Barr Trail Haiku

Golden butterflies fall in the warm mountain breeze. We have miles to go

keith

A beautiful day begins with a beautiful mindset

A beautiful day begins with a beautiful mindset.
When you wake up,
take a second to think about what a privilege
it is to simply be alive and healthy.
The moment you start acting like life is a blessing,
I assure you it will start to feel like one.
Time spent appreciating is time worth living

Everything is going beautifully Nowhere

Cooling off in Aravaipa Canyon

Do not ask where
we go from here
Nobody knows
Some think they do
but nobody really knows
anything
about anything

We are only gurgles
in the stream
and the stream doesn’t
know where it’s going
either
It is just going
It is just
going with its nature
as far as that
will take it

And with its nature
it has to take along
a horde of
gurgles
who are forever asking
where they are
gurgling to

Everything
is going beautifully
nowhere

---James Broughton

photo by Julia Hee

Star dream

Star Dream from Keith Stretchko on Vimeo.


Last nights dream: I was flying in space on a ship with transparent walls and it felt like I was flying through stars and I Feel Love was playing loud and I felt magnificent.

Desiderata

~Desiderata~

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant, they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let not this blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore, be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams; it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful.

Strive to be happy.

~ Max Ehrmann, 1927

Far Beyond Explanations

One can spend a lifetime seeking explanations.
It is even worse if one finds them.
What the heart requires is not explanation,
but breaking open entirely
far beyond explanations.

 ---Robert Saltzman---

We are Still the Big Bang

"There was a big bang at the beginning of things and it spread. And you and I, sitting here in this room, as complicated human beings, are way, way out on the fringe of that bang. We are the complicated little patterns on the end of it. Very interesting.

But so we define ourselves as being only that. If you think that you are only inside your skin, you define yourself as one very complicated little curlique, way out on the edge of that explosion. Way out in space, and way out in time. Billions of years ago, you were a big bang, but now you're a complicated human being.

And then we cut ourselves off, and don't feel that we're still the big bang. But you are. Depends how you define yourself. You are actually--if this is the way things started, if there was a big bang in the beginning-- you're not something that's a result of the big bang. You're not something that is a sort of puppet on the end of the process. You are still the process.

You are the big bang, the original force of the universe, coming on as whoever you are. When I meet you, I see not just what you define yourself as--Mr so-and- so, Ms so-and-so, Mrs so-and-so--I see every one of you as the primordial energy of the universe coming on at me in this particular way. I know I'm that, too. But we've learned to define ourselves as separate from it.”

― Alan W. Watts

I Will Follow

I’m in love with a girl 
who’s in love with the world 
and I can’t help but follow