anonyrrie

Drinking it in

 

Water
If I were called in
To construct a religion
I should make use of water.

Going to church
Would entail a fording
To dry, different clothes;

My liturgy would employ
Images of sousing,
A furious devout drench,

And I should raise in the east
A glass of water
Where any-angled light
Would congregate endlessly.
- Philip Larkin (1922 - 1985)

Invincible Summer

In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.  - Albert Camus

Fern Hill

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs

About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,

The night above the dingle starry,

Time let me hail and climb

Golden in the heydays of his eyes,

And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns

And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves

Trail with daisies and barley

Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns

About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,

In the sun that is young once only,

Time let me play and be

Golden in the mercy of his means,

And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves

Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,

And the sabbath rang slowly

In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay

Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air

And playing, lovely and watery

And fire green as grass.

And nightly under the simple stars

As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,

All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars

Flying with the ricks, and the horses

Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white

With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all

Shining, it was Adam and maiden,

The sky gathered again

And the sun grew round that very day.

So it must have been after the birth of the simple light

In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm

Out of the whinnying green

stable

On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house

Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,

In the sun born over and over,

I ran my heedless ways,

My wishes raced through the house high hay

And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows

In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs

Before the children green and golden

Follow him out of grace.

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me

Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,

In the moon that is always rising,

Nor that riding to sleep

I should hear him fly with the high fields

And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,

Time held me green

and dying

Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

- Dylan Thomas

 

Word-Art Opening

On Ancient Wings - 16" x 20" x 1" - acrylic/mixed media on wood panel

Tonight is the opening of the 4th semi-annual Word-Art show at the Gallery on the Green in Canton, CT.  Once again, I had the honor of working with my dear friend, Karen Jasper, who wrote the poem "Wounded Bird" in response to my painting, "On  Ancient Wings."  The show runs through April 12, with an evening of readings on Saturday, April 4 at 7:30. 

Wounded Bird

Part 1

A swallow can fly miles, from treetop to ocean cliff,
The wind's undertow buoyantly gliding her
To a resting place warm with possibility.

She is free, lifted higher by duty and family,
Not a thought outside of weather and wind,
Acceptance and choice safely within her span.

But then, jolted in flight,
her heart pumped deep
And she is transformed,

The unknown and unfamiliar
In that very moment,
A broken wing reclaiming

Something lost and ancient
Spiraling deep and desperate
Into the habitat of hidden.

Some species heal their wings
In solitude, licking and lying
In a nest of thin twigs

Healing from within
Until they can fly again,
To and from home.

But other species do not heal
And they tuck that wing
Underneath themselves,

Landlocked and less,
The natural order
Injured inside and out.

That species will push on
Practicing, praying, pretending
That wings are but a crutch;

Meanwhile hoping that reverse gravity
May rocket them up and open them wide,
Heedfully whole to fly again.

 

Part 2 (My Side)

 I fly from necessity

Hovering over leafy trees and endless water,

Following an inestimable path from home

 

Only to return again,

Where I’ll find my roots and rhythm

Deeply tucked in grainy sand.

 

I do not question why I do this--

This destiny of family and fate--

What I cannot fathom I will not change.

 

My twelve feather tail and meager wing span

Weigh in below two ounces,

 Not enough for my survival

 

And yet I maneuver and endure,

I doggedly sing my song

And tuck my broken wing

 

Under my expanding and rapid chest

Until I know if

I might fly again.

 

If I should die here

Unable to lift myself beyond this place

I will fly anyway

 

Straight to this indomitable future

Where I will be an African River Martin

tending and fending

 

Reaching still and always,

Weightless in my belief          

That I was born for just this moment.

- Karen Jasper

Medusa: It's Intricate

Medusa - 9" x 12" - micron pen/digital color

Whenever I read Greek mythology, I am always intrigued by the intricacies of the gods' relationships!  This is a drawing I posted a few years ago, along with the story of Medusa.

The Gorgons of Greek mythology were so hideous that the mere sight of them would turn anyone who gazed their way to stone. They were, according to the poet Hesiod, so frighteningly repulsive to the senses that they "were not to be approached and not to be described." Medusa, the only one of the three who was mortal, was born beautiful with a head of luxuriant, shining hair. The lusty Poseidon took a fancy to her, and disguised as a horse, seduced her in the temple of Athena. Enraged, Athena transformed Medusa into a monster whose most common portrayal shows her once beautiful hair as a mass of writhing snakes.

Medusa

 

She is the gypsy

Whose young have rooted

In the very flesh of her scalp.

Her eyes are drill-holes where

Your senses spin, and you are stone

Even as you stand before her.

She opens her lips to speak,

And have you believe.

She has more tongues to deceive

Than you can deafen your ears to.

If you could look away, the voices

From the heads of her vipers

Would be hard to argue.

If you could look away,

The pedestals of your feet might move.

If you could look away, 

The song from the cathedral of her mouth

Would fall to the floor like a lie.

- Frieda Hughes (1960 - )

Be Present

be present - 10" x 10" x 1" - acrylic/mixed media on wood panel

{from the Mantras & Meditations series - available for purchase in my etsy shop}

To the Moon

   

Art thou pale for weariness

Of climbing Heaven, and gazing on the earth,

   Wandering companionless

Among the stars that have a different birth,--

And ever changing, like a joyless eye

That finds no object worth its constancy?

- Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822)

Climbing, climbing, always wanting more, or something just beyond reach... living for the future... believing in "if only"... not stopping to breathe and see and touch and understand that everything in this moment is perfect and as it should be... 

Sunrise

You can

die for it-

an idea, 

or the world. People 

have done so, 

brilliantly, 

letting

their small bodies be bound 

to the stake, 

creating

an unforgettable

fury of light. But 

this morning, 

climbing the familiar hills

in the familiar

fabric of dawn, I thought 

of China, 

and India

and Europe, and I thought

how the sun 

blazes

for everyone just

so joyfully

as it rises

under the lashes

of my own eyes, and I thought

I am so many! 

What is my name? 

What is the name

of the deep breath I would take

over and over

for all of us? Call it 

whatever you want, it is

happiness, it is another one

of the ways to enter

fire.  

- Mary Oliver (1935 - )

Winter Blossoms

blossom - 9" x 12" x 1" - acrylic - mixed media on wood panel 

{from the Mantras & Meditations series - available for purchase in my etsy shop}

We all have contained within us seeds of beauty, strength, compassion, understanding, creativity, love...  seeds that must be nurtured in order to blossom.  The trick is to discover the right environment within which to grow.  It's not necessarily a place, but more a state of mind.  

What does it take to get it just right?  Well, for me it all starts with honesty and self-acceptance; knowing that if I stay true to who I am, that is more than enough.  

The Jewel

There is this cave

In the air behind my body

That nobody is going to touch:

A cloister, a silence

Closing around a blossom of fire.

When I stand upright in the wind,

My bones turn to dark emeralds.

- James Wright (1927 - 1980)

Listening

shine within - 10" x 10" x 1" - acrylic/mixed media on wood panel

{from the Mantras & Meditations series - available for purchase in my etsy shop}

The snow falls, the world is silent; yet there are voices that speak if we will only quiet ourselves and listen...

Sojourns in the Parallel World

We live our lives of human passions,

cruelties, dreams, concepts,

crimes and the exercise of virtue

in and beside a world devoid

of our preoccupations, free

from apprehension--though affected,

certainly, by our actions. A world

parallel to our own though overlapping.

We call it "Nature"; only reluctantly

admitting ourselves to be "Nature" too.

Whenever we lose track of our own obsessions,

our self-concerns, because we drift for a minute,

an hour even, of pure (almost pure)

response to that insouciant life:

cloud, bird, fox, the flow of light, the dancing

pilgrimage of water, vast stillness

of spellbound ephemerae on a lit windowpane,

animal voices, mineral hum, wind

conversing with rain, ocean with rock, stuttering

of fire to coal--then something tethered

in us, hobbled like a donkey on its patch

of gnawed grass and thistles, breaks free.

No one discovers

just where we've been, when we're caught up again

into our own sphere (where we must

return, indeed, to evolve our destinies)

--but we have changed, a little.

- Denise Levertrov (1923 - 1997)

The painting above is one of a series called Mantras & Meditations.  I will be offering that series, along with other smaller paintings and prints of larger works for sale when I open my Etsy shop in January. Happy Holidays!  ♥

Passing the Day

Peony silks, in wax-light: that petal-sheen, gold or apricot or rose candled into- what to call it, lumina, aurora, aureole? About gowns, the Old Masters, were they ever wrong? This penitent Magdalen's wrapped in a yellow so voluptuous she seems to wear all she's renounced; this boy angel isn't touching the ground, but his billow of yardage refers not to heaven but to pleasure's textures, the tactile sheers and voiles and tulles which weren't made to adorn the soul. Eternity's plainly nude; the naked here and now longs for a little dressing up. And though they seem to prefer the invisible, every saint in the gallery flaunts an improbable tumble of drapery, a nearly audible liquidity (bright brass embroidery, satin's violin-sheen) raveled around the body's plain prose; exquisite (dis?)guises; poetry, music, clothes. Nothing needs to be this lavish. Even the words I'd choose for these leaves; intricate, stippled, foxed, tortoise, mottled, splotched -jeweled adjectives for a forest by Fabergé, all cloisonné and enamel, a yellow grove golden in its gleaming couture, brass buttons tumbling to the floor. Who's it for? Who's the audience for this bravura? Maybe the world's just trompe l'oeil, appearances laid out to dazzle the eye; who could see through this to any world beyond forms? Maybe the costume's the whole show, all of revelation we'll be offered. So? Show me what's not a world of appearances. Autumn's a grand old drag in torched and tumbled chiffon striking her weary pose. Talk about your mellow fruitfulness! Smoky alto, thou hast thy music, too; unforgettable, those October damasks, the dazzling kimono worn, dishabille, uncountable curtain calls in these footlights' dusky, flattering rose. The world's made fabulous by fabulous clothes.

Couture - Mark Doty (1953 - )

A Story of Abundance

journal page - 9/23/08

Vegetable-Life

Where the pulp lifts its germ and the sludge of beauty sighs,

where the leaf pulls the branch to the breathy earth,

where the rind cracks and buds rust into petals,

where the clove steams and cinnamon bark spits out cinnamon air,

where roots sweat and the earth boils in curds of steaming mud,

where the stem draws up the seed and holds it like a lamb to the sun,

where flowers rest their animal heads,

there, full throated, limp with seed, lush and smiling is

Vegetable-Life.

To come upon her you must journey through the rains,

and sleep through a night of fish smells;

there must be a dead man in a hot room,

there must be a basket of figs and plums on the pier,

there must be no new ship in the harbor,

there must be the sound of flowers falling upon flowers,

there must be no children swimming in the salt pools.

Where the Flamboyant spills into the vulcan dust,

where the wild pig chews up the door frames,

where the leper kneads his bones,

where the sun is stuffed with guns,

where the water flows like honey from the tap,

where black flies swell in the gecko's translucent belly,

where these are, there is

Vegetable-Life: The Sultana of the Vine,

The Goddess of the Harvest Gone Bad, The Spectrum Swallower.

In an ointment of wild saps, ripe fronds and mosses, tumid wheat,

and bareley, Abundance pours down over the head, heavy with pollen

and in the puce interrogation of the harvest

the intellect sprouts leaves.

- Ned Gorman (1929 - )

Static

It rained hard this morning, and I awoke with the thought that it would be a good indoor kind of day.  A day to work in my studio... a day to create something that would make me feel joyful from beginning to end.  But some days neither the process nor the product seem to please me, and today was like that.  I think I just have too much static in my head, and as I mixed paints and made shapes on the wood panel, the static kept getting louder and louder and the process became so frustrating, I just had to stop.

This kind of confused energy often surrounds me when I have been away from my art for a while. I return to my studio with so much pent up desire, and I approach the act of creating with so much anticipation and expectation that I lose that sense of ease and flow that's essential to the experience.  I know that I need to step away when I become aware of such negative shifts... try to break that energy and get myself into a different space.  It's hard work though;  almost a battle, because these little pockets of creative time are so rare and precious, and I find myself feeling disappointed, as if I've let myself down.

But I am forever a work in progress, and days like today appear to teach me something, if I am willing to listen.  So I have been listening all day... trying to decipher the messages that come through the static...  let go of expectations...  approach  art with a beginner's mind...  be with the process...  stay the moment...

And while I'm listening to the wise voices of the Universe, here is the poem that inspired the painting that still sits on my easel... waiting for me to finish her.

Questions In The Mind Of A Poet While She Washes Her Floors  

Will obedience leave me unknown to myself, stranded?

Is it enough for me to know where I'm from?

If I do more truth-telling will I be happier with what I say?

If I had three days to live would I still be sensible?

Is the break between my feelings and my memory 

the reason I'm unable to sustain rage?

Am I a peninsula slowly turning into an island?

If I grew up gazing at the ocean would I think

life came in waves?

If I were a nomad would I measure time

by the length of a footstep?

If I can see a cup drop to the floor and shatter

why can't I see it gather itself back together?

If a surgeon cut out my mistakes

would the scar be under my heart?

How much time will I spend protecting myself

from what the people I love call love?

Would my desires feel different if I lived forever?

Will my desires destroy my politics?

Is taboo sex the ultimate aphrodisiac?

If I fall in love with the wrong person

How do I learn to un-in love myself?

Can I make my intuition into a divining rod?

Is music the closest I can get to God?

How many of these questions will remain

when I kneel to wash my floors again?

- Elena Georgiou