Author: Elizabeth

elizabethweaver.wordpress.com

Flying Raccoon-Angel Dog

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Joya, poem & photo by Elizabeth

CRAZY

It's crazy how much I love this girl - 
if I'm a pirate, she's my mountain of gold
and while sailing at night, my northern star
yet when we dock, she's my Zanzibar.

(Joya picks up almost anything and turns it into a toy that she flips in the air, catches, chases, since everything is animate and joyful play in her world.)

Joy

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Joya flies on her first beach day, photo by Elizabeth

Know that joy is rarer, more beautiful and more difficult than sadness. Once you make this all important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation.

Andre Guid

Catalyst

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poem & photo by Elizabeth

CATALYST

As if disintegrating the stone of our being to sand
we pour ourselves empty to be remade beyond
the merciless sins we rise above. 

The beauty of your breast cleaved away, 
my lungs stomping their sun-fire dance always,
yet we reshape ourselves as balm for each other
till we can bear our stories' terrible weight

and are transformed as if to sound - 
water on granite, wind through pine, 
an osprey's haunting cry.

Thank you to the editors of The Tishman Review for first publishing this poem.

11/9/16

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photo by Elizabeth

I’ve been saying Fuck fear! to everyone today, especially myself. The surrealistic results of last night’s election were shocking and fostered images of increased violence, economic disparity, disenfranchisement, senseless cruelty and suffering in our country and beyond our imaginary borders…yet while out with our dog, I marveled at the stars sparkling as they have and will for eons.

So many compassionate people with social and historical understanding are scared, yet fear is how slave owners and terrorists, bullies and rapists, gangs and militias have gained and maintained entirely too much privilege for too long. Fear paralyzes. Fear wraps us in numbing behavior, PTSD and isolation. I’ve spent too much of my life focused on moving out of fear to embrace it now because our young nation is struggling with issues of entitlement and humanism; ideals of capitalism and democracy; definitions of freedom and propaganda. Fear locks the brain in a simplified fight or flight state that prevents us from perceiving others through the complex lens of empathy and layered perspectives.

Fear, like anxiety, is a mighty force. If I let it root, I’ll be paralyzed in ways I’ll be too blinded to even see. Instead, we can choose to rise above harsh circumstance and heal must be healed through love and connection so we can make our way to 2020 as intact as possible as a nation and a world. We can do this with the deep listening, caring and intelligence that we are capable of providing ourselves and one another.

May all be happy, safe, healthy and at peace.