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'."

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.

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.

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.

'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.

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.

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)