Tag Archives: Perception

Enigma

December 11, 2025 By in Photography, Poetry Tags: , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

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Rooted in the Greek word for riddle

I steady myself

in the middle of the stream

So much rain

my toes search for purchase

as I move along in the strong current

~

But I’ll not wander in the side eddies

where the slickest algae

coats the surface of the stones still idling there

passing time as if singular

feigning reflection

~

An intoxicated accumulation

of over fertilized organic matter

girdling themselves

as if they could hold on to the ground

~

My days have been emptying

full of the feeling that I’m living in two separate realities

~

More than a waiting game

too much hard evidence

~

Carrying a pack that needs to be cleaned out

and made into a traveling case of essentials

fit for traveling in even faster flowing water

~

I’ve been carrying these stones around with me for decades. The one with the impressed shells is from the Northwest Pacific coast and was gifted to me. Its partner once dwelled further south, somewhere along the coast by Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco.

They traveled with me when I returned to the waters of the east coast, after my sojourn with the Pacific.  The stones always hold a corner of one of my gardens, along with a bowl of water for the critters and birds.

The poem inserted into the photo arrived out of the blue, as many poems tend to do. It came as a puzzle and I chuckled as I considered who it could be referring to.

That is until…. could it possibly be “water”?  And partner with the poem “Enigma”?

~

Poems and photo © Jana White

Instagram @ Jana_H_White

Perfect Landing

December 9, 2025 By in Archetypal currents, Art, Painting, Personal Journal, Poetry Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

I step lightly between the landing of the animus

The muse that comes lifting honey from the hives

Pollinating words penetrating through veils

Boundaries permeable by light

Still feeling the sinew and bones of intention

Smiling around dark corners

Unabashed!

 



Painting and journal entry © Jana White

Instagram @ Jana_H_White

Dengue Diary

December 4, 2025 By in Art, Pencil Noir, Poetry Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

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Becoming

~

Even substance

can not slow to definition

The holiness

of momentum

~

Weather

~

It’s called the “Bone Crusher”.

At the end of 2019 and five days into a month long artist residency in Mexico, I fell into a deep viral vortex known as dengue fever. As the virus rummaged through my physiology, the microscopic mutants concentrated in my skull. My brain swelled with a pain so focused that I couldn’t open my eyes and for days I lost all sense of whether it was day or night.

All I remember of this time is literally having no other choice but to surrender to the pain. Finally, within this weird dark place I “saw” what I remember as an image of the archetype of Mary, which I held on to with the thought that perhaps I wasn’t being swallowed whole afterall.

Shortly after the pain subsided, and other than the bones in my head being tender and my lungs congested, I slowly re-entered the day to day world of the rest of the residency.

The canvasses I had prepped were all ready and hanging on my working wall. My paints were arranged on the table, but I found that I could not tolerate color! Light also bothered me and I was unable to look at a phone or computer screen without feeling some internal wires were being crossed. My original intentions disrupted, I sketched instead in black and white trying to express the experience and make something of the residency.

Even more disconcerting was how it felt simply inhabiting space. When walking there was the feeling of riding up and down an elevator. For months afterwards I would have to stop to steady and ground myself….in a panic. Since this feeling was this side of actual dizziness or vertigo, it took months to understand my eustachian tubes had been permanently altered. Finally allergy testing confirmed this and also that my body remained on high alert. I continually exhibited allergic reactions, and I became a human barometer of weather and environmental and seasonal changes. It took years to convince my neurology that neither hard wood trees, nor a new weather front, would upend me.

I was finding that I was having to come into perceptual relationship with everything around me…in a deeper way. This relationship wasn’t a new experience. I had been relying on nature for a sense of wonder and relationship, but also emotional regulation, since a child old enough to wander alone in the wildness of it. This is where I found true beauty in the rhythms of life, sometimes death, and learned to trust change.

Considering the archetypal image of Mary that I saw during my dengue episode? It has become clear to me that this was the Earth herself….in one unbroken seam.

~

Drawings by Jana White ©

Instagram @ Jana_h_White

Lumens

March 15, 2016 By in Art, Pencil Noir, Poetry Tags: , , , , , , , , , 40 Comments

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The push the pull the moon’s sculpting hands

Its broad face spilling transparent

over lunar mountains

Full bright

but veiled by cloud’s chattering

Obscured

yet still felt in the marrow

~

With a tactile sensing

for the peaks and dark hollows

My blood its own compass

I map the edge of the sea

as the tide recedes

filling the carved pools as it leaves

~

The clouds drift away in their own mystery

as the moon glides free

in luminous ascending

and I sway as a puppet in a shadow play

bathed in luminous manna

~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pencil sketch and poetry: j.h.white

note: a photo attributed to Joshua Black Wilkins was the inspiration for the sketch. ( I was unable to verify the source however)

 

balance balance

January 28, 2016 By in Art, Poetry Tags: , , , , , , , , , 44 Comments

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The swaths of sky above crisscross in a babble of breathy scars

I see more than chemtrails though…

I try to imagine the people up there in the winged bullet

making its way across the sky

their feet dangling in mid air

save for a foot or so of wires and baggage and metal.

From this perspective, looking up, it’s barely comprehensible

that people are really up there at all.

~

When I think about it,

anxiousness and excitement both feel the same

The same pit of my stomach startled wings

 A choice of persuasion then?

My choice what to make of it?

~

Perhaps ‘being lost’ and ‘being free’ are similar

the same choice of persuasion of this or that.

I’m not talking about real loss

The punch in the stomach that takes my breath away,

but the weightless existential can’t find my shoes

want to sleep all day being lost

translating into the realms of flesh.

~

Aren’t both ‘being lost’ and ‘being free’

a casting off from the perceived familiar?

Being pushed off or pushing off

from a finely honed routine of nomenclature

that causes a shift in my internal gravity?

Are they so different?

I stand in the middle of either …. lost or found

~

Even while recognizing the breath of this feeling though,

my feet want to touch the ground

whether covered by moss, or sidewalk, or water.

Pragmatic, I want intimacy to have a face, a hand, a leaf, a claw

and be swayed by ideas or feelings

that have grown from some shared fertile ground.

It’s simpler to pick them up and put them to use

to make something, to hold, to do.

Even if it is simply making dinner, holding my grandson’s hand,

or doing nothing at all.

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Painting and poem by j.h.white

Pencil Noir #7

December 2, 2015 By in Art, Pencil Noir, Poetry Tags: , , , , , 46 Comments

” There is no route out of the maze. The maze shifts as you move through it, because it is alive.” ….Philip K. Dick

 

hello….hello….hello….

I’ve returned from traveling on the dark side of the mountain. I was never really (completely) lost. It did require entering the mountain to find my way out though, as the mountains began to float away.

While underground I made steps through the dark tunnels trusting a lighted candle. Finally I came upon an immense cavern and there I found a working head lamp, a pencil and a passage to the open air.

The moon’s light cast long shadows as I swam towards shore. Floating on my back, I sent it kisses. Digging in the sand at the shoreline I looked for wave washed shells to tell me their secrets. Before continuing on my way along a phosphorescent passage of singing shells.

Now I am here retrieving my poethead. And finding rhythm in the alchemy of the virtual heart.

 

Pencil drawing by j.h. white

Weather

December 20, 2013 By in Poetry Tags: , , , , 19 Comments

Trees~

We’ve never been a good fit

as I’ve skimmed across your surface

scratching at dust

looking for entry

The humus of my life is enough

to sustain each season.

Never enough it seems 

to grow roots.

~

They counseled me,

” Don’t forget to breathe

   when the trees

   lose their leaves”

~

I watched those last brazen greens

that were stunned to new growth

by the sun warmth and rain of falling days,

their wildness ignoring immoral reason.

I harvested their leaves for winter teas.

Good medicine for this winter of my life.

~

The pulse now lies below

retreating

recollected

tucked in for reflection

networks of roots resting,

arms around each other.

~

When I too was brazen

I would empty myself with nights of hard drinking,

or when resolve quickened for release,

with bouts of high fever

Unaware of the pulse below

and startled by the clacking of human engagement

that other seasons hid from view with warm promises.

~

Now I have covered that distance between my mind

my heart

and have become a nomad in this civilized wasteland

as I follow the shifts in my perceptions.

~

My skin is a porous coat

I wear

in all weather

Trees

pray

in all seasons.

””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””

When I went to re-post this poem I discovered that it had originally been published exactly a year ago on the same date. It’s good to listen again, poetry being such an amazing dialogue with self, with Other …

~

Under the radar

November 6, 2013 By in Poetry Tags: , , , , , , , , 14 Comments

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They softened or hardened

their intelligence

walking deftly

under the ladders

of hierarchy

~

While circumnavigating

the solid grid of references

they wander barefoot

dancing Flamenco

The flight of their passion

entertaining the complexities

of insight

bright seeds

 planted in fecund dust

under the radar

~

~

photo credit: Unknown

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Enigma

August 14, 2013 By in Poetry Tags: , , , , , , , , , 27 Comments

075396999d1c8e472355b7002bd1066c~

Rooted in the Greek word for “riddle”

I steady myself

in the middle of the stream

So much rain

I wish I’d worn back straps on my flip flops

standing in the strong current

but

 I’ll not wander in the side eddies

where the slickest algae

coats the surface of the stones

still idling there

passing time as if singular

feigning reflection

 an intoxicated accumulation

of over fertilized organic matter

 girdling themselves

as if they could hold on to the ground

~

My days have been emptying

full of the feeling that I’m living

in two separate realities

  More than a waiting game

too much hard evidence

A pack that needs to be cleaned out

and made into a traveling case of essentials

fit for lifting off and moving

in even faster flowing water.

~

~

photo credit: Russell Tomlin Flickr

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