Posts

Showing posts from May 29, 2016

Living the world through our hearts and dreams...

Image
All too often, most of us talk about what we are going to do with our lives...what we plan to do next; what the planned life objective is at the moment in time we are having that conversation with someone else. And unless the world has changed and tipped off of its axis, I suspect our meanderings, no matter how well-intentioned, remain just that, idle wanderings of our restless mind for the overwhelmingly majority of us. Yet, some people are fortunate and courageous enough to step off of that hustle, that grid, and venture into an experience that changes them forever. For those folks, the world then opens its majestic charm and offers unique experiences that can only be achieved in a specific place, at a specific time. The photo taken at Lion Encounters, Zimbabwe, Africa C. Evans Mylonas journeyed from Texas to Namibia and back to Arizona, and I am willing to bet “the farm’ that because of these experiences, especially the ones on the continent of Africa, her decisions

Come Sunday

Image
S undays evoke a variety of meanings for different folk, but it is singularly the day for praise, celebration, and recognition of a force larger than humans. In the African-American community, Sunday is the day for worship, testifying, fellowship and prayer.  Duke Ellington’s sacred jazz piece “Come Sunday” from his instrumental jazz suite, Black, Brown and Beige, that premiered at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 1943 weaves a hymnal quality offset by a majestic “use of dissonance” as the Duke examined the celestial nuances of praising the Lord through music.  Decades later on a Sunday, aaduna celebrates the vitality of this day by launching its spring 2016 anniversary issue featuring a diverse array of poets, writers and visual artists.  And keeping in the realm of Ellington, Jacques Wakefield delivers his poem “ Harlem Morning” evoking the same contextual feel Ellington {who lived in Harlem up on Sugar Hill} brought to his musical piece. Here is the opening to Wakefield