La Luna -no poem, draft videopoem-

direct link: La Luna -no poem

Last night I went out and videoed the full moon for a different video poem (Wear White Paint for the Moon), and I got some nice footage for that project. This little clip was, oh, enticing. I've played with it a bit. I think including the text in the video this time, and perhaps a voiceover, or not, I don't know. The up close might be a bit hard to watch, yet I could put words in those sections, or filter it somehow. I like that it's really only clearly the moon in the last few frames.

May not even call this La Luna. Haven't written the poem yet, but many notes surround me, old journals, my current Moleskine notebook, scribbles, thoughts...

Music by Arnold Wohler, 'Larghetto espressivo' from his album, "Quintett für Flöte, Geige, Gitarre, Klavier und Cello in 5 Sätzen."

                              

Wind Over Grass

Wind Over Grass, 2009, 14"x10.5", 35.5cmx26.5cm, India ink (with a dip pen), and oils (paint and pastel) on a primed canvas sheet. I based a larger painting on this, which is included in the photo album, Midnight Sun: Wind Over Grass.

The figures in this drawing were originally from a drop-in life drawing session in 2005! After some years I transferred the sketch to a small primed canvas sheet. Then lines of bright oil paint, which I rubbed out to a pastel hue. That hung on a wall in the hall for a few years. Yesterday I grabbed it, deciding I couldn't stand seeing it anymore, and if I wrecked it, the garbage would be fine. Wetted water-soluble oil pastels, clumsier than brushes, but colour-bright, follow those lines of force, curves of bodies and landscape. Then my dip pen, old trusty pen, and a bottle of permanent India ink. No going back! No rubbing out! Don't spill the ink! I move it around my crowded desk, trying to keep an envelope under it, scratching lines in, over and over, a wind of lines flowing. I am in a trance almost, another state of consciousness, more primal, less 'thought'-ful, empty, an energy of muted frenzy emerging from the pen tip. I am not-me. I pass the point of no return. Then stop. I'm happier with the drawing, in the flush of finishing, but who knows?

Contact dance - the points of tension in the parts of your bodies that touch, and the flow of energy so that you know where the motion, the flow, your combined flow, is going. It is about the touch, and the space between you, and the flow of intuitive movement. Wind Over Grass is an exercise where one person stands as a blade of grass and the other runs to them as wind and gently touches them, anywhere on their body, touching lightly with any part of their body, the side of the palm, chin, back of the shoulder. The grass bends, sways, curves. Then stands upright as again the wind sweeps in again.

When we practice Wind Over Grass, our bodies become part of the landscape. Two years after I last worked on this drawing, it didn't hit the garbage, but is back on the wall in the hall. Hopefully, with lines of telluric energy finally moving.

All the previous drawings are here, as well as a painting that I began, but haven't finished, that's sitting on another wall (le sigh): Midnight Sun: Wind Over Grass.

                              

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the willingness to accept the truth of each moment.

Moments are dangerous, painful, delirious, filled with satiation. Many moments are dreamy; in some you are zoned out, or sometimes protective. How many tired moments do we have? Then, immersed in activity or asleep we forget about the moments.

Awareness is mindful. Of the dangers, the pleasures: where you will be enticed, or flattered, or hurt; where the simplicity of joy is. Mindfulness is not a garment of light you wear in the world that keeps you connected to infinity no matter what. Rather, mindfulness is not stepping on that land mine. Mindfulness is loving the moment in its brusque complexities. And believing in ultimate benevolence, yes.

Mindfulness is speeding at 200/mph acutely aware of every bump in the road and exactly where the other drivers are. Mindfulness is closing your eyes in the underground and knowing where the other passengers are sitting, what they are wearing, whether they are watching others or drifting in their own dreamy worlds. Mindfulness is copy editing your awareness of the moments you live as you live them.

We are mirrors reflecting the world in our inner landscapes.

We are cameras taking a perpetual film of our lives.

We are directors who edit that film into memories. The themes of the film can change, of course, and then the angles and lighting on the memories changes and shifts as they become part of an expanded design, or sometimes a new one.

Mindfulness is adapting to change. An agility of awareness. Recognizing patterns and where the deviations occur.

Of course, being open to love, loving fully.