dj strang

the night ocean

noreply@blogger.com (dj strang) — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:00:00 +0000

We are the night ocean filled
with glints of light. We are the space
between the fish and the moon,
while we sit here together.

...Rumi

Goodbye, Vic, we'll miss you.

blue

noreply@blogger.com (dj strang) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 17:02:00 +0000

Labradorite Necklace

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of sweetness show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find the mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness see you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.

-W.H. Auden

Happy Thanksgiving

noreply@blogger.com (dj strang) — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 14:46:00 +0000

Connestee Falls, NC - 11/09

Garnet, Chrysoprase, Ruby and Sterling Silver Necklace

ocean

noreply@blogger.com (dj strang) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 13:37:00 +0000

Fernandina Beach '09

• • •

Chalcedony, Prehnite and Silver Necklace

This is the critical moment
when a swell of ocean turns
its edge to foam.

- Rumi

Cat's Eye

noreply@blogger.com (dj strang) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 03:48:00 +0000

Cat's Eye Bracelet

halloween

noreply@blogger.com (dj strang) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 03:35:00 +0000

Elizabeth '09

A bat is born
Naked and blind and pale.
His mother makes a pocket of her tail
and catches him. He clings to her long fur
By his thumbs and toes and teeth.
And then the mother dances through the night
Doubling and looping, soaring, somersaulting--
Her baby hangs on underneath.
All night, in happiness, she hunts and flies.
Her sharp cries
Like shining needlepoints of sound
Go out into the night, and echoing back,
Tell her what they have touched.
She hears how far it is, how big it is,
Which way it is going:
She lives by hearing.
The mother eats the moths and gnats she catches
In full flight; in full flight
The mother drinks the water of the ponds
She skims across. Her baby hangs on tight.
Her baby drinks the milk she makes him
In moonlight or starlight, in mid-air.
Their single shadow, printed on the moon
Or fluttering across the stars,
Whirls on all night; at daybreak
The tired mother flaps home to her rafter.
The others all are there.
They hang themselves up by their toes,
The wrap themselves in their brown wings.
Bunched upside-down, they sleep in air.
The sharp ears, their sharp teeth, their quick sharp faces
Are dull and slow and mild.
All the bright day, as the mother sleeps,
She folds her wings about her sleeping child.
Bats by Randall Jarrell

sleeping

noreply@blogger.com (dj strang) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 23:46:00 +0000

August '09

Garnet, Idocrase and Sterling Silver Necklace

I was lying on the sofa to rest, to sleep
a few minutes, perhaps.
I felt my body sag into the hole of sleep.
All at once I was awake and frightened.
My own death was drifting near me
in the middle of life. The strong body
blurred and diminished into the waters.
The flesh floated away.
...
The shadow is a tight passage
that no one will be spared
who goes down
to the deep well.
In sleep, something remembers.
Three times since I woke
from the first sleep,
it has drunk that water.
Awake it is still sleeping.

- Donald Hall

white pelicans

noreply@blogger.com (dj strang) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:49:00 +0000

white pelicans - Fernandina Beach - August '09

Moonstone and Sterling Silver Necklace

I am so tired of what I have been doing.

Then one image without form came,
and I quit.

Look for someone else to tend the shop.
I am out of the image-making business.

Finally I know the freedom
of madness.

I am weary of personal worrying,
in love with the art of madness.

Tear open my shame and show the mystery.
How much longer do I have to fret
with self-restraint and fear?

Friend, this is how it is.
We are fringe sewn inside
the lining of a robe.

Soon we will be loosened,
the binding threads torn out.

- Rumi

sunset

noreply@blogger.com (dj strang) — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 15:13:00 +0000

Fernandina Beach - August "09

Solar Quartz & Black Spinel Necklace

sunset

noreply@blogger.com (dj strang) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 12:39:00 +0000

Fernandina Beach - Sunset - August '09

Tourmaline & Tibetan Agate Bracelet

a brighter day

noreply@blogger.com (dj strang) — Tue, 12 May 2009 19:37:00 +0000

Sterling Silver and 14k Gold Filled Pendant Necklace
• • •

Give us gladness that connects
with the Friend, a taste of the quick.

You that make a cypress strong
and jasmine jasmine.

Give us the inner listening
that is a way in itself
and the oldest thirst there is.

Do not measure it out with a cup.
I am a fish. You are the moon.

You cannot touch me, but your light
fills the ocean where I live.

...Rumi

fire

noreply@blogger.com (dj strang) — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 13:53:00 +0000

Mexican Fire Opal & Silver Bracelet
• • •

Late by myself, in the boat of myself,
no light and no land anywhere,
cloud cover thick.

I try to stay just above the surface,
yet I am already under
and living within the ocean.

- Rumi

spring

noreply@blogger.com (dj strang) — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 22:05:00 +0000

Chalcedony & Gold Necklace
• • •

I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the riverbed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as in in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

excerpted from Twelve Moons
by Mary Oliver

mojito

noreply@blogger.com (dj strang) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 12:58:00 +0000

Jade, Rose Quartz and Silver Bracelet
• • •

Ode on the Whole Duty of Parents

The spirits of children are remote and wise,
They must go free
Like fishes in the sea
Or starlings in the skies,
Whilst you remain
The shore where casually they come again.
But when there falls the stalking shade of fear,
You must be suddenly near,
You, the unstable, must become a tree
In whose unending heights of flowering green
Hangs every fruit that grows, with silver bells;
Where heart-distracting magic birds are seen
And all the things fairy-story tells;
Though still you should possess
Roots that go deep in ordinary earth,
And strong consoling bark
To love and to caress.

- Francis Cornford

ring

noreply@blogger.com (dj strang) — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:27:00 +0000

cigar band ring
• • •

There is a strange frenzy in my head,
of birds flying,
each particle circulating on its own.
Is the one I love everywhere?

- Rumi

Ring of Gold

noreply@blogger.com (dj strang) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 19:39:00 +0000

Delicate Hand Forged 14k Gold Rings

• • •

My rings are made from 100% recycled eco-friendly precious metals.

Unfortunately, the mining of precious metals generates enormous environmental waste which contaminates our water and soil, endangering the health and lives of humans and animals.

I purchase my gold from an earth-minded refiner and manufacturer that has been providing socially and environmentally-responsible products for over 95 years. Their precious metals are 100% recycled. They use a newly developed gold refining process that reduces waste products by 75%. Their refinery operates at the highest standards in the industry and does not release harmful particulates or waste water into the environment.

Moon Glow

noreply@blogger.com (dj strang) — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 14:57:00 +0000

Moonstone and Sterling Silver Necklace

New Beginnings

noreply@blogger.com (dj strang) — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 17:12:00 +0000

Silver Leaf, Knotted Linen, Silver and Turquoise Beads

• • •

"The point of creation ('things', 'nouns') is resurrection, being made new . . . really living rather than just existing."

- Bonnie Thurston

Vertigo

noreply@blogger.com (dj strang) — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 14:34:00 +0000

Oil Pastel by DJStrang

Midnight Garden

noreply@blogger.com (dj strang) — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 14:04:00 +0000

Mystic Labradorite & Sterling Silver Necklace

• • •

There is a path from me to you
that I am constantly looking for,

so I try to keep clear and still
as water does with the moon.

- Rumi

politics as (un)usual

noreply@blogger.com (dj strang) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 01:59:00 +0000

...I have lived through everyone from Kennedy to two Bushes. In that time I had great hopes with Kennedy, and a little hope with Carter, and absolutely no faith in Johnson or Nixon. After all, the last two didn't seem to mind sending a lot of kids in my generation to die in a country in Southeast Asia that nobody else in the world seemed to care about. Call me crazy, but I like seeing nineteen-year-olds alive and stoned in college. It's a little quick of mine.

- Lewis Black

sparkle

noreply@blogger.com (dj strang) — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 17:09:00 +0000

necklace
• • •

To the illuminated mind, the whole world burns and sparkles with light.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

out beyond

noreply@blogger.com (dj strang) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 02:48:00 +0000

view from beyond - djstrang 10/08

• • •

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense.

- Rumi

noda

noreply@blogger.com (dj strang) — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 20:29:00 +0000

• • •

Life tells the biggest lies of all,
And draws wages from itself.
Truth is a landscape the saintly tribes live on,
And all the lenses of Japan and Germany
Wouldn't know how to focus on it.

Life flickers on the frame like beautiful hummingbirds.
That is the film that always comes out blank.
The painting the artist can't get shapes to fit.
The poem that shrugs off every word you try.
The music no one has ever heard.

...from I Am a Cameraman by Douglas Dunn

noreply@blogger.com (dj strang) — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 03:15:00 +0000

Lantern