Thursday, June 28, 2012

What Can I Do?


Joy Williams
"What Can I Do But Love You?"

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Heartfelt

By Divine Ms. Moon


The most beautiful things in the world 
cannot be seen or even touched, 
they must be felt with the heart.

~ Helen Keller (born June 27, 1880)

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Come with Me

By Divine Ms. Moon

Your Love Songs

Marit Larsen
"I've Heard Your Love Songs"

Looking Up

The Crab Nebula (Messier 1)
for Charles Messier (born June 26, 1730)
From NASA




Love Alone

By Divine Ms. Moon




"Love alone could waken love."
~ Pearl S. Buck (born June 26, 1892)


Dream of Flying



Brian Crain
"Dream of Flying"

Monday, June 25, 2012

Photo Gallery

By Divine Ms. Moon

Like You


Linda Eder
"Someone Like You"

Photo Gallery

By Divine Ms. Moon

All the Things

Carly Simon (born June 25, 1945)
"All the Things You Are"

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Without The Rain

Brian Crain, "Perfect Rainbow"

"And when it rains on your parade,
look up rather than down.
Without the rain, there would be no rainbow."

~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

Kiss the Rain


Yiruma, "Kiss the Rain"

Faults


By Divine Ms. Moon


They came to tell your faults to me, 
They named them over one by one; 
I laughed aloud when they were done, 
I knew them all so well before,-- 
Oh, they were blind, too blind to see 
Your faults had made me love you more.”


~ Sara Teasdale, from "Long Songs"


Friday, June 22, 2012

Still Looking Up



Coddington's Nebula (IC 2574)
Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day
Image Credit & CopyrightStephen Leshin





Jason Mraz
"I Won't Give Up"





Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Monday, June 11, 2012

Longer than Forever


"Far Longer than Forever"
from "The Swan Princess"

Photo Gallery

By Divine Ms. Moon

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Saturday, June 9, 2012

In the Still of the Night




Kevin Kline, Ashley Judd
"In the Still of the Night" 
(Cole Porter, born June 9, 1891)

Photo Gallery

By Divine Ms. Moon

Friday, June 8, 2012

Wind that Blows My Heart


Radio Galaxy Centaurus A
From European Southern Observatory
Credit: ESO


"What he had yearned to embrace was not the flesh but a down spirit, 
a spark, the impalpable angel that inhabits the flesh."
~ Antoine de Saint Exupery
 "Wind, Sand, and Stars"


Southborder, "Wherever You Are"

Thursday, June 7, 2012

All Passion Spent? Not Hardly

By Divine Ms. Moon

Language of Dreams

"Color! What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams."
Paul Gauguin (born June 7, 1848)

Paul Gauguin
Haystacks in Brittany (1890)
From here

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Ms. Moon Solves Your Most Pressing Problems

If your problem happens to be what to do 
with that old camper parked in your backyard ....

By Divine Ms. Moon

Adventures in Forgiveness

"Life is an adventure in forgiveness."
~ Norman Cousins


Corinne Bailey Rae
"Enchantment"

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Everything Possible

"When nothing is sure, everything is possible."
~ Margaret Drabble (born June 5, 1939)

By Divine Ms. Moon

Monday, June 4, 2012

Lullaby ~ George Winston



George Winston, "Lullaby" (Sandman)

"Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head
 with silver liquid drops. 
Let the rain sing you a lullaby." 
~ Langston Hughes

Taking Joy

"Taking joy in living is a woman's best cosmetic."
Rosalind Russell (born June 4, 1907)

By Divine Ms. Moon

Sunday, June 3, 2012

In the Fragrant Gardens of Heaven


By Divine Ms. Moon




Those who love the most,
Do not talk of their love,
Francesca, Guinevere,
Deirdre, Iseult, Heloise,
In the fragrant gardens of heaven
Are silent, or speak if at all
Of fragile inconsequent things.



And a woman I used to know
Who loved one man from her youth,
Against the strength of the fates
Fighting in somber pride
Never spoke of this thing,
But hearing his name by chance,
A light would pass over her face.



             ~ Sara Teasdale







Art Gallery ~ Pierre-Auguste Renoir

"Work lovingly done is the secret of all order and all happiness."
Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Woman with a Parasol in a Garden (1875-76)




Fractured Mythology ~ Or How the Peacock Came to Color


When Hera drove out to investigate the earth-shrouding cloud that Zeus had created to cover his plan to seduce the river nymph Io, she drove out in style. Her chariot was drawn by her favorite birds – peacocks – which in those days, apparently, were rather dully colored -- at least as imagined in this classic painting by Pieter Lastman. 


Pieter Lastman, “Juno discovering Io with Jupiter” (1618)
From here

After Zeus surrendered Io to Hera, she put the little bovine goddess into the hands of the many-eyed Argus, who never fully slept. Hera intended Argus to keep constant vigil so that Zeus could not reclaim his lover. But this time, Zeus outwitted his clever wife, sending his son Hermes to lull Argus to sleep by --depending on which version of the legend you read -- either playing soothing melodies on his flute or telling him stories. When Argus finally closed his last eye, Hermes cut off his head.

According to legend, Hera then removed Argus’s eyes and placed them into the tails of her peacocks, giving them the brilliant color that we know today.


By Divine Ms. Moon

In astronomy, the many eyes of Argus are said to symbolize the vault of the stars. The peacock is immortalized in the southern constellation called Pavo, which literally means peacock in Latin.

Since those days, the peacock has developed something of a reputation. I wonder if they were thinking of Zeus, as he approached the unwary Io in the meadow that fateful day.


He approaches her, trailing his whole fortune,
Perfectly cocksure, and suddenly spreads
The huge fan of his tail for her amazement.

Each turquoise and purple, black-horned, walleyed quill
Comes quivering forward, an amphitheatric shell
For his most fortunate audience: her alone.

He plumes himself. He shakes his brassily gold
Wings and rump in a dance, lifting his claws
Stiff-legged under the great bulge of his breast.

And she strolls calmly away, pecking and pausing,
Not watching him, astonished to discover
All these seeds spread just for her in the dirt.

~ David Wagoner

Saturday, June 2, 2012

Into the Heart


“How can we not create a fantasy 
in our minds when the reality is so hard? 
~ Lisa See, “Peony in Love”

By Divine Ms. Moon
  
A friend of mine posted elsewhere today about a 70-year-old woman who claims to be a virgin, and who has waited all this time for the right man. Well, really, who hasn’t? But anyway, the woman claims that she is now ready for love.

I don’t know what that thought does for you, but it made me think of this poem by an anonymous Chinese author from the Ming Dynasty –
All night long, clouds pile up and wild showers fall,
the intent lovers numb to time as night passes.
As dew drips into the heart of her peony
her joints all melt and she cannot move.
Such heavy love, heavy love,
she falls into the Kingdom of Dreams!
By Divine Ms. Moon
*The term "Kingdom of Dreams" is said to refer to a mythical land called Hua Xu that the "Great Yellow Emperor" dreamed of visiting, where people lived "naturally and full of joy." In other words, a sort of Shangri-La. (T. Barnstone and C. Ping, trans. and ed., Chinese Erotic Poems (Everyman's 2007)).

    

Great Milk Comes from Happy Cows

In Greek mythology, Io was a lover of Zeus, who appeared to her in a cloud. When Zeus's wife Hera suddenly arrived on the scene of the seduction driving her peacock chariot, Zeus turned Io into a beautiful cow to conceal her from Hera. Not fooled for a minute, Hera asked Zeus to give her the cow, and Zeus was forced (by his own weakness) to surrender Io to Hera. The rest is a very entertaining legend for another day.

Jupiter's moon Io
showing the continuously present Prometheus Plume
(near the shadow line at the center of the photo)
From here

Art Gallery ~ Henri Matisse


"A picture must possess a real power to generate light and for a long time now I've been conscious of expressing myself through light or rather in light." ~ Henri Matisse



Henri Matisse, Vase of Sunflowers (1898)
From here

Friday, June 1, 2012

Night Music ~ Eva


Eva Cassidy, "Songbird"

Evening Clouds


"Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky."

~ Rabindranath Tagore




From Pixdaus
 (posted by Maxine)

New Age Sound ~ Liz Story


Liz Story, "Without You"

Art Gallery ~ Georgia O'Keeffe


Every time I photograph this flower, which is common in tropical conservatories, as well as in my office lobby during certain months, someone accuses me of being too sexual. I just don't get that. I mean, seriously, Georgia O'Keeffe only painted flowers because she couldn't afford people, and no one ever accused her of being too sexual, did they? 

Well. The point here is that sometimes a plant is just a plant. But this isn't one of them.


Georgia O'Keeffe
Leaves of a Plant (1942)
From here