sleeping duck

They all will find their way
They all will go
And I am walking circles in a dark room alone

Hey hey hush now
Hey hey heart don’t break
I want to see your face fall
When you hear my name

Hey hey don’t find your way
Hey hey don’t wait
Hush now there’s your answer
You cannot fight your fate

They all will find their way
They all will change
And I am painting circles
On a silence for my shame

-a little Corby wrote me

Ring around the rosies
pockets full of posies
ashes ashes
we all fall down

oiled birds, check this blog here

I wish the idea of time would drain out of my cells and leave me quiet even on this shore.

-Agnes Martin "Writings"

Well I managed to rein in the face I was painting, although I am about to tackle the eye. One is just sitting wrong and I cannot live with it. I am too picky for my own good.

I am spotted today, literally all over. I am allergic to some medicine I was taking and now I look like a bizarre human dot to dot. It is really wonderful considering that I had drop in house guests and I do have to be in public tomorrow. Just call me spotty, or rather I should change my name to Dottie. Ah well at least I can still laugh at the silliness that is my life. Let's all hope that tomorrow it fades away and I am back to my normal less animal print self. Ahh... the Glamorous life I lead.

arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggghhhhhhhhh!
Do you want to know how "romantic" art making is? Well guess what? Today it is not. I am trying to be zen, happy, enjoy myself and it is just not happening. I want to take this crappy piece of ass painting and throw it and all of its trickery out the god damn window. UGH. When I need to get things accomplished I dither and dither forever on a face that well looks like a pumpkin with drugged out eyes. Perhaps tomorrow I will remember I can paint, because today I am beginning to wonder. My effortless passages are only achieved after hours of steady revisions, looking for that one bit of perfect color. Some people can just do that I am sure and I am wondering why I work so damn hard anyway. Perhaps I should think about abstractions and not pumpkin heads. Perhaps I should quit for the night but I generally have a policy to not stop until I have a good resolution. Perhaps slightly upturned noses are generally problematic and should not be allowed. Perhaps I should shut up and continue painting.
Tah tah my lovelies.

I do not love you as if you were the salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

From Pablo Neruda' s Sonnet XVII, Between the Shadow and the Soul

I am loving this silly little blog, it makes me laugh.

Fallen

So I am leaving the conditions-and the final results to something beyond myself. I drew a strong lesson from one of your letters where you said-"don't trouble over the future or the past-but work"...

-Mardsen Hartley in a letter to Alfred Stieglitz from "My Dear Stieglitz"

Well behaved women seldom make history.

-Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Have I mentioned in the last 5 seconds how much I love painting. Nothing this week can even compare to the quiet thrill I am getting as I work today. I tell you though bloggers, that I am so glad this week is over and a new one begins. Perhaps we can all start over anew. Death cannot help but change you, no matter how unwilling you are to let it claw its way in. So here I sit painting and trying to make sense of what cannot be understood. I have lost faith in my dreams, they are only painted wishes a heart makes with no prophecy in them. Little lies, but sweet lies indeed, so beautifully marked on the canvas.

Which one lays golden eggs?

A man and his wife had the good fortune to possess a goose which laid a golden egg every day. Lucky though they were, they soon began to think they were not getting rich fast enough, and, imagining the bird must be made of gold inside, they decided to kill it in order to secure the whole store of precious metal at once. But when they cut it open they found it was just like any other goose. Thus, they neither got rich all at once, as they had hoped, nor enjoyed any longer the daily addition to their wealth.

Much wants more and loses all.

The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs- by Aesop

waiting

I want to be brave, I want to be brave
But the night goes up in flames
The courage we need
A fury to tame
This madness, madness, madness

No more,
will I count the dead
Bending gathering words
I should have said

When the night falls
It scrapes its knees
We watch the houses on fire
And she says to me
I want to be brave, I want to be brave
But I don’t think I’ll love again
The dark is so deep
I’ve lost my way

Sarah Slean -Madeline

turning away

ASSING stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,

You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me as of a dream,)

I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,

All is recall'd as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,

You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with me,

I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become not yours only nor left my body mine only,

You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass, you take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,

I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone,

I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,

I am to see to it that I do not lose you.

Walt Whitman-To A Stranger