First there was a quiet that was deafening. My heart was washed of all the years of torment and bitterness, in an afternoon. Just gone. Daily anger, frustration, strife, vexation. Poof. And what remained echoed in its shiny cleanness. For a couple of days, that roared in my head, or maybe hummed. My thoughts sticking up like little rabbits in a field, curious, investigating, … Continue reading The Vanishing Point where Stillness Bellows
Mystics hear voices. the question “Do you hear voices?” is used to sort the sane from the insane. And yet, as artists, we do hear voices and most insistently when we seek the guidance for our art. We are led. We are prompted. We are urged. We are called. ~ Julia Cameron, from The Complete Artist’s Way, the 2nd Book, Walking in This World Every … Continue reading Mystics Hear Voices
Or rather, we have a friend coming over this afternoon, and so the boys are cleaning, and I am cleaning, and we are all getting distracted by the things we are supposed to be putting away. I’m straightening my bedside table, and finding books of poetry that should be leafed through if only for a moment after I’ve dusted them, before stacking them neatly … Continue reading Because Cleaning is so Distracting
This morning, I started out my reading time with a little poetry from Billy Collins. The title of this article is a line from his poem Canada, from the book, “Sailing Alone Around the Room.” What Collins does best is turn an apparently simple phrase into a numinous moment. –The New Yorker That started off innocently. I just wanted to share the quote on the … Continue reading Endless Visibility that Hands you the Horizon on a Platter
T.S. Eliot is another one of my favorite poets. The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock, perhaps, being one of the most haunting and beautiful poems I have ever read. He has a way of speaking that is lilting, and ominous at the same time. This morning, I read East Coker, one of the poems in the book, Four Quartets, by T.S. Eliot. Here is a … Continue reading Between the Two World Wars
The other day, I was reading Billy Collins poetry and he started one with the Paul Cézanne quote, “With an apple I want to astonish Paris.” It only took a quick Google search to find that he did a lot of still-life paintings of apples, baskets of apples, apples and wine bottles, apples with skulls, and this pile of skulls. My boys love skulls and … Continue reading Art Mash-Up with Puzzles and Skulls
Just thinking of the word Perspective tweaks my brain a tad. There are so many points to consider. Last night, my boys and I worked on the idea of a Vanishing Point in art. We looked at some YouTube videos of learning to draw a scene based on a single vanishing point, and all the lines you should draw across the scene to make sure … Continue reading Spatial Relationships on a Flat Surface
In only seven stanzas and a little introductory phrase, a quote by Paul Cezanne, I am plunged into the world of beauty, where art, science, philosophy, farms and haystacks, baseball, the history of architecture, and the heaven of geometry with its lines, vanishing points and theorems converge to dance, intertwined and deeply in love.* That is the Poetry of Billy Collins. His ability to pull … Continue reading All the World, In Brief
Another night. Another gift. Dinner was amazing – homemade hot-dog buns, homemade mayonnaise, homemade relish, homemade potato chips. Big, honkin’ Hot-dogs. Delicious. Then while Bean was humming sweetly to himself in the tub, Scott and Ben were imitating one another sprawled out on the floor in front of the wood-burning stove. They were both exhausted from a long day of work, for Scott, and school, for Ben. Both … Continue reading Planting Seeds of Hope: in Hums and Laughter and Poetry
Ever since last week, I cannot help hearing the name Dessa Darling, a poet nearing Pop Icon status, and wrecking my serenity just a tiny bit. Only a tiny bit. Of course I’m happy for her. She is all over the internet, Twitter adores her, she was interviewed on The Splendid Table over the weekend on NPR, for Pete’s Sake, to learn about her eating … Continue reading Nostalgic Poet Mama, with a Downright Ugly Twinge of Jealousy
The last thing you hear on the audio version of this recording is someone saying into the microphone, while the crowd is going crazy, “The Blues Does Not Get Better Than That!” This is Part 2 of the Video of about 12 minutes of performance for a 70th Birthday Bash for John Mayall. This was playing on Pandora while I chopped onions for a stew … Continue reading I Chop Onions and Get Lost in Melancholy for a Moment
It is so lovely to be getting lost in books again! It feels like I’ve never left, like I haven’t spent the last few years being too exhausted to read. I wasn’t too exhausted. Somehow, I got stuck in thinking I was, being a new mom. We always have read great children’s stories, but once I got the kids into bed at the end of … Continue reading Lost in a big pile of Books
