Mirror of Venus

I am the mirror that I watch my
self in.

Behind the mirror is where I see.

Only ask for the 'freedom to revolt- psychic,
analytic, artistic- a permanent state of questioning,
of transformations, an endless probing of appearances,'
......found on the dustjacket
......of a book by Kristeva,
who wrote about revolt, and love.

Everyone should love wholly once in their life, as
the daughter of fortune knows.

The tenor of love demands it.

Love, illicit, a revolt against the order
of the rest of it.

The amatory moment is poetry, open-ended,
without a story to guide it, what's behind the mirror
where I watch your face.

Venus, Goddess of Love, married to Hephaestus, master craftsman.

Of course love is wedded to art. How else
could it be?

The block was a red clay-baked brick which took two hours to smash. It revealed
itself, heavy, smoldering with beaten passion, betrayals and intrigues, over my heart. Cracks of light appeared that became white-red lava that disintegrated slowly the faster I danced.

When I melted into the mirror, love flowed freely.

Venus, Goddess of Love, but she knew her Ares, Mars, God of Fire and War.

Venus undid her bodice and melted
into his arms.

Illicit. Love.

Sometimes I prefer the quietness
of my own thoughts.

Remembered

Is my art confident? Intensely meditated? Is how deeply I love what will be remembered about me?

Strange questions Lightbrown brings to his biography of Botticelli, who was only remembered by Vasari's Lives of the Artists in what was otherwise five centuries of obscurity.

How odd that it was his paganism which appealed to the fin de siècle who brought his work from the shadows of history.

The barest outline of a life.

Botticelli is his art.

A Love Affair hits #2 on the Charts

A Love Affair #2 in SoundClick's Poetry Charts?! You guys!!! Thanks. 16 min of too-rich poetry, no music, & a Summer weekend? Blow me away...

(Go here to read the poems, which I pasted into a comment.)

(Yes, I am a little out of place at SoundClick's Poetry section, but I've been posting there for a few years, before they even had a Talk/Poetry section, and it's where I keep my poetry recordings: Aural Pleasure.)

Painting In Process July 08

Clipped 2 clamp lamps each with 100Watt daylight spectrum bulbs on either side and snapped it. Blue is a bit bright, slightly darker in the original. The lower right quadrant a little darker than in the painting, but running the Dodge tool in Photoshop over it even at 25% didn't bring it to its shade of colour. Every monitor's different anyhow. My old iMac & new Dell laptop each present colours differently. Overall, and I worked on this awhile, between the 2 computers, the coloration's not bad.

Anyway, how's that drawing I posted going? Eh. Tinkering, dabbing, letting it grow in its own fashion. Slow, but I'm enjoying slow. My paintings used to be done in 20 minutes and that felt fine then only now I want to linger longer, enjoy the process continuously. A dab, a little bit of paint, wait a day, see what's next. This piece, however, who knows, it seems quite complex to me as I work on it, and I don't know in which direction it'll develop.

I just spread the blue of her back into the other blue to syncopate the rhythm across the page better because alone it overwhelmed, was too strong. I started using watercolour pencils because they're more forgiving, and I can test the colours first.

Do I like it? I'm not sure. It's growing on me. It seems diagrammatic. A blueprint. Though of what, I cannot quite say. Groupings, images of women.

72.5cm x 52cm/28.5" x 20.5", oil and watercolour on paper (click image for larger size) or go directly here (you might need to press F11 to see it all).

A Love Affair Charts

I'm tickled no end that something 16 minutes long and all poetry, an almost too-rich offering since there's some fairly complex stuff there too, and no music has made it to #5 on the charts at SoundClick! Thanks to you...

(note: only first poem is explicitly sexual, none of the others are)

A Love Affair (15:53min)

# 24 in Talk (highest position was 24). Total songs: 7,345
# 5 in Poetry (highest position was 5). Total songs: 1,594

(ps-check comments here to read all the poems, which I pasted in)

A Love Affair

This series of poems is about a love affair a few years ago. The gentleman and I haven't been in touch since. Enough time has passed for me to release this recording, made in March 2006. Most of these poems can be found in the archives at Rubies In Crystal.

I would add a Parental Warning Advisory, but only to the first poem.

A Love Affair (15:53min)

Broadband: A Love Affair

Dial-up: A Love Affair

When the Grey of the Sky

When the grey of the sky descends with a feeling of chaos. A windless night while a thunderstorm ensues. We shut the windows, water pouring in.

The basement floods, where my son sleeps, an inch of water; we mop and lay old towels wringing water out for hours until it is dry. The vibrant orange vegetable dyes of his kilim carpet bleeding a little, otherwise no damage. My birth paintings are stored there but the water didn't go that far in.

My son is sad on the night of the flood, it's interim, his staying with me, nothing was damaged but a right mess and will it happen again?

The morning after the flood, the rush of muddy water, clothes that were on the floor, towels, laundry half the night, storm waters, what washed through us?

We threw the wet high density foam mattress in the basement that was a buffer protecting boxes of files, my paintings, out. It dried in the Summer sun beside the building.

Last night it was comfort for a dreaming homeless tattooed man. The white waterproof cotton sheet that covered the old mattress crumpled into a soft bed for his dog sleeping beside him.

I see him in the morning, he sleeps late. The day is sunny and cooler, and I photograph him between the trees, past our swatch of backyard.

In this neighborhood of millionaires and university students, the city will quickly remove such comforts for the outcasts who beg on Bloor Street.