Looking to Freedom

Molecular fingerprinting suggests that every life-form on earth today originated from the same bacterialike ancestor. That ancestor eventually led to the three main surviving branches of life, the archaea, bacteria, and eukaryotes (the organisms made of cells with a nucleus that include algae, plants, fungi, and animals).

...in the evolution of organisms and ecosystems there are innumerable random events of history that shape outcome. Outcome is not preordained. There are no correcting factors or laws from above that specify the form of the ultimate outcome...

-Bernd Heinrich -Winter World

A moment of saddness among my mirth today....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2006/11/25/AR2006112500877.html

yes global warming exists..

Tom At Cruachan

On Cruachan's plain slept he
That must sing in a rhyme
What most could shake his soul:'
The stallion Eternity
Mounted the mare of Time,
'Gat the foal of the world.'

-William Butler Yeats

a wild stallion

Alchemy is also shy, and it also keeps to substances and lets them silently fill with meaning rather then blurting out what seems most precious.

--What Painting Is -James Elkins

I have been thinking about assumptions. I assume that I will wake up tomorrow and that my weekend, which I am waiting for will occur. As I age this gets idea gets more regular as if the passing of time, having grown greater since its beginning will continue unchecked. So I plan uninterrupted in a kind of luxury. I can't imagine or focus on time being finite, yet ultimately it is. Somehow I wonder what meetings we take for granted because we believe that they are going to happen again. What would I say if I thought that I was not going to see.... well that is for another day.

Building your own universe

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6545246

So if you could choose an object to squeeze and create a black hole out of it what would you pick?

... I, too, await
The hour of thy great wind of love and hate.
When shall the stars be blown about the sky,
Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?
Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows,
Far-off, most secret, and inviolate Rose?


-W.B. Yeats "The Secret Rose"

Juniper Rain

Happy Birthday

My Grandmother Florence was by far the most important influence on my life and person. She was an amazing woman who was funny, caring, and tough as nails. She worked when women were still expected to stay home and raised 4 children by herself. Despite all of the difficulties in her life, she lived through the Great Depression, 2 World Wars, and other historic times, my grandmother never lost her sense of humor. In fact she could make an entire room light up in laughter at her jokes.

She was a daughter of a steel worker, who would read by latern after his shift. My Grandmother often joked, that like her father she would spend her last dollar on a book. My Grandmother and I would go to the library when I was a little girl. She would let me get a armfull of books, and she would get one as well. We would sit at her apartment and she would read to me with her soft crackly voice. She instilled her love of reading in me, which is a great gift.

My Grandmother was on her way out to dinner and was dressed very nicely, when she encountered a bum on the street outside of her apartment building. He asked them for a cigarette or something of the like. My Grandmother looked at the filthy man and walked over to him and gave him a warm hug. The man was shocked and began to tear up. When my Uncle asked my Grandmother why she had done that (he was rather angry at her risking herself); my Grandmother replied, "He looked like he needed a hug."

I miss her and hope I still make her proud. :-)

So I have had a few days of freedom from obligations and suddenly I find myself at home on a Friday night. I am struggling to not work, which in itself is a bit pathetic. So here I am blogging because I haven't blogged today. I spent the day birding and it was unproductive. This may explain my restless mood this evening.

ah well, perhaps tomorrow...

Happy Thanksgiving

"When you ride hard on a mountain bike, sometimes you fall. Otherwise you're not riding hard."

George W. Bush
July 7,2005
From Presidential MisSpeak

O Brother, Wisdom is pouring into you
From the beloved saint of god.
You've only borrowed it.
Although the house of your heart
Is lit from the inside
That light is lent by a luminous neighbour
Give thanks; don't be arrogant or vain
Pay attention without self-importance.
It's sad that this borrowed state
Has put religious communities
Far from religious communion.

-Rumi Translated by Kabir and Camille Helminski

Can art change the world? The movers and shakers think so...

http://www.artinfo.com/News/Article.aspx?a=24225

Age tends to smoothe the rough edges of people and they lose their passion. Somehow they become content with a shadow of their original dreams. It is much easier to surrender to everyday convention then to break from it and chase at hope.

I want to remain rough to break skin on the edges of my passion.

Night lift up the shades
let in the brilliant light of morning
but steady there now
for I am weak and starving for mercy
sleep has left me alone
to carry the weight of unravelling where we went wrong
it's all I can do to hang onto keep me from falling
into old familiar shoes

how stupid could I be
a simpleton could see
that you're no good for me
but you're the only one I see

love has made me a fool
it set me on fire and watched as I floundered
unable to speak
except to cry out and wait for your answer
but you come around in your time
speaking of fabulous places
create an oasis
dries up as soon as you're gone
you leave me here burning
in this desert without you

everything changes
everything falls apart
can't stop to feel myself losing control
but deep in my senses I know

how stupid could I be...

-Sarah McLachlan - Stupid

Fiddleheads

My painting has been compared to this painter's work...

http://www.arca.net/uffizi1/Uffizi_Pictures.asp?Contatore=94

really no comment necessary on this turn of brilliance:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/11/16/smog.warming.ap/index.html

The Swan

This toil and struggle-passing on, heavy
and as if bound, through things still undone,
is like the makeshift walking of the swan.

And dying-this no longer grasping
of that ground, on which we daily stand
like his nervous settling himself-:

into the water, which received him gently,
and which, so happy in its passing,
draws back under him, wave after wave;
while he, infinitely still and sure,
ever more confidently and majestically
and serenely designs to glide.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

I am sure that the explosion in the kiln was magnifcent. The splitting of clay as it burst forth into a million shards. The force and energy of the movement of what was once solid into a fine powder full of broken suggestions of what it once was.

So sits my day on the edges of the work, once complete and now destroyed. A minor tragedy in the grand scheme of days, but still I rather liked the sculpture.

The day has been like swallowing glass.

The life of the artist/teacher is really a rather dull affair. I wonder why so many people want to meet artists and the like. I am half crazy and generally full of annoying little factoids. I don't get out much (obviously or I would not waste time writing to no one on the internet). I get obsessive about odd subjects (birds, generally) ((although lately it is a rather unmentionable subject I am obsessing over)).

Anyway, I am just wasting time, and so I imagine are you. I have 2 of my paintings in shows this weekend. So the effort of all this strangeness pays off, sort of. I am not looking forward to the openings, standing in a room trying to make small talk. I am going to try to look stunning, maybe O'Keeffeish in black to set off my blonde hair.

I imagine....oh what I imagine, crossing the open room. Well enough of this ridiculous drivel.
I have so much to do as usual.

The Poet

You're withdrawing from me, you hour.
The beating of your wings leaves me bruised.
Alone: what shall I do with my mouth?
with my night? with my day?

I have no loved one, no house,
no place to lead a life.
All the things to which I give myself
grow rich and spend me.

-Rainer Maria Rilke Translated by Edward Snow

Look at great bird illustrations by Fuertes here:

http://cidc.library.cornell.edu/Fuertes2000/BrowseBirdNames.asp?BirdLet=c

as proud as a ...well....

"The next two or three days dragged by heavily. The taste of the of the usual was like cinders in his mouth, and there were moments when he felt he was being buried alive under his future. "

-Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

goodbye my muse
as the air rushes out of me
like Ovid's women
I must run
to escape those eyes
that pierce all I am
hawk like fury
give me time to recover
as I am so transformed
time feels endless
would I fall to water
or to air
winged my way home
to find all shelter gone
and I am branched on that tree
one sight turned
one sight inward

-the corbyhawk

Vote People

http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/11/freedom.html

they had just been having a bit of fun before I took this photo

Have someone read poetry to you, or a good book, at:

www.librivox.org

I have been painting all day and into the evening. I am restless, but in need of a break from it so here I am writing this insanity. I am on the floor of my studio listening to some classical music and to my starling, who is attempting to talk. It is rather odd because at times he does manage to say something, although it is a bit difficult to decipher.

Well art my vast blogging audience is work, work, and more work. I hate to destroy any romantic notions of the entire experience, but it is a solitary and slightly tedious affair.

The bird is saying something, I am not going crazy from the paint fumes. A worthy, if not slightly unclear, companion.

I do think this painting is going to do well once it is finished. I am a bit desperate to get it ready for the show. Well I have been overworking for so long I am chatting with a computer screen on a Saturday evening. My social life has hit rock bottom, but at least I can have a slightly confusing conversation with the bird.

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain --and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

-Robert Frost -acquainted with the night

"Stieglitz was there, talking to rapt listeners in the gallery, amid rows of paintings stacked against bare wall. He felt the quiet presence of someone behind him, turned, and was astonished to see Georgia O'Keeffe."

-Laurie Lisle Portrait of an Artist A Biography of Georgia O'Keeffe

Just so we can all really know that the Art world is going to proverbial hell:

http://www.nme.com/news/marilyn-manson/24891

I can't seem to find images of the art however....