The look on my dad's face was pure happiness. He was trying to act cool about it but he couldn't hide a childlike mirth that seemed to radiate out of him. You have work to do, I chided him with humor. I have accomplished my goal of getting a show for us this coming October. It was so good to see his obvious delight. For a moment he was moved as I commented on all of the people we could invite. He fought back some tears, as he has since his cancer at times. It is as if life touches him more since these days almost feel stolen from death that was so close before. It felt good to give this back to him.

twa corbies

Fallen into
Fall in love
Fall out of favor
Fallen
Falling
Fall
Fall down
wind Fall
Fall over
Falling down drunk
Falling off a log
Falling head over heels
Falling into a trap
Falling water
water fall
free fall
...

I do not want to wind up becoming a technician in my painting and I think that is what I should come out of that discussion with. That there should be places of effortless disregard in the painting that are intentional and much more profound then endless perfection of technique. That of course takes confidence and the ability to know when to stop trying to create a sense of realism. I need to have a greater reliance on my own translation of what I am seeing and create a sense of poetry of expression. That is what great painters have, above and beyond technicians, a method of emotional painting that evokes the same response within the viewer. I think I began to understand this the other night when I was at the local gallery. I was immersed in the paintings, while the gallery itself was filled with life. It was a celebration and I was moved by the art becoming alive as it was surrounded by its human family. Of course, this connection is what really makes a masterpiece, the artist speaking with their human family.

Sweet Ophelia
forced here in shadow
I hear him- far away muffled
the loss stings
Ophelia share your madness
bring out your wines
of bitter head
let's dance on the
river bottom
and throw life
like pansies
into the wind

by the Corbyhawk herself

Trumpet of the Swans

a true story:
Someone I know is getting a divorce, to prevent it she decided to attend a counseling session for people with "control issues". She did not return after the first meeting because -she did not like how it was run and she could do a much better job of running it herself.

Birds sing like we do read here

A drawing of mine, it is ok, rare that I actually put any work on this but why not throw caution to the wind tonight.

There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray,
love, remember: and there is pansies. that's for thoughts.


-Ophelia in Shakespeare's Hamlet

But what did he see there in the clear water? He saw his own reflection, and he was no longer a clumsy, grey, ugly bird- he was a swan himself.

It makes no difference where you are born, even in a poultry yard, if you have hatched out of a swan's egg!

-Hans Christian Anderson- The Ugly Duckling

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries

And look upon myself and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,

Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least; Shakespeare from Sonnet 29

I must tell you bloggers that I want very much to be a great painter someday
and I work and work at it as much as I can
it is slow progress and I find myself losing my faith in it
but what I cannot express well is that I need to do it
as a redemption as a means to creating some reason to be

I think I find being misunderstood the most disappointing thing
I use you as a mirror and lament my own mediocrity
The sadness of standing behind you and knowing that we can only fight our own battle
wishing somehow you would respect me and see the lengths I have gone to earn it from you
after I have championed you to so many, these are words you do not hear
songs you think unsung
what I see is your own anger and sadness
and even after we have danced in a sour tongue
I still will sing them for you have more merit then one off note

Our greatest glory is not in never falling,
but rising every time we fall.

-Confucius

1 and 2

Little Gray

This little squirrel has taken up residence in a bird house in my yard. He has it all, two exits for safety, all the food he could ever want with some variety to it, and a warm dry house. Red squirrels are not the most common squirrel here, mostly I have the larger gray squirrels, but this little guy chases them away. He is not even afraid of the crows that steal the suet cakes from the feeder (they fly away with the entire suet cage). He used to be more gray brown but he is turning the more customary red ochre. He sometimes will run around the snow piles in a seemingly random pattern and it never fails to amuse me.

The other night dear, as I lay sleeping,
I dreamed I held you in my arms,
but when I woke dear, I was mistaken,
and I hung my head and cried.

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
you make me happy when skies are gray
you'll never know dear, how much I love you,
please don't take my sunshine away.

Words and Music by
Jimmie Davis and Charles Mitchell

ghost hawk

a pale red-shouldered hawk

My First Memory of Her Face

Warm little destiny in my arms
silent at the dawn of day,
watching closely to memorize me
Soft you nuzzle in
like the light floating from the window
Encompassing us
in the quiet air
I sing to you, my old voice often catching
as you look unashamedly at my face
Who are you?
So serene in this place
in my arms, as if you know the future
something in the eyes
following nothing but my soul
as we rock back and forth
greeting time.

-for Florence, my grandmother who 13 years ago tonight left this world, my first memory is of her rocking me by an open window.

Shake your thing

Snow Dog

So I have seem to have a bit of trouble with the tendons in my right hand. This is problematic for all the work I have to do this weekend. I will do my writing work tonight and then hopefully it will not be so painful tomorrow. As it is my brush grip is weak which for an artist is utterly crippling, but I will work anyway if I have to push through it.

The Lost Dances of Cranes by Juliet Wilson

Your fields are empty now.

Only your ghosts dance

while cranes of another kind

dance cities into being.



All that remain of you are

a fading crackle of your energy

and some grainy video footage



that people in the new cities

will watch to marvel

at the wonders the world



once held.

Feathers "shingle" over one and another within each feather tract and this overlap may vary from tract to tract, such as the middle versus greater wing coverts.
-Don Eckelberry The Art of Bird Painting

First and most important, if you are serious in developing your talent in this direction, you should (indeed you must) get to know your subjects in life through observation. Naturalists know in an instant when an artist is inspired by field experience, and they are not fooled by a lot of detail which often bespeaks a dependence on mounted birds or photographs...

-Don Eckelberry From the Art of Bird Painting

More deformities

I am not sure why this local population of alien mute swans (they are European in origin and should not be here) are having bill deformities. Perhaps they are inbreeding-and a recessive trait is showing up, or there is a nutritional deficit. I originally thought they were injuries but they seem more like deformities. Hmmm....

what's cooking

A good lentil and rice recipe

6 cups of water
1 cup of rice
2 cups of lentils (I like the dark green-they taste a bit nuttier)
salt
add to pot and start it boiling
turn it down and simmer for 40 minutes

in another pan soften
1 cup of onions
3 garlic cloves (less if you are not a garlic fan)

add the onions and garlic to the lentils when they are done
add
two pinches of cumin
two pinches of corriander (ground)
some soy sauce
black pepper
drizzle some lemon on it
-a dash of hot sauce *not for the light palette

I like to serve it over a flat bread surrounded by greens with a bit of red wine vinegar on them and olive oil. It helps to have some good blues music playing while you cook to add some flavor.

~yum~ makes enough for 6 or lunches all week and it is preservative free!

Beautiful Deformity

The More Loving One
by W. H. Auden
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well That, for all they care, I can go to hell, But on earth indifference is the least We have to dread from man or beast. How should we like it were stars to burn With a passion for us we could not return? If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me. Admirer as I think I am Of stars that do not give a damn, I cannot, now I see them, say I missed one terribly all day. Were all stars to disappear or die, I should learn to look at an empty sky And feel its total dark sublime, Though this might take me a little time.

O bless me.
Am I going silent now?
O have I overnight been emptied?
If I could call these thoughts to come,
to stand on this paper
I could read what I mean
May I? May I?

O bless me.
Now I seem to come apart,
to sink
inside this overwhelming, What can I do?
What have I made of all of these new days?
And forgive my despair.

Where is color this hour?
Where is music this hour?
Are they still going on somewhere?
But where now, in this hush?
Where are words in this hush?
And what am I?


-Now in this Hush -Innocence Mission

Bird with unbarred wings disappeared
Rock with weighted heart returned
And rock became her anchor
And bird became her dream

-Rock and Bird- Cowboy Junkies

to love:

Edited for content -too personal to leave up for long

My kind of heart shape

I give you one loud, huge, warm and inviting smile.

Good news, good news!!!

I am braced and ready for any news. My heart is heavy as the things around me break apart with steady efficiency. This time I do not have as many resources to draw upon, this time I have seen the panic greeting your stare, this time I hear a different catch in your breath as you speak of it. All those who should hold me are fading away, so I have to pull myself up.

How can I be strong enough? I will not whine, I will not fall into a stupor of grief, I am made from stronger stock then that.

I can only push for your unrealized dreams and clasp a steady hand over yours. We will fight this again my father, I will not flinch away.

To shoulder this burden
while waiting in vain,again
Your strength is the weakness
On which your enemies prey
Then bury your conscience
let memories fade, away

Given the choice, I'd rather be anyone else
Given the chance, I'd rather be anywhere else

Let all your misgivings whither and fade
our humble possessions remain

Could all be forgotten
if nobody cared?
The weight you have carried
will crumble and fall, today

Given the choice I'd rather be anyone else
Given the chance I'd rather be anywhere else
Let all your misgivings whither and fade
our humble possessions remain

let all your misgivings whither and fade
Our humble possessions remain.

-I am Cuba -Finalyson Maize from Dark Hollow

Sunday Couch Potatoes

The vultures in India and Pakistan are disappearing, read a good article on it here

"But these wild vultures are disappearing so fast-up to 99 percent of the population is now gone.."Just 15 years ago Gyps vultures were thought to be the most numerous large raptors on the planet," Cuthbert says in a single decade they've undergone the most rapid population collapse of any animal in recorded history."

-Susan McGrath Feb. 2007 Smithsonian Magazine

I have been a bad blogger lately, mostly I am in an odd limbo. My painting looked good at the gallery tonight. They hung it well and it had a nice placement in the gallery. I felt secretly proud of it for a moment.

Now here I am just confused and horribly smitten. I am trying to remain rational and good, really I am... but then there is a BIG part of me that wants to well...

I wonder what would happen if he knew how attracted I am to him?
Ah, but how can I possibly even begin?

Stars may always guide our way~From desert sands where the winds blow harsh and long
Here's where, where our hearts will pray~And all our loves will slumber with a song

So now, if our hearts be true~And like a pool of truth reflect the sun
We will find right honour there~ And keep us safe and lead us from all harm

So come love, let us dance all night~Until the birds they waken at the dawn
Then come love, let us sing all night~And all our loves will slumber with a song

-The Gates of Istanbul -Loreena McKennitt

Retreating Glacier

"Sweetness is a desire that starts on the tongue with the sense of taste, but doesn't end there. Or at least it didn't end there, back when the experience of sweetness was so special that the word served as a metaphor for a certain kind of perfection. "

-oh so sweet....

-From The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan

At once a voice arose among
    The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
    Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
    In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
    Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
    Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
    Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
    His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
    And I was unaware.

-From The Darkling Thrush -Thomas Hardy

-from Wikipedia

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.


-If You Forget Me- Pablo Neruda

bridge

A sad day for Whooping Cranes, 18 known losses-potentially more...
The ones I saw may have been affected by the tornadoes last night.

The day is bitter~sweet, good news on a grant and I am in a show next weekend. The gallery owner was excited about my painting. So it is a mixed bag, because I hate to think something has happened to those magnificent birds I was lucky enough to spend time with. They are so few in number, and bad luck could mean the end of them. What a tragedy that would be, they are just so utterly magical.

Unflinching eye to which I have hands to grab at hawks and eagles without trepidation-by no means a wallflower-iron core-sharp taloned foot-gold eye-hooked beak-sliver tongue
I miss it more then air-in this so conventional-lost nerve-flighted soul

how can I be patient enough?

The immortal cranes call, their cries sound from afar, their thoughts
circle upward into distant skies. Below, on the autumn rivers, stands
a man, above him the bright moon. The man wanders aimless, trailing after
the endless Milky Way. The wind blows past him. I, too, thinks the man, would like to be utterly free.

-Jiang Yi Ning

I want to live where soul meets body
And let the sun wrap its arms around me
And bathe my skin in water cool and cleansing
And feel, feel what its like to be new

Cause in my head there’s a greyhound station
Where I send my thoughts to far off destinations
So they may have a chance of finding a place
where they’re far more suited than here

I cannot guess what we'll discover
We turn the dirt with our palms cupped like shovels
But I know our filthy hands can wash one another’s
And not one speck will remain

I do believe it’s true
That there are roads left in both of our shoes
If the silence takes you
Then I hope it takes me too
So blue eyes I hold you near
Cause you’re the only song I want to hear
A melody softly soaring through my atmosphere

Where soul meets body

-Soul Meets Body Death Cab Cutie

looks so free, I love how white pelicans fly...

. . . for me there lies,
Within the lights and shadows of your eyes,
The only beauty that is never old.

   -James Weldon Johnson

lucky ducky

Everglades Snail Kite

What greatly worries me:

the extinction of birds

my little cares are really not much in comparison to this kind of speculation

Elegy for a Doe

She looked at me
two great brown eyes
swinging her ears forward
she hunched and rocked heaving
every inch gained slid back
the snow dark from the weight.

I am not done yet
two dead legs under me
the hill is not so far
a road hangs heavy
my eyes fill.

She is tired
the fight leaves in bitter cold
her last run is outward
on the echo of a gunshot.

--by the Corbyhawk, written to remember the deer that had been hit but not killed. I made the call to end her suffering but did not have the strength to see it happen. As for the other I decided that it is not so bad a thing and I will just be content in my little daydream. It helps me work, my hope that he is watching.

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)

They will complain of physical hardship, these sons of the pioneers. Not for long; once they rediscover the pleasures of actually operating their own limbs and senses in a varied, spontaneous, voluntary style, they will complain instead of crawling back into a car; they may even object to returning to a desk and office and that dry wall box on Mossy Brook Circle. The fires of revolt may be kindled-which means hope for us all.

-Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey

I couldn't resist posting on the giant banana
I find meaning in the lavish amount of money used to fund such a noble artistic venture. Perhaps I will write a grant to fly a giant cucumber over Canada.

The term NOTAN, a Japanese word meaning "dark, light", refers to the quantity of light reflected, or the massing of tones of different values. Notan-beauty means the harmony resulting from the combination of dark and light spaces-

-Arthur Wesley Dow - Composition
(sigh:-)

Something fishy...