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.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
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
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.
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!
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
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!
Monday, June 16, 2008
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!
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!
Sunday, June 15, 2008
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
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
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
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 40oC! 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.
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 40oC! 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.
Thursday, June 05, 2008
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.
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.
Monday, June 02, 2008
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
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
Sunday, June 01, 2008
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.)
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.)
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Venus like a Visitation
'the state of love in the world...'
...................she whispers
.........tendril of a curl curves
around her cheek, brush
stroke of honey-toned
watercolour; her eyes, full and
frightened, water saffire
..........her lips, parsed & pale, she
hovers on a scallop sea shell
above the waves, though she is tossed
to & fro by the windswept whitecaps
..........her voice a lament,
a soprano singing the ending of
Mahler's Ninth, grief disappearing
but never leaving,
the wind blows more strongly
until she's gone, a pearl of the sea
into the white horizon
..........echoing in the conch shells
held to our ears, her voice
ringing over rising waves, 'we do not
put each other first'
...................she whispers
.........tendril of a curl curves
around her cheek, brush
stroke of honey-toned
watercolour; her eyes, full and
frightened, water saffire
..........her lips, parsed & pale, she
hovers on a scallop sea shell
above the waves, though she is tossed
to & fro by the windswept whitecaps
..........her voice a lament,
a soprano singing the ending of
Mahler's Ninth, grief disappearing
but never leaving,
the wind blows more strongly
until she's gone, a pearl of the sea
into the white horizon
..........echoing in the conch shells
held to our ears, her voice
ringing over rising waves, 'we do not
put each other first'
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Films that Inspire
Lately I'm smitten with Wong Kar-wai's movies, oh, what a man he portrays! And every frame is a painting. Beautiful, beautiful women and men. Vivid colour - who else does blues and greens like Kar-wai? Or those florid reds, bursting passion. And his films haunt me for years after. And Tarkovsky, my first love. "Nostalghia" being my favourite film for a few decades, and "Stalker," and "Mirror." The water, the light, the beautiful profound characters, the struggles, the massive sets, the epic proportions of ordinary lives, the poetry of his films I am fully grateful for and can't live without. And Wim Wender's, "Wings of Desire" - this movie has shaped me, my understanding of love, of the scope, the scope of us all. "Sex and Lucia," by Medem is a poem of sensuality, a full moon of wisdom on our fertility - the island with no roots but an interconnected interlacing of tunnels swimming with salt water. Not to forget Hero, by Yimou, lord of the Oriental martial arts movie, that burning story of the unification of China, painterly scenes of airborne dancers and bright coloured fabrics blowing in the wind or the spirited dance of candlelight, and wisdom and its knowing sacrifice. These are among the directors and films that inspire me.
In the Discretion of Inspiration
It's been a long time since I last painted, about a year and a half. Why did I give it up? I think I sacrificed my art for a relationship where it may have been problematic but now I realize not painting was the real problem. Still struggling with issues of creativity, in other words.
I don't mind the painting, quite like its bright colours, find the women a bit detached from one another, but then they are separate poses by the same model over the course of a few hours one evening at a lifedrawing session. If I did them again, I'd like to paint them with the wings of angels... and, who knows, may.
I realized that the figures have composed themselves into pairs - the two on the far right I don't particularly like - the colouring is too thick, but then again they're more earthy than the others, more ripely body, hence more sensual. The central two I rather like, somehow reminding me of the centuries of art looking out at me, it's hard to explain; one looks straight at us, I left the features of her face deliberately delicate, not forceful lines, and the other I happily left with her head in the clouds, almost sculptural, and she's quite androgynous too, sort of like 'The Thinker.' On the left are figures growing out of the swell of sky and earth, colours themselves. They remind me a little of Michelangelo's 'Slaves' who are both emerging from and yet still part of the marble, but my figures are free and lithesome, like flowers dancing in the breeze. There is one rising like a vivid plume, too, who echoes the far right one with the walking stick, herself a figure, in my mind, of the Australian walk-about medicine woman of earthy potent power, bald perhaps from illness she's gone through, but she's there, an onlooker, a protector, one who cares for the soul. All the figures are sensual to my eye. They blossomed on the page like flowers in a wild garden, nature spirits, fertile with the creativity of nature and spirit.
This little painting comes out of the womb of life, the women who are like flowers in the garden we all play in through our years of living.
Overall I'm pleased with this renewed effort to paint again. I have already bought a sheet of paper for the next one...
This is how to do it - to continually have something 'on the go,' bit by bit things get done, you just have to keep dabbling, keep reaching in, taking a moment here and there to add a line of paint, or a phrase, or a little prose poem, and then you find you have a book, or a set of paintings to show.
Inspiration is in the moment, in discreet, distilled moments of time.
I happily share my journey with you.
I don't mind the painting, quite like its bright colours, find the women a bit detached from one another, but then they are separate poses by the same model over the course of a few hours one evening at a lifedrawing session. If I did them again, I'd like to paint them with the wings of angels... and, who knows, may.
I realized that the figures have composed themselves into pairs - the two on the far right I don't particularly like - the colouring is too thick, but then again they're more earthy than the others, more ripely body, hence more sensual. The central two I rather like, somehow reminding me of the centuries of art looking out at me, it's hard to explain; one looks straight at us, I left the features of her face deliberately delicate, not forceful lines, and the other I happily left with her head in the clouds, almost sculptural, and she's quite androgynous too, sort of like 'The Thinker.' On the left are figures growing out of the swell of sky and earth, colours themselves. They remind me a little of Michelangelo's 'Slaves' who are both emerging from and yet still part of the marble, but my figures are free and lithesome, like flowers dancing in the breeze. There is one rising like a vivid plume, too, who echoes the far right one with the walking stick, herself a figure, in my mind, of the Australian walk-about medicine woman of earthy potent power, bald perhaps from illness she's gone through, but she's there, an onlooker, a protector, one who cares for the soul. All the figures are sensual to my eye. They blossomed on the page like flowers in a wild garden, nature spirits, fertile with the creativity of nature and spirit.
This little painting comes out of the womb of life, the women who are like flowers in the garden we all play in through our years of living.
Overall I'm pleased with this renewed effort to paint again. I have already bought a sheet of paper for the next one...
This is how to do it - to continually have something 'on the go,' bit by bit things get done, you just have to keep dabbling, keep reaching in, taking a moment here and there to add a line of paint, or a phrase, or a little prose poem, and then you find you have a book, or a set of paintings to show.
Inspiration is in the moment, in discreet, distilled moments of time.
I happily share my journey with you.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Women In Spring, process of a painting
Tag at Flickr: Women In Spring - I wonder if it'll work?
Sketch of Sketches
It's really pale, I apologize. A pencil sketch of sketches from a lifedrawing session in, oh, Nov 06, that's how long it's been! Feeling like painting again...
(25.5" x 19"; 64.7cm x 48.2cm on textured ivory Strathmore Artist Paper)
Women In Spring, first wash of paint
Women In Spring, 2008, 24.5"x18", 62.2cmx45.7cm, oil wash on paper (click to enlarge)
In process... who knows. Not what I'd thought I'd do. Painting, like life, is like that.
Colours dart at me. Touch, and pull their washes back.
Can I shroud you in the colours of the background, so you'll fit your pattern, so you're not cut-out from it.
I'm not different from the scenery I surround myself with.
Look closely, there I am.
With my addiction
to you.
Dreaming Truth, detail
dreams are infallible, accurate, true for that situation, that relationship, things change, dreams reflect the changes; nothing expresses the truth of life like the dream; the dream is a clear representation of our reality;
the dream is a clear representation of our reality.
dreams never lie, the dream doesn't lie: it foresees and predicts, even forewarns
encapsulates; explains; never our enemy - nightmares are our fears, turn and face them
the dream conveys its messages in metaphorical language, images that shock, or bewilder, or uplift, that astound, are vivid, direct
dreams guide, our helpers: offering insight, mystical information, a panoramic perspective
ancient wisdom calls to us through our dreams, where our intuition is powerful
prescient
Dream Truth...
Painting Corner
How little space for painting! This is the corner. You can see the original sketches from which I composed the composite image of The Women in Spring. What's nice is that if I don't like the way the painting turns out, I can create another one. The painting on the board is influenced by the one on the wall, isn't it. I did that one in Vancouver and it's quite large: Celestial Dancers, 2004, oil on canvas, 4' x 5' based on late Medieval relief figures of the temple art of Cambodia when it was in the midst of a shift from Hinduism to Buddhism. The smaller one on the wall to the left is Celestial Dancer II (31"x35", acrylic on canvas, 2003) based on an image of the Hindu God, Krishna. This nook is about to become all desk as I move the futon couch out and create a workspace for painting and writing...
Women In Spring - finished!
Women In Spring, 2008, 24.5"x18", 62.2cmx45.7cm, oil wash on paper
It's relatively easy to swoosh paint, Zen-like, and let the image emerge however it does. Only now I sought to include detail, painted lines, to put effort into the composition. I wanted the women, who are one woman, drawings from one lifedrawing session placed on the same page, to be colourful like tulips in the garden. The figures appear in varying stages between perhaps more painterly and a reliance on drawing, and I don't seem able to move away from that, not yet anyway. I outlined boldly in paint tonight, resisting the urge to use coloured pencil, then wasn't sure, then knew that from across the room there would be more definition. The final criteria - can I live with them? Who knows?
The grouping; the way they create the space around them; their relation to each other; the view they allow the viewer; some emerging out of the washes of colour, or disappearing into...
The fecund forces of Spring, who can define it?
Sketch of Sketches
It's really pale, I apologize. A pencil sketch of sketches from a lifedrawing session in, oh, Nov 06, that's how long it's been! Feeling like painting again...
(25.5" x 19"; 64.7cm x 48.2cm on textured ivory Strathmore Artist Paper)
Women In Spring, first wash of paint
Women In Spring, 2008, 24.5"x18", 62.2cmx45.7cm, oil wash on paper (click to enlarge)
In process... who knows. Not what I'd thought I'd do. Painting, like life, is like that.
Colours dart at me. Touch, and pull their washes back.
Can I shroud you in the colours of the background, so you'll fit your pattern, so you're not cut-out from it.
I'm not different from the scenery I surround myself with.
Look closely, there I am.
With my addiction
to you.
Dreaming Truth, detail
dreams are infallible, accurate, true for that situation, that relationship, things change, dreams reflect the changes; nothing expresses the truth of life like the dream; the dream is a clear representation of our reality;
the dream is a clear representation of our reality.
dreams never lie, the dream doesn't lie: it foresees and predicts, even forewarns
encapsulates; explains; never our enemy - nightmares are our fears, turn and face them
the dream conveys its messages in metaphorical language, images that shock, or bewilder, or uplift, that astound, are vivid, direct
dreams guide, our helpers: offering insight, mystical information, a panoramic perspective
ancient wisdom calls to us through our dreams, where our intuition is powerful
prescient
Dream Truth...
Painting Corner
How little space for painting! This is the corner. You can see the original sketches from which I composed the composite image of The Women in Spring. What's nice is that if I don't like the way the painting turns out, I can create another one. The painting on the board is influenced by the one on the wall, isn't it. I did that one in Vancouver and it's quite large: Celestial Dancers, 2004, oil on canvas, 4' x 5' based on late Medieval relief figures of the temple art of Cambodia when it was in the midst of a shift from Hinduism to Buddhism. The smaller one on the wall to the left is Celestial Dancer II (31"x35", acrylic on canvas, 2003) based on an image of the Hindu God, Krishna. This nook is about to become all desk as I move the futon couch out and create a workspace for painting and writing...
Women In Spring - finished!
Women In Spring, 2008, 24.5"x18", 62.2cmx45.7cm, oil wash on paper
It's relatively easy to swoosh paint, Zen-like, and let the image emerge however it does. Only now I sought to include detail, painted lines, to put effort into the composition. I wanted the women, who are one woman, drawings from one lifedrawing session placed on the same page, to be colourful like tulips in the garden. The figures appear in varying stages between perhaps more painterly and a reliance on drawing, and I don't seem able to move away from that, not yet anyway. I outlined boldly in paint tonight, resisting the urge to use coloured pencil, then wasn't sure, then knew that from across the room there would be more definition. The final criteria - can I live with them? Who knows?
The grouping; the way they create the space around them; their relation to each other; the view they allow the viewer; some emerging out of the washes of colour, or disappearing into...
The fecund forces of Spring, who can define it?
Monday, May 19, 2008
Potter's Trestle
Like a potter's lathe that spins. Keeping myself from the position of the shards in the corner of the studio. Reach into the freedom of wet clay, loving the act of love.
Shaping wet rock in my fingers, I resist despair by suppressing memory, reworking the images, a quiet optimism. But it creeps in during the firing. Hidden behind the grate of burning heat, lies spread like cracks in the glaze.
Flashbacks. Stressors break the pots I am hewing for the paint that will colour my life. Angels wings are torn, become iridescence in the glaze. We are forged to be free.
The ground of being out of which we are born and into which we die, this fixing of the centre of the trestle. The making and unmaking spins smoothly.
The heaven that was closed to us by angels with wings of broken clay, when you fell and cracked, opens elsewhere in the scenes of etchings, and you are restored, whole.
It's a magical playground, this studio.
"You better start swimmin', or you'll sink like a stone," sings Dylan.*
The stone turning on the lathe
sings.
___
In "The Times They Are a-Changin'."
Shaping wet rock in my fingers, I resist despair by suppressing memory, reworking the images, a quiet optimism. But it creeps in during the firing. Hidden behind the grate of burning heat, lies spread like cracks in the glaze.
Flashbacks. Stressors break the pots I am hewing for the paint that will colour my life. Angels wings are torn, become iridescence in the glaze. We are forged to be free.
The ground of being out of which we are born and into which we die, this fixing of the centre of the trestle. The making and unmaking spins smoothly.
The heaven that was closed to us by angels with wings of broken clay, when you fell and cracked, opens elsewhere in the scenes of etchings, and you are restored, whole.
It's a magical playground, this studio.
"You better start swimmin', or you'll sink like a stone," sings Dylan.*
The stone turning on the lathe
sings.
___
In "The Times They Are a-Changin'."
Saturday, May 17, 2008
The Angel Poems
Gravely, like grated chocolate on the tongue, sensual, erudite, but friendly, warm, inviting...a tang of citrus, oranges, and mango, O yes mango, sweet, ripe, dark chocolate embedded with orange and spices, silken, and I can feel your throat, a sonorous quivering behind the speaking, hum of life, quiet, symphonic in its own way, the miracle of your voice after the malignancy was eradicated, almost a delirium of reciting poetry as if into a lover's ear in the early hours of the morning, like the massage of holy angels soothing us in our sleep in the paradoxes in which we live like babes...
The chocolate a little bitter mixed with honies to give it a quality of sweetness to produce bliss on the tongue, the caramelized orange bits, oh. And so very, very good for us...
This voice, your speaking, thank you dear John.
The chocolate a little bitter mixed with honies to give it a quality of sweetness to produce bliss on the tongue, the caramelized orange bits, oh. And so very, very good for us...
This voice, your speaking, thank you dear John.
Monday, May 12, 2008
On the Self-Portraits...
I was born in the middle of last century. The years wear like veils of washed light. Perhaps that's why people dissolve into light as they age, in their eyes, their whitening hair, when the blood that fills their veins flows under their skin like the pale light past sunset.
My brows droop, but if I lift my head high and open my eyes wide so my forehead wrinkles I can see. This is how I took the photos, in the bright sunlight eradicating the crows feet, the jowl, because I wanted to see my own eyes. To read what was there. To read myself.
And I found myself impenetrable. I couldn't put the cross-currents together, how I am composed of opposites.
All I could see was bursting light in the room, flooding the walls, the carpets. The being in the photographs is nearly incidental. Sun on translucent skin. The windows of the eyes filling with flooded light. Solar prominences. Sun-washed fields of light. Disappearing into a brightness of the flaming dance of love.
My brows droop, but if I lift my head high and open my eyes wide so my forehead wrinkles I can see. This is how I took the photos, in the bright sunlight eradicating the crows feet, the jowl, because I wanted to see my own eyes. To read what was there. To read myself.
And I found myself impenetrable. I couldn't put the cross-currents together, how I am composed of opposites.
All I could see was bursting light in the room, flooding the walls, the carpets. The being in the photographs is nearly incidental. Sun on translucent skin. The windows of the eyes filling with flooded light. Solar prominences. Sun-washed fields of light. Disappearing into a brightness of the flaming dance of love.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Self-Portraits
Inner changes? I'm feeling depressed, most uncharacteristically, which implies withdrawal of energy, transformation of the depths. What I'm feeling is a strength and a softness coming, these already as I define myself - independent and sensitive - but more so. Whatever anger I once had is long washed away; I am one of those people who loves to laugh. When I took these self-portraits today, I wasn't sure who I was seeing, pensive, yes, but lightness too.
Sunday morning: It's passed, only an evening or so, but uncharacteristic and thus important to pay attention to whatever newness is arising. An older layer of thinking passing away for a newer, fresher, more innocent self to emerge. If that makes sense! I edited the blurb to better reflect the inner process... I like the image of going to the depths to find the light, yes, the shamanic, visionary journey, and each time the depths are different and each time the light is a more complete spectrum of understanding.
There is a negative conventional view of depression. It's not seen as part of a larger process of the psyche in communion with its depths, nor the deep changes that may be occurring because it's seen as a problem, as anger turned in, that needs therapy and/or anti-depressants, and so the whole process of inner discovery is truncated. How can we develop wisdom when we are afraid of our shadows?
The sadness has always been in me, it's there in my photos as a young child, it's still there. Yet I am one of those people who loves to laugh, good deep belly-laughing!
I think I'm moving away from any sense of judgment, of applying systems of thought to people's actions, events, the way things are, that layer of thinking is disappearing, dying, thankfully, most thankfully, and a greater strength and softness is emerging.
The moment of 'depression' has passed and I'm feeling my usual quietly exuberant self today, ready to continue manifesting my dreams.
Friday, May 09, 2008
'portrait' & 'in the café'
portrait
colour scores your skin
like massage oil,
almonds & apricots,
mandarin
& magnolia.
I paint you with strokes
of my heart.
*
in the café
bushel of gold apples,
........some darkly bruised;
bushel of dark purple plums,
........ripe.
gourd of stone vegetables
........fired in kilim
...............zucchini, squash,
......................yam.
polished granite tabletop
woven rattan chairs.
sultry jazz.
custard tart glazed
strawberries, blueberries
kiwi, peach.
sipping espresso
& cappuccino
coffee.
the late hour
our intense bond.
colour scores your skin
like massage oil,
almonds & apricots,
mandarin
& magnolia.
I paint you with strokes
of my heart.
*
in the café
bushel of gold apples,
........some darkly bruised;
bushel of dark purple plums,
........ripe.
gourd of stone vegetables
........fired in kilim
...............zucchini, squash,
......................yam.
polished granite tabletop
woven rattan chairs.
sultry jazz.
custard tart glazed
strawberries, blueberries
kiwi, peach.
sipping espresso
& cappuccino
coffee.
the late hour
our intense bond.
Monday, April 28, 2008
The White Ocean
She stopped to rest.
Momentarily, in the field of pure possibility, her position unfixed, indeterminate.
Without hovering, or insecurity.
It was an image of being in the vast field of life.
Without knowing. In a position of unknowing, positionless, I suppose. Existing without location or momentum. Vibrating with possibility. It wasn't exciting or fearful, just what is.
Nothing is fixed or certain, though there are always solutions to problems.
Then she continued on.
She didn't doubt her certainties.
Momentarily, in the field of pure possibility, her position unfixed, indeterminate.
Without hovering, or insecurity.
It was an image of being in the vast field of life.
Without knowing. In a position of unknowing, positionless, I suppose. Existing without location or momentum. Vibrating with possibility. It wasn't exciting or fearful, just what is.
Nothing is fixed or certain, though there are always solutions to problems.
Then she continued on.
She didn't doubt her certainties.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Still painting...
How little space for painting! This is the corner. You can see the original sketches from which I composed the composite image I posted last week. What's nice is that if I don't like the way the painting turns out, I can create another one. The painting on the board is influenced by the one on the wall, isn't it. I did that one in Vancouver and it's quite large: Celestial Dancers, 2004, oil on canvas, 4' x 5'.
(click to enlarge)
Friday, April 18, 2008
The Waterfall is Truth
A moral universe?
No!
Nor a religious one.
The will to truth is different. Where stated actions and actions match. Where the description of the deed and what was done match. Where there are no discrepancies. Where what is done is what is said was done. No lies, deceptions, hypocrisies, veils. There is something that wills clarity, a force, a power, a drive towards.
This will to truth that's inherent in the structural energies of what composes the universe, oh, how I must sound!, who knows what to call it, is evident in the Scientific Principle. Verifiable truth. Then it's a trustworthy knowledge on which action can be based. It's there, and it's strong. I feel it everyday.
Call on it! Call on the truth, it'll come. What was obscure or hidden will become clear. Truth will expose the lies. It's a trustworthy force.
Two and two equal four because truth favours clarity, predictability, stability. Truth is a will and an organizing principle. Listen to me rant! Me, who loves 'shades of grey' and thrives on paradox!
Truth isn't ultimatum, nor is it like light opposed to darkness. Not like that at all. The real workings, that's truth's domain.
And perhaps it's the heart's view. The beating heart needs truth.
No!
Nor a religious one.
The will to truth is different. Where stated actions and actions match. Where the description of the deed and what was done match. Where there are no discrepancies. Where what is done is what is said was done. No lies, deceptions, hypocrisies, veils. There is something that wills clarity, a force, a power, a drive towards.
This will to truth that's inherent in the structural energies of what composes the universe, oh, how I must sound!, who knows what to call it, is evident in the Scientific Principle. Verifiable truth. Then it's a trustworthy knowledge on which action can be based. It's there, and it's strong. I feel it everyday.
Call on it! Call on the truth, it'll come. What was obscure or hidden will become clear. Truth will expose the lies. It's a trustworthy force.
Two and two equal four because truth favours clarity, predictability, stability. Truth is a will and an organizing principle. Listen to me rant! Me, who loves 'shades of grey' and thrives on paradox!
Truth isn't ultimatum, nor is it like light opposed to darkness. Not like that at all. The real workings, that's truth's domain.
And perhaps it's the heart's view. The beating heart needs truth.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Gates of Truth are a Waterfall
It's always seemed normal. What everyone does except me. I don't because I can't. I've seen consequences. It's against my ethic to knowingly create situations where others will get hurt. I want relationships of integrity. Love means too much too me to play around with it. An intense woman of intensities, I don't need to take more than my share.
It's been around me all my life. Nothing new. I'm blasé about it.
And then, finally I understand betrayal, this particular humiliation, pain. A breakthrough. Increase in understanding, empathy. To know how it feels helps me to be sensitive, more so because experienced. How a kind of post-traumatic stress syndrome takes over as scenes of deception are played and replayed in their horrifying truth.
I think there is a will in the structure of reality, something part of the energy of the universe's being, towards truth. In all things. The way it works; what really happened. It is not the nature of life to hide its realities. Revealment, over and over of the secrets of nature. Of each other. Of our atrocities.
I think it is there in the core of my being, expressed in the archetypal imagery of my dreams, represented in me thus.
The will to truth.
When I encountered her as the strange and fragile Maat, the ancient Egyptian goddess of truth I understood how old. Always ultimately the truth, a tallying in the hereafter, in the karma which determines the future of the soul.
The ledger of life. When dishonesties are exposed.
The universe has a force of
truth to it.
Incredible. How this is.
But it is.
II
In my inability to comprehend
myself.
I feel like a collection of attitudes, beliefs, feelings, thoughts and sensations which are in constant flux.
Whatever is now is all, and it can be diametrically opposed to yesterday and not seem inconsistent.
When I say I love you, I do, though it is a complex unfolding.
Leafless vines cling to the walls, ready for Spring, the verdant carpet. The concrete waterfall is a melody of its own. Pigeons hop along the top to drink and bathe where the water crests forth. As I sit nearby on a bench, my notebook is sprinkled and I look up to see a tiny wren on the naked branches ruffling its tail feathers. "Little bird!" It shakes a few more drops that fall on the cement walkway in front of me before it flies off to my laughter. My baptized book.
This little notebook
of my truths.
It's been around me all my life. Nothing new. I'm blasé about it.
And then, finally I understand betrayal, this particular humiliation, pain. A breakthrough. Increase in understanding, empathy. To know how it feels helps me to be sensitive, more so because experienced. How a kind of post-traumatic stress syndrome takes over as scenes of deception are played and replayed in their horrifying truth.
I think there is a will in the structure of reality, something part of the energy of the universe's being, towards truth. In all things. The way it works; what really happened. It is not the nature of life to hide its realities. Revealment, over and over of the secrets of nature. Of each other. Of our atrocities.
I think it is there in the core of my being, expressed in the archetypal imagery of my dreams, represented in me thus.
The will to truth.
When I encountered her as the strange and fragile Maat, the ancient Egyptian goddess of truth I understood how old. Always ultimately the truth, a tallying in the hereafter, in the karma which determines the future of the soul.
The ledger of life. When dishonesties are exposed.
The universe has a force of
truth to it.
Incredible. How this is.
But it is.
II
In my inability to comprehend
myself.
I feel like a collection of attitudes, beliefs, feelings, thoughts and sensations which are in constant flux.
Whatever is now is all, and it can be diametrically opposed to yesterday and not seem inconsistent.
When I say I love you, I do, though it is a complex unfolding.
Leafless vines cling to the walls, ready for Spring, the verdant carpet. The concrete waterfall is a melody of its own. Pigeons hop along the top to drink and bathe where the water crests forth. As I sit nearby on a bench, my notebook is sprinkled and I look up to see a tiny wren on the naked branches ruffling its tail feathers. "Little bird!" It shakes a few more drops that fall on the cement walkway in front of me before it flies off to my laughter. My baptized book.
This little notebook
of my truths.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
New Café on the Block
I'm at a new coffee shop that hasn't quite opened yet across the street from where I live where I have been given a free Americano with frothed milk and it's delicious. They sell Bodum here. A little pricey, but the coffee is excellent and while the shops are a bit distracting outside there is a good view of the magnificent sky. It is the sky that I need to see when I write - which made writing a challenge in Gideon's basement! When I had the money, I went to an Italian café nearby and wrote. That's a little far now, but perhaps this café, where I am now, will be my "spot." Here's a cell phone pic to show you...
(click on photo to enlarge)
(click on photo to enlarge)
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Still Life
I would never have left, that's how it was.
But I am shifted into the expanse of light.
There's no attitude I can think of to express this.
The streets are busy, and I walk them, Spring warmth. I can't say if it's love. It's very strange to be here, where it's incipient.
I'm not sure how we stay together when we do, or how we fall away from each other.
There are many ways of being. It's pointless to talk about singular, unitary things. Fluxes and flows. There is a trajectory, though. That's what's most surprising after many years. A path in the pathlessness.
I don't know how I ended up there, or why it was over. Or why we never spoke. Or why there was a significant effect anyhow.
It makes me aware that most of life goes on under the surface.
Which is strange, when the pathways map these routes to and fro.
Nothing was stable, but everything remained as it was, only more so.
I don't mean to sound vague. All the things I thought weren't close to what was unfolding in the underground ways that it was. We didn't understand, but we knew this had to be.
I can't fathom a design, but perhaps there is one in an absent fashion.
An inner directive.
Of which we're hardly conscious, except in retrospect.
Nothing stays still.
But I am shifted into the expanse of light.
There's no attitude I can think of to express this.
The streets are busy, and I walk them, Spring warmth. I can't say if it's love. It's very strange to be here, where it's incipient.
I'm not sure how we stay together when we do, or how we fall away from each other.
There are many ways of being. It's pointless to talk about singular, unitary things. Fluxes and flows. There is a trajectory, though. That's what's most surprising after many years. A path in the pathlessness.
I don't know how I ended up there, or why it was over. Or why we never spoke. Or why there was a significant effect anyhow.
It makes me aware that most of life goes on under the surface.
Which is strange, when the pathways map these routes to and fro.
Nothing was stable, but everything remained as it was, only more so.
I don't mean to sound vague. All the things I thought weren't close to what was unfolding in the underground ways that it was. We didn't understand, but we knew this had to be.
I can't fathom a design, but perhaps there is one in an absent fashion.
An inner directive.
Of which we're hardly conscious, except in retrospect.
Nothing stays still.
Monday, April 07, 2008
The Path
Adrift
Out of the fertility of the ocean, sea tides within, rhythms following the moon's wake, I sought you.
My planet of fire.
You'd disappeared into steaming mist. I lost you in the clouds. Perhaps you'd transformed into the raptor flying overhead. Or the dark loam of the shore looming.
You were always only figments,
imagined.
Pink roses
falling in the wind.
What could be fired her desire, kept her enthralled. Only now she sees what is.
For love is beautiful and painful, this is its nature. "A great love carries within it a mourning for love." [Edmund Jacobs.]
The way the processes of love unite what is disparate, the longings and communions, and hold us to our wanton paths amidst the fluxes of the heart.
Venus
adrift...
My planet of fire.
You'd disappeared into steaming mist. I lost you in the clouds. Perhaps you'd transformed into the raptor flying overhead. Or the dark loam of the shore looming.
You were always only figments,
imagined.
Pink roses
falling in the wind.
What could be fired her desire, kept her enthralled. Only now she sees what is.
For love is beautiful and painful, this is its nature. "A great love carries within it a mourning for love." [Edmund Jacobs.]
The way the processes of love unite what is disparate, the longings and communions, and hold us to our wanton paths amidst the fluxes of the heart.
Venus
adrift...
Sunday, April 06, 2008
Titles
Sometimes I have trouble with titles. The Red Flower was the only one I could ultimately use because those were the first three words of the poem (which I hope you get, how it was written I mean), and that's okay when you can't come up with anything else. The Red Flower seems to be part of another series, a 'Vishnu, The Preserver' series perhaps, who knows if a theme is developing. The Venus Poems are continuing to develop. Mostly I'm fine with the titles I choose. Though In the Throes of Love... really was a bit much, sort of 40s romance, or I thought, this morning Venus in Lament would I think be better, since she's left being Celestial Aphrodite and entered the realm of Pandemos, where there are no rules and it isn't altogether fun, but why give away the last line? Oh, it's so impossible, this naming of the words of love that poetry is...
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
The Red Flower
(I think this poem goes with what may be a "Vishnu" series, the first of which is Vishnu on Chinese New Year.)
The red flower spirals
or it's a fractal
folding.
His heart is a window
box with a red flower
Beating. Petals spiral in, or out,
Magritte-like.
A map in water, a warehouse, snowblue.
Lost pink dancing slippers,
a church in black and white,
a chorus singing carols.
Quarantine. Insolence. Defiance.
Burlap and cold steel.
Madness in prison.
I heard the message,
its jumbled sanity.
Fragments of patterns,
like this poem,
torn from the epic.
Worlds within worlds.
Bullets and blood, the heart floods.
Five billion dying in biological warfare.
What was that movie where he dreamed his death,
unable to save the world.
Saviour, the preserver.
We'll all be saved on a microchip,
says the prophetess.
The red flower spirals
or it's a fractal
folding.
His heart is a window
box with a red flower
Beating. Petals spiral in, or out,
Magritte-like.
A map in water, a warehouse, snowblue.
Lost pink dancing slippers,
a church in black and white,
a chorus singing carols.
Quarantine. Insolence. Defiance.
Burlap and cold steel.
Madness in prison.
I heard the message,
its jumbled sanity.
Fragments of patterns,
like this poem,
torn from the epic.
Worlds within worlds.
Bullets and blood, the heart floods.
Five billion dying in biological warfare.
What was that movie where he dreamed his death,
unable to save the world.
Saviour, the preserver.
We'll all be saved on a microchip,
says the prophetess.
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