Light Catches Diamonds (4:18min)

Light Catches Diamonds- DSL or Cable

Light Catches Diamonds- Dial-up

While I simply cannot record this again, won't tell you the story though you can surely guess, and I dearly hope the volume is high enough (I'm using Audacity on a PC rather than SoundStudio on my old iMac), it is a plain and slower reading, no echoes, promise!

The text for Light Catches Diamonds may be found at my art website.

Thank you, Sky, ydurp, vexations, Ashes_2_Ashes_Words_2_Words, and Richard Geer for your much appreciated feedback. xo

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People have asked if you are supposed to pay for the recording. While I surely appreciate it if you do, no, you don't have to pay for it. You can listen to any of my recordings at SoundClick anytime (streaming is free). I switched from free download to paid because Paintings in the Sand was downloaded about 1500 times and, well, you understand...

Lucubration

.......................... The woman became spirit in the differentiated dawn. By an attic window of diffused sun with which she's not merging but emerging as light. Dust floats scintillating like myriads of reflectors. Bright as the birdsong of the world, her spirit an unburning flame, a panoply of sparklers, a cluster of luminophor, a throng of stars.

In secret transforming into spirit in the quiet of the dawn hidden in the turret of an old house.

I saw her when I lay down to rest, and remembered so that when I came back I could write of her for you.

Sometimes it's like that, the light burning behind your closed eyelids, the woman becoming spirit.

___
Lucubration: that which is composed by night; that which is produced by meditation in retirement; hence (loosely) any literary composition.

It's Time to Give Up Continuous Mantra

Two nights ago I stopped. Let it be.

I think it was 1995 when I began mantra recitation, walking, during the hours awake in the middle of the night, while cooking or cleaning, during repetitive tasks at work. Like Hail Mary's, only not Christian, not even necessarily the Sanskrit of my yoga, often ones I made up to suit whatever my needs were.

Mantra filled my mind, plus the meditation I did every day of 15 minutes or more.

It stilled my mind; my mind needed stilling. I left my husband in 1997. There was an ongoing war in my mind. Mantra soothed it. Mantra lifted my weary spirit over and over for the ensuing decade and more. I've come to rely on it to bring me to a state of inner peace.

Two nights ago I decided to let my mind run rampant again. Be as unpruned as it is naturally. I woke at 2am and lay awake until 6am and didn't calm my tumultuous interior with mantra. An hour of extra sleep before rising suffices.

From now on I will only silently recite mantra during my actual meditations, and what a balm they are, those moments of forgetfulness, of not-being, of being gone. The relief of not thinking, of not carrying the pressure of everything, of letting it all go in the ease and peace that mantra brings.

Outside of actual meditation sessions, I will let my mind become what it is. It's safe now. The last thirteen years of honing and focus through continuous mantra have surely had an effect.

Dawn, the momentary effect

when love's flame
rises

encroaching the dark
birds singing dawn, chirping
grace

or finally knowing what to do,
after such a long time
of unknowing

spreading a caul of light over
the horizon

until the sky is clear, safe, free,

and you may continue on

Prep drawing for painting

India ink on paper with acrylic matte medium brushed over the drawing, 73cm x 52cm, 28.75" x 20.5"

Prep drawing for a new painting. Combining figures from lifedrawing sessions and a very famous Venus, to become part my current work-in-progress: the Botticelli Venus Suite of Poems (I've included some tiny bits of text from my poems which may be lost in the paint, who knows).

Click on image for larger size, & the tiny quotes from which poems.

A Lion Tale...

Irresistible! As an animal lover, this touches me and if you are, wonderful...

Also I spent ages 2-6 1/2 in Kafue National Park in Zambia living in mud huts with all the wild animals about and the lion who I called "blond," and who I told to "Stop roaring all night, you're keeping Mummy awake!"

A hug like that...

Animals who love people.

Burning Video

Watching Kurosawa's Ran, very King Lear, but marvelously Japanese, that landscape, warrior fury, splendour of pageant, emotion moving under

Having been laid off recently, these recessionary times, I went to the Korean Video Store where videos apparently sell for $2. In budget! Korean films and a shelf of Chinese & Japanese. Two Kurosawa's later and one described as "very sexy" that won't load...

When I put the "very sexy" video in my laptop earphones in it smells vaguely of burning

...I wish I had more information, there is a Korean note, with "ONLY" in English

ONLY what? And what did the man in the store mean, "there are some scenes..." and selling me a burning disc with mystical Korean calligraphy

on a label on the disc for $2.? Tomorrow I shall go back and say to the old Korean lady who owns the store and who only takes cash, "It doesn't play..."

Is this part of the mystique of the very sexy burning movie ... I did ask for 'art films' in the Korean Video Store afterall.

Cinnamon Scones

Tax returns done, passing a tray of freshly baked cinnamon scone bits, yumhhmn, buying half a dozen, cloudburst, package of warm scones high under umbrella home

she says they are the best scones she's ever tasted watching the bliss with every bite how are little pockets of pure cinnamon

everywhere in the pastry like raisins only not raisins? Delicious treat, but we'll get used to them, like we did the Chinese sugar donuts

soft sweet twists of pastry fresh from the boiling kettle of oil
rolled in sugar

Sunglasses

Hidden mirrors behind the eyes. Like being looked at through shutters that are bright slats of sun.

You can't see anything but you know you're being watched.

Or tracked. Might be the eye of a camera, who knows. I passed a group in the patio of Mel's and all four heads turned and their eyes followed me and then I noticed the camcorder.

On my way to the supermarket to buy a large bottle of spring water with the old bundle buggy broken from dropping the 18 litre bottles into it and which is kept only for that purpose. I filmed them too. They are burned on my optic nerves and in my memory banks. They were as old or older than I, but had the look of the effect of drugs and alcohol, too much of both for too long. If I'd seen the camera earlier when I was closest to them I'd have asked them to turn it off.

I was thinking of someone who is a compulsive liar. The pose, the facade, an insistence that what is presented is the truth. Seamless illusions. Blatant proof otherwise is rendered insignificant with a shrug. And the way of being watched through the slats that reflect the twisting that is presented as truth. Why do I posit myself in a role of moral conscience? Who cares if the neuronal synapses have been forced to present a false version of a person's life and to maintain those appearances and whether in the final dementia there won't be a terror of not knowing what the truth and the fiction is anymore.

The slats are collages of life. Displaced images. Intertexual figments.

Truth is a fiction; fiction is always truth. The conclusion doesn't follow from the premises presented.

Or the eyeglasses that are mirrored slats for us to look though.

Solstice Moon

Problems, problemas, problematises, how to rectify, fix, endless. Go howl at the full solstice moon! White snake oroboros moan!

Mañana

Have to get 2 years of taxes done today, today, today. No more mañana! Groan. Blue Snake Moan. Or else full moon roaming charges!

Twitter Pieces

This is cool. (What gives you the idea I've run out of things to write about? Whaddya mean? Say it in 140 characters or less.)




His coldness a nuclear chain reaction in me begins and then his desperation and ardour
.
It's clouding over and we don't want to go out grocery shopping and so we're yelling pizzazazhaha, but we won't, not in the morning, no
.
We grocery shopped muffins & juice & coffee on the patio & filled out forms before we went in, filling hunger then filling a shopping cart
.
Ate t-bone, o moan, begroan, dog thrown bone, what to do? What to do? A situation. Avoid? Allow? Be flown with the blowin' rain?
.
Tinkle chinka of change in the silvered tiny square purse and the chugata chugata ... awhhhh sorry, laundry drums spinning round unbound
.
Fast 5km dog walk under 200 year old trees, cool sweat, huge nearly round moon, Oscar Peterson's Night Train, stepping out of stepping into
.
Black Snake Moan. O groan! T-Bone! Rocking scrunchies of laughter!

the exposé blurb

I've joined Facebook, MySpace, and now Twitter. Why? Oh, that's a good question... just 'cause. Perhaps to explore, keep in touch with friends close and far (if you're on any or all please send an invite).

And thus the era of the exposé blurb begins!

eating huge homemade oatmeal cookies lush thunderstorm crashing rivuleting glass and streets aflush water

reading the interaction design article Will sent as exciting as huge sweet cookies and thundering sky of flashing white veins

Night of an Electrical Storm of Rain

I purchased an air conditioner, but taking out the screen and the glass and the window frame was an unbearable task and it was returned. What I'd like is an indoor air conditioner, which will have to await funds.

Oppressing each sweating skin cell, the undersides of one's hair continually damp, this is how it is in the heat.

I can only wear a loose cotton dress with my long hair tied up; shorts or pants suffocate.

Place the small fan on a pedestal over the screen of my bedroom window to get a little cooler air. With a wall of windows facing West on the second floor without tree cover, the apartment is an oven. Like anything steamed, we wilt.

Though I like the heat, it must be 40^oC! I bring home a large fan and hang it in the front room with string since there is no window ledge, and the beating of air through the paddles of the fan helps.

No-one wants to cook, my son goes to work and my daughter and I go out for Sushi.

The thick clouds have an underside of glimmering red like tropical fish chased by a shark. An anvil of clouds are upon us in the middle of the night and lightning like white veins slice the sky and rain beats on the new fan spraying the room.

In my room, which faces East, I remove the screen. It is fresh outside, and cool. I lean out to breathe the cooler air. The CN Tower's lights are flashing strongly, mesmerizing with the glow of red, then white, then green up the length of the concrete pin. Nothing else is visible on the skyline from where I am downtown.

The sound of heavy rain falling on leaves and rocks, the large tree in my bit of land out back and the pebbles that cover an adjacent parking lot. It's a luscious sound. Water hitting the earth. This bridal veil of rain. Drenching richness. How long do I stand alone in the darkness, in my white cotton nightdress, by the open window, leaning out, breathing rain-filled air?

I sleep finally lightly and wake a few hours later at dawn.

I wake loving the world, as I always do.

At the Window

The wine
of love fills us.
We are inebriated
with loving each other
distantly.
I can’t gather you more closely
than this.
I am a chalice
of red lace at the window.
You are intoxicating
blossoms bursting
colour over the landscape of my
heart.

Video of poetry reading of Veils to Clothe Venus

A test, an experiment. I bought a laptop and made this recording with the built-in webcam. It's fuzzy, oh so fuzzy. I wasn't able to figure out how to edit in Windows Media and so it's as is. It's not going to stay up for long - I do have a video camera that will record a person in motion, and seeing this is enough to make me dust it off... more poetry experiments in the future!

Oh, I wouldn't wear my reading glasses, no, no, so I was using a large magnifying glass to read the poem - it's soooo funny. And don't ask what I was doing with my arm at the end, who knows.

Notes for future recordings: memorize, stay in focus, and anything else you the happenstance reader who might bumble upon this site might add if you come by before I delete this, blush, clip.

xo

The Woman Who Lived in a Closet

Nearly a year! I read it with surprise and admiration when it made the world news. But how hungry she must have been to take food from his refrigerator, risking her invisibility in his household.

I could see her, worrying, but unable to starve any longer, and not wanting to die in the storage closet she had taken up residence in, and so she crept out like a stowaway, like a church mouse, and helped herself to the offerings.

And thus left evidence of her existence and was ultimately exposed.

Which may be just as well, perhaps there is a home for her in the state. Or perhaps someone will write a book about her and share the royalties with her...

Incredible story of desperation, daring, courage, and finally surrender.

___

(There is a part of me that is still so very 3rd World and who sees life and what it sometimes takes to survive from a different vantage than many people in my culture, I think.)