Sunshine ii

Let it go. Let it out.

Let it all unravel.

Let it free and it can be

A path on which to travel.

Michael Leunig

Last week, Massachusetts-based poet Miriam Levine - Mim, a wonderfully observant and subtle writer - was nominated for a Sunshine Award. She generously passed this award on to me and a group of other bloggers whose sites she regularly visits. Thank you, Mim. It was a joy to receive and now I have the pleasure of passing the good will on.

There are a few suggestions that come with this award:

-Send it on - nominate a group* of bloggers whose sites you visit

-Put the logo in your sidebar or within a post

-Link the nominees within your post

-Let the nominees know they have received this award by commenting on their blog

-Share by linking the person from whom you received the award

~

* the suggestion is a group of 12 - a comfy dozen

Before I go any further, I need to do as Michael Leunig suggests and 'let it go. Let it out... '

For some reason I managed to get myself into a complete state over the innocent number 12. How crazy is that? Especially when it comes to the bigger picture; the greater scheme of things. Ah me. We can be our own worst enemies at times. The thing is, my last post (the one I've since deleted) was a wrestle from beginning to end. I kept stumbling into potholes, should have taken this as my cue to stop and wait patiently for the tizz-wazz to pass... but, I didn't. Instead, I crashed on, took a few odd turns and ended up on a weird trajectory speaking in a voice I barely recognized as my own. Eeeugh... Next thing I knew, a sharp jab came out of an unexpected corner, leaving me feeling both floored and felled. Without going into the details, suffice to say I've had an interesting time wandering the shadowlands these past two or three days.

I feel better this evening. The internal wobbling has settled; I've dusted myself off.

Grit can become grist.

The stone-that-was-once-a-boulder has taken on a new shape; one that I can look at with interest and understanding instead of distress. I'll pick it up from time to time, ponder again the smoothness of its contours and, too, its rough, flinty edges.

~

The blogs I visit regularly are on the right hand side of this page, each one a welcoming place of good will, inspiration, humour, instruction, nourishment and companionship....

I'd like to pass the Sunshine Award on to all of you, as a great big bouquet. (I'm afraid I seem quite unable to think in terms of a specific number just at the moment - hope this is okay, Mim) . . .

. . . Visit Pam Morrison at Cadence; the title of Pam's blog resonates perfectly with the range and timbre of her musings,

Penelope Todd at The Intertidal Zone, NZ writer whose succinct snippets lead us to ledges and edges it is hard to resist peering over,

T. Clear at Premium T, whose images, food and life-affirming conversation kick-start so much more than appetite,

poet and gentle chronicler of the land (whenua) and her people (whanau) - Kay McKenzie-Cook at Born to a Red-haired woman.

Zoe Keating is a cellist whose way of being in the world I have admired for some time. Something about the way she works and makes her music available to the world echoes with the ethos that underpins Lewis Hyde's book, The Gift. She blogs less frequently than many of us, but her music reverberates between postings - Zoe's Incredibly interesting blog

Alice Walker's blog - the subtitle of which is "The Cushion and the Road: Meditation and Wandering As the Whole World Awakens to Being in Harm's Way." Her website can be reached via her blog and offers visitors a place akin to sanctuary.)

Vesper Sparrows Nest articulates her truth about place, time and experiences that are at once weighted and weightless. Beautiful writing. "... What are time and space for us now? We are still afraid of the dark. If faith and history have failed us, our sciences are incomprehensible, and philosophy unprovable, all we have left is the truth of art..."

Tony Bridge is a Hanmer Springs-based photographer who muses on subjects technical and aesthetic and poses questions to do with the difference between seeing and perceiving.

Fire Bird at Only slightly singed

poefrika - a green weblog of creative, Africa-inspired writing,

Mary Parker at beautcommute - 'Good stuff for commuters'

Tania Hershman who writes an inspiring series on Writing and Place - how where you are affects what you write.

Vanda Symon, The Paradoxical Cat and O Audacious Book are a triumvirate of local, and not-so-local writers - women who have their antennae out and their ears to the ground.

~~~

Thanks all.

(And there will be no further wrangling from CB - at least, not for a good, long while...)