Ascender Rises Above

At Night I Bloom; Illuminated Tile. Collage, Paint, Mixed Media
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Wide awake I can make my most fantastic dreams come true.

Lorenz Hart

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The Fire Line; Photo. More Ascender’s Photos. Print

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All the angels of Tie Siding were on fire.
The famous sky was gone.

Presumably the mountains were still there, invisible in haze.
OK,
there was only one angel, but she was a torch in the wind, beside
the wind-ripped American flag the post office flies.
OK, she wasn’t
literally on fire.
Maybe her angelic red hair made me think she was
ablaze as it flaunted the prairie and made a festival of itself.
There
was a fireworks stand nearby, entirely beside the point, as was the
Fourth of July.
It was really dry.
It was fire season.
It was the
wind festival, featuring an angel standing in it, letting her red hair
conflagrate history, reduce it to ash, bid it start anew, erase the sky
with atrocity’s own smoke.
She wore, besides her flame of hair,
blue jeans and a singlet.
She was violent in the wind.
I started
walking toward her.
I’m still walking toward her, no idea what to
say when I get there.

Fire Season by James Galvin

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Fire Season in the news

Wildfire wiki

Locations of large fires - US/Canada; MODIS satellite imagery

CalFireNews.com - California/World Wildfire News and Photos

Wildland Firefighter Foundation - provides assistance to fallen firefighters’ families and to firefighters injured in the line of duty.

Orange Mysteries; Illuminated Tile. Collage, Paint, Mixed Media
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Oh mysterious world… I have become better for having understood and having loved thy human soul – a flower which has ceased to bloom and whose fragrance no one henceforth will breathe.

Paul Gauguin

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Simply Joy; Photo. More Ascender’s Photos. Print
Taken at The City of Ten Thousand Buddhas.

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Life, like a child, laughs,
shaking its rattle of death as it runs.

Rabindranath Tagore

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Cherry Tulips; Illuminated Tile. Collage, Paint, Mixed Media
More Ascender’s Illuminated Tiles this blog.

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Adhere to your own act, and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant, and broken the monotony of a decorous age.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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A Moment To Reflect, Photo. More Ascender’s Photos. Print
Taken at The City of Ten Thousand Buddhas

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Meditate.
Live purely. Be quiet.
Do your work with mastery.
Like the moon, come out
from behind the clouds!
Shine

Buddha (Hindu Prince Gautama Siddharta, the founder of Buddhism, 563-483 B.C.)

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Climbing Dress Mountain; Illuminated Tile; Collage, Paint, Mixed Media
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We revere your wax-flattered flesh.
We press our lips to many of your faceted images,
Our world is built with ancient emotions, flat. Perfection.

You live in our foiled boxes,
Unreal people, elevating our foggy lives.
Icarus-like, we fly at your sun. Burning.

Filled with false desire, inspired, blinded by your light
Too bright, others falter, faults woven large
Loom out of proportion, real life. Death.

Your voice falls in snowy drifts
Settling about our ears. We now hear your faults, fears.
Facing fragile mortality, we turn away. Broken.

Did you understand too late, your fate,
The fate of a paper god, falling.
Your mistakes undo what was great. Murderer.

We did what we had to.
That night, we tore down your temples,
Removed your icon from the altar/dressing-table. Unstable.

We wept for you, our fantastic fantasy.
You ended your days in a blaze,
But not quite full circle, you curled old and wrinkled.
Twisted by fate.
Bonfire fodder,
Fallen.

Paper Gods by Liz Palmer-Smith

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Climbing Dress Mountain; Illuminated Tile; Collage, Paint, Mixed Media
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More Ascender’s Illuminated Tiles this blog.