by Bela Johnson | Dec 28, 2017 | friends, nature, people, Uncategorized
She’s been dead a couple of years, my soul mate. Lots of people’s soul mate. That was her gift. She belonged to everybody and nobody at all. She was very much her own woman or the Goddess’ woman or at least a powerful woman; no less nor more than I, myself; but still....
by Bela Johnson | Dec 5, 2017 | dogs, Hawaii, lifestyle, nature, Uncategorized
As if there could be too much rain in a water-parched world we head out, two spotted canines jostling for space in the Scion’s passenger seat chasing bright, leaving gathering darkness behind; Off the highway we turn downhill toward a squall-rimmed sea, heavy mist...
by Bela Johnson | Nov 15, 2017 | Maine, nature, perspective, Uncategorized
Listening to an Annie Proulx’s Barkskins on audiobook while painting today, I think I am no storyteller. A poet, yes. Fleshing out characters for a story seems intrusive somehow, as though I were borrowing another’s eyes so that I might view the world in a different...
by Bela Johnson | Oct 3, 2017 | nature, philosophy, Uncategorized
Swirls and curls picking up detritus along the way and setting it down elsewhere, never mind human order; this is our mother the earth, and she is magnanimous and destructive in turn; Whether we worship gods or devas, the dandelion parts with her seed on the same...
by Bela Johnson | Sep 26, 2017 | home, lifestyle, nature, philosophy, Uncategorized
A sense of place … again and again we return to this puzzling concept. Wendell Berry, America’s best-known bioregionalist, says if you don’t know where you are, you don’t know who you are. Does our actual physical location determine our ability to...
by Bela Johnson | Sep 19, 2017 | musings, nature, philosophy, psychology, Uncategorized
How can we begin to understand the nature of simplicity, here in the Western world? Is our restlessness symptomatic of a deeper yearning to know our sense of place more profoundly? Many of us are feeling called to a life less fettered with consumerist trappings and...
