On Saturday Night

Do you ever get those evenings that never quite fall into an activity, or a rhythm?

The hours drift by, unfulfilled. The rain falls in rich curtains of fertility. Everything is bathing, the trees, shrubs, flowers, birds, earthworms. But your mind strays, unfocussed.

I wouldn't call it boredom, but it sort of is.

When nothing you can think of is enough to rouse you from your couch of comfort. The hours aren't weaving or unweaving anything. You're just wasting them.

You feel spent, uninspired, worked over, at odds, suspended.

I don't feel like drawing
or walking the dog.

I don't feel like being alive
or dead.

Or creating art out of my life.

I don't feel like being alone,
or with anyone.

The lush Spring rain
simply falls
without metaphor.

You want to eat something
to nourish and fulfill
but all the multi-grain breads and cereals, the fruits, oranges, apples, strawberries, grapes, and almonds and raisons and cheeses, the fresh vegetables, carrots, green beans, cauliflower, broccoli, and herbal tea of cranberries and vanilla that sits steaming in your hand
doesn't satisfy.

And you ask questions of the moist fresh air all evening
about what was, is, or will be
asking about intention
knowing that's it,
the intent to be
is everything.

And you write it,
this mundane
enfolded mystery.

Sex and the Artist

This is a rather funny, depending on how you look at it. A dear blogging friend, Bill, bought one of my watercolor pencil drawings:

Dance, the Dream, Disappearing Into Each Other, 8.5" x11", watercolour pencil on paper, 2006.

The writing along the blue woman's leg: 'shadow my desire'; up the older woman's arm, 'what rises into the self?'; and curling from thigh to breast to arm, 'repose curls in on itself.'

(click on it for larger sizes)

He wrote in a recent comment, "By the way, my Mother in law thinks my awful painting of those people having sex should be removed from our quest bedroom. I love it by the way and will post it framed soon."

Huh? I overlaid (uh oh, I'm noting my terminology) 3 sketches of the same model from the same lifedrawing class and then colored them so that they seem what I thought was melting into each other (uh oh, terminology again) like a dream, sort of surrealist. All I can see is the figure 8 of the composition, which I like and didn't notice until it was finished. But now that he mentions it...

A prime example of how the artist creates a work but doesn't thereby generate the meaning... (Wayne Booth's Rhetoric of Fiction, but don't ask me for a page reference, it's in storage! Booth says there is a gap between author and text, and between text and audience. I'll say!)

But perhaps unconsciously... (O, roll over Freud, roll over).

Bedroom in Seaton Village

The futon bed couch arrived, was constructed, laid with a sleeping bag and pillows...

Upon which I immediately sat and meditated and then napped. Not quite the Bedroom in Arles, but nice...

And even nicer to be off the sweating floor (a swamp, shhh). Austerities of sleeping on a foam mattress (nee sponge) on the floor gone. It feels positively luxurious. Emergency measures were called for. Beautiful Kobe design cover in flame colours ready in 2 weeks, and I’ll post it then.

Update: Perhaps I should dress it in velvets, as this filter suggests...

Woman in Green

She begins a new page on my website.

Floor Sweat

That obscure country north of the border...

"Canadians are healthier and have better access to health care than U.S. residents. And, according to a new study, Canadians obtain better care for half of what Americans spend on their medical system." CTV News

Not only that but, thanks largely to the Liberal Government under Chretien:

"The [Canadian] federal government has posted a whopping $12-billion budget surplus for the fiscal year that ended March 31 [2006]." Shaw News

Compare this to the U.S. Deficit of 8.4 trillion dollars. Methinks the US has to consider electing a president and a party who can put the economic stability of the country first, even risking electoral consequences to do it. And, Americans, do something about your national health care!

Hexagram of I & Thou