A dark meditation in a safe place.
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Romanticism
Tag: art
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Horses and Cars
This one was borne out of Peaky Blinders and the amazing time in history when horses outnumbered cars in cities and towns.
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If there are 2, there are 3
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Peacocked Grief
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Distraction and Duplicity
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The beckoning call of sleep
There goes sleep: I’ll take that train.
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The old man
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A hand descends
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Killers / Vigilantes / Super Heroes
Seeing red wings sprout
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Re-knitting
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I can
Limbs strewn like branches from a tree after a storm.
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Vessels
Before.
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Ascent
For AD.
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The Prayer of an Artist
To cut away the background and even lop off an arm, I contrast my self against the white space that I am not because, really, I am everything I am not. These ties are so intricate they form and unform as I move through space and time. These ties keep me animated and tethered at […]
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Shadow Series No. 2
The first in the series gives some background on what I’m trying to do. When I run, the three parts of me interact very loudly. These are photographs taken by me and edited with Enlight and WordSwag. They are a two dimensional way to capture one second of my three parts loudly interacting.
I read something by Rumi once: “Don’t be satisfied with stories . . . How things have gone for others . . . Unfold your own.” Live life without an outside reference. In Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert writes that she found God inside herself as herself. Aristotle says consciousness is the process […]
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Unfinished
Where ability does not meet art drowns Something . Lungs burst to live on land, to have Grown something good, a hard green grassy ground to Roll around in. For her to uninhabit Me, is all I ask. As well as why she’s Moved back in. She takes the water and the Food and sleep and […]
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Love as Melancholia
I recently watched The Paradise, a BBC series based on Emile Zola’s novel about a department store in the late 1880’s. It is delightful, all two seasons of it before it was cancelled. There are so many things I could write about it: its cinematography, its characters, the dialogue. The moments when the heroine, a […]
I’ve been struggling with creativity lately. Something is blocking not the ideas but the execution. Self-doubt. I wrote a poem about index cards last month. One of its lines: when the index cards come out my unease loses a little bit of its doubt Last week I wrote about art (poetry). For the 17 years […]
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A Weird Fairytale
I got a new app Color Splash and I made these. The woman is the “Seer,” a character in a graphic novelesque something I have brewing in the mind. She is the fourth character, the first supporting, to be created. I’ve not written a word. It is all heavily edited photography using Perfect 365, Word […]
I am on vacation visiting elderly and near elderly relatives. I have been listening intently to their manner of speech. It is delightful and familiar while also strange. I overheard the following snippet during lunch today and did the ink sketches (my first) after lunch while they were resting. My 84 year old relative […]
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A Corpus Sunrise
Tales from the WagginMaster inspired another oil pastel with his beautiful photographs of a sunrise in my once hometown of Corpus Christi, Texas.
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A buffalo in snow
I paint an animal and motion for the first time. When I was shaping its snout, I felt my own head transform into a buffalo head. Just for one second. The creative process is weird. The pastel is based on a photograph by Ian Nichols of a buffalo in Yellowstone Park posted by Nat Geo […]
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Pastel of a Sunrise in Bangalore
One of my favorite bloggers, Stock Research 52, posted another inspiring photograph of a sunrise in his home of Bangalore, India earlier in March. I tried to paint it in pastels last week.
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Blue Vaquero
I took this picture last week. It is called “Vaquero,” Spanish for “cowboy.” It was modeled in 1980 and cast in 1990 by the Texan-born artist Luis Jiménez. It is made out of acrylic urethane, fiberglass and steel armature. It stands on the north side entrance of the Smithsonian Museum of American Art and National […]
Photo 101 has helped me understand colors a little bit more; to know things I only knew in theory before. I am growing into the name of the blog. The Impressionists were also known as the painters of light since they preferred painting outside and catching the light as opposed to sketching outside and painting […]
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Uncertainty & a Moody Heroine
I have issues with the telephone. It feels very intrusive to me. I have tried different ring tones on my work line, including a man saying “Are you there?” I thought a human voice would help. It did not help. When today’s Photo 101 prompt suggested: “Intrigue us with uncertainty,” I knew I wasn’t advanced […]
Whenever a thing is done for the first time, it releases a little demon. – Emily Dickinson I read this the other day for the first time. A big part of my life was explained in this short sentence! I am new to writing prose, writing poetry, painting with pastels, drawing and making mosaics. In […]
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Time’s 3rd Act
Future is time’s third act, time still to come. Only since time is of indefinite Duration, we gape ahead, holds hands to Eyes, to magnify or blind. This future Can never know me. We’ll never meet. We Never will, for when we do slithering Time has become present, which is so now, As to be […]
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Ode to Index Cards
Index cards Large or small White or bright The thicker ones are better. I pull one out of its plastic sheath. The things that could happen Big things mountains of words Organized into thoughts could happen. I write one idea per card and then shuffle, Look at them in different orders. If I can just […]
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Phantoms and Foreigners (Divergence)
Limbs are limbs, We think. But, I Don’t. When a Phantom Can hurt, A foreigner demand removal, How? The common element is paralysis not motion. Oppressed By arms and legs: “They don’t belong To me but keep Clinging to My Torso.” Tracking The first 21 Days Of life, vindicates The immediacy and The primacy of […]
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The Little Ox
In her mother’s womb she wrestled. Her bag of waters made Of hearty fibers, almost In a mermaid’s purse, she’s born. Black hair is spiked, blue eyes are wide, Mama could barely hold In her delight at this new child, Not fraught with any frailty. With powers so full since that first day, A little […]
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Elegy No. 1
Will I come to your side when you are no longer in my arms needing? I try though it feels stilted like cotton is in your ears. Sweet small boy that you were, molded to me like a sloth on a tree, Now you are tall and knobby like a young sapling: proud, no bend. […]
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A Sunset in India
I discovered a new blog – Colors 52 – with beautiful photographs. The Colors 52 blogger lives in India and posted this photograph of a sunset on his related site earlier this week. I tried to paint it with pastels. It did not do it justice but it was fun.
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On the topic of travel
At the whim of my elders I dangled on the travel. To the ends of the earth I was tasked, though I knew I’d unravel. They packed me on a plane. Jet lag left me insane. I drank wine every night and caroused and was graveled. Here is a limerick for the Writing 201 journey/limerick/alliteration […]
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Brown / Water
A brown coat hangs in A dark closet absorbing Dust. Will water help Or steam or fire? He Looks at her with all the words In his eyes. She hears And cries into the Soil. She thinks it will cleanse it Somehow some way. When? I will have to back into the brevity of a […]
The Blacklight Candelabra says: There’s much in nature that the naked eye can’t perceive without assistance . . . It shows us the magnified eye of a fly, which looks nothing like you would think an eye would look and challenges us to: Use words to accomplish similar revelations through magnification. I chose as a […]
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The Character of Music: A Bum in Paris
The Blacklight Candelabra challenges us to create a character or a story based on this music: The old woman yells, “Sortez!” She pushes him with a broom off the back door entrance to the building. She has morning shopping to do. He is a nuisance. He stumbles up in his wrinkled clothing. He was once always […]
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Box of Abecedarian Sequences
The Blacklight Candelabra challenges us to re-imagine a box of chocolates in writing form. A collection of unique and separate [writing] forms a greater whole. One rarely finds a single small piece of [writing] that ascends to the heights that the variety provides. I had been thinking for some time of putting the Abecedarian Sequences into a visual art form. […]
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Alice’s Watch
I had a close encounter with a dolphin once. The dolphin was not happy, though I couldn’t tell you how I knew. Horses stomp their feet and neigh with irritation. Dogs bark and growl. This dolphin had its smiley face and was still but I could feel her angst as though it was an assault. […]
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The Williamsburg Loop
The last millennial I interviewed wrote an essay in the Fall of 2013 as she was beginning her training for the NYC marathon. She describes the culture and structures along her favorite running route, the Williamsburg Loop. I love it and wanted to share. She agreed. Here it is. I’m training for the 2014 New […]
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The Living
When I was a kid I was afraid of lava. I felt it was an imminent danger. At any minute I might encounter lava. Lava has recently come into my four year old son’s life, probably the same way it must have come into mine: school. Somehow he found out about lava and now when we cross […]
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Learning to listen, learning to wait
After doing my first interview as a practice in long form writing, I was inspired to make a mosaic of my subject. I first started this blog to practice writing, thinking I would focus on the personal essay. Over the past couple of months, though, I have been experimenting with other things, like writing on […]
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Gems
Sayings, singing songs like threaded words on Strings of twine around your neck. Not plastic Like the bright cheap colors in the super Market. On a farm of green and hay and Red barn doors, a child sits high above the Tilting windmills stringing gems, whistling joy. Perchance, the world looks bleak; perchance it is. […]
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(a brave calm darkens)
A brave calm darkens even fear. God harvests ideas, judgments, keys. Living miracles need only prayer, quandaries. Relaxing saves trembling, unarmed. Votive worlds (e)xonerate yesterday’s zealotry. This is an Abecedarian sequence. The featured image is “Study of Hands” by Leonardo Da Vinci sketched in 1474. The original work can be found in the Royal Collection, […]
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(edgar degas)
A ballad courses, devotes evergreen favors, garners hearts. Inside joy (knells / laughs) mirrors noisy oils. Perhaps questions remain. Silence takes us valiantly wayward, (e)xhibiting zeal. This is an Abecedarian sequence. The featured image is “Fallen Jockey” by Edgar Degas painted 1896-1898. The original work can be found in Kuntsmuseum Basel in Basel, Switzerland. All […]
A few weeks ago, I interviewed a Millennial. I wanted to explore who he was from a generational perspective. He represents the American Dream, still alive today, I think. He talks about baseball and the Blues, of family and God, and his wife, of loving small town America, of the big and bright New York […]
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A curtain drops
To wake hellbent, the maelstrom funneled head: Inside “(no)” a curtain drops. But I say, “I’m okay now.” (The small deceits.) Instead Of, “See, the grey sky’s fraught? Rain’s on its way?” Ignored I am by me against my will. Self prison grows up hate to wind up thought. “Sleep snug smug shits” and sundry […]
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(taboo)
Abundance breeds colony drones, earnest foragers, Goldenrods. Humming in jealousy, knowing lore’s manners, none of puberty quiet remains. Swarming (taboo) understands vacillation (wings), (x)centric yellow zones. This is an Abecedarian sequence. The featured image is “Self Portrait With Arm Twisting Above Head” by Egon Schiele painted in 1910. All work by Schiele (1890-1918) is in […]
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(A writer)
Ava bends cold dreams. Ever (forever) glad hands, in June, kindly light masterful nearness. Oh, prose quite rarely sits. The unbent visions would (e)xonerate yet zest. This is an Abecedarian sequence. The featured image is “Portrait of the writer N.B. Nordman-Severova” by Ilya Repin painted in 1905. All work by Repin (1844-1930) is in the […]
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(At the races)
A bright coat deigns every fall gallant. Horses, indelibly jaunty, kill laps (matted neighs). Orphans, pawns, queens, rabble-rousers, stand to Undo velocity. “Winner! Xerxes!” yells Zachary. This is an Abecedarian sequence. The featured image is “At the Races, Longchamps” by Pierre Bonnard painted in 1894. This work by Bonnard is in the public domain.
Abecedarian = “a 26 word prose poem” that “almost means something.”
We continue our review of Marx’s Introduction to a Critique of Political Economy. As a recap, Marx first treats “production” and sets forth some main ideas about production, in opposition to the classical liberal economists of the day: (1) the isolated hunter-fisher of Smith and Ricardo is not primitive or natural, (2) production is most usefully […]
Millennials are people born from approximately 1980 to 2000. Millennials are the fourth of the four currently living adult generation cultural groupings. They were preceded by Generation X (approximately 1964-1980), who were preceded by the Baby Boomers (approximately 1946-1964), who followed the Silent Generation (approximately 1927-1945). Millennials have been called entitled, narcissistic and perhaps the greatest generation of our time. […]
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A parentheses more like
I thought, “I will abandon this car, this Hulking piece of metal. It won’t keep me Prisoner. I have legs, after all, I’m Made of flesh and bone, after all.” So I
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These things came hard
We’re to honor those who gave us breath of Life. With might, I never thought I owed this Debt; since I sprung from my father’s head full Grown. Respect, obey, take heed, these things came
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Beyond Enter Right, Exit Left
I heard once that thoughts are your mind breathing. I imagined my mind releasing thoughts like extra energy, so it could be well. This concept helped me come to an arrangement with thoughts that would come, unbidden, in meditation. I could watch them go by, like a car passing on the street in front of […]
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Marx’s Editor: Production (Part II)
Below is a summary of the second half of Marx’s treatment of production in his “Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy.” The first half sets forth that (1) the isolated hunter-fisher of Smith and Ricardo is not primitive or natural, (2) production is most usefully discussed historically as opposed to as a general economic term and (3) […]
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A full square meal
They say to make the most of every day While youth says, wait, I move to squander years Youth loathes the dawn, when demons tend to appear In brown forms, they fly tugging at the scalp
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Marx’s Editor: Production (Part I)
The “Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy” is the opening to Marx’s lengthy unfinished manuscript, the “Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy,” or the Grundrisse. It was written around 1857, then abandoned by Marx, to be first published posthumously in Germany around 1939. Towards the end of his life, Marx supposedly viewed his […]
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Undoing the sun
My son, I love you more than words could say. Judged I the wish for an obedient child, So long, you’d need but me to meet your day. My trickster boy with temperament as mild
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It’s All About Niran
I don’t want to write long, because of NaNo. Writing time is tight these days. The big news is my main character changed last night. Though I sketched out the plot and characters in October, once I started writing, the characters took the story in a direction of its own. Which is pretty cool. The […]
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Excerpt from Chapter 5
“We must seem so gauche to you, Niran,” she flushes excitedly, “after all the splendor of the Numu.” Iphigenia fans herself, shaking her head a bit, reeling from it all. Niran smiles at her, his face is kindly. Thein watches them both, from her corner. She turns away and looks out the tall windows to the […]
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Oedipus at Colonus
I do not remember the day you filled my mind with certainty. The day your dazzling clarity became irrefutable to my feeble mind. The card-board stand-up people bartered dead objects in strange and barren places. I could see to the end of heaven.
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Genesis
We do not perceive a species’ extinction or survival in terms of punishment or reward because such a judgment would have a moral quality, inappropriate to the beasts. Yet, we do not treat ourselves or each other with such tenderness.
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Le Gourmet (The Greedy Child)
I feel tingly in my hands and toes to think of tiptoeing down the hallway, down the stairs, into the kitchen for the fridge. Rarely do I undertake such a thrilling journey, knowing there is the darkness and the creaking floors and perhaps I will happen upon mice meeting up in three’s. I wouldn’t want […]
I used to think that I was the mask I put on my face. I was not duplicitous (then) – I thought my mask was my face. Until the day I saw my mask. In one moment, I took it off and held it in my hands. I had imagined it to be just right. […]
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Imaginary Things
I never had imaginary friends. I have imaginary enemies, instead. They are not quite as fun. It’s really no surprise since I tend to predict the worst possible outcome and love engaging with doubt. The imagined adversity I create creates a soundless cacophony only I can hear.
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The Marathon
I would not call myself a runner and neither would most anybody. I’m not really built for running of any type, neither sprinting nor long distance. I ran a marathon once, though. I got the idea from an advertisement at Marvelous Market near my building. It said anyone could run a marathon.
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Unequal Terms
I am a lawyer by trade, and not one who enjoys reading judicial opinions in the common law. I’m not a fancy lawyer, you understand. When it dawned on me my first year of law school that reading opinions was a whole lot of what law school was about, I thought I had made a […]
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Part V: My Soul Echoes
We lasted 9 months in the deep burbs before we decided to move back. It took 4 months to sell our house. We lived in a furnished apartment for 3 more months in our old neighborhood in Arlington before we bought the house we live in now. I was ecstatic to be back in the old ‘hood and my old yoga […]
I got pregnant. I wanted to more than anything, but I was shocked by it all the same. I stopped yoga and all physical exercise as soon as I found out and was on bed rest for two months as well. I went back to yoga when my son was 4 weeks old and practiced […]
What I did next was surprising, in retrospect, and wholly self propelled. I had mistaken my soul stretching into my body for and end in itself.
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Part II: I see a flower
I stayed in the forest for 9 years. Indeed, I lost my way. Just when I had given up all hope, I happened upon the path again, as though no time had passed.
Exhibition 1874 