Thursday, June 24, 2021

Yucca flower

 

Some yucca blooms by the parking lot caught my eye,

And if I were a professional photographer, I'd enlarge just the blooms!

At least the flower is still in focus. But it's pretty dull. However, it's in an industrial area, so should be commended for just making it this far.

Today's quote:

The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives. It is within this light that we form those ideas by which we pursue our magic and make it realized. This is poetry as illumination, for it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are — until the poem — nameless and formless, about to be birthed, but already felt. That distillation of experience from which true poetry springs births thought as dream births concept, as feeling births idea, as knowledge births (precedes) understanding.

Poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.

Within living structures defined by profit, by linear power, by institutional dehumanization, our feelings were not meant to survive… We have hidden that fact in the same place where we have hidden our power. They surface in our dreams, and it is our dreams that point the way to freedom. Those dreams are made realizable through our poems that give us the strength and courage to see, to feel, to speak, and to dare. If what we need to dream, to move our spirits most deeply and directly toward and through promise, is discounted as a luxury, then we give up the core — the fountain — of our power… the future of our worlds. 

For there are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt — of examining what those ideas feel like being lived on Sunday morning at 7 A.M., after brunch, during wild love, making war, giving birth, mourning our dead — while we suffer the old longings, battle the old warnings and fears of being silent and impotent and alone, while we taste new possibilities and strengths.

 Audre Lourde




13 comments:

  1. Hello
    The yucca blooms are pretty, it is interesting to see how this plant blooms. It is so tall.
    Have a happy day!

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    1. I've grown yucca a few times, and had crying kids that got hurt by it too. It should be in places people don't walk close by.

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  2. ...yucca is one of those plants is rugged, just don't over water it!

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  3. Such spectacular flowers! They look like a desert plant but seem to thrive here (in well drained spots.)

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    Replies
    1. It is on a south facing slope. I've seen others here too!

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  4. Nice to see that yucca blooming there.

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  5. There is quite a bit of yucca growing along our trails and we also see their pretty flowers this tie of year. I am always amazed how a plant so sharp and pointy can produce such beauty!

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  6. Nothing yucky about that flower..

    My confession is that I don’t read quotes, even the little ones. I hang my head.

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There is today, more than ever, the need for a compassionate regenerative world civilization.