Blog o’ Gnosis

The past few days I have been searching through old journals and notebooks looking for notes on an event I went to years ago. I haven’t found the prize yet, but in the process of not finding what I was looking for I did find some other interesting stuff.

Back in 1990 I was taking a poetry class in the evenings, and I worked on those assignments in the same notebook that I used for recording meeting minutes, jotting down ideas for articles, and writing songs. Somewhere in the middle of all that I found the following, dated July 12, 1990. I have no recollection of writing it, but I think I was in the middle of writing a song that wasn’t cooperating, so this came out instead.

The Pile o’ Books challenge was fun. Today a few folks on a Pagan bloggers list were tossing around ideas for new and exciting challenges, and I came up with the idea of photographing something at our homes that is an altar but doesn’t look like an altar.

It’s Sunday, a day when attention-seeking pundits across the nation are paid to appear on opinion shows whether they know what they’re talking about or not. If they can be overpaid to spout off on national TV, surely I can do the same here for free. So in the spirit of free enterprise, here’s what I think about various sorts of things.

My sisters and I were all subjected to a rigorous musical education as we grew up. We all took piano lessons from the age of five, and by the fourth or fifth grade we all had taken up a second instrument as well. Two of the sisters quit taking piano lessons by the ninth grade, the other two—my sister Sarah and I—continued through high school. Sarah and I both began college as music majors, and she went on to graduate with a BA, two MAs, and a PhD in music-related fields.

This morning I took my camera to Doran Beach, in order to capture some of the great profusion of blossoms there. It is a peaceful place to walk and think, especially on overcast mornings before the weekend crowds. I am not much of a photographer; my technical expertise lies somewhere between point-and-click and set-your-own-f-stop. Except [...]