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17 March 2017

Splash of Green for St. Patrick's Day - Missoula, Montana


Perfect timing for a montage of almost-spring grreens - literally and liberally splashed with melodious melt water.

For endless fun and parental irritation, print them out to make your very own flip book! 

(Yes, these springward sprites were brought to you - again! - courtesy of inelegant crouching. 
For you, I would do this, and I don't say this to just anyone!)

Enjoy the lovely Irish Day!

16 March 2017

River Rush - Clark Fork River, Missoula, Montana

"I grew up in this town, 
my poetry was born 
between the hill and the river, 
it took its voice from the rain, 
and like the timber, 
it steeped itself in the forests."

- Pablo Neruda (1904-1973)

14 March 2017

Rest and Motion - Missoula, Montana

"When by the discipline of His Divine guidance,
 we know Him,
 and He going with us
 gives us Rest,
 then Time and Eternity are merged
 and lost
 in that amazing vital relationship. 

The union is one not of mystic contemplation,
 but of intense perfection of activity,
 not the Rest of the placid peace of stagnation,
 but the Rest of perfect motion..."

13 March 2017

On Seeing - Missoula, Montana


"I have been so young till this moment that all my life now seems to have been a kind of sleep. I have thought that I was being carried, and behold, I was walking."

Ransom asked what she meant.

"What you have made me see," answered the Lady, "is as plain as the sky, but I never saw it before. Yet it has happened every day. One goes into the forest to pick food and already the thought of one fruit rather than another has grown up in one's mind. Then, it may be, one finds a different fruit and not the fruit one thought of. One joy was expected and another is given. 
But this I had never noticed before--that the very moment of the finding there is in the mind a kind of thrusting back, or setting aside. The picture of the fruit you have not found is still, for a moment, before you. 
And if you wished--if it were possible to wish--you could keep it there. You could send your soul after the good you had expected, instead of turning it to the good you had got. You could refuse the real good; you could make the real fruit taste insipid by thinking of the other."

- from Perelandra, Chapter Five, by C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)

10 March 2017

Minor Monarch - East Missoula, Montana

"...the monarch of mountains;
They crown'd him long ago
On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds,
With a diadem of snow."

  -Lord Byron, Manfred, Act I, scene 1, line 62

09 March 2017

Not Quite Spring... - Missoula, Montana

Sister #3 has been texting photos from the other side of the world, where all is warm and light-infused.

To balance out the universe, my reply this morning included today's current Western Montana view. 

And it doesn't show signs of stopping...

06 March 2017

Fugitive Image - Missoula, Montana

"...Yet mental images play an important part in my prayers.... 
But they seem to help me most when they are most fugitive 
and fragmentary—rising and bursting like bubbles in champagne or 
wheeling like rooks in a windy sky: contradicting one another (in logic) as the 
crowded metaphors of a swift poet may do. 

Fix on any one, and it goes dead. 

You must do as Blake would do with a joy; kiss it as it flies...."

- from Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, page 86, by C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)