Let me touch you with these words
as they fall over the cords of your neck
down to the bow of shoulder
tickling lightly over your lips
trace their edges with your fingertips
they are a whisper
to such a longing

Ice is falling in Antarctica

NY City here I come
whooo hoooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am going arty and flying out Friday night for a short crazy weekend!
Art fair info here
I am going to have a time I tell you, a time!

Heron with an ice necklace

I was struck by the notion the other day that herons know when to come back North, because they know when the water is going to be open.

In other news, I cleaned my studio which means I will soon be working on something new. I can't not work or else I will go crazy with my little round about thoughts. Besides more shows are springing up faster then the flowers are.

Snow bunting (transitional winter plumage)

Snow buntings are extremely difficult to find sometimes. I saw them fly up and then I walked into the half frozen-half mud corn field. You have to step on the high parts where the old vegetation is or else you will sink into this milky brown mud. The buntings are rather unconcerned when you get close to them because they believe you cannot see them. The thing is, you can't really. They blend in so well you could be right on top of them before you are able to see them. Even with my magnified lens on them, they would do their magic act of coming in and out of view.

me and Themis' Swing

The show was just plain great. I had a wonderful time and I got to see so many people from the past. My friend is here from NY City and I am flying to visit her next weekend. I was so tired last night that I just went to bed when I got home after a late dinner. It went well and I was offered another solo show when it comes down in a bigger venue, so no rest for the wicked. I got some really wonderful gifts and I am optimistic about the future. I think things will all fall together and I will not be sad about these little endings.

Ok, the first day of Spring equals a below 30 wind chill and the ever present white stuff we like to call snow or rather the most common precipitation of late. I like to call it crap that I am just plain sick of.

In other news happy birthday to me sisss booom bah

Tomorrow is the BIG show opening which I hope goes well.

think spring

I am trying to do some writing and it is like picking off a scab on a rather fresh wound. I find that I have to go there and in going there I am revisiting the pain. So they want my blood, or he at least asked for it. Why, why why did you do those paintings? How can I say? My silly stupid heart hangs on those walls, falling in the throat of birds, feeling the touch of a painted hand, wrapped in cord around the owl plummeting to earth. I wanted him to understand my language-words fall flat,words fall, out of his eyes. What were you saying? I am trying to hear you, not what I want to hear, but what you are really saying. I long to listen to you and hear your stories but the way is blocked. There are doors I cannot open, but sometimes I see the glimmer of light coming from them, from you. Will you also disappear behind them?

Shall I be prisoner till my pulses stop
To hateful Love and drag his noisy chain...
Perfidious Prince, that keep me here confined,
Doubt not I know the letters of my doom...
(Sonnet XVIII)

-Edna St. Vincent Millay

Green finch, and linnet bird,
Nightingale, blackbird,
How is it you sing?
How can you jubilate
sitting in cages
never taking wing?
Outside the sky waits
beckoning!
Beckoning!
Just beyond the bars...
How can you remain
staring at the rain
maddened by the stars?
How is it you sing
anything?
How is it you sing?
Green finch. and linnet bird,
nightingale, blackbird
How is it you sing?
Whence comes this melody
constantly floating?
Is it rejoicing or merely aloaming?
Are you discussing?
Or fussing?
Or simply dreaming?
Are you crowing?
Are you screaming?
Ringdove and robinet
is it for wages?
Singing to be sold?
Have you decided it's safer in cages
singing when you're told?
My cage has many rooms
damask and dark...
Nothing there sings,
not even my lark.
Larks never will, you know,
when they're captive.
Teach me to be more
adaptive.
Ah...
Green Finch, and Linnet Bird,
nightingale, blackbird,
teach me how to sing.
If I cannot fly...
Let me sing.

Jayne Wisener -Sweeney Todd Lyrics

Hope

Hope is with you when you believe
The earth is not a dream but living flesh,
that sight, touch, and hearing do not lie,
That all thing you have ever seen here
Are like a garden looked at from a gate.

You cannot enter. But you're sure it's there.
Could we but look more clearly and wisely
We might discover somewhere in the garden
A strange new flower and an unnamed star.

Some people say that we should not trust our eyes,
That there is nothing, just a seeming,
There are the ones who have no hope.
They think the moment we turn away,
The world, behind our backs, ceases to exist,
As if snatched up by the hand of thieves.

- Czeslaw Milosz

If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it.

-Emily Bronte Wuthering Heights

Do you mind, we are taking our bath

So there it is, all up and ready. The gallery woman kept looking at my face asking "Don't you just love it?" I couldn't help being blank and sort of empty feeling. I felt bad that I was not ecstatic at the end of it as I should be. I feel sad at it, all those thoughts and hours hanging up in the open. They are no longer my own or should I rather say ours. They hang up there for everyone to have now. It is a funny thing to feel a loss of them. Here they are all dressed up and formal. Their conversation is silent to me now and I find I miss hearing it. For so long they pulled me, told me what to do, mixed with his voice as I worked in a beautiful intimacy. I must start my new work soon, get into some new thing so I do not have this listlessness for very long. Things are coming up this summer and I will jump into them soon. I do have much to do, somethings I must edit and write but I am so listless today. I even took a nap which I never do.

A new bird discovered here

OPTIMISM

More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam
returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous
tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,
mitochondria, figs--all this resinous, unretractable earth.

-Jane Hirshfield

I am zen, I am the gentle breeze, I am the calm sea, I am the steady tree, I am not nervous about hanging my show. I do not look with a mixture of fear and dread at the empty gallery space I must fill. I do not have doubts about my competence.

I know I am silly but I would not be human if I was not pinched with a bit of nervousness about a show that is the culmination of three years worth of work. I mean if you are not nervous then you run the risk of not being prepared. Plus think of the wave of relief I will be feeling when it is done. So yes, my palms did sweat a bit as I looked into the gallery. I get that way sometimes.

I just want to be his Georgia.

I am a basket case today. I am already incredibly nervous about hanging this show and the whole process I have to undertake in the next week or so. It makes my stomach twist up and my face is flushed with stress. I just want it to be perfect, the work to look so good and show how much effort I have put into it. I want to make sure it is an excellent show and I care so damn much about it. I want the ending to reflect all of the emotion I have placed into it. This show is really me hanging my heart out there for all to see. What I really fear is the end of it. The knowledge that when it is done, it is done. I know I have to carry all of the learning and love I have placed so carefully there into the future, but I tell you I have lived these past years. I have been so happy under that steady gaze and grew towards the warmth of it. I hate to ever see it pass out of my life, please say that this will not be the end. I cannot endure the idea of returning to who I was before, not after all this. Not after painting birds, picturing flowers and all this falling....

My co-workers know I have this big show coming up that I am setting up Friday. It is hard for people around me not to know since I have given everyone a show card. So I am trying to get through all my daily responsibilities which have increased lately and manage to get everything all ready for the big show.

All in all I am a complete nerve ball. I want so much for it to be really great.

They know that I was seeking the perfect outfit at my favorite expensive European import store. (Danish women are tall I have heard and so am I). So they chipped in and gave me a card full of money to help get the outfit. I was at lunch with my mouth full of pretzel and I tell you it was so lovely and thoughtful that I teared right up. How wonderful to be surrounded by people like that, I am lucky. So many good people are helping me out. I am lucky and grateful,so very grateful.

I almost drowned twice in my life. The first time was between two small plastic row boats, one orange and one blue. I was trying to cross between them and fell into the river because I hesitated out of fear, since at the time I did not know how to swim. My brother reached in for me screaming as I sunk downward. The silty river water filled my eyes and a million bubbles danced around me to the light of day above. Someone jumped into the river and grabbed me out of the water. I coughed and sputtered on the dock, embraced by my mother.

The second time I fell between a large boat and a dock. The boat swung out on its ropes as a wave hit and listed back towards the dock. I went into the small gap of water plunging almost below the boat. Again I watched the daylight disappear and the bubbles rise around me. A hand, my uncles lifted me out of the water just before I was crushed by the hull of the boat against the dock. There was barely an inch of space left, enough to get my slight child body through.

Another memory from today, was of my grandfather. He was a large man full of raunchy jokes and he would often curse in regular conversation. He was a tough man to convince that I had as much gumption as a boy my age. I set about this task with great passion. I was rowing around in the plastic rowboat. A large group of my grandfather's cronies and my uncles were sitting out at the picnic table drinking, and generally being their rowdy selves. My grandfather thought it would be funny to throw a live river eel in the boat. It was huge and slimy with large eyes and gaping mouth full of tiny sharp teeth. They all stood laughing and taunting on the rocks above me. I stared at my grandfather, reached down around the giant eel and hauled it over the edge of the boat. They gasped and started to yell. My grandfather smiled at me as the taunts turned to him. Blondie as I was called then, had earned his respect, even though I was a girl.

Traveling this way of obliqueness, at times even the poet does not recognize his prey, mistaking camouflage and quarry: the self's deepest ponderings must often be taken by ambush.

-Jane Hirshfield Nine Gates

Male Redpoll

Made from crushed petals of flowers,
the pollen is dropped on the sand to reveal
the vision of the man opening his hands
to let the powders fall.
The grains land in a random pattern,.....

Colors fall and he sees the design will never fade.
It holds the boundaries of sand
like a flower growing from his fingers,
the spot where the cells of the mountains
bring their soily light.
When he runs out of colors,
he follows those who taught him
to open his hands and drop the grains,
older pollen spreading over
the breathing canvas of ground.

From Pollen Paintings by Ray Gonzalez

I remembered the day I discovered the word odd this morning. It was the first time I remembered constructing meaning out of the shapes of letters. A powerful moment in a young life, realizing the connection between pictorial symbol of language and profound meaning. I loved the odd page with its somewhat sedate scenery filled with abrupt juxtapositions of objects that "clearly" did not fit. A yellow wrench in the green tree, a boat in the lawn, all of these little surreal pictures we were supposed to pick out and determine as odd. I loved the odd page, because I realized that I rather enjoyed it, much more then the sedate pictures of ordinary children. I was the odd page and have been ever since.

On another note, when it snowing out and the roads are bad, do not stop quickly. That is recipe for disaster, one which I barely managed to avoid by sliding off of the road. My leg is killing me from pounding on the break to stop. I was lucky since I have driven a car that absolutely sucked in snow and slid often. You learn from feel how to turn into a skid and regain control of the car. So I turned into the skid and barely missed the other car. Anyway I am not going anywhere tonight or tomorrow, not with all this snow-5 inches already and they are saying at least a foot is expected.

I love the way you're breaking my heart
It's terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly thrilling
I love the way you're breaking my heart
Although you're gonna ruin it
It's heaven while you're doin' it
I love the way I feel when we kiss
You're terribly, terribly, terribly irresistible
Sigh to me, and lie to me, you really know how
It's gonna hurt tomorrow, but it feels so good now
So darling, just keep playing your part
Take your time and really finish the things that you start
'Cause I love the way you're breaking my heart!

Song performed by Peggy Lee

I generally dislike golf and I really dislike this person for his idiocy.

Swan Abstraction

My soul do not seek eternal life, but exhaust the realm of the possible.

-Pindar

I know I know I know and I know... I think after all this time I get it. What a splendid thing to get and enough in and of itself without possession. Oh sure it longs for that still, when will I not crave it? I cannot say, but the craving has molded me into something new and lead me through all of this dying to feeling and life. I would not trade a moment of it, irregardless of what it could destroy in my life. Tonight I cannot so much feel my work, as I am starting to look ahead already into another future. It is so hard to describe them, they are odd to me now. I will have to go sit before them this weekend and write a way in for some. They are so complicated and difficult with a million little impulses that I have to make a map of so that the viewer can follow the path in. I know, today it was so clear to me and I was proud of it, it was so obvious for a moment. A relief to see that I am not so crazy after all.

But originality also asks presence-the willingness to inhabit ourselves amid the uncertain transports and sufferings that are our fate. To feel, and to question feeling; to know, and to agree to wander utterly lost in the dark, where every journey of the soul starts over.

-Jane Hirshfield- Nine Gates

Death is the mother of Beauty

-Wallace Stevens

adobe

Everywhere we look, the theme appears: wisdom, at least in the West, is obtained through transgression and paid for in suffering. The journey into maturity, whether seen in Odysseus or Aeneas or the joined figures of Persephone and Demeter, must pass through the underworld realms of uncertainty, fear, and death, before the green and peaceful life the hero longs for can be restored-and both world and self are irrevocably changed by that immersion. Deception, too, has its role in each of these stories. Craftiness and trickery are a part of the test-we are tricked into falling, and tricked into wisdom. It is worth pausing to note the word, craftiness: the beauty of art-its craft-is a conjury, a sleight of hand enacted against dullness, inattention, ignorance, and the inner and outer faces of death.

-The Nine Gates- Jane Hirshfield

Path to the clouds

From that fear and nothing a painting comes... it breathes out its life on the canvas and my mind is lulled by the concentration of shaping it. The snow comes again and I am so sick of snow. I want sun and flowers because winter and fall have taken such a toll on me this year. I will be ok, I am strong and I will not lose hope. Even though it is snowing and dark and endlessly cold, I will remember the sun. I at least have those snapshots of wonder and possibility and beauty in my mind. Those sweet days are not lost, I will never forget them and I would not trade a moment even knowing that everything must change. It was worth it and maybe spring will bring flowers and hope again. So I wait as I always do and paint falling butterflies. This painting will surprise them all and I love to do that. I love to step up to the bar and throw it down, going way beyond expectations. I will not wilt at this, I am far too feisty and full of life. I laugh at sorrow because I believe in this and I thumb my nose at the sky. I know this and I will not give up.

I tell you everyone is saying, oh won't you be so glad when your show is all over and I look at them and just think what? Then the reality hits and I want to stall time but even now it is flying past me. I did not say anything, I couldn't even then I followed the rules. So today honestly I am wreck and I do not even know if I have the guts to start this work.. I have to let go and I am so sick of that kind of pain lately, letting go. Even hope feels bitter sweet and hurts right now. What could I do? I want to go sit next to that work and just be with it and hold it near me one last day one last time before I do something new. I need the old brush strokes and the old room where my dreams were and I just cannot seem to pick myself up and get there. Damn this feeling is always the one I get before bad news slams me. I am desperate as if something is happening that I cannot see. Maybe I am just getting paranoid since there is so much bad news lately.

It is the funniest thing, I cannot paint this painting because I am afraid it will lead to bad news. I am actually afraid to paint it. That is a new one for me.

The world is its poem, a rolling sonorous poem
In which a remote presage of joy annotates vast sorrow...
Where silently his beloved waits, watching the minutes,
The long days move.
Her room is closed: no road to look out on-
Her hope,
Worn out by waiting, lies in the dust.
The poet has given her pining no language,
Her love no pilgrimage-...

From Yaksa-by Rabindranath Tagore

A little note, here I am bone weary and with a tired mind. I have worked since dawn in the studio trying to get my work ready for a show. I painted the edges, put on the wires, signed them, and tried to tweek things here and there in them. I still have much to do but made good progress. Tomorrow I am working at home on something new, but will be nitpicking again on Sunday. So it was a good day but a tiring one and I am not inspiring right now.

windfarms gone awry

White Orchids

What is the shape of goodbye?
I do not want to leave you
with those pictures
fleeting passages
of shadows that fly
across my face
I will never lose my desire
to kiss you
Remember me
picturing flowers
holding falcons
laughing anyway
As I will remember you
talking to owls
offering cookies
giving direction
and tenderly taking hold
of my little dreams

-by the Corbyhawk herself

mouth orchid

At his moment of triumph, then Apollo found in his arms not the beautiful warm-fleshed nymph but a woman rough-skinned and cooling: becoming a tree, a laurel, whose leaves would become in turn his wreath of honor. There are things we can possess only by following them into the realm of disguise. There, we may be given a quarry altered, more pungent and wilder and stranger than we had surmised.

-Jane Hirshfield Nine Gates

One leaning on the other

for my little friends

Chiquitita, tell me whats wrong
You're enchained by your own sorrow
In your eyes there is no hope for tomorrow
How I hate to see you like this
There is no way you can deny it
I can see that you're oh so sad, so quiet

Chiquitita, tell me the truth
I'm a shoulder you can cry on
Your best friend, I'm the one you must rely on
You were always sure of yourself
Now I see you've broken a feather
I hope we can patch it up together

Chiquitita, you and I know
How the heartaches come and they go and the scars they're leaving
You'll be dancing once again and the pain will end
You will have no time for grieving
Chiquitita, you and I cry
But the sun is still in the sky and shining above you
Let me hear you sing once more like you did before
Sing a new song, chiquitita
Try once more like you did before
Sing a new song, chiquitita

So the walls came tumbling down
And your loves a blown out candle
All is gone and it seems too hard to handle
Chiquitita, tell me the truth
There is no way you can deny it
I see that you're oh so sad, so quiet

Chiquitita, you and I know
How the heartaches come and they go and the scars theyre leaving
You'll be dancing once again and the pain will end
You will have no time for grieving
Chiquitita, you and I cry
But the sun is still in the sky and shining above you
Let me hear you sing once more like you did before
Sing a new song, chiquitita
Try once more like you did before
Sing a new song, chiquitita
Try once more like you did before
Sing a new song, chiquitita

-ABBA

For Grandma Florence

Today I wrote and then took a break to see an orchid show. It was great to be in such light with these amazing flowers. Orchids always make me think of my dear Grandma who died 14 years ago today. I always remember the day with something special in her honor. Today it was the orchids.

I have just been trying to express myself-... I just have to say things you know - Words and I are not good friends at all except with some people-when I am close to them and can feel as well as hear their response-I have to say it someway-Last year I went color mad-but Ive almost hated to think of color since the fall went-Ive been slaving on the violin-trying to make that talk-I wish I could tell you some of the things Ive wanted to say as I felt them...The drawings dont count-it is the life-that really counts-To say things that way may be a relief-....It may be interesting to see how different people react to them...-I am glad they said something to you. -I think so much alone-work alone-am so much alone-but for letters...

I cant tell you how sorry I am that I cant talk to you-what Ive been thinking surprises me so-it has been such fun-at times has hurt too...that would be great to tell you..

You see-I would go in and talk to you if I could-and I hate to be completely outdone by a little thing like distance.

-Georgia O'Keeffe in a letter to Alfred Stieglitz, 1916

For T and C

Oh my heart my sad heart
and fighting and rough words at home today when all I want is solace
She turned to watch, her little eyes following my tears
and how did I know that her friend now gone helped her lose that tooth
I pointed out yesterday
She smiled a sad smile, gave me her trust
and it stole my heart
which aches for them all
There is no greater grief then the long mass for two dead children
although the light makes the room shine with a million colors from the windows
and I want to paint flowers with butterflies, a perfect beauty
for them
with two white balloons against the sky and a million teddy bears sitting at the edge of the road that I pass to remember
We bowed our heads together as one
and wept for them
I know as we scattered we weep still
I need arms to hold me up, I am not strong enough to carry this
all this dying, dead ends and disappointments cut me down
tomorrow comes though with its anniversary of another great loss in my life
and I will find the sweet tinge of hope despite it all

Memorize yourself with the starling dance here

The pictures should have been shown for a wedding, a graduation, anything but this. Her little face which never had time to grow into the lean lines of adulthood. Her barbie doll laying on the table with a small silver crown she liked to wear. His drawing was on the table, he was always so proud and satisfied when he worked on them. His classmates would gather around him as if he were a magician when he drew a car or the Titanic. (he loved to draw machines) Tonight there was just some pictures and matchbox cars to tell the story of a life. I found it hard to breath and kept staring at the flowers that were so vivid and fresh in this room that closed its walls on me as I moved through the line. I hugged her tight, what could I say except give her hope in a hug, her children are gone forever. We all loved them so much.

I don't want to paint
without your eyes
all the color runs empty
to the memory of the red pulse
as you showed me your fingertips

My brush hits canvas with no music
no soft-lifting cadence
of your perfect voice.

How your words color me
their memory sweet
falling flowers
that I cannot scoop upwards

My heart hangs an empty show
a requiem for
a lost story

It hopes among the crowded
for one pair of amber eyes
to lock on it, break rules
of composition

this work we did
you said once
and I thought I would fly

Let the paintings stay unfinished
I cannot bear their sad hope
that even now longs
for your finishing touch

-Corbyhawk

can't light no more of your darkness
All my pictures seem to fade to black and white
I'm growing tired and time stands still before me
Frozen here on the ladder of my life

Too late to save myself from falling
I took a chance and changed your way of life
But you misread my meaning when I met you
Closed the door and left me blinded by the light

Don't let the sun go down on me
Although I search myself, it's always someone else I see
I'd just allow a fragment of your life to wander free
But losing everything is like the sun going down on me

I can't find, oh the right romantic line
But see me once and see the way I feel
Don't discard me just because you think I mean you harm
But these cuts I have they need love to help them heal

-Elton John

I am back for a moment to express my sorrow at the loss of two of my students today. They were only 11 and 7 years old. I knew them very well and I am just utterly at a loss to put words to this tragedy. I loved those kids.

My point in posting is this, do not let one more minute slip through your fingers. Tell them you love them, do what you are meant to do, laugh, eat an extra slice of cake, and live. Life is too short. Tomorrow is just too damn late.

My readers, tonight I say goodbye for a while. Be well and take care. I just cannot be so open right now and some things are better left unsaid.

They are throwing those words around. "Core" subjects, streamline, resource sharing, budget, future, technology, justify, exemplar... I see this future coming and it will not let me pretend that I can sit back and bury my head to let my bigger dreams pass. The future is a dog nudging my hand over and over in its loyal persistence. See me, see me, see me, see me, such constancy. I am in the mood to slay the gods, of the normative mainstream. I am in the mood to shine and fight the silencing of my own vision to fit the status quo. Nudge, nudge, nudge, like a loyal dog I nudge you. Face your fear and leap. The world needs your light not your conformity. Do not get tied to their ribbons.

end over end

I am Fenrir
and today I considered the weight of this arm
as it lay encased
in the iron of dull eyes
useless words and empty expressions
I felt its pulse under my tongue
as I ran along the edges
and hungered for the flesh ripped free
to bone.

I hear the echo of some other world
limbless, what price?
The blood of a thousand other days
worth one instant of horror
as I chew out
the predators circle taunting my courage
with their sticks of apathy
My heart hits bone
snapped easily when the
only choice is courage

The iron plays at kindness
the offer of warm food
laying limp and bloody
with one remaining piece of me.

-By the Corbyhawk and no it was not a nice day

Well the last day and a half have been very eventful and not so much in a good way. I have had a bit of a crisis at work which I will not divulge the details of which, except that it is rather horrible and sort of embarrassing. This is not generally good and I am not looking forward to the drama that will greet me when I get there tomorrow. In other news my previous food purchases could make me very sick so...I did manage to get a shot today along with a large portion of the other affected public. This required waiting in large lines for long periods of time. Luckily I am under 40, the older folks had to get the shot, in their buttocks. Not the sort of fun you want to have on a Sunday. How I manage to get into these little dramas I will never know. I seem to attract it. One little predicament after another, silly and stressful. The show went well. I did have to take out a tissue in my pocket and wipe off the greasy fingerprints on my picture during the opening. It was quick though and understandable as it really did not look good to have slime on my work. My friends understood and expected no less from me. Argh...argh....today is argh

So I am in a show tomorrow and I have to go to the opening tomorrow night. The show is generally a comedy of errors so I have not told the people I know. Why, you may ask? Well the first year they hung my photo upside down. So I pulled it down and flipped it over. The next year I had not affixed the image well and it slid out of the matt and was crooked. So I took it down and fixed it. (my taking the picture off the wall during the opening horrified my friends. -my opinion is a minute of horror for the rest of the show time with the work being fixed the correct way) So I quietly wonder at what kind of stupidity will happen with it tomorrow night. I plan on working in the studio tomorrow and I have work to take to the framers. Another show is coming up and I am trying to get everything together for it. My mind is tired tonight so off I go. Goodnight.

Lift

Hold on tight to your dream
Hold on tight to your dream
When you see your ship go sailing
When you feel your heart is breaking
Hold tight to your dream.

Its a long time to be gone
Time just rolls on and on
When you need a shoulder to cry on
When you get so sick of trying
Just hold tight to your dream

Chorus:
When you get so down that you cant get up
And you want so much but you're all out of luck
When you're so downhearted and misunderstood
Just over & over & over you could


Hold on tight to your dream
Hold on tight to your dream
When you see the shadows falling
When you hear that cold wind calling
Hold on tight to your dream.

Oh, yeah
Hold on tight to your dream
Yeah, hold on tight...
To your dream.

-Electric Light Orchestra

osprey looking

Because joy has wider wings
than sorrow, it disappears faster,
catching the first good thermal east,
sailing off into promises.
Sorrow meantime scrawks on its
leathery stubs, trying to gain on
altitude, kicking up rocks and dust.

From -A Parable of Brother Sorrow by Ralph Black

Do you know what is funny or maybe not so much so, I still check his blog (this moment). I wonder at that impulse, as if by some miracle he will be back posting. A little thing but the absence hits me and I am reluctant to admit to goodbye when so many of them are coming to me. I hate goodbyes and I am tired of them. I shake my fist at you world with your need for endings. Jeers to goodbye and endings. Jeers.

ending or beginning?

Let's stay up all night and watch the sun come up
You bring up my wild side and I can't get enough
Enough of you and the stories you tell
Whisper sweet weave me into your spell

Last time I saw you
You took me by surprise
Tried to smile through my sorrow
But from you I could not hide
With a kiss you breathed life back into me
You stole my heart
When you set my soul free

Chorus:
And it's gonna be a long time till I see you again
Hold me close, rest your hand in mine
Let me love you and we'll say goodbye
For a long, long time

I love the way I feel with you
I can just be myself
And that dark cloud that follows me will have to find someone else
And we'll laugh until that sun does shine
Then you'll go your way and I'll go mine

Chorus

Bridge:
I don't care where it is we're going
I stopped looking at the world in black and white
Just the thought of you
Your eyes (light brown)
Brightens up my life

And it's gonna be a long time
And it sets me free
Let love shine
And it's gonna be a long time
Till I see you again
Hold me close
Rest your hand in mine
Let me love you
And we'll say goodbye for a long, long time

lyrics to Long Time written by Annie Burns (one little change by me)

A young person I know (he is 5) said today that his classmate, let's call her Sarah thinks he is cute. He made this statement while the rest of the class was sitting quietly. He then said "we are going to be in love, but not until we are grown up because love is for grown ups." I had to hide my face to not laugh out loud, since he said it with such purpose. So I asked him later when he came up to me if he liked Sarah, and he said "No, but when I am more grown up I will have a crush on her because that kind of thing is for grown ups."

Now you have to know the two of them, she makes these jokes for him in class and he will laugh out loud with this silly really funny little heh heh heh laugh. It is very sweet.

Bernini Apollo and Daphne

So that you must not attach any great botanical importance to the characters of contrasted aspects in leaves, which I wish you to express by the words "Apolline" and "Arethusan"; but their mythic importance is very great, and your careful observance of it will help you completely to understand the beautiful Greek fable of Apollo and Daphne. There are indeed several Daphnes, and the first root of the name is far away in another field of thought altogether, connected with the Gods of Light. But etymology, the best of servants, is an unreasonable master...Daphne chased by Apollo, may have perhaps-though I doubt even this much of consistence in the earlier myth-have meant the Dawn pursued by the Sun. ...
so Daphne of the leafy peace. She is, in her first life, the daughter of the mountain river, the mist of it filling the valley; the Sun, pursuing, and effacing it, from dell to dell, is, literally, Apollo pursuing Daphne...
And farther, the leaf, in its connection with the river, is typically expressive, not as the flower was, of human fading and passing away, but of the perpetual flow and renewal of the human mind and thought, rising "like the rivers that run among the hills";

-John Ruskin from Proserpina Studies of Wayside Flowers, While the Air Was Yet Pure -1888

Tie your heart at night to mine, love,
and both will defeat the darkness
like twin drums beating in the forest
against the heavy wall of wet leaves.

Night crossing: black coal of dream
that cuts the thread of earthly orbs
with the punctuality of a headlong train
that pulls cold stone and shadow endlessly.

Love, because of it, tie me to a purer movement,
to the grip on life that beats in your breast,
with the wings of a submerged swan,

So that our dream might reply
to the sky's questioning stars
with one key, one door closed to shadow.

-Tie Your Heart at Night to Mine by Pablo Neruda

Me reflected/ice flower eyes

You are getting me today and rather early since I was off again today due to weather. (yes a dance was done this morning as work was called off for the second time this week)
What I am contemplating is ice, this is especially prevalent today when the world was for several hours coated in the stuff. What an interesting outward reflection of a personal inner state as if somehow my little voice called the frozen world into being. A silly notion, but so compelling today. I went out and crunched around in it for a time, letting the rain soak my coat and the cold wet air fill my sore lungs (some kind of cold that is refusing to leave me, so today I got armed with antibiotics). The world was encased in light reflections muted at the lack of direct sun but the possibility of the radiance was still there. Everything looked so fragile and delicate; little tree branches coated in ice, cold and the potential of spring very hidden. It is a wonder that the seasons can change at all but they will.

Today I feel loss and lost but I am determined not to. I am determined to have the best month ever and feel my luck changing. All my stubborn resolve cannot ease the sorrow of what is and what will eventually be. Loss is loss and as the wheels of time churn away, I cannot stop them nor slow the progress of the eventual end and this above all bothers me. I do not know what I will do, but I know that I will have to just go on. I am stronger then all of this worry really. It strikes me with a desperation that I do not want to feel and I find myself wanting to free the branches of their icy sleep. I know that you cannot rush spring and it will come both in its beauty and its sadness. Today ice is the nature of the world like my soul that is just starting to crack free of it. Can there be anything worse then lack of change? Can there be anything worse then change? No peace here today,only restlessness, but tomorrow has its own way free.

How my body blooms from every vein
more fragrantly, since I first knew you;
look, I walk slimmer and straighter,
and you only wait-: who are you then?

Look: I feel how I am moving away,
How I'm shedding my old life, leaf by leaf.
Only your smile stands like pure stars
over you and, soon now, over me.

-From Sacrifice by Rainer Maria Rilke

Peacock

In honor of James Joyce, a telegram sent to him from Nora-

yes

my dog in the snow

You have not made me suffer,
merely wait.

Those tangled
hours, filled
with serpents,
when
my heart stopped and I stifled,
you would come along,...

-From You Would Come by Pablo Neruda

We sit at the threshold and I wonder at what it means to be a visionary at this time and place. I can only record what I see and experience now in order to translate it to a future. For me that is one of the major goals of art, to signify an experience, a time, a translation and to freeze it within the scrutiny of paint. -reflections on my work

This video is interesting and spawned a translation in my mind of my moodiness lately after some highbrow discussion about the future of education. I need to be more visionary and less mundanely adult. I am going to make an effort to get into a better place mentally and be a leader of vision and make change happen instead of just lamenting what is not. The future of art and education is one that is not at all static.

Here is the video

Brown Creeper

I am feeling a bit better which is good since I have a challenging week ahead of me. The melancholy of Sunday, endless endings of time on a small scale. I want to do this and this and well it is evening already and the hours are gone. Today I am a much better painter then yesterday and tomorrow I will be even better. I keep working not minding so much the necessary radical shifts I have needed to overcome stiffness and dull areas of my paintings. I almost revel in the destruction of it and am not attached to my unsuccessful attempts. They are lifeless and I am longing for life. I will not mourn the inevitable I have decided. The ending of days has equaled one less day of time. One moment less before the ending I worry is coming. Such an ending but can it be a new start? I will still carry this persistent tight ball of hope that at times makes me believe with such a childlike intensity in things. I believe in this thing, I do despite every reason not too. I just plain do and I cannot say why or stop it. I have given up trying to stop it, it just is. I hate goodbyes and I just do not want to say that to him ever. So here is to hope, twilight times, and little musical brown creepers who dance in my eyes.

Visitors

the brown creepers fly in
with the late afternoon winter light
a sprinkle of little bells that descend
as they dance sideways upwards
on the trees

they probe the bark
with their delicate curving beaks
finding some small treasures there
and flying off to investigate
the next trunk

their backs covered
with the feathers of bark
they appear and disappear
in the twilight
until they go
with the whoosh of tiny wingbeats

-by the Corbyhawk -just a little thought description really

Stalking Magpie

ok, post number two on this lazy Saturday. ( ok not so lazy since I have been painting since 9AM)
The alchemy idea works for me in the back of my mind. If I think of the elements in a painting as air earth fire and water and try to balance them it seems to make sense to me. I think I may have figured this one out a bit more. It has been -lighten the pants, no darken the pants, no lighten the pants. I have painted them over and over. I made the light more directional which helps. Now I am still looking at the pants and thinking hmmmm darken etc etc I cannot leave them yet. fuss fuss fuss ...I feel a bit better but my lungs feel heavy still so I took a nap which I simply never do. It felt really delicious though but no good dreams to greet me, everything is so quiet lately. I am waiting for my optimism to return and hope. Off I go less angry at this painting to get the pants right again.