the air that I breathe out carries me with it,
the air that I breathe in
brings me back

Red Balloon

Le Ballon Rouge (The Red Balloon)
Albert Lamorisse, France, 1956 34 min

A red balloon with a life of its own follows a little boy around the streets of Paris. Winner of the Best Original Screenplay Oscar, despite almost no dialog spoken in the film.

Le Voyage Du Balloon Rouge (Flight of the Red Balloon)
Hou Hsiao-hsien, France, 2008 113 min

A little boy and his baby-sitter inhabit the same imaginary world: through their adventures they are followed by a strange red balloon. Directed by celebrated Taiwanese New Wave director Hou Hsiao-hsien who captures the magic of the mysterious balloon often through an elegant use of the reflection of mirrors and glass.

A more thorough synopsis of the film here.

May be spoilers, not sure. I sought to write something that would enhance your viewing if you saw these films. I explore the red balloon as poetic image. Not a film review; rather the way my thoughts of the movie hovered and swam in the air like the red balloon.
______


The Red Balloon, the 1956 nearly silent film by Albert Lamorisse is stark poetry. The balloon and the child. Both buoyant and fragile, moving into an expanding world and trusting. The film is the motion of the child through the streets of an older Paris; like the balloon, we rarely see him in interiors, and when we do it is looking out of windows to the light where the balloon hovers with him. Of course jealousy and envy arise and the boys who want the power of the red balloon that the chosen boy has, and ultimately the slow deflation of the balloon by catapult. When all the balloons in Paris rise and congregate like a flock with the grieving boy who has lost his red balloon, he flies over the city held by them, a Chagall painting.

Flight of the Red Balloon, the 2008 film by Hou Hsiao-hsien, in part a tribute, begins with a balloon that echoes the balloon from the original film. A poem within a poem. The balloon hovers around the boy in the new film, though no-one but the audience sees this.

The balloon has been called a symbol of the imagination yet for me it cannot be this.

It's a relationship. As if you rubbed the balloon on your sweater, it would stick to you. The balloon is loyal like a puppy. It follows, hovers, allows itself to be seen only by who should see it.

The balloon is like a vision, fragile, buoyant and red. Or an apple, the beginning of the alphabet and the wisdom the fall from the Garden of Eden initiates.

It is a piece of man-made rubber inflated with helium but loses that property.

The red sphere dances in the sky, being a balloon that becomes a stave in a musical score, an image in a poem, a rich round colour in a painter's palette. It is the spinning globe of red that is the life force.

The red balloon is the magic of what floats.

If we follow what floats we will understand the symbol of the red balloon in the film.

The red balloon is a sun in the sky.

It's happy.

It's locked out. The red balloon is untethered, free to fly in the wind, to fly up into space.

The red balloon is the boy's heart which it invisibly ties itself to. The red balloon comes to comfort the boy in his loneliness, his bravery in living the independent life expected of him. The boy travels from home to school and back again in Paris, alone, the red balloon following.

There is a poignancy, a tenderness to the comfort the large red balloon and the boy offer each other, the white string of the balloon like an umbilical chord to hope.

Whoever holds the red balloon in the film, or the wires attached to it is made invisible as the balloon hovers near the boy, only the pure relationship remains.

In Flight of the Red Balloon, the film-student nanny of the boy is filming a film of the red balloon but never sees the one following her care outside the window, as if she is a grown Wendy who cannot see Peter Pan's Neverland of eternal childhood dancing on the windowsill.

The red balloon rises and falls on the walls outside the boy's room like breath. Sometimes the red balloon slides glancing over a graffiti representation of a red balloon as life and art interweave, as they do everywhere in the film.

The matriarch of the film, of the house, which was her mother's before her, and the mother of the child is a puppeteer, or rather the powerful voice of the woman in the puppet show. Everywhere in the film we see puppets, snippets of a show of mythic proportions and great passion (based on the Yuan Dynasty story of Zhang Yu and his beloved, Qiong Lian.) Archetypal forces are at play under the weave of characters and narrative of the film, in the domestic dramas and interweaving of cultures, French and Taiwanese (the film by Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien), the struggles of the artists represented in the film in all their variety, from the successful puppeteers (the mother, Suzanne (Juliette Binoche), who financially supports the household), to the film student of film, Song Fang (played by herself), who stays with the boy, Simon (Simon Iteaneau), after school, to the writer and his girlfriend who live on the second floor without paying rent, to Suzanne's boyfriend who is absent in Montreal writing a novel, to the teacher at the end teaching the children how to look at the painting of the child with the red balloon from an aerial perspective, from the balloon's perspective.

While Hou Hsiao-hsien provided the general scenarios of the film and the background story to the actors, they created the dialogue and the movement. The domestic scenes feel real and contrast with the poetry interweaving the film like the balloon floating about the windows and walls outside, held by desire yet subject to the rhythms of air, a moving notation.

The balloon always behind dusty old windows, in mirrors, at the edge of the pictorial frame, never graspable. So subtle as to be missed by all but the boy and the film director who guides the audience's vision to its close red roundness.

In the slightly nostalgic and poignant feeling of the film, the red balloon is held by the warmth of our hearts to us.

The Painting Nook

woke this morning with a sense of joy as I cannot express, something that hasn't happened in a long time, such relief so welcome

In the middle of August in the Summer of 2008

Perhaps there were different ways of understanding, parallel paths of interpretation and it was impossible to pick which was more real.

Or you could let your feelings emerge in meditation, the sadness, sorrow, rage, lust, tenderness, love.

First one, and then the other seemed likely.

But, no, it was more like a kaleidoscope of turbulent thoughts and chaotic feelings.

Perhaps they were lassos you were flinging from each hand, sometimes they swung wildly divergently, sometimes they entangled.

The problem was there was no strategy, or even a map of where we were.

Or probably you didn't swing anything and the parallel ways of understanding were the metaphor I was most comfortable with.

I couldn't decide, on the long walk grocery shopping that day which path more accurately represented your feelings, or mine, or what happened.

Or when I lay at the beach on the hot day imagining Ferris wheels of kaleidoscopes where everything impinged on everything else.

It was an embarrassing situation from which you fled. Discovery of the truth was the last thing you wanted.

Nothing made sense.

But what was the truth?

What is truth?

Parallel paths; I can't decide which.

Rather, multiple lines like tangled tackle.

One interpretation, the cavalier one, you'd prefer; the other a deeper more vulnerable one you'd prefer hidden.

I can't live in your heart to know definitively. I imagine you yourself don't fully know either. We're hanging somewhere between spiritual truth and illusion. The illusion you'd rather cast hides what?

Probably it was the more hidden truth and it held a power over you that disturbed you greatly because to follow that path would change your perception of freedom irrevocably.

what is it in life that is reorienting slowly?

with all the fans off last night wake to the press of heat sun streaming through veils of leaves

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

Sailor's Delight

the sky is yellow with rain

it hasn't stopped raining all Summer

the wet sky is
stained with rain

I rewrite and wash
my life

the pitter patter of mantra, or tears
sheets of rain

then I saw fashion colours for this Fall
are amythyst and burnt orange

like the fresh clean billows blowing in the sky
suddenly at sunset

finding the moon

round light that is the moon
gliding, a psychic eye in the sky
before lightning drowns it
with falling water

water of the moon floats over me

water of the moon is a dry seabed
on the spin of rock in the sky
that swings round
and around us
pulling the
waters

as I am pulled to you

envisioning what always was
but can never be

and then becomes
when the shroud of purple cloud
drifts clearing our hearts
luminescent crystal ball
floating

moon is round

spiritual truth and illusion
one vision

tonight we find
tonight
we are found

Liquid Metal

I

falling through space without landing, or flying

into an eclipse, deliberate blotting out
the darkening of the sky
denials of our feelings
for each
other

II

writing kept us from recognizing

the fissures

III

how we hurt each other

IV

fiery strands of interrelated passions
memories, motives, what happened
what didn't, the suspicions
times of deep connections
pulsing at varying speeds
in varying directions
hooking up here
& there exploding
randomly

V

pulsing
like the heart

VI

the moon glides
releasing the sun

VII

we chip away anger
a brittle ceramic mold
on the gold

sculpture
of love

forged in our fire of desperation

Birds Wings

Images of the world. Under a chestnut tree with your dog reading Ondaatje, a superb writer, watching for the police lest they catch you unleashed, a musician on a bench who put his book down and lifted his guitar from its case on the ground and began strumming though you are too far to hear, on the pale-striped green and blue fleece blanket with the nylon underside from Vancouver where it's generally wetter though we've had record rains in Toronto this year, sipping a mug of fresh French-press espresso coffee with cream, rocking a little in a camping chair, your iPod nano beside you unused, your hair clipped back, a black camisole and comfortable thin cotton khaki shorts, and such green as this city never sees by mid-Summer, usually the grass has brown patches, unaccompanied by your invited kids who couldn't conceive of anything more boring than sitting on a blanket in the park up the road on a hot sunny day, and you're content amidst these images of your world, the breeze that flutters like birds' wings.

Fragments of Healing

where I am, the edge of oblivion

blank, empty stare

you carry it in the palm of your hand

delicate music-maker, this filler of hours

without art, I couldn't imagine living

blank, empty stare,
its simmering anger boiling at the edges

that I see on your face
I know the edge

come back to those who love you,
love

Almost Finished Painting

(28.5"x20.5"; 72.5cmx52cm; oil & watercolour on Waterford paper, click here for larger size & press F11 for full screen)


The women on the right appeared ghostly from a distance.

The greens of Nature and the poppies and marigolds much stronger.

She wondered if that was a statement.

The ocean has turned into green.

She had to put the water back in for depth.

Otherwise she'd be flooded.

Where was he anyhow?

Why were the women always waiting.

They were naked and waiting.

Even she who was born from a seabrush
of sea foam.

Paiting Still in Process, nearing end though...

awake in night, sleep soon, hope, embroiled by my painting, get overalls on, go at it again

complexity of colours & figures driving me nuts. ready to throw it out. obsession. unscrew tubes of oil paint, try this, that. mess of reality.

where painting has progressed to, or regressed to.

(click here for larger size, you might need to press F11 if you'd like to see its whole cacophony)

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.

Sun Burnished

pink as a pomegranate, red as a nectarine, fruity, this ripeness turning tawny, O for sunswooning at the bluebluelake

Beach Bum

At the beach, it's hot! Doggie & I took wrong path - long, sandy road instead of short sandy road, uh oh, underbrush is wet, look, a swamp, where to step, soggy foot, don't want to get stuck, large boulders placed along the lake edge, climbing up and down, this way, no that, c'mon doggie! careful! not there, up here - whimper - oh, ok, over this way, found our way to the nearby beach without her getting trapped. It's beautiful here.

A not-very-visited spot, alone in our corner of the bay, light breeze, billowing blue sky, gentle lake of water, a swan and many ducks, being nipped by a blackfly though.

Getting redder from slapping the damn blackfly on my thighs than from the sun.

Parks & Rec guys come and start raking the beach right in front of me, then their all-terrain vehicle gets stuck, sand whipping out behind the back wheels everywhere.

Only here 2 hours, no sunscreen. Sun's a vitamin, c'mon! Sigh, move on.

Into people-land, purer sand, lifeguard, a dozen beach bums, seriously, a few families and some loners, and no blackflies... yes, perfect!

daylily

the afternoon opened like a hot orange daylily and I lay floating in a hammock over the underbrush and cheatgrass lovesongs of crickets and katydids