"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....

One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Short Circuit

For no reason,
all at once,

a dove and a jay
swerve the land

at oppposite ends
of the clothesline,

and the clothes-mine,
all mine!-commence

to dance with reckless
love and joy.

Daniel Hall

"It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know it has begun. A thousand heralds proclaim it to the listening air, a thousand messengers betray it to the eye. Tone, act, attitude and look, the signals upon the countenance, the electric telegraph of touch - all these betray the yielding citadel before the word itself is uttered, which, like the key surrendered, opens every avenue and gate of entrance, and renders retreat impossible."

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882).

Two seperate divided silences,
Which, brought together, would find loving voice;
Two glances which together would rejoice
In love, now lost like stars beyond dark trees;
Two hands apart, whose touch alone gives ease;
Two bosoms which, heart-shrined with mutual flame,
Would, meeting in one clasp, be made the same;

-Severed Selves- Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Sun Raven

Experiments with Common Ravens, on the other hand, have demonstrated that they can show true insight when solving problems, without prior trial-and-error learning. Ravens faced with a novel task, such as getting food that is dangling on the end of a string, were able to assess the problem and then use their feet to hold the string and pull the food up.


-Kevin J. McGowan in The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior

Cold Fuschia

But there was another truth she was now fully aware of. Something had created in her a state of perpetual defense against the very possibilities of experience,an urge for flight which took her away from the scenes of pleasure and expansion. She had stood many times on the very edge, and then had run away. She herself was to blame for what she had lost, ignored.

-Anais Nin

Sneaker Tree

Then Iris came as messenger to white-armed Helen,
taking on the image of her sister-in-law,
wife of Antenor's son, fine Helicaon.
Her name was Laodice, of all Priam's daughters the most beautiful.
She found Helen in her room,
weaving a large cloth, a double purple cloak,
creating pictures of the many battle scenes
between horse-taming Trojans and bronze-clad Achaeans,
wars they suffered for her sake at the hands of Ares.
Standing near by, swift-footed Iris said:

"Come here, dear girl.
Look at the amazing things going on.
Horse-taming Trojans and bronze-clad Achaeans,
men who earlier were fighting one another
in wretched war out there on the plain,
both keen for war's destruction, are sitting still.
Alexander and war-loving Menelaus
are going to fight for you with their long spears.
The man who triumphs will call you his dear wife."

-Homer's Iliad, translation by Ian Johnston

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind

-Shakespeare from a Midsummer Night's Dream

Beauty, thou wild fantastic ape
Who dost in every country change thy shape!

-Abraham Cowley

the morning after

Let's just say mother nature decided to limit my blogging over the last few days.
I am now back online with power and internet, which makes for warmer evenings.
It is extremely difficult to paint by candlelight.
I am rather glad I was able to make it home Thursday night as it was a dicey ride home and a tractor trailer was determined to run me off the road, he was not successful and Subaru's rock in deep snow.

The road home

To my little Arthur

The room is silent
even the doves do not coo
your little body
lays prone
wings outstretched
this last flight is long
I imagine you crossing
over distant places
to some home
beyond your wire cage
an expanse of trees
filled with yellow-green
copies of you
in a constant chirping
conversation
my hand only warms your edges
and closes your unseeing eyes.

-by the Corby herself
goodnight little Arthur you have been a loyal companion for many years and will be missed

#42

At this institute of higher learning I attend there was an interesting conversation. A fellow artist said that he "would rather not make anything at all." This was in regards to making work vs. hiring someone else to make the work.

Call me old fashioned but I was rather horrified by the thought of not making anything myself. It would sort of defeat the purpose of learning any usable art skills at all. If that is the case then why even bother attending such an institute of higher learning in the first place?

If you have never made a good painting, how would you really know what one was? Or do you rely on the skills of the crafters to create what is good? Of course all of the art historians will be crawling on my back, but to me looking at a painting is a kinesthetic experience born of doing.

So I should just hire someone to create the work to earn my degree and claim it is about the experiences of capitalism. Perhaps I can even hire someone to write my thesis as well. Brilliant and why do I even work at all?

This would work well with the colleague educator who feels that we will be soon teaching virtually and no teachers will have to physically be in school. Why suffer from human contact?

My last but not least rant of today, is if you hit an animal on the road, stop your so busy life for a minute and grant it the courtesy of moving it off of the road. This is especially true if it is a pet animal, such as a cat. Take some responsibility, so that when the owner comes home they at least think the person cared enough after they destroyed a beloved pet to move it and give it some dignity.

So to the unmentionable person who swerved purposely to further mutilate the animal when I went to cover the other insensitive (edited for content)'s backside. Thanks alot for the lovely visual that I and the owner now have to suffer because you are a clueless idiot.

Ok, I feel better now.

“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.”

-Edward Abbey

sigh...

http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/column?oid=oid%3A406104

trying to earn a living as an artist...

memory

Jasper Park in Canada

Pretend your happy when your blue
It isnt very hard to do
And you'll find happiness without an end
Whenever you pretend

Remember anyone can dream
And nothings bad as it may seem
The little things you havent got
Could be a lot if you pretend

Youll find a love you can share
One you can call all your own
Just close your eyes, he'll be there
You'll never be alone

And if you sing this melody
Youll be pretending just like me
The world is mine, it can be yours, my friend
So why dont you pretend?

And if you sing this melody
Youll be pretending just like me
The world is mine, it can be yours, my friend
So why dont you pretend?

sung by Nat King Cole words by Lew Douglas, Cliff Parman, and Frank Lavere

They set up rival looms across
The room, stretching the weblike threads from beam
To beam and, where the reeds divided them,
Flashing their shuttles through with ardent fingers
While the toothed heddles beat the nap in place.
Stoles tight across their breasts, their bare arms weaving,
They took delight in speed and craftsmanship;
And there upon the looms Tyrian purple
Shaded to lavender and violet-rose,
As though one saw the sun strike passing rain,
Its rainbow ribbon across the sky,
A thousand colors streaming light within it,
Each melting into each where no eye sees
One fade into the other, yet both far ends
Colors of distant hue-gold thread to bind them,
To weave a story of long years ago.

-Ovid -Metamorphoses

from the local art gallery off of a sign describing the work:

...sports related paintings the artist has chosen to paint, not because he is a sports fan but he considers sports to be a contemporary American vehicle to explore the human condition.

really in high art darling you don't want to be associated with the sport loving types.

Chrysantemum
For you I am a chrysantemum
Supernova, urgent star
Astera Compositae
For you I'll be a dandelion
a thousand flowerettes in the sky
Or just a drop in the ocean
If you know my name
don't speak it out
it holds a power - as before
Liliacea
A lily of the valley
a flower of saron
Helianthus annus
For you I even be a sunflower
Do you hear my enlightening laughter?
another reason to cut off an ear
You know my name, do you not?
don't say it
For it's a sacred, immovable - frozen
Rosa, Anemone etNymphea alba
I'll even be a waterlily, a marygold, a rose
or a little thistle
Euphorbiaa blue dahlia,
a black tulip
that's where opinions differ
the scholars disagree
My name, should you know it
remains unspeakable
and it's spoken - malediction


-Einstuerzende Neubauten Blume

red in morning

beauty still exists and tonight all the work can wait
it is my night to dream in


the rest of these words are my own

A bath

"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy"

-The Shining by Stephen King

"All work and no play makes Corby a dull girl"

O Bonny Portmore I am sorry to see
Such a woeful destruction of your ornament tree
For it stood on your shore for many's the long day
Till the long boats from Antrim came to float it away.

O Bonny Portmore you shine where you stand
And the more I think on you the more I think long
If I had you now as I had once before
All the Lords in Old England would not purchase Portmore.

All the Birds in the forest they bitterly weep
Saying "where shall we shelter or where shall we sleep?"
For the Oak and the Ash they all cutten down
And the walls of Bonny Portmore are all down to the ground.

O Bonny Portmore you shine where you stand
And the more I think on you the more I think long
If I had you now as I had once before
All the Lords in Old England would not purchase Portmore.

-traditional

One of the Fallen

They took down all the trees. It was over quickly, their slow life was ended by a few bulldozers. I grew up with them. I crawled into their limbs as an escape. I hid near their roots when I needed a reprieve the regular world. I imagined their conversations as the wind pushed itself through their leaves. They were my secret garden, a microcosm of all of the great forests I would someday visit and find familiar. Today these memories represent ghosts. A severed shell remains of them. Sitting cut on the cool night grass; they are slowly dying.

Dance

Good luck with the first molt.
To see the love of your life turn indifferent to your affections during the long hot summer, only to come back to you in the fall will teach you something about hawks and yourself. And do not be surprised if you come to love autumn more then before.

-The Falconer's Apprentice William C. Oakes

We have come to the edge of the woods,
out of brown grass where we slept, unseen,
out of knotted twigs, out of leaves creaked shut,
out of hiding.

At first the light wavered, glancing over us.
Then it clenched to a fist of light that pointed,
searched out, divided us.
Each took the beams like direct blows the heart answers.
Each of us moved forward alone.

...It is their turn now,
their turn to follow us. Listen,
they out down their equipment.
It is useless in the tall brush.

And now they take the first steps, now knowing
how deep the woods are and lightless.
How deep the woods are.

- Jacklight by Louise Erdrich

I can only tell you that my motivation has tanked out on me. I am finding it difficult to continue my painting and I am sitting here looking at it and wanting it to be more then it will be. I am a bit nervous about my lack of drive, it is a dangerous place to be in.

I find my peers are in a different place and I am in need of a good art conversation. So I will have a nice chat with this painting and hate every minute of its making. I will hate the paint, the brushes, the sound of it, and the realization that I am about to fall upon my own failure if I cannot keep up with an impossible schedule. So I am pushed ahead by my will but so much of me is reluctant. I just want to stop thinking and sit for a while. I am reaching for something but I am not sure what. Every moment I exist feels spoken for, when does it give back?

So I say Art mocks itself....

"In the future, whose idea of beauty and order will be in public spaces? That is perhaps the greatest question we have to face. You can look at a landscape and you can see it as perfect in itself. Or you can look at it as undeveloped land. Those are two very different points of view. Who will make the public art in that space?"

-Judith Baca

I said your name today
it was a rush of wind
upon my lips
bringing forth a
contorted face as I
tried to hide the weight
it flew from me
and created its own wings


-by the corbyhawk herself

The Dalliance of Eagles

SKIRTING the river road, (my forenoon walk, my rest,)
Skyward in air a sudden muffled sound, the dalliance of the eagles,
The rushing amorous contact high in space together,
The clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel,
Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling,
In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling,
Till o’er the river pois’d, the twain yet one, a moment’s lull,
A motionless still balance in the air, then parting, talons loosing,
Upward again on slow-firm pinions slanting, their separate diverse flight,
She hers, he his, pursuing.

Walt Whitman

Melting Tundra

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6098974

Goodbye river, the sweet smell, the curling waves around my oars as I row, peace for a moment, and I am free to be nothing at all but a passenger on its back. Your sanctuary will be dearly missed.

I

Strings of the Earth and air
Make music sweet;
Strings by the river where
The willows meet.

There’s music along the river
For love wanders there,
Pale flowers on his mantle,
Dark leaves on his hair.

All softly playing,
With head to music bent,
And fingers straying
Upon an instrument.

-James Joyce

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,

-The Love Song of J. ALfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot

Future Home of: XYZ company+ rats, crows, gulls, and mice

Former Home of: shrikes, field sparrows, goldfinches, deer, opossum, bobolinks, red-winged blackbirds, monarch butterflies, etc....


Response to painted message on car that read: Jesus Loves You

What gave you the authority to pre-suppose that?

This is a reactionary work
clever pun
signifier for a cultural issue
a reference to pop culture
the cult of identity
an abstract cliche
worship at the shrine of beauty
anti-(insert subject here)


..........

9-11

I remember standing in the breakroom where I was working. We were all watching the TV as the news media struggled to put a clear frame around what was going on. The second plane hit as we stood and I turned to a friend and said, "this means war."
After the pentagon was hit we began to feel fear, suddenly no place was safe and we were close to a potential target. Nothing really ever was the same.
I remember how so many people changed in small ways. There was a solidarity that remained for a brief time but was lost. When I was placing flags in my front yard a few days after the attack, so many people honked their horns in a show of support.

The question is how far have we come since then as a Nation?

The Goose

The capture

She slept hidden under the tree, but I noticed her. Her left wing sitting oddly; her shape unbalanced. She was also alone.

I had seen her a few days ago, when I was in transit from work to work so to speak. All of my time now consumed by deadlines and responsibilities, but she gave me a moment’s pause as I considered her.

I left her twice because I knew she was not going to be saved. The angle of that wing was too dramatic, it hung from her like a banner. Today is Sunday and I was on my way home from my studio. I had already had a meeting and am even now postponing more work I must get to. Still, I knew what I must try to do. I turned around and bought a container for her to ride in.

Now a catch of a semi-flighted bird that can swim well near water is a daunting task with a crew of people. I was stuck with just my own self to manage it.

I tested her by walking directly up to her. I knew she would be off balance and clumsy with her broken wing. I was hoping she was so tired and out of it (we call it ‘down’) that I could just grab her as she lay there.

She stood assessing me as a threat and began to hiss. All of her feathers stood on her neck as she swayed her head back and forth. We became one in our concentration, she to get into the water and me to keep her from the water. I stood between her and the muddy pond. If she reached it there would be no way I could catch her. She knew this and began to run using her good wing to give her speed.

I ran as well in singular purpose, to prevent her from getting into the water.

We danced; she and I, each of us mirroring the other in anticipation of the next move, left or right. I cannot describe it in rational words how I can read the slightest turn of the head or lift of feather to know where the bird is going. It is not part of my “modern” brain. It is some deeper place that language does not go to. There is no room in it for regular thought, it goes ahead of it controlling every muscle as I ran side to side. My body was pushed forward by my will. I can’t really recall when I have ever ran and dodged that fast.

In a catch one of you will make a mistake. You have to watch for it, a stumble the body weakening just a bit. Your window is small because otherwise the mistake will become yours and the game is up.

She tripped, falling on her chest as she forgot for a moment that one of her wings would not help her balance. I grabbed her then, hearing her hiss. She briefly struggled away and I caught her again.

Unlike some birds geese do not ever give up. Swans do, they realize the game is up and they just gently give in. This goose was determined to get free of me. I held on with my heart pounding and my lungs reminding me that they were still not quite healed after my bad illness this past spring.

Panting I got her in the container and closed the lid. My jaw hurt from the rush of adrenaline that must have helped me run faster. Now she is here for a brief span before she goes to be humanely euthanized. Which is a better death then slowly starving under that tree alone.

You stand here in my place
Feel the warmth upon your face
Stand back and start to smile
You now have time, you now have will.

I would never want to leave this country
Where roads are fast and knowledge easy.
I would never want to take you with me
Unless you're open and trust my hand.

I would never wish this much on you
When what you have might be enough.
I would never want to drive that fast
Unless you're ready, willing, happy.

Take me away from these simple feelings I know
There's places on the other sides of here.
Take me away from these simple feelings I know,
I'll take that car and drive there faster.

Drive That Fast -Kitchens of Distinction

and you too could have this at your home

Ok, but really...bronzed baby poop
I like the not Dada but doodoo reference; it is rather hi-brow.

http://www.artinfo.com/News/Article.aspx?a=19443

He looked into her eyes and saw the stars
Though staring does not satisfy desire

-Ovid Metamorphoses

White- Tailed Ptarmigan

Hold on honey, there's a new dawn coming
and a big bird to sweep you away
Are you born yet? Are you listening?
Are you sick of staring at the walls?
Are you hungry? Are you angry?
Are you wondering if there is anyone at all?
Hold on honey there's a new dawn coming
and a big bird to sweep you away

-Cowboy Junkies

intemperate and savage, the hawk remembers him;



-Robinson Jeffers

The King

steller's jay, northern mockingbird, long-billed curlew, great egret, blackburnian warbler, mountain chickadee, glossy ibis, rough-legged hawk, trumpeter swan, belted kingfisher, sooty tern, royal albatross, limpkin, snow goose, brown creeper, northern waterthrush, european blackbird, carrion crow, king vulture, andean condor, scarlet tanager, manx shearwater, north polar skua....

We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven into an age of unreason if we dig deep into our history and remember we are not descended from fearful men.

-Edward R. Murrow

On top of the world

swallow boom burb

It's happening everywhere; commercial and housing development, along with the road network need to suport it, is the single greatest pressure on natural landscapes in the United States, and by its very pervasiveness the hardest to control. Between 1982 and 1997, developed land in the forty-eight contiguous states increased by 25 million acres- meaning a quarter of all the open land lost since the European settlement disappeared in those fifteen years. This isn't a trend, it is a juggernaut, and the worst may be yet to come. At this pace, by 2025 there will be 68 million more rural acres in development, an area about the size of Wyoming, and the total developed land in the United States will stand at a Texas-sized 174 million acres. Already, just the impervious covering we put on the land, the things like roads, sidewalks, and buildings we pave with asphalt or concrete, add up to an area the size of Ohio.

...led Dolores Hayden, a professor of architecture and American studies at Yale, to compile a new lexicon by which to describe it, including a "boom burb" (for a fast growing suburb), "zoom burb" (for one growing even faster), "LULU" (Locally Unwanted Land Use), and "litter on a stick" (billboards).

-Scott Weidensaul
Return to Wild America: A Yearlong Search for the Continent's Natural Soul

rain rain go away,
come again another day...

from my mother, who got it from her mother...

last weekend of freedom = rain rain rain rain rain rain rain

resourceful

love or hate them, ring-billed gulls have adapted well to modern times

looking

went out to find the Manx Shearwater along with everyone else, but he was not there

Echo

Oh dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet;
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

-Christina Rossetti