This blog allows me to talk about my interests in travel, the outdoors, music, art, writing and literature; all of which have altered my views of this small world.
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Gustav Klimt: Time and Magical Illusions
Wednesday, April 1, 2015
Sacred Time: Short Piece
Sacred Time
Armando Ortiz
Life is not the holy moment; at best this mundane time becomes a break into the extraordinary, where eureka is hollered after years of mistakes. Nirvana is only the waking of eyes, where for a lifetime your pupils are pried wide, and blindly live every second that passes, thinking that life is forever.
This dream is just as a rose dropping its petals, a sakura that is released from a branch, only here for a moment. Our Mother’s hand slowly opens, letting tiny birds take flight, while Father’s arm swings, to sow seed into the air that becomes a cloud of butterflies floating on bye.
Thursday, February 12, 2015
Love and Hate: Five Pieces
Love and Hate: Five Pieces
By Armando Ortiz
1.
I love you like party time,
as the sun goes down, and
bed sheets cover us to hide
what we imbibe.
2.
I hate you like the emotional isolation
that is felt when beside me you cry,
shedding those tears
through the night.
3.
I love you like party time
that’s when its Friday at midnight,
and though tired I fight the urge to sleep
keeping on the mild cool light.
4.
I love you like dark chocolate chili
that is sold in the old markets
of towns found in between green valleys
where on deserted imaginary lands
abuelitas wearing aprons
carry those delicious goblets
on dry baskets, and covered
in golden maize husks.
5.
I hate you like clammy handshakes
that leave that water residue on the skin
as a sign that time has come to say goodbye
like eyes that splash you with darkness
with abysmal irises of black unknowns.
Sunday, January 18, 2015
Life and Death: Short Piece
Life and Death: Short Piece
by Armando Ortiz
Yes, we all die
but that doesn’t answer the question
as to why.
Into this confusion we are born,
and just when we thought that this fusion,
of love and nature could endure,
your neighbor dies and
souls begin to knock on our door.
We end up visiting the hills where people,
still cold and stiff, are laid to rest
and every time we return, it seems that life’s
duress reveals its empty self in the shape of death,
where memory can no longer regress to that time when
lawns were used to play ball, and trees blanketed
us with that cool shade.
No one knows the suffering of others.
we walk kilometers forgetting that there are those,
who’ve trampled through the heat of humanity,
walked through valleys of glowing embers and silently
swallowed the bitter drink of life.
Broken remain those who hang from trees and tattered are
the happy times that we barely reclaim, yet
there is no prejudice with life and death.
It’s the stuff in between that stirs waters,
that creates hurricanes and tsunamis
of labels and names, and
painful experience.
Wednesday, January 7, 2015
Peasants
Peasants
by Armando Ortiz
Sun weathered,
weather beaten.
Feeling mother’s warmth
inside the furnace of creation.
Where the wheat
is sheared and beaten.
You embody the perfect mirror
un-fragmented by life’s tears.