lift-off

I think this may be my last post for a bit,
you see I have to concentrate on my painting.

I so long to break rules, but instead I will paint it away
sorry and sad.

I leave you for a time with O'Keeffe,
"Making your unknown known is the important thing-and keeping the unknown always beyond you-catching-crystalizing [sic] your simpler clearer vision of life-only to see it turn stale compared to what you vaguely feel ahead-that you always must keep working to grasp-"

-Quote by Georgia O'Keeffe published in Portrait of an Artist by Laurie Lisle

Innocent Sunday morning
As plain as the Sunday before
I thought as she told me her story
I don't think I can hear these anymore

Charting a map of land mines
Asleep in the settling dust
How come we never remember
How many times you picked yourself up

Hey that's the way to go
We need to know pain to grow
But you're right it's a long way home...

When the day breaks into dark.
I think there's nothing more beautiful
Than a face that has come so far.

-Sarah Slean Bonnie's Song

worked all day,

a reason to not drive on thick ice

Whooping Cranes are coming back from the brink:

read here listen here

Lanner Falcon

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;






-W.B. Yeats The Second Coming

My drive home from work was stunning. The sun was just starting to change to the yellows of a winter sunset in a light blue sky. Ice still coats every tree and it just glowed with the light. It accented each attenuated tree limb like an outline of fire. I felt like I had been transported into some childhood fairyland. Everyone was driving a bit slower and I think today is the first time I have ever thought of a power line as beautiful. It was a literal power line, glowing bright yellow from the ice and fringing the road. These golden strings passed on upward arcs to a pole and then swooped down. I wondered at how I could paint light like this, pure light that transformed objects into something magical. For a moment, I pretended to be driving to some other place between the worlds where an ordinary commute could take me somewhere beneath all of this normal living.

I am free today at least until late afternoon,which is a very good thing since some rather bad events happened at work last week. I dread going back and I do not have to today!!!

HA! Thank you ice and snow.

ice

There may come a time
When you'll be tired
As tired as a dream that wants to die
And further to fly
Further to fly
Further to fly
Further to fly

Maybe you will find a love
That you discover accidentally
Who falls against you gently
As a pickpocket
Brushes your thigh
Further to fly


-Paul Simon --Further to Fly

Pilgrim
Where’s your head at?
Are you paying the birds to sing?
Meet me
On the true path
I’ll be dizzy from growing wings


-Sarah Slean- Pilgrim

And he sang of the wondrous far-off places
That a man may only see in dreams,
The death-still, odorous, starlit spaces
where Time is lost and no life gleams.

And there till the day had its crest uplifted,
He stood with his still face bent on me,
Then forth with the Dawn departing drifted
Light as a foam-fleck on the sea.

And now my heart is the heart of a swallow
That here no solace of rest may find,
Forevermore I follow and follow
His white feet glancing down the wind.

And forevermore in my ears are ringing--
(Oh, red lips yet shall I kiss you dumb!)
Twain sole words of that May morn's singing,
Calling to me "Hither"! and "Come"!

From flower-bright fields to the wild lake-sedges
Crying my steps when Day has gone,
Till dim and small down the Night's pale edges
The stars have fluttered one by one.

-The Dream of Aengus Og by Eleanor Rogers Cox
(with a slight change in text from she to he)