Re-visers, oh, oh..... A Wandering Self Portrait!

I apologize for updating posts; it drives me crazy too. Yesterday was a case in point (surely dozens of times, those with aggregators must have... oh, sorry!). But the post kept growing! I eventually took the drawing and photographed it in different places - no overlays, the real drawing in real places: leaves, a gutter, a posting pole. Now I'm thinkin' where else I could take her. Any suggestions?

Self Portrait of Woman Wandering the City.

No comments allowed on this post; you'll have to go back to the other one...

Self Portrait #6 - Using the Non-Suffering Method of Drawing THE SELF PORTRAIT GOES WALKING!

For Sparky's Self Portrait Marathon.

The Non-Suffering Method of Drawing a Self-Portrait: take a photo, some good contrasts work best; lighten it & print (no need to use copious amounts of toner); paper clip it to the sheet you want to draw on; hold up on a window with bright sunlight behind and trace...


This is a traced drawing of the new profile pic. Looks way too young, but that's beside the point. Why? It's hard to draw ourselves - afterall, we haven't spent a lifetime looking at our faces. I have no real idea of my eye or nose or mouth shape, nor the way the curls fall. So I'm learning... for all you folks who don't draw, this is a viable way to learn! Even if it doesn't exactly turn out to 'look' like us.





A hand drawn image of a photograph photographed. O, this is fun! Lady of the Vines, or the Forest, or Fence Sitter.






In the gutter!

WORK AT HOME on this woman!

YES, she's been sighted all over the city!

Self Portrait goes walking!

Intrepid artist wearing a sun visor and sunglasses and a skimpy red dress seen taping suspicious SELF PORTRAIT to public poles and drains!

Blogsday for Bloomsday

It's an enjoyable, funny, sad, irreverent, serious hour of blog readings trolled from the NET on June 6th (I'm, umm, before the middle, it was interesting to hear an actor read ma words, too). Sit back, enjoy, while you compose another self portrait for Sparky's Self Portrait Marathon. Open Source Boston Radio:

Click to Listen to the Show (24 MB MP3)

Self Portrait #5, Chorus in Red

For Sparky's Self Portrait Marathon.

Update: Surely our self-portraits are versions of ourselves, and it looks like I've done versions on an image. Wonder how that happened? So far this is my favourite self-portrait. It took the longest; is more complex than it looks with something like 87 layers in photoshop. There were the photographs, one of which I chose, printed in black and white and inked in the outline and coloured the dress with a red and wet watercolour pencil; I traced this version in ink on tissue paper, and painted that dress with the same red and wet watercolour pencil and stuck it to the printed one. My daughter likes these 'two Brenda's' best, kind of a collage. Then I photographed the collage and layered it with the original photo plus another one. I crudely cut out dolphins and used them as patterns, decreasing the size on some (that's where all the layering is); then I wrote a couple of words from the post in; drew some right angle red lines and enhanced the red in various layers and posted it. It probably does "look" like me - in that if you saw this collage & you knew the Summertime me you'd recognize me. If you know what I mean! But then, hey, it's a photo, and a take-off on a photo, and a take-off on a take-off of a photo...

I kind of look like a chorus in red, don't I? :grins:

Yesterday's post: On the steaming city day, a high and dusty South wind, I walk miles breaking in new shoes that break in my feet. Red spots that threaten blisters that never arrive. Returning other shoes for exchange, I walk in a ridiculously skimpy red sundress and put the brim of my hat low because I don't care and don't want to see anyone's disapproval. Aging women shouldn't have to hide themselves, and so I don't. It's too hot to wear anything else. Finally on the way back, walking very slowly, I stop at Future Bakery for a coffee. The patio is large, partially covered with a Corono Beer tarp and a couple of tables have Corona umbrellas. Wherever my skin touches anything it sweats. The backs of my legs, behind my knees, the soles of my feet. Somewhere birds impossibly chirp. The sounds of the voices of the people around me chirp. It's a good spot, where students and writers come to drink, to study, to write. It hasn't changed in 20 years. Near me is Ye Olde Brunswick House; across the street my favourite Indian restaurant, Nataraj; an ice cream booth; and on the other corner, By The Way Cafe, which hasn't been a vegetarian cafe in at least two decades but whose sign still says it is. And now I must make my way on to buy fruits and vegetables and then home. Where I will ask my daughter to photograph me for another self portrait...

Of multiples. Duchampian. It was actually fun tonight, playing, thank you Jean!

Self Portrait #4, a photograph of a reflection...

Does a photograph of a reflection of oneself in the glass covering a watercolour drawing by oneself count as a self portrait? Tired, having walked many miles in search of shoes for my daughter, for myself, in 32C/90F humidity, now listening to Anjani's and Cohen's Blue Alert and sipping red wine...

For Sparky's Self Portrait Marathon.

Self Portrait #3

Who am I? Why do I find self-portraiture harrowing? What my mind sees and what my hand draws are not the same. Is it that my eyes are trained to see like a camera, and my hand feels its way over surfaces, uncaring about representational likeness? If someone who knows me saw these self portraits would they recognize me? The problem is no, they wouldn't; not out of context. I don't know who I'm drawing, but it's not me. Could I then call them versions of the self?


Because Natalie asked, for Sparky's Self Portrait Marathon.

Two renditions of the same self portrait drawn in a tiny mirror, on a small piece of canvas, 3.5"x5", india ink, watercolour pencil. Click on image for larger sizes.

Blogsday

I found this in my inbox, neat huh:

"Hello,

I'm writing from Open Source, a public radio show based in Boston and distributed around the country.

Last year we started what we hope will be a yearly tradition for us called Blogsday. Based loosely on Bloomsday, which celebrates "Ulysses" as an evocation of the whole world in a single day (in Joyce's case, June 16, 1904), the idea is create a mosaic portrait of our country from excerpts of blog posts written on the same day. (In our case this past Tuesday, June 9th.)

After assembling the excerpts we bring in two accomplished and agile actors to read them. I'm writing now because your post on June 6, "On Saturday Night," caught our eye and we're interested in using it on the show, which will air live on Thursday night from 7-8pm EST.

We can't pay anything -- this is public radio after all -- but we can guarantee a respectful treatment, a national radio audience, and a link on our blog.

Best regards, Chelsea"

I don't know if it's podcast. Chelsea did email me at 7:30pm: "It's being read right now. It sounds great. Many thanks." It was a long day and, oh, it was nice to say yes to Blogsday in honour of Bloomsday...

Self Portrait #2

Another sketch, for Sparky's Self Portrait Marathon, surreptitiously where I'm working. The small mirror was under the counter, it was dimly lit, and I had my sketch book flat in front of me, so... Someone did say, "That looks like you!" But then my daughter said it was cartoony and didn't. Representation. Oh, sigh. Self-portraits. Oh, sigh.

While I released myself from having to make people look like themselves some time ago, and consider my drawings instead 'inspired' by my models, and it was very freeing, I am trying to create more of a likeness, however that may be!

Eyes are too big. Reading glasses askew - that's me!

Random Bits from the Notebook...

Don't use twigs, use brushes.

The downward vertical line & the upward vertical line don't meet, and she saw this years ago and went away distraught.

It's SunFire Day. Solstice.

The typoGenerator threw up some of my images. A photograph of a poppy; a line drawing of a woman.

In the field of green, some random red.

My dog lies sleeping beside me; she always has to be near.

The wall clock ticks. The world holds still. O

Meditate.

(I did for an hour.)

Then move, fast.

(I didn't. But ran into an old friend in her blue Rav4 later, an occurence which seemed stretched like a line inevitably from this point.)

Self Portrait #1

It's a self-portrait, because Natalie asked, for Sparky's Self Portrait Marathon.

I know it's pale and limpid. So many night-time dreams over the years that I ought to draw, paint... but I don't know.

Daily Sustenance...

Perhaps I'll write about meditation, what I do daily, sometime...

100 Days, a place to meditate, is a wonderful site if you'd like to find compatriots.

Dress Us In Apple Blossoms

A short prose poem published in Qarrtsiluni that I wrote on Earth Day, Dress Us In Apple Blossoms. I took the photo of the apple where I was working just before eating it. When I looked at it later that night, I found the image disturbing - you'll see what I mean. And got to thinking about apples and Eve and wombs and death and Genesis and nature. We're revising the texts now, planting new seeds...

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

Vines

Crawl of vines
inside
the window.

How can you breathe
without air?

Fresh, profuse tendrils.

My fingernails,
green like Spring.

Celine, worms
with five hearts
fill the earth
create the soil
out of which we grow.

The spirits are watching.

My mouth fills with loam
thick, rich humus.

Do I seek
what is too deep
and far away
from sunlight?

Thin mantle of earth
that supports us.

Remove the screen
find pure green.

It was the vines
that undid everything.

I'll tell you what's sacred.
Not the gods out there.
This flare of life
in the shrine
of our bodies.

short, unfinished sketch of funeral flowers...

A Moment...

Before the moment, or is there a moment? Something freezes in time, or does it, or is it only what we embellish? Perhaps we create a moment to represent the other moments, a snap shot of time that didn't happen like that at all.

Otherwise we'd go mad with the intricacies of living. Overwhelming details. Simplify, this is the mantra.

Why not take that stream of photographs, and play them as a slide show. Why embellish one when many will do? Let's overwhelm ourselves while the carousel goes round. As we breathe, so we shall image. Snip snap shutter bug. Flutter bug. The moments are memorable; each one.

Only what we remember isn't there. If there were a camera it would tell a different story to the one of our inner narrator. What we remember isn't on celluloid, or pixelated. We can't upload our memories because they aren't orchestrated that way.

Not as one memorable moment.

Our moment is an amalgam of moments. Clarified, pure. The image that fits our interpretation. O, we rewrite it. Re-image. Revise. Take new angles and slants. Add new information, remove old patinas.

I'm not saying it's a finished moment, or that it's untrue, only that it never existed.

A to Z Meme

I've been tagged by a beautiful bluebird for a meme

accent: mostly Canadian, but have been told undercurrents of English Southern African/Zimbabwean & British, & probably some Swahili rhythms

booze: red wine, usually Merlot, and dark beer, Guiness is good

chore I hate: vacuuming, swishing floors with a mop and bucket way preferable, or sweeping

dogs/cats: a Springer Spaniel with me, a shy black cat at my mother's at present

essential electronics: computer, digital camera, sound equipment, does coffee maker, fruit smoothie blender and toaster oven count?

favorite perfume/cologne: Angel - all kitchen scents, over a hundred, no floral, but usually don't wear perfume

gold/silver: silver for my lunar/lune-y self

hometown: TO, where I've been since 10

insomnia: wake for a few hours in the night frequently

job title: umm, dog walker, chief housecleaner, mother, writer, artist, editor, receptionist, tutor, meditator, blogger... :)

kids: two

living arrangements: close

most admired trait: empathy (by my daughter's estimation, though she had a far longer list of her least admired -:)

number of sexual partners: how delightful

overnight hospital stays: pneumonia at 16, for 2 weeks, one night after my first child was born

phobia: snakes, especially the extremely poisonous ones found in African jungles

quote: "Develop this good heart that longs for others to find lasting happiness..." and seeks to help others realize themselves, their gifts, live their potential, something to that effect, it's by Sogyal Rinpoche in The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, and I started two journals with it, and kept it on my desk, and the phrasing slips my mind now...

religion: amalgam of mystical traditions, I'd venture

siblings: two brothers

time I usually wake up: anywhere from 5am to 8am, depending on if I've been up a couple of hours in the night and if I'm working or not

unusual talent: untying knots

vegetable I refuse to eat: did a big internet search last night on vegetables trying to find one I didn't like - my daughter thought I was crazy, but still haven't found one

worst habit: letting the world drift by, or myself drift in it

x-rays: too much dental work

yummy foods I make: due to sparse living circumstances I don't cook much (no stove or oven), but my daughter remembers the homemade pizza on the pizza stone, the fresh cinammon buns, various roasts, the arrays of curries, and as soon as we move to a place with a real kitchen again...

zodiac sign: pisces

No tagging - but please do this meme if you're delighted or intrigued or captivated by it...

Slipstream, oh the tangled garden

post removed by author

"Never Got to Love You"

My tiny video clip of Leonard Cohen and Anjani Thomas, that Google kindly uploaded directly. I was holding the camera high above my head, couldn't see the viewfinder. The clip stops because my camera ran out of memory. It's just under 2 minutes. They are singing, "Never Got to Love You" from the CD.

I took this image from Book of Longing off the Blue Alert website, have digitally added copyright information and linked it to the site. It's too beautiful not to share.

My ex Mother-in-law died yesterday. The last time I saw her was in 1998, on a night when she came to look after her grandchildren so I could go out. I was working in an office when she passed away but I felt her presence so clearly, I knew. When I got home, my ex phoned and told our daughter. She said she just can't believe Granma won't be there this Summer, or at Christmas, that she won't see her again. We cried a lot. I helped her pack so she could catch the bus to the small town in southern Ontario to be with her Dad and brother. I wished I had a car and could have driven her, and also seen my son, who's living there and has taken it very hard. The cancer was virulent, fast, just over a week from when it was discovered; thankfully she didn't have to suffer long. I didn't get to see Granma, the way it worked out, but I did spend 2 hours in the hospital on Wednesday feeling close. She was 84; a good long life. Bless her. Bless her. Bless her.

The one who is dying lies in the hospital bed upstairs, unable to speak. The oxygen mask; the breathing tube.

The other one sits at the table at the end of the cafeteria by the window that looks out on the parking lot and the trees of the ravine and writes.

Canada geese walk carefully on the wet gravel, drink at the grey puddle, or stay under the pine trees out of the rain.

Upstairs the family drama unfolds. They don't expect her to live the week. It was all very sudden, this illness, this immanent death.

Those who know she is downstairs pretend she isn't. They think the old and beloved woman would have forgotten. They want to protect everyone. They are lonely, sad.

But she hasn't forgotten. Nearly breathless, the morphine dulling her consciousness.

The rain drums in the puddles.

The sprinkler is ridiculously on, a constant gush of water as high as the trees.

Sprays of water accompany the cars on the bridge passing by.

She waits.

Perhaps what needs to happen will be understood. Perhaps there will be courage through fear.

Before the end there was a chance, but no-one listened.

She waited at the window at the back, but was not called. Absolution never happened.

The Canada geese rise and fly in formation over the weeping willow trees.

Toronto Street Performance: Leonard Cohen Live

(click on image for larger size)

Leonard Cohen and Anjani at an outdoor concert at Indigo Books in Toronto on May 13th to promote his new book of poetry, Book of Longing, and her jazz CD, Blue Alert, of songs they co-wrote (or perhaps co-arranged, really they're his poems) and that he produced. The Barenaked Ladies were there, and singer Ron Sexsmith.

Leonard Cohen is 71 years old. It's the first book of poetry he's published in 13 years and is filled with his delightful line drawings. After the concert Heather Reisman, the owner of Indigo-Chapters, came out and told us Book of Longing had made it to number one on the bestseller list; the first time a book of poetry has been number one in Canada.

A few hundred people attended the event, and the rain held off until he had finished.

I did take some video with my digital camera, and tried to upload it to a couple of hosting sites without success, which is probably just as well since the quality is not very good. If you go to the Blue Alert website and browse, you'll find all the lyrics, and some video clips.

Her voice, magical, rich tones stacking, cascading, interplaying in her singing, her beauty, radiant; his presence, however, was the highlight. And he sang "So Long Marianne" from his heart, without holding anything back, and we were enthralled, swaying before the Zen master from the mountain, a poet-musician dearly beloved by the Canadian people.

Mount Merapi

Can't we see why the ancients thought that a hell existed beneath the earth of fire and brimstone?

An angry underworld war lord belching flames for the unworthy.

Explosions of acrid smoke, flames shoot into the sky, darkness spreads over the land, rivers of redhot lava overflow, burning down the mountainside, searing villages, the world is ignited.


The heat cloud is growing, but, as of Monday morning, Merapi hasn't blown yet. Evacuations continue. Here's a news report.

They will come in the car. They will stop to pick you up. When you get into the car, they will be silent. There may be tears on their cheeks. They will let you know the barest facts. You must understand that they are numb, with shock, sadness, grief, anger. Perhaps there will be talk of logistics, how and when. These are the simple things, where we feel useful. You will sit in the car while it is driven the distance. If he is driving, his knuckles will be taut, white, on the steering wheel. He is already writing in his head what is happening, composing the elegy. He cannot fathom the split in his heart. This time it's real in a way that it never has been before. The one who I urge you to care for sits beside you, looks striken out on the grey highway, uncomprehending. The trip will be wordless. When they arrive home, they will all disappear, into other parts of the house, into their rooms, into the silence of their hearts, to wail, to struggle, to feel the deep heaving. My love is with you, know this.