Self-portrait on the edge of

I'm not sure whether to post this photopoem, its extreme Hamlet-like self-referentiality. When did I compose it? Maybe a month ago? When Kyra, my daughter, saw the photopoem where it is reproduced twice, she told me it was an awful picture of me, that it didn't look like me at all, that if she'd seen it she would never have guessed it was her mother, and absolutely not to post it. The eyes, yes, she she said that was the only part that looked like me. Take that off the computer screen, she said. My fierce little editor....

Yet, on this rainy cold and broke day, I return to it, wondering. My manuscript is being written, yes, the artist is alive, so is the mother, but for how long without a job? This portrait was composed on the edge of.

Even I don't know who that woman is. Even I have never seen her before. She must be a literary figment...

It clicks to a larger and readable size, but you probably already know that...

Which is not large enough for some readers, oh Blogger.

Here is the text:

Self Portrait/Photopoem, Brenda Clews 2005 (self-reflexivity, the self produced in collision/collusion with the self)

[images here]

Is this the colour of the edge, where the light, eyes that, where it pours over, at the moment of, disappearing, that clarity, an obfuscated truth, the face, its waxy quality of lotus cream-colours, burnt auburn waves, emblazoning, meditating with open eyes, the gaze, un/self/conscious, always I take self-portraits on the edge of possible devastation, needing to see who I am... [the last 3 words bleeding into the larger portrait]


Bravely, or maybe secretively (since she's at school, the sweetie), I'm posting this as an echo to, some sort of personal response to, Jean's post on works the National Gallery in London on Self-Portraits; and Richard's post on Self-Portrait with photons in tandem with Jean's. Perhaps...that is; or perhaps those posts reminded me of this one buried in my hard drive.

How to fathom...

From The Move, my current writing project...

How to fathom the poetic metaphors of our lives? Where does art come from? What layers of our being do images arise out of? And how do they reveal our lives in their unfolding, and in what ways are they prophetic? It seems as if we already know the truths of our interactions with each other, and she is not sure how that is.

Her life was an artwork where a collection of images had clung to her.

The Aviator blessed as Shefi, butterfly spirit...

A Mazahua Indian chief, "Margarito Sánchez Valdez, bathed the aviator in incense, wreathed his neck with marigolds and blessed him in the name of Shefi, a butterfly spirit, and Mysyohimi, the Mazahua's supreme deity."

The journey began "on Sept. 6, when Mr. Gutiérrez flew his ultralight, Papalotzin, an indigenous word for the monarch, over Niagara Falls with a cloud of butterflies beneath him."

From there he "traveled more than 4,375 miles from Montreal to Michoacán State, following the butterflies at low altitude. He logged more than 90 hours of flying over 72 days." Last Thursday, "Mr. Gutiérrez wheeled his ultralight plane painted like a monarch over the butterfly sanctuary...and brought it swooping in to land on a stretch of mountain highway."

His extraordinary journey made to publicize the plight of Monarch butterflies, who are vastly thinning in numbers, whose future as a species is precarious.



NYTimes Article: To Save Endangered Butterfly, Become a Butterfly, by James C. McKinley Jr.

Photos my daughter took today...

My daughter's into the digital camera (finally)... here's a merge of moi, from this afternoon, now how self indulgent is that? Nothing like those rich carpets of gold leaves... we are in an older neighbourhood with many beautiful trees, they are massive and wise and soothing, and often I reach out and touch their trunks, the knotted bark, and caress leaves as I pass by...

All images ©2005 Kyra Clews

A NaNoWriMo month...

If anyone doing NaNoWriMo this year would like one of these nifty counters for their website - I've put mine in my banner - go here: National Novel Writing Month Progress Meter. Last year I swear seeing the little pointer move incrementally around the dial kept me going until I jubilantly huffed across the finish line with 50,000 words on the last day... (this from a woman who's got many unfinished manuscripts littered about, pieces here and there, until, that is, NaNoWriMo, a marathon writing month when you join in with tens of thousands of other insane writers around the world and convince your muse to take the worded trek, and to travel with you, offering you ambrosia and nectar and good kicks in the butt when needed, writing a first draft of a book of novella length by the end of the month)...

Shadows On The Wall - photopoem