Me as an Audience Extra

The last year has been one of the most difficult years of my life. While I cannot share much of what has happened, the good news is that I am still going. Sometimes I'm not sure how.

At the end of May my last contract position ended and since then I have been officially unemployed, a disempowering experience to say the least.

Anyhow, for a new experience last Friday I was an 'audience extra' at Market Call Tonight on BNN. Here's a clip of me asking a question, something I make myself do whenever I attend a seminar. Okay, I don't know a lot about the stock market, but I realized that I know more than I thought I did.

By all means watch the whole show, Ross Healy's viewpoints are interesting. If you want to see yours truly, a little nervous (could have done with some of those beta blockers, laughs) go to 7:25 on this clip (after the ads) for about 2 minutes to hear his full answer.

Bridging Transformations

In the time of transformation, what bridges the gap between what is disappearing and what is coming to be?

What do we leave behind to cross?

Who are we to meet?

As we transform, what are we bridging in ourselves?


I found these questions scrawled in my notebook. Surely that day in late August I had something specific in mind. Perhaps I had just seen the video clips for the movie, Man on Wire, of Philippe Petit's dream to walk on a tightrope between the Twin Towers of New York's World Trade Center, and who did it in 1974. Twenty-seven years before their destruction, his delicate dance of balance across the strung edge of death bridged his dream to its realization.

Or perhaps I was considering the Oracle of the Hunab Ku, number 36: Bridge.

What bridges the crossing for you?

What are you crossing from,
and where are you going?

Discus Thrower

Discus Thrower, ©Brenda Clews 2008, oil pastel on paper, 13" x 17", 33cm x 43cm (click on image for larger size)

Began by playing with some new oil pastels while watching a movie, abstract at first rubbing and painting the soluble colours but I'm a figurative artist and so overlaid them with a guy inspired by the famous Ancient Greek Discus Thrower, in turn obviously inspired by the Olympics that I watched obsessively for two weeks. It is amazing how our experiences come through in our art. As I outlined him, first putting in and then removing an arm to give him a paradoxical angle whereby he can appear to be facing the viewer or with his back to us, depending on the light -squint & you'll see him from behind, look and you'll see the barest representation of a face to incline you to think he is facing us- I thought, to me he represents a 'force of nature.'

In my recent paintings I have chosen to work slowly with an eye to detail; this, by contrast, was an explosion.

Clustering the Night Sky

A star system that spins around its black holes. Twinkling nexus of neurons. Why do I breathe or lie here wondering why I am. Or you.

No, I don't wish to explain mystery. I like the strangeness of life, knowing we are real even as we part from our bodily images in our imagination of being.

I follow the lines of your body with my fingers of light. Lines that limn memories of you, you haven't lain with me for a long time.

In the masses of stars how did we find and then lose each other?

Do I carry a simulation of you, you are so real beside me? Mirrors of the past reflecting in the present. Neurons traveling the gaps in time.

Or are you here, thrown into my arms by the electricity of what is conscious, our connection beyond time and space.

In the strangeness, clarity.

Night after night I roll into your warmth imagined beside me.

Women In Summer

If anyone knows the code to reverse the order of a Flikr slideshow I'd appreciate it. It's currently running backwards, from finished painting through all the stages to the drawing, which is a bit awkward. Women In Summer, I'm happy to say, is finished.

(Clicking any of the images will stop the slideshow and provide more of the info I included for the picture.)

Also, I've grouped this series on one page by the tag, WomenInSummer, at Flickr, here.

The Dancer Who Turns

Do you see the dancer turning clockwise or counter-clockwise?

If clockwise, then you are NOW - at this very moment–
using more of the right side of the brain and vice versa.



Most would see the dancer turning counter-clockwise though you can try to focus and change the direction; see if you can do it.

Please consider what neuro scientists have discovered
through careful research:

LEFT BRAIN FUNCTIONS
uses logic
detail oriented
facts rule
words and language
present and past
math and science
can comprehend
knowing
acknowledges
order/pattern perception
knows object name
reality based

RIGHT BRAIN FUNCTIONS
uses feeling
"big picture" oriented
imagination rules
symbols and images
present and future
philosophy & religion
can "get it" (i.e. meaning)
believes
appreciates
spatial perception
knows object function
fantasy based
presents possibilities
impetuous
risk taking

_________
Copied from a comment by Ken Grisnak, Aug 16, 2008, at a blog post, Losing Your Religion, Part I, by Ann M. (image reader).

Race of the Medals of Fortune

(This is rather long, & loose, what I wrote while watching the race live on my computer through CBC streaming without commentators - I could hear the rain and the distant cheering of small groups of people as the runners streamed past, the breath of the camera crew and the breath of the runners, their feet pattering the pavement kilometer after kilometer - I posted this piece because it's current though would rather have sat with it a bit longer to tighten the phrasing and bring out the race as metaphor.)


the women, running

they look like they're in pain

in pain, yet with runner's high

it won't let them stop
desire and the power of their bodies

she leaves the packs of women
everyone runs in packs, occasional loners
falling behind to the oncoming pack or streaming ahead to the next one

does she feel her winged feet touch the pavement?
can she hear the onlookers straggled in the rain along the avenues cheering?
does she see the multitude of cameras following beside, in front, whirring overhead?
does she know where she is? or has she forgotten?
perhaps what lights her blue eyes, framed by Botticelli curls caught back
is her lover who she is running to
her husband her trainer, their child, her country, us
who wait in the Olympic flame

she is running for her life

the others, thin-bodied svelte athletes, muscle-flat stomachs, smooth pelvis’
shaped legs, not heavily muscled but sinewy
and the ubiquitous knees, joints rising and falling, rising and falling
elbows back and forth
breath in and out
steady beat of feet on the tarmac
little two piece bathing suits, pasted over their chests their number, and country
and the ever-white sneakers of the marathon runner

running through central Beijing
from Tiananmen Square past the Temple of Heaven
the Forbidden City and the National Theatre
passing the trees of the boulevard
the concrete enclosed river
the office towers
the closed factories
along the nearly empty wet streets
past obliquely collected crowds waving and cheering them on
the women running
rasping breath
thudding feet

they become landscape streaming

they are angels running past us

sweaty athletes close to collapse
on the flagstones through the grounds of Qinhua University
near the Summer Palace, on and on
camera lenses flecked with water

where do you centre your gravity? in your knees, rising and falling
in your belly with the forward momentum
where the energy is?
how to pace yourself so you don't burn out before the end?
when do you open your stride
and go

she holds nothing back
she endures

in the lead
she is the leader

there she is, #2716
passing the stands for the runners, each country waiting with mineral salts in water
blue two-piece track suit
with yellow side bars
skimpy
fair hair,
eyes blue as the skies of the Romanian farm she grew up on

she is so far ahead
there is only one car following her, one camera
to watch her

it is silent around her

how far are they from the Bird's Nest, the stadium where a hundred thousand wait?
where it will roar when they enter
in packs

except for the lone winner

who is compelled to run
through the pain of her limbs
who is elated
running over
the clouds of Olympia

she is the breath of her feet

she is gold

_____________
Constantina Tomescu-Dita of Romania at age 38 on August 16, 2008 won the Women’s 40 Km Marathon at the Olympics in Beijing, China with a time of 2:26:44. She is the oldest Olympic marathon winner and stands 5'2" (1.6m) at 106 bare pounds (48 kg).

Constantina Tomescu crossing the finish line of Women's Marathon. (Photo Credit:Guo Dayue/Xinhua) Photo from Beijing