Stalling…

journal page – 8/19/07
…by playing around in my journal. There are four paintings in my studio that must be finished within the next few days, but my muse is indolent and I simply can’t trust her with the last details of these pieces.

In the meatime…

And water lies plainly

Then I came to an edge of very calm
But couldn’t stay there. It was the washed greenblue mapmakers use to indicate
Inlets and coves, softbroken contours where the land leaves off
And water lies plainly, as if lamped by its own justice. I hardly know how to say how it was
Though it spoke to me most kindly,
Unlike a hard afterwards or the motions of forestalling.

Now in evening light the far-off ridge carries marks of burning.
The hills turn thundercolored, and my thoughts move toward them, rough skins
Without their bodies. What is the part of us that feels it isn’t named, that doesn’t know
How to respond to any name? That scarcely or not at all can lift its head
Into the blue and so unfold there?

– Laurie Sheck

Guilt-Free Procrastination Zone

journal page – 8/16/07 Scribbles are the lianas of the forest of our selves. Clinging to them,
the primate still in us frolics free. – Orlando González Esteva
While Writing

Someone inside says, “Get busy.”
But I’ve got appointments to keep,
I have an abstemious love of equations calculated quickly
While the tepid day melts into design.

And the high cheekbones of the beautiful life
Bear the loose look of a calendar by lamplight.
I search for patterns in everything.
I am tied in knots of comprehension.

I think, how useful it might be
To pierce all the hands of the earth
With an oath of pins encircling snarling planets
But talent and shallowness sewn together

Is nothing but a kerchief tied around a survivalist’s head,
And it helps to know the feet wriggling through a hole
In the universe will land for an instant
Upon the cushions of the dark,

And that after marching one doozy of a kilometer after another,
We each come upon the same poem scribbled in invisible ink
Taped to the door of a room
In which an austere justice is burning for us.

– Noelle Kocot

There are those days when I never get around to doing what it was I had intended to do…

Silence

journal page – 8/14/07 

My father used to say,
“Superior people never make long visits,
have to be shown Longfellow’s grave
nor the glass flowers at Harvard.
Self reliant like the cat —
that takes its prey to privacy,
the mouse’s limp tail hanging like a shoelace from its mouth —
they sometimes enjoy solitude,
and can be robbed of speech
by speech which has delighted them.
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence;
not in silence, but restraint.”
Nor was he insincere in saying, “Make my house your inn.”
Inns are not residences.

– Marrianne Moore – (1887 – 1972)

…more about silence here…

Weeds and Butterflies

A friend recently laughed at my end of summer blues (which really aren’t too bad this year), saying, ” you know, most people who have their summers off go through the same process, a sort of mourning for the freedom they’re about to lose. They don’t seem to remember what a treat it is to have all that time off!”

Well, she wasn’t chiding me, really; just reminding me that in the world of people who go to work, those of us who do have our summers free are pretty darn lucky. Nevertheless, the daydream of a different structure to my days becomes more and more insistent…

There’s a studio available at a local arts center. What would it be like to go there to work each day, surrounded by artists of all kinds doing their thing in their studios? I mulled it over as I walked with Heidi this morning, mentally spending a day in my own away-from-home studio, and by the time we returned, I was thinking that anything is possible. It’s just a matter of dumping out one’s life-puzzle on the table and figuring out another way to put it together. But for once, I didn’t feel that clawing sense of urgency… I have to figure this out now…” When the time is right, opportunity and action will coincide.

In the meantime, I’ve been pretty busy puttering around in my little home studio. In addition working on some paintings, I transformed an old wooden cigar box my friend kj gave me a while ago, and returned it to her yesterday as a birthday gift! She and jb hosted a delightful art fair in their yard, followed by a party in the afternoon that is probably still going on as I write. Jol and I drove north to spend a few hours with them, and there I had the pleasure of meeting Ces, who had flown in from far way to celebrate kj’s birthday. We had such a good time… lots of family and friends and actvity… and a gorgeous day as well.

And today… fresh bread from the bakery, fresh fruit and vegetables from the farm down the street, and a bath for stinky Heidi!