Laurelled Petals

Browsing old sketchbooks when I was making navigation buttons for my new Art & Writings website, I found this poem. It fits quite well with the Botticelli Suite of Poems, and I'll probably add it as a 'page' to that manuscript. You can see I've been into ways to combine words and image for a long time! I must have written this piece around 1976 perhaps... I think the poem was published in a university mag too.



(click on image for readable version)

Bramble Rose

Petal edges
butterfly wings
blue powder.

Blossoming
from the hips.

Singing
hip-hop shaking
strutting
struggle with closed bud
of a cocoon.

Here to blossom.

A whole life
to unfurl.

Unexpected, that.

It never gets boring.

The unflown flying.

Petals in the wind, pink,
blue dusting to indigo.

This sun, this rain
never felt before.

Be the valley of women dancing.
Be the flowers, and the earth,
and the wind, and the moon.

Tattoo me on your skin.
Ink me in colours of the meadow,
a blossoming bramble
rose

As I dance the opulent
blossoming
of you.

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a little ditty written at Erica's recent "Blossoming" workshop.



Image of gorgeous dancing women - a stylized version of a photograph at Erica's Dance Our Way Home website.

My 86 year old mother who broke her hip on the weekend is doing fine after her operation. The fractured bone only required a pin, which was good. Thank you all for your kindnesses and support.

Paraphernalia of daily living

This has been one of the strangest weeks of my life, and there's not much more to say than that.

Psychic energies are strange things. You never know what people are thinking, that was made clear this week. I think I'm through the worst of it though.

In general, my lesson this week is that the net holds, even when you fall. That's been the most amazing experience. I'm still not used to it.

The hot water tap developed a terminal leak last night at 1 am, when my daughter was using it. I turned it off under the sink. Haven't called the landlord about it yet. Soon, maybe late tomorrow, or the next day.

Tonight my key wouldn't turn in the front door lock. After I finally got in, I sprayed it with WD-40, which will help for a bit. I've had locks go before, I know the signs.

My iPod is jammed and won't turn off, or play and my computer doesn't recognize it.

Bits and pieces of the paraphernalia of daily living. How we keep our worlds operating.

The air is humid and therefore warm tonight and I had an unexpected walk with a fellow dog owner. Usually I prefer walking alone, but his dog ran out into the street to meet my dog, though they don't know each other, and once together in the park, ignored each other. We started talking, though, and he told me about animal rescue guys, guys who crawl in little spaces with miner's lights on to move racoon families who've moved into the eaves. We spoke of Vancouver, where he's from, and Kafue National Park, my childhood home in the African bush, and then compared responses to the Brazilian film, City of God, and Slum Dog Millionaire. I had been speaking of the depravity of the shantytowns in old apartheid South Africa, and so the conversation turned to movies about slums, and now I have to watch City of God again. The violence was bad, but it was such a brilliantly directed and edited film. Remember that strobe light scene...

I want to join the 20 hour a week challenge. An artist on Twitter has started a challenge where we try to spend 20 hours, in any kind of configuration, and no pressure, only if it helps, working on our painting or writing. While I do manage to accomplish lots, I haven't started on this one yet. Hoping Saturday to have some time to work on a painting. That'll contribute some hours to that group's weekly tally.

My brother comes every Thursday and does hypnotherapy sessions with my son and I, separately, since he now is fully certified and offering free sessions for a year before he starts a practice. It is helping much more slowly than I thought it would, though I do feel closer to my youngest brother and that's almost the best part.

Tonight he wanted me to remember a time of joy, and I couldn't. It's not that I'm unhappy. I just couldn't connect to what the immediate feeling of joy feels like, the full sensation of it.
Working feels like joy these days.
One day it will return.

In the meantime...

My daughter has finally finished a course, a night course and yes she is very bright and did very well, tied for first place at 87%. I want to celebrate her. I want to buy her a dress and see her smile with joy. She's worked hard and deserves it.

I've been exploring piano on Jamendo, looking for music to pair with my longer poem, White Fire. I read it on the radio once, on a poetry show, and the host of the show asked me out afterwards (no, I didn't) and phoned me for months after that but I always made excuses. Don't ask why. Wasn't attracted I guess. White Fire takes about 20 minutes to read, so it'll be a half an hour recording with music. I've found some beautiful, impromtu piano that is really quite incredible because it seems to 'fit.' White Fire should have dramatic flaring music with long stretches of smooth tones composed for it, I know what I'd like, but my envisioning far beyond my musical skills.

I like to scoot posts through to Facebook, but an image really helps, which is why I've taken to posting so many postage-sized images. :Grinning:

Every night I listen to a 'paraliminal' hypnotherapy recording as I fall asleep. It helps with sleeping, and I often don't wake for 6 hours, almost unheard of before this recording.

But not tonight. My iPod's jammed. It has a lot of juice. Maybe in a few days when the battery's dead and I recharge it, it'll come back to playable life.

Sure hope so.

xo

Podcast Banner that's Not-To-Be

Silly, and I don't mean to be *so* silly, but I quickly made a silly banner to upload to a podcast site (trying a new hosting site, podbean, yes - prefer their embeddable player), only after making it I discovered you've to upgrade to a premium basic account if you'd like to add your *own* banner, so I'm posting it here. *Ra*

"Go Away Blues," by Jazz Street Trio added to "Light Catches Diamonds"

Light Catches Diamonds

I wrote this prose poem in June 2007, and a year later, in June 2008, recorded it. And, as seems to be a yearly tradition, now that it is almost June 2009, I have paired it with a beautiful Jazz recording, "Go Away Blues," from the album, Because, by Buz Hendricks of Jazz Street Trio, who has licensed this album with a Creative Commons license on Jamendo.

Hope you like it!

___
Links (that open a pop-up player):
DSL or Cable
Dial-up


(click on image to read
poem-about ½ way down,
gosh didn't notice that was
the image I created for my
website, anyhow, I've linked
it to Celestial Dancers page)

Ai!R's 'Insomnia'

Jamendo is now the #1 Creative Commons Licensed Music site in the world. There are true finds at Jamendo, too. Like Ai!R. This is Ai!R's second album. (I also posted on his first, Waxworks.)

Ai!R writes, in his description of Insomnia: "The album presents a four-part suite for chamber orchestra, piano, a few symphonic orchestral instruments, choir and perscussion. Its polyrhythmic musical language is both classically-shaped and modern and mostly addressed to lovers of chamber music. At the same time, all listeners may, hopefully, find it interesing as well."

I wrote (yes, I'm posting comments, it's a way to highlight artists whose work I really like): "I wrote a review some time back and lost it in the posting process. The stars showed up, but nothing else.

That night I was inspired to share images of your music that came while listening.

It hasn't come back again, that 'whatever-it-is'... but I feel I need to respond anyhow.

The title worked well for me - the pieces are beautifully woven into the hours of a long night when one can't sleep and travel through the hours in reminiscences, partial dreams, hallowed moments of visionary light, tiredness, a slow waiting for the unconsciousness of sleep.

There was a syncopated element in the music that was more Jazz-like than your earlier album.

I like the rhythms in these pieces. They are poems of the night. Sonorous. Slow. Fast. Beating with rhythm through the endless dark hours. When it is quiet. When you can free yourself from the constraints of space and time and drift and dream. While awake. On the edge of sleep. That profound state, my favourite one.

Thank you for these pieces, their harmonies that sooth and yet entrain with the strange harmonies of our inner lives. Where we transmute our darknesses into subtle and steady and holy light."

And now that I am again listening, of course Stravinsky and the strings. Chamber music, yes. I think I meant ambient jazz, which can have a classical soundscape.

Anyway, I post because I love Ai!R's work. Deep, complex, covering a huge tableaux in its sweep in the spirit of Russia's greatest artists. What isn't here, in his panoramic tonal vistas?
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Direct link: Ai!R's Insomnia, in Four Parts.