I am sick again and I am angry about it. I had a high fever last night and simple things like going up the stairs make my heart pound and following any activity I am extremely tired. This is very problematic since I have so much work to accomplish that I do not have time for this. I am so angry that my body is weak when I need it to be strong. Oh your body needs a break, no my soul does my body is just a vessel for all my chaos. So I hope it does not get worse, because last time I pushed I was very sick. Now I have to take my groggy headed self and paint with tired arms and a heavy heart. I hate this painting, throw it out entirely I think. Let the snow fall on it and the canvas rot, but I have to have it in my show. I feel no loyalty to it, it was impulsive from the start and there is no magic in it. So now I have to save the damned thing, when otherwise I would leave it behind. We will be weak together this crappy painting and I; and maybe I will understand it in this mood of chaos and despair. Arg the timing of this illness makes me crazy.

Dreaming of spring

I want to give you a feeling of hope- I want you to take your freedom-I am only too sorry that my life has been thrust on you-I have relied upon your perfect understanding-otherwise-how many times I feared I might be imposing or perhaps ruining a too fine friendship-and I should only have myself to blame-but I know you have understood and have always had faith...

I do not altogether despair but I do struggle and the struggle produces nothing in me but fatigue and nothing for others-not even for my work for that proceeds from another kind of inward activity. And there's no saying "buck up and be different" for it is myself and I must always be that and be true to it-and live with it the best I can for I am eternally alone with it.

-Marsden Hartley

Flowers for Alan

Matter and Spirit

A shadow empties itself into a river.
No one sees.
But the cloth for washing the bodies of the dead
softens, gentles a little.
Neither the cloth nor the body feels this,
yet it matters. Someone else, you see, is there,
in the blunt and blind of grace--
Someone stands silent,
listening, the looped cotton held in her hand.

-Jane Hirschfield

In memory of dear Alan from this moment, he will be missed for his wit, beautiful pictures, and wonderful intelligence. Condolences to his family and friends. He was the original inspiration for this blog. Alan I did manage to eat that city with your song in my heart, sleep well.

Harris Hawk

I would paint a bird
to fly in the small space
between your mouth and mine
it would fly up as my eyes do
to your eyes
Erase the world
the murmurs of others around us
I step in and in one breath
am completely lost
and found again

by the Corbyhawk

I want to hear the low hum of the work itself, its little voice that whispers in my ear. When I am not paying attention it is evident in the paintings, they all see it. I can not get over exactly how much you can communicate on the canvas as if the underwear of your soul is sticking out of the back of your pants. It is really sort of uncomfortable to be so on display, but what I have to say demands me to push on forward anyway despite all that. Unnerving really, does he see everything? I am so tired today and now, sort of defeated feeling really, overwhelmed. I don't think I was wearing my best underwear!

Easy to see
that the lion and angel
are one visitation
but how do you come
to offer your throat to either?
In autumn, the trees
learn to drop off
both their disguises,
what finally fills them is simple.
The heart's deepest
affections will equally be devoured.
And still we go ankle deep
into that carnage, lifting first one,
then another part up to the light.
As if we were looking for something simple.
As if what we wanted
were not the thing that falls.

-Lioan and Angel Dividing the Maple Between Them- Jane Hirschfield

Paper Flowers

Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.

Rumi

I can't explain the goings,
or the comings. You enter suddenly,
and I am nowhere again.
Inside the majesty.

Rumi

Of dusty glances fallen to the ground
or of soundless leaves burying themselves.
Of metals without light, with the emptiness,
with the absence of the suddenly dead day.
At the tip of the hands the dazzelment of butterflies,
the upflight of butterflies whose light has no end.

You kept the trail of light, of broken beings
that the abandoned sun, sinking, casts at the churches.
Stained with glances, dealing with bees,
your substance fleeing from unexpected flame
precedes and follows the day and its family of gold.

The spying days cross in secret
but they fall within your voice of light.
Oh master of love, in your rest
I established my dream, my silent attitude.

With your body of my timid number, suddenly extended
to the quantities that define the earth,
behind the struggle of the days white with space
and cold with slow deaths and withered stimuli,
I feel your lap burn and your kisses travel
shaping fresh swallows in my sleep.

At times the destiny of your tears ascends
like age to my forehead, there
the waves are crashing, smashing themselves to death:
their movement is moist, drifting, ultimate.

Pablo Neruda Alliance (Sonata) translated by Donald D. Walsh

Oh, why you look so sad?
Tears are in your eyes
Come on and come to me now
Dont be ashamed to cry
Let me see you through
cause Ive seen the dark side too
When the night falls on you
You dont know what to do
Nothing you confess
Could make me love you less

Ill stand by you
Ill stand by you
Wont let nobody hurt you
Ill stand by you

So if youre mad, get mad
Dont hold it all inside
Come on and talk to me now
Hey, what you got to hide?
I get angry too
Well Im a lot like you
When youre standing at the crossroads
And dont know which path to choose
Let me come along
cause even if youre wrong

Ill stand by you
Ill stand by you
Wont let nobody hurt you
Ill stand by you
Take me in, into your darkest hour
And Ill never desert you
Ill stand by you

And when...
When the night falls on you, baby
Youre feeling all alone
You wont be on your own

Ill stand by you
Ill stand by you
Wont let nobody hurt you

Ill stand by you
Take me in, into your darkest hour
And Ill never desert you
Ill stand by you
Ill stand by you
Wont let nobody hurt you
Ill stand by you
Wont let nobody hurt you
Ill stand by you

-Pretenders I'll Stand By You

Untitled 1

Like a ghost will it go?

This kiss of a life

The drying wetness of my lips

As they miss you

A rustle of brown leaves

Giving a still green glint glimmer

Of a once thriving sustenance

When it grew attached

To so great a tree

As separate as seasons

I fall unfixed into air

And dance my brush edge

On all colors of our meaning

Do your roots grow?

Just there under my remaining spine

Will your seed push upwards

And create a merged life

In something new flowering?

Or will it rot there?

Encased in mud and weather

Ever close and ever decaying

Beyond the support of your once mighty frame

That in time will too fall

Piece by piece into my waiting earth.

-By the Corbyhawk herself copyright 2008 steal and bad juju will haunt you all your days not to mention the law itself. scary huh? Good.

Below the incandescent fruit,
the strange experience of beauty;
its existence is too much;
it tears one to pieces
and each fresh wave of consciousness
is poison.
"See her, see her in this common world,"
the central flaw
in that first crystal-fine experiment,
this amalgamation which can never be more
than an interesting impossibility

From Marianne Moore's On Marriage
in my quest for American Moderism

Merlin

I am home from work. I feel generally better but I just really lack the energy for my job and my body is still kind of weak. I also am still afraid to eat anything since I do not want to be that sick again. I am not even hungry at all. So I am home and will go do a bit of work this evening when I hopefully have more motivation. I am thinking about my next painting but just want to do some small sketches today. My arms are sore anyway from whatever I have, so maybe it is better to just work small. Some rest to get better will help as I have a busy time coming up.

The universe had other ideas. No playing in the print studio today, I am blogging from bed because getting up is well just difficult. I feel terrible and managed to get to a meeting but then came right home and here I am in bed, sick as a dog. The dog just looked over, ok sick as sick better? He sighs, he is happy laying on the bed. They both are up here for morale support I guess. The cat is as well, me a laptop, two dogs and a cat in the bed. What a bunch.

Flight Birds by Thomas Aquinas Daly

Thomas Aquinas Daly -Flight Birds Oil on Board 14in by 10 1/2 in

I met this artist last night and he was quite wonderful. He is a friend of someone I know. I really loved his work and it makes me consider working smaller. Then again I did get a 36in x 60 in canvas today so perhaps in the future. The next painting is sneaking up on me and it is more of the same thing I am currently doing. Still I am going to go where it leads me and play a little tomorrow in printmaking. To hell with worry, I am no longer going to keep score of every day's accomplishments. It just wears me out and makes me feel bad about everything I don't do. I work constantly and well I will just have what I have when my show comes. There is a part of me that is just ever hopeful that the next work will be the best one and it drives me as I go. Maybe this one is going to be it and I feel a massive push to get to it and leave the others behind. This time I have slowed down and am tweaking the other paintings here and there to make them stronger. Some have had some drastic and unexpected changes as they progress. All for the better and now I cannot seem to leave them alone. A split between stalled ambition on the new and the need to reconsider the old. Yuck, I think way too much for my own good. So no more procrastination today it is getting late.

Two Jays

If you offered me a shade of blue
Would I return it saying that it was too
Dark or light?
Or would I see it for the precious thing
That it might one day be?
Hold on to me

If you offered me a point of view
Would I dismiss it saying that it was too
Black and white?
Or would I see it as the special thing
That it would no doubt be?
Hold on to me

Ill hold on to this gift we share
It is as slippery as it is rare

-the Cowboy Junkies Hold On

Ghost Deer

Today was today and I am so tired and spent I don't have much for you.
The funeral was accompanied with a day long windstorm that raged by ripping down trees, forcing open the funeral home doors and taking out the lights. It was the living echo of the turmoil of my heart as it rages that life is too short. Here I am it whistles as it pushes the trees, here I am. Do we ever know when the forever goodbye will be?

If you were offered a chance, a tear in the sky perhaps or a set of distinct choices that were the stepping stones into a completely different world, would you go? So many heroes make that choice and with blind faith in the rightness of that step into the complete unknown. They do not know where they are going and offer no regret to what they leave behind. They simply know they must go and they do without question or regret. I guess all this death makes one think of these things, since in a way it is a similar crossing. I know I am one of those people who would go and blindly take that step (alive-the change aspect is what I am considering not death). Dear blogger would you?

The Dream

Argh. I am just trying to get so much done before I go out of town for the funeral. So many odds and ends to tie up and work to do and I realize that I am just not going to be able to get it all packed in tonight and tomorrow. Sometimes tools have their default not working stages which leads one into the damn I thought I was going to easily accomplish said task. Two hours later when the drill is still not charged, you realize that said task will have to be postponed because the witching hour is 9PM. If I do not start to wind down, blog, relax, read by 9PM I cannot get to sleep and am wickedly tired all the following day. (this should go under the know you are getting older when file, 10PM is bed time although I do get up at 5:45AM which just generally sucks.) So here I am unwinding. A funny moment today was trying to get a new headlight bulb for my car. I asked a really stupid question and the store guy just kind of eyed me. Yes, but I did manage to replace the bulb (no great feat really and changed my wipers (finally)). So tonight I am sort of dull and preoccupied with all that stress that goes with the funeral. It was a gorgeous 60 degrees here today which made me long to get my hands in the dirt and garden. A trick though, winter is only starting to dig in his heels. Ramble ramble tonight, a tired and sad Corby signing off.

Evening Grosbeak

In other news I spent some time looking for and finding with great success Evening Grosbeaks. One of my favorite birds, they are just gorgeous and full of personality. I am optimistic that this sighting which was so similar to a dream I had recently will lead to the rest of the dream coming true.

I also went to worship at the shrine of Fuertes. It is still has the same kind of magic for me and I always find myself longing to get to work on more bird related paintings. I just love it and there were other artists I admire hanging up as well including one childhood favorite. I took the day off from all the work I have to get to, but it was so worth it. One needs magic and I always can find some looking at a Fuertes or a Sutton. It felt really good, and I even got some great veggie food.

The only hawk that ever really footed me good

I went back there after 5 years and nothing has changed. I was hoping to see some improvement and that the hawk I could not rescue from her neglect was thriving. Perhaps my work and fight for her would have woken them up to her needs. It was not so.
I am so sorry my dear hawk, I am so horribly sorry. I will paint you free.

To you my dear Aunt
and all of these goodbyes
I saw you there laughing
on the island this morning as I dreamed
your eyes were their glinting blue
the same as your fathers
the same as mine
and so sweet and dear you always were
a hug a kiss and time to hear my little voice
how you would laugh and give us all
your generous hospitality
such a gracious and wonderful Aunt
with so much love to give
and I remember you there
in your trailer as it was falling apart around you
warm air without your leg
sugar took it
as it took your fingers
and your life
How I grieved for you then, that you
were reduced to such suffering in such a place
where the rain leaked in above you
how death has been hammering at my door
and today it has taken your sweet soft face
and smile
get to the island now and hold hands with the sun
feel it warm upon your back
and know you will be missed

Goodbye Aunt Judy

Virus is hitting New York Crows

Wind turbines and raptors yet again here

one going the other way

You who never arrived

You who never arrived
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost
from the start,
I don't even know what songs
would please you. I have given up trying
to recognize you in the surging wave of the next
moment. All the immense
images in me- the far-off, deeply-felt landscape,
cities, towers, and bridges, and unsuspected
turns in the path,
and those powerful lands that were once
pulsing with the life of the gods-
all rise within me to mean
you, who forever elude me.

You, Beloved, who are all
the gardens I have ever gazed at,
longing. An open window
in a country house-, and you almost
stepped out, pensive, to meet me.
Streets that I chanced upon,-
you had just walked down them and vanished.
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors
were still dizzy with your presence and, startled,
gave back my too-sudden image. Who knows?
perhaps the same bird echoed through both of us
yesterday, seperate, in the evening...

You Who Never Arrived by Rainer Maria Rilke translated by Stephen Mitchell

looking

Long Tailed Duck transitional plumage

Ah the morning, so sweetly sunrise colored, yellows and pinks. So off I go into the bitter chill to work. As I drive my windshield wipers are encased in an icy mix at their base. So I stop to clear them and stop yet again to clear them as I could not see after following the trucker that really was hankering to walk to work but was driving instead (slow). Yes I am late as usual, especially after the stops. The burning question I have is, why do the wipers always smear and refuse to work right where you need to see? So here I am driving by trying to shrink down below the smear or at times sitting tall trying to see above the smear. Why is that? When so much of the windshield remains clear? It is the little things that conspire to drive us crazy.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Macbeth Act 5, scene 5, 19–28
Shakespeare

Because I am dreading my return to work....

Bonaparte's Gull

Happy New Year!!

"They wove bright fables in the days of old,

When reason borrowed fancy's painted wings;

When truth's clear river flowed o'er sands of gold,

And told in song its high and mystic things!

And such the sweet and solemn tale of her

The pilgrim heart, to whom a dream was given,

That led her through the world,– Love's worshipper,–

To seek on earth for him...

-by T.K. Harvey

The Merlin King

Today I went out into the wide gray world. Did the sun even rise? I managed to get to a show of Edward Steichen's photographs. I loved the aspect of his work where he seems to be catching time in the photo. There was a gorgeous photo of the edge of Walden Pond, where the water was sepia toned but had this great quality of making me feel like sticking in my hand. I loved the caught moment in it, familiar even though it was taken 87 years ago. A lifetime.

Edward Steichen
Color coupler print
Minneapolis Institute of Arts Collection

Mabel Dodge Luhan's place

Imagine a building divided into many rooms. The buildings may be large or small. Every wall of every room is covered with pictures of various sizes; perhaps they number many thousands. They represent in colour bits of nature-animals in sunlight or shadow, drinking, standing in water, lying on the grass; near to, a Crucifixion by a painter who does not believe in Christ; flowers; human figures sitting, standing, walking; often they are naked; many naked women, seen foreshortened from behind; apples and silver dishes; portrait of Councillor So and So; a sunset; lady in red; flying duck; portrait of Lady X; flying geese; lady in white; calves in shadow flecked with brilliant yellow sunlight; portrait of Prince Y; lady in green. All this is carefully printed in a book- name of artist-name of picture. People with these books in their hands go from wall to wall, turning over pages, reading the names. Then they go away, neither richer or poorer than when they came, and are absorbed at once in their business, which has nothing to do with art. Why did they come? In each picture is a whole lifetime imprisoned, a whole lifetime of fears, doubts, hopes, and joys. ...

With cold eyes and indifferent mind the spectators regard the work. Connoisseurs admire the "skill" (as one admires a tightrope walker), enjoy the "quality of painting" (as one enjoys a pasty). But hungry souls go away hungry. ... Those who could speak have said nothing, those who could hear have heard nothing.

-Wassily Kandinsky Concerning the Spiritual in Art translated by M.T.H. Sadler

a series of relations stemming from a dream

Ok, a dream of a bridge in NY city that I have never seen or been on.
A Georgia O'Keeffe show that had a painting of the very same bridge leading to Arthur Wesley Dow
a show of Stieglitz's photos, His gallery 291 to John Marin
biography and a mention leads to Marsden Hartley
Marsden Hartley's letters to Stieglitz lead to the Blue Riders,
Kandinsky, Marc, and etc.
of course Paul Strand
over then to DH Lawrence and Mabel Dodge Luhan
her friend Gertrude Stein circles back to Hartley,
A stay at Mabel's in Taos then to the Lawrence ranch to Willa Cather
Sideways backtrack a bit to Robert Henri leading to Edward Hopper
the Ashcan School
including the Arts Students League of NY which is hard to not find a notable connection to...
lately from there, Wolf Kahn
and finally onwards to:
Edwin Dickinson

This is an article about Andean Condors. I had the great fortune of working personally with one and he and I were secret sweethearts. He would come close to me edging over and hiss in his wheezy kind of way. His pink fleshy skin would turn crimson and he would throw out his gigantic wings in display. This would be accompanied by him bending his head down coyly and turning from side to side with his wings outstretched. I would murmur endearments to his masculine display and scratch him on the head. I miss working with him, he was a character. Above is a picture of him. A looker, no doubt.

Leftover shell

That is it, I draw myself up to my full height and say no more. So I will work and remember at last, to dream on my own.

I had such a great painting day yesterday and am hopefully about to have another today. The kind of talk that starts you in one place and leads you along to another. The ones where dreams are born and intense wonderings are aired. Ah well, it is not so bad, I will have one with the brush today.

a bit of memory

Sweet Apollo
how I miss you today

Twas the Night Before Christmas

and the cat already found her presents and opened others just for fun...

They got to unwrap presents early

She got a new toy to enjoy

Too Much Fun was had

Happy Holidays, whatever you may celebrate, may you enjoy friends, family, and good food.

Corby with a treat

I run around like mad
picking up handfuls of birds
and my tenderness
which after all is not made of water
asks the water for a face

-From Zbigniew Herbert -I Would Like to Describe translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott

Northern Hawk Owl today

Whatever is real casts a shadow.

-Jane Hirschfield

Solitary Dancer

todays gaze

Swan showing a little leg

I feel as round as this junco today

I am having one of those "fat" days where my pants are tight and I feel rather bleh. You may know the days, where the hair is just not so great, and well the self-esteem is not the best. So I am in the grocery store and a man walks by with his cart. I don't really look at him but I do notice that he is looking at me. I walk by and carry on in my search for something glancing back once more (he is still looking). Then suddenly I hear a loud metallic crash as his cart slams into a pole.
I tried to be polite and not burst out laughing, so I walked away. Oh honey, even on bleh day I guess I got it still. I am still laughing about it even now.

Snow Dog

The snow is really lovely and falling all day in these big giant flakes. I tried to get some pictures but snow is really hard to capture in a picture. I have been like a bear in a den all day, slowly making progress on my painting. I am listening to old folk songs on Pandora so the feeling sweet and cozy. Snowstorms are great when you don't have to go anywhere.

Watching for the storm (red fox)

We are supposed to get 20 some inches of snow tomorrow. I will post pictures if this really does manage to happen. People were stripping the shelves in the grocery stores like a bunch of maniacs. It was rather festive in a way.

Have them pick some new music to your taste at Pandora.com a great place to hear something new since radio generally stinks.

I have to remember that there are always times as I create a painting where I dislike it. It is kind of a given, dislike and then fix and then more dislike and further fixing. Hopefully they do not end on a sour note. It is the discipline of keeping the focus of the original impetus for the work that always reinvigorates the process of creating it. Sometimes I find myself going beyond the reason and when I do that I have difficulty finding the hook in a work that held my attention. My mind races ahead of my clumsy hands and wants to keep finding more and more things to paint. I have to have more patience and calm my focus to get back where I need to be. I am endlessly starting things and then as they go on I grow impatient with the subtle details needed to convey the work I am on. Oh, just be done I want to say impatient to express the next charged idea. I have to go back in and find the beauty of the painting even in its clumsy adolescence. I can be so steadfast on some things, harboring terribly strong crushes for years, patiently conveying a concept to someone who is confused, waiting for the perfect moment with a bird to get a photo, and so I must be this steadfast in my work and not be so ready to jump away from it. Mature painters can do that, sit with a work for years. I will be more patient in all things, see I can wait. I must take my time on things and not always want to rush rush. I cannot live like the world will be over tomorrow. I must have more hope and trust.

the 66 birds of Christmas

Vermillion Flycatcher

Twilight White Ibis

Letter [Persephone to Demeter] by Rachel Zucker At home, the bells were a high light-yellow with no silver or gray just buttercup or sugar-and-lemon. Here bodies are lined in blue against the sea. And where red is red there is only red. I have to be blue to bathe in the sea. Red, to live in the red room with red air to rest my head, red cheek down, on the red table. Above, it was so green: brown, yellow, white, green. My longing for red furious, sexual. There things were alive but nothing moved. Now I live near the sea in a place which has no blue and is not the sea. Gulls flock, leeward then tangent and pigeons bully them off the ground. Hardly alive, almost blind-a hot geometry casts off every color of the world. Everything moves, nothing alive. In the red room there is a sky which is painted over in red but is not red and was, once, the sky. This is how I live. A red table in a red room filled with air. A woman, edged in blue, bathing in the blue sea. The surface like the pale, scaled skin of fish far below or above or away—

Fleeing Commorants

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the mourning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

W.B. Yeats

Osprey

If the Rise of the Fish

If for a moment
the leaves fell upward,
if it seemed a small flock
of brown-orange birds
circled over the trees,
if they circled then scattered each in
its own direction for the lost seed
they had spotted in tall, gold-checkered grass.
If the bloom of flies on the window
in the morning sun, if their singing insistence
on grief and desire. If the fish.
If the rise of the fish.
If the blue morning held in the glass of the window,
if my fingers, my palms. If my thighs.
If your hands, if my thighs.
If the seeds, among all the lost gold of the grass.
If your hands on my thighs, if your tongue.
If the leaves. If the singing fell upward. If grief.
For a moment if singing and grief.
If the blue of the body fell upward, out of our hands.
If the morning held it like leaves.

-Jane Hirschfield

I watched her, she was still beautiful in her ice blue jacket and skirt. Her hair was long and silver and hung free about her head, in a sense a defiance of all of the young girls in the laced up green dresses. She was the mother of the groom and stood with her husband in her orbit. He was gentle-faced but horribly overweight. He could barely move as the square edges of the tux cut into his fleshy jowls and wrists. I wondered at it, how he could have snagged her as she floated in the room, greeting the guests. I do not know their story, their romance or what she is really beneath her ice blue dress. I created my own as I sat among the guests at the table. I wooed them with my happy artifice and they did not know any difference. Oh lovely, lovely, she and I may be sharing the same dark dance; a facade. Who knows; but last night I wanted her to be an ally. I could see my life clearly placed before me in her, and I shuddered at the banality of it. Her son the groom was flushed and happy with his gorgeous but slightly non-emotive bride. She was young and elegant, a dancer in her white dress and long veil. It all seems so surreal she told us as she came to our table. The flowers were red roses with white lilies and orchids, their gentle scent came to us from the middle of our tables. As if summer had not left us in this dark winter evening, a warm world far away from the snow and ice. The magic beckoning me to some other place and some other history. The dancing began and I wanted to join them. All of the young women and men throwing themselves into the music with a jubilant abandon. No, I was matron, condemned to sit in this chair and dream of moving myself to the undulating music and losing all of these dark thoughts. So I smiled but wondered at how quickly I have become one of those who sit pounding at the bars of this cage of convention.

She fell, the white haired groom's mother. As the blood red of the rose in her stopped beating. Her heart had given in and the fun turned to horror as death plucked her up. The dark December was upon us as her daughter in the beautiful green dress screamed out her name. Mother, wake up, a chill over the room and confusion. The DJ calling for a doctor or someone to help her. Suddenly action broke out over the lethargic room, was it minutes before it happened? Seconds? It felt like forever she lay there on the floor with her heart stopped. Luckily someone performed CPR. The very exclusive country club did not have an emergency defibulator, which might have made all of the difference. We were told to go to the next room, all of us dressed and silent except for one drunk fool. The bride sat heavy in her dress, face etched as she discovered that her day of joy would always carry this weight. The groom sat by her side, as helpless as his father who stood mutely over his wife. I did not look at this scene, knowing I would not soon forget it since my mind grasps and holds pictures. I did not look as they wheeled her out to the ambulance and as her daughter the bridesmaid crying held her daughter and went to get in a car. As the bride walked out next to me, her makeup creating lines where the tears had fallen. Knowing that tonight was not part of the fairytale that it was meant to be. She put on her coat, resigned to her wedding night at the hospital. We all left silent, as we got our coats. That will not be me and I begin to rip down the bars of this cage. I am so shaken I cannot paint well today. I feel so damn mortal and I hope for the bride that the silver haired woman is ok.

Dead seabirds in Europe due to starvation, read it here

Edwin Dickinson "The Fossil Hunters"

owned by the Whitney Museum of Art

Tundra Swans/one swan watching

Unnameable Heart

The cricket who
kept me company three days
has fallen silent
I don't know where.

There are so many
lives of which I know nothing.
Even my own. It moves now
through my fingers towards yours
and I know nothing
I can say that will name its heart.

A boat drifts far out
on the river below the mountains,
and below it
the fish, the great fish
that the one in the boat has come for,
swims in the shadow.

Perhaps the cricket is there, inside the fish.
Stranger things have happened.
I have looked everywhere else
for my lost companion.

From here, the shadow looks small,
but to the fish it is huge.
Range after range of mountains,
and still the old painters
found a place
where two could walk together, side by side.

-Jane Hirshfield from her book The Lives of the Heart

House Sparrow

Bird That Comes Just Before Our Kiss

A nest held by the cup, by the curve
Of our two throats. Each composed wing; to behold
That arrival, that settling

Into air between us-how she might grow
Tame, how she might eat from our hand! A sound came
In a slight way, but to draw back until

Each feather came into view, the hammer
Of the tiny heart, the underlidded eye,
Became what we did not do. The nearby

Of everything braced as if to ask was it enough
We had come this far. To look up even once
Was to lose the bird and what is made

Out of nowhere and nothing, the open place,
The sudden shape caused by what closes in.

Sophie Cabot Black

Snow on the head is the new black darling...

Character isolated by a deed
To engross the present and dominate memory.
Players and painted stage took all my love,
And not those things that they were emblems of.

Those masterful images because complete
Grew in pure mind, but out of what began?
A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

From: The Circus Animals Desertion, By William Butler Yeats
fits my paintings perfectly as of late.

It begins with just a gentle echo of hope as I run my hand over the unprimed canvas. I can feel it as a whisper, this one, it says. It comes as a dream, a hush, a faint little voice. This painting comes to me so quietly and I think it may give my heart a voice.

Tree Sparrow

Didn't see the Bohemian Waxwings today sadly, but had some good looks at old favorites, such as this tee sparrow. His foot was covered in ice that he was trying to thaw by sitting on it and pecking at it occasionally. He did not let me close enough to catch him or else I would have thawed it for him in my hands and given him more of a chance at survival.