up running late, and took the note with me on a drive a day before deadline. it was there, during the drive, while standing on the third red light in row that the lines above came together.

Sea Bandits
from that red crossing in Germany, they now found their way into the Sea/Thievery issue, you can find it here at Yaywords, the introduction to it also is about time: Sea Bandits.
the visual above is an illustrated version, in the issue, you find the text-only version of my ti/me piece right after the sandcastle on page 1 (which includes this moment of "opening a car window just to breath the wind")

Small Stones
and in a parallel of format, i came across this note from Fiona Robyn in twitter:
"lots more people are dropping a #smallstone or two into the twitter-river. join them - mindfulwriting is good for you: why & how to write small stones"

so easy, to forget those little habits that are good for us. and seeing that the 100 days of summer are nearing their end, i might continue there with a small stone series

31, or: diary of... january

today: january 31
and with it: the completion of 31 days of small stones.
more about the projethey are all lined up in my photoblog:
a river of stones, january 2011

*

some reflections on stones / attentive notes:
in some ways, it's just a small thing: some lines on a specific moment of the day, every day. but what this challenge did was:  to make me more attentive for the everyday, for all the moments it brings. to look for stones.

it also made me go take my camera along, to take a photo somewhere along the way. and then, while out there, turn that extra corner, or take a road i havn't taken before. and: be more focused. here's where stones connect to that (seemingly) simple zen advice: when walk, walk. when eat, eat. when see, see. like when i went swimming – and there was the light floating through the windows, reflecting on the water surface. and it was almost hypnotic. is it different? i wondered. but it probably was my attention that was different.

another thought: i think one of the effects of the river of stones is that it gives a name to those  nameless moments, and with it, brings more attention to them and makes us more aware of them.

looking at the page of images and notes also makes me think of the peculiarity of our own perception. every day is full of hundreds of moments, but at the end of the day, just some are standing out in our memory. there could have been a completely different set of 31 entries, based on the same days.

another side effects of the stones: not only did they make go and try other roads, they also let me go and try some other templates, and arrive at the mosaic-style one, which was perfect for this, as it shifted the mosaic of images with every new entry. just like a new experience can shift our take on things that happened before.
 


also, the stone time made me go and revive my tumblr account life as a journey. i reblogged some of the stones there in larger format. it's one of the things that fascinate me: how the same content feels different when presented in another shape / size. which of course relates back to the whole idea of moments of the day, and the size / attention we give them on our way through the day.

thanks to Satya and Kaspalita at Writing Our Way Home for organizing this month!

now, to read the other stones of today
:)

winter solstice & small stones

today: solstice
today: rain, melting the new snow away
today: revisiting last year's december photos and finding this sky
today: sending out a december newsletter for blueprintreview. such a joy.

& in between all, this moment:

solstice, 7am.

turning out the light, the world outside takes shape in the window.

--
this moment, it now is the first in my "stone" notes -
in january, i will join the river of stones challenge again. the simple and difficult task: attentiveness to the small moments of our days. more about it, here. there already is a twitterstream of stones, here: #smallstone

handful of stones: Perseid meteor conjunction

last month, i took part in the Folded Word daily writing base camp. on day 12, i wrote a tiny meteor poem. the poem now found a place in a handful of stones, an online-journal that celebrates the extraordinary in the ordinary:

Perseid meteor conjunction

enjoy ~~ and while there, browse 7 stones down, and visit "Catch & Release" by Karyn Eisler, the 2 of us recently had 3 asemic images up in foffof, which somehow fit both poems with their encoded title: oenisplx igrnimeeg spnimirt (the title is based on the words: explosion / emerging / imprints [of a dried out world])
.