A Tree

I'm sad today. My dear friend's brother was tragically killed Saturday night by a tree. He was collecting firewood and a large tree fell on him. A tree.

I am reminded of how gossamer fragile life really is.  How delicate and confounding this sticky wicked proteinaceous spider web of existence can be. A tree.

And I don't know what's real or True or if we are simply "billion year old carbon," as Joni Mitchell declares, trying break through the tensile strength of one fragile day to the next, or exactly what the Supreme Being has in mind or if there is such a thing after all, with its warped sense of destiny. A tree.

In the midst of this bluest eye felt in a whole month of assorted blues, my son Imani sends me a hilarious clip from Saturday Night Live, with Jim Carey doing a spoof on Matthew McConaughey in that Lincoln commercial. I laughed so hard I cried and almost peed on myself--a welcomed intermission in today's opera. It amazes me how things can change from one delicate second to the next and back again. A tree.

I am reminded of how peppermint cool it is to draw on tissue. How fragile and susceptible it is to being wrinkled and creased. But yet it endures, strong as its roots, its source. A tree.

Pencil drawing of Patti Austin from the--uh oh--is it the Havana Candy album? I forget; the albums are all packed away.

Back to the Bards

I'm back to Nef's bards--my little book cards. They've been calling me with flashes of new ideas for  page pop us and serendipitous encounters with design ideas. I spent this past weekend at a poetry retreat in central PA, at the Kirkridge retreat center, led by Michael and Kathleen Glaser and Jean Richardson. And what an exquisite experience that was. To bathe for three days in my essential questions. To explore my rich and turbulent inner life through the voice and lens of poetry. That's what these Kirkridge poetry retreats are all about, as opposed to spending three or five days trying/learning to write poetry. There are other places for those objectives; they're called writing classes and writers groups. But a retreat into oneself with an invitation to explore relationships, our world, nature, and essential questions is something sweeter. 

I digress. This weekend I made a new accordion fold bard that was a metaphor for a map to my centering place. (I also learned about an amazing mystic named Howard Thurman who advises: "How good it is to center down!") So now I'm centering in on a way to take this simple design--with its pop ups, cut outs, inserts--and do

something different/fresh/surprising. I'm starting to feel this artist's life is a constant movement and circling around possibilities, much like R. M. Rilke's following poem:

I live my life in growing orbits

which move out over the things of the world.

Perhaps I can never achieve the last,

but that will be my attempt.

I am circling around God, that ancient tower,

and I have been circling for a thousand years,

and still, I don't know if I am a falcon,

or a storm, or a great song.

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I, on the other hand, live my life like a cockeyed owl

which looks out over the whispers of night in two directions;

within and outside the heart's secret places

Perhaps I can never achieve a singular, laser focus

but that will be my attempt, as well.

I am circling around a real unchanging Truth

and I have been circling for countless incarnations 

and still, I don't know if I am a ghost,

or a beam of God, or a cockeyed owl.

                                                            -- Nef

Dollar Store Paint Painting Part 4

So what have I discovered on this journey to the universe of painting? It's much easier than I thought although not at all simple. Then again, nothing about creating art is ever simple. The process can be complex, consuming, tedious, maddening--you can seriously and joyfully lose yourself in that act. I'd like to hang out there again, ride that wave until something truly unique jolting weird other worldly and wondrous emerges.