CREATIVITY AND OTHER LIFE QUALITIES: ALASKA

Friday

ALASKA

Magnificent, Mysterious. These two words came to me countless times on my recent journey to Alaska. Again they arrive, a kind of mantra, as I reflect on the time there while the memories are as raw and fresh as the virgin snow on top of her glaciers, as the people drawn there, some of them characters, some of them strangers, some searching for a place to hide, others for a place to survive, and still others for an expansive place to stretch out and grow.

After a series of losses since 2005 that blew my world apart and began a process of reshaping most of the beliefs I held dearest about life, love, family, justice, faith and more, now in 2010 I have visited for the first time the magnificence and mysteriousness of Alaska, a place where it’s clear I’ve discovered, quite literally, just the tip of the iceberg, where already I'm planning with my beloved to return, to experience and learn more.

For now, some pictures. Soon, more images and some essays, taken hastily or scribbled from water taxi, kayak, air taxi, and the road, sometimes looking out from hotel rooms, cafe windows, or cabin doors, through the lenses of my mind and heart to share with you some tiny slices of the magnificence and mysteriousness of our latest adventure, and our newest home away from home.

Except where noted, the pictures at my blog are taken by me. You're welcome to share them, if only you will kindly credit me. Thanks, peace, D.M. Solis, www.dmsolis.blogspot.com

Diane Solis

The poetry of Diane Solis has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, excerpted in Expressive Writing: Classroom and Community, and has been published or is forthcoming in literary journals and magazines, including, America, Big Muddy, The Healing Muse, Hobo Camp Review, The Lost Country, Psychological Perspectives, Sinister Wisdom, Slink Chunk Press and elsewhere. Her chapbook ART SPIRITS, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. A science writer and technical editor by trade, Solis practices contemplative and Zen forms of meditation and travels to remote places to photograph and write about the "wild" she encounters there. She resides on the Central Pacific Coast with her partner.

www.dmsolis.blogspot.com

The Latest Quotes for Contemplation:

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. --Annie Dillard

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times, in life after life, age after age, forever. ~ Tagore

I look at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world.... ~ Frank O'Hara

Of all fires love is the only inexhaustible one. ~Pablo Neruda

Prophets are so dangerous because they cry in season and out of season, politely and impolitely, loud and long. ~Joan Chittister

When I say be creative, I don't mean you should all go and become great painters and great poets. I simply mean let your life be a painting, let your life be a poem. ~ Osho

There are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving. But, who wants easier? ~ Mary Oliver

Without warning, as a whirlwind swoops on an oak, Love shakes my heart. ~ Sappho

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
T.S. Eliot, from "Little Gidding"

Love many things, for therein lies your true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well... ~ Vincent van Gogh

I have found that to love and be loved is the most empowering and exhilarating of all human emotions. ~ Jane Goodall

Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone--we find it with another. ~Thomas Merton

I am certain that after the dust of centuries has passed over our cities, we, too, will be remembered not for our victories or defeats in battle or in politics, but for our contribution to the human spirit.
~John F. Kennedy

I cannot write convincingly about anything that I am not passionate about. ~Darrell Bourque, Poet Laureate of Louisiana

In the lover's heart is a lute which plays the melody of longing. ~Rumi

But perhaps the most important thing about my father was that he taught us the simplest things -- Navajo things -- like how to just sit and be quiet, to blend in and watch, or to move so silently we'd become a part of the forest. My father taught us how to live the concepts of our culture, especially the importance of communicating with the natural world. ~Lori Arviso Alvord, M.D.