Stone #76

Slow, meticulous cutting of patterns, sewing. Each second is a stitch; each hour a finished seam. Our lives are the garments we wear.

Stone: #75

In the Annex's wealthiest areas, the streets are empty. No cars, no porch-sitters, no children, no-one out watering their front gardens. My dog and I walk. Unencumbered silence.

Dream: July 25, 2011

An empty apartment pool, high up, maybe the 20th or 22nd floor. The building is thin, constructed of whitened concrete. Light from the slits of windows shines on the water. My ex makes me swim naked. He is in a bathing suit. He is in his late 40s; I am more like my 20s. It's okay because we are alone. I swim in the blue chlorinated water around the bend. The pool is shaped like a half moon.

Then we walk down the street, where, again, I am naked and he is dressed. I don't like this, am embarrassed.

I rush back to the building, trying to hide my body. We are in the elevator rising. On the screen in the elevator I try to edit the YouTube video. I want to put on the clothes I am carrying. Only I can't. I have to go to the YouTube studio to do that.

Daphne Becoming-Tree

Daphne, 20.5cm x 20.5cm, 8" x 8", dip pen with India, acrylic and fountain pen inks, Moleskine Folio Sketchbook A4. (Click on image for larger size.)

I hand wrote the words with a dip pen under the image today.

I lay in the park sketching the tree; though invisible to the biological eye, she was there. Neither did the lake exist, nor the rocks. It was sunny and yet I found a sliver of a moon and a star on the paper. The child in me saw her. She is like a paper cut-out, drawn as a child would draw; she is Daphne. Look at her laurel crown. Her arms are turning into branches with leaves. I found her ghostdrawing her myth in the green dreaming imagination of the woman drawing in the book on her lap.

This Daphne is caught, perpetually transforming, as night falls. Apollo, the god of light, long gone. No sign of Cupid's arrow, if it ever flew.

Stone #74: Daphne

Daphne, 20.5cm x 20.5cm, 8" x 8", dip pen with India, acrylic and fountain pen inks, Moleskine Folio Sketchbook A4. (Click on image for larger size.)

I lay in the park sketching the tree; though invisible to the biological eye, she was there. Neither did the lake exist, nor the rocks. It was sunny and yet I found a sliver of a moon and a star on the paper. The child in me saw her. She is like a paper cut-out, drawn as a child would draw; she is Daphne. Look at her laurel crown. Her arms are turning into branches with leaves. I found her ghostdrawing her myth in the green dreaming imagination of the woman drawing in the book on her lap.

This Daphne is caught, perpetually transforming, as night falls. Apollo, the god of light, long gone. No sign of Cupid's arrow, if it ever flew.

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According to Greek myth, Apollo chased the nymph Daphne. From Ovid's Metamorphoses:

...a heavy numbness seized her limbs, thin bark closed over her breast, her hair turned into leaves, her arms into branches, her feet so swift a moment ago stuck fast in slow-growing roots, her face was lost in the canopy. Only her shining beauty was left.

Stone #73

Rain pounding, my sticky heat-riven body wet-soaked, like the laughing people passing by. Water criss-crosses the drought-white grass.

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The style here a little 50s, I thought. Post-Joycean, hyphenated word pairs.

The Dancer with the Full Moon in her Throat (sketch 2)

The Dancer with the Full Moon in her Throat, sketch 2, 2011, 20cm x 28cm, 8" x 11", India, ink, graphite, Moleskine Folio Sketchbook A4.

Before coffee this morning I got out my Rotring EF pen, the one in which I now use KOH--NOOR's 'Fount India - drawing ink for fountain pens,' a beautiful find. You cannot use permanent India inks in fountain pens because the enamel in the pigment will cause them to clog. Finding one specially formulated for a pen gives you something that will not smudge or blur when you brush it with coloured inks, or washes of oils, acrylics or other media.

The little drawing of the Woman Dancing the Dance of the Full Moon in her Throat is coming along. I like the imperfections in the pose, the slight awkwardness of mismatching. I think I will lengthen her legs, and then see where the sky can go. Round it off a bit better, and then either keep making more lines or brush some sort of colour in the drawing. Who knows.

That's the best part about drawing so freely. You let the pen in your hand take you along. One thing suggests another and off you go.

The Dancer with the Full Moon in her Throat, 2011, 20cm x 28cm, 8" x 11", India, ink, graphite, Moleskine Folio Sketchbook A4.