Continuum Art

Waterfall

2010-12-18T18:27:00.000-08:00

Waterfall

A drop water of you were if
what you do would?
Cliff the to cling?
Go let?
The waterfall enjoy?

For some unknown reason these words were following me one day and I played with them and tumbled them and imagined them like the drops of water...
I don"t know maybe you"ll find it inspiring...
Inspiration , like water is unstoppable...

The Passage and a Meeting

2010-05-24T13:29:00.000-07:00

story by Rosa Anna Nastro in which we learn more about Madame Butterfly...

(For the previous section, see: this post.

It lasted just a second. After jumping into the pond, Cahetel felt like he was fluctuating in an indefinite space, dragged by a force like fog dispersed by a strong wind through a valley. His body had no weight, his mind was completely free. Suddenly, his body was painful and heavy again, the air flowed through his lungs. He was reborned. When he opened his eyes, he saw a pale light surrounding him. This light passed from yellow, to orange and, finally to red. At last, a dazzling blue lightning, then the darkness. After few seconds, Cahetel’s eyes adapted to the dark atmosphere and he realized he was in a round room made by a dark stone. There were just two windows, high in the wall. A pale light enlightened part of the wall and of the floor, where he was seated. He explored the floor itself by his hands and he realized he was in a circle, with some water flowing through it. But, after few minutes the water disappeared, revealing the opalescent stones that formed the circle itself. He looked at the room intently, and even if it was night, he was almost sure it was empty with the exception of some mirrors hanging from the walls. Even the high ceiling seemed brilliant, but he wasn’t able to recognize the nature of the matter it was made by. Paying more attention, he noticed the mirrors were able to reflect the light entering through the windows, giving some kind of lightening to the room. Like a dream, the pale light of a candle appeared at the side of a beautiful mirror, whose frame was accurately carved. Then, Cahetel realized he wasn’t alone in the room. A woman was seated in front of the mirror, brushing her long hair with grace and care. The candle floating in the air. “Finally a pilgrim from Nowhere” said a voice, calmly. The young man noticed the image reflected by the mirror: it was a charming woman, with an indefinable age. “Lately, some fleeting ghosts came from the same place. I let them pass, but they annoy me now…”. She stopped brushing, looking at the pilgrim through the mirror. His eyes were deep, dark with a light inside, a sort of flame. “Dear Madame, my name is Cahetel. The Red Spirits sent me to the Fifth Colony” he said standing up and making a bow. She stood up. “Very interesting. So, they opened the passage. You must be very important”. When she started moving, the young man noticed her face changing appearance: in a moment she was young, but suddenly she looked like an old woman. Moreover, when she started walking it seemed she had two different images, following and, at the same time, overlapping each other. Cahetel wasn’t able to move or to speak. “Give me your hand, so I can see who you are…”. When she saw the circle in the palm of his hands, she looked with her penetrating, mysterious gaze into his eyes.”I can’t stop you, Blue Pilgrim”. Then, Cahetel felt like a heavy force had released him. He breathed deeply. “Do you have any message from Him?”she said while turning back and going to sit at the mirror. “No, Milady” he answered without knowing the reason. “Oh! I’ll wait for Him. I know. He’ll come back”. So, she started brushing her hair again. Calmly. With

grace. In that moment a pale blue light spread from the surface of the ceiling to the mirrors. Madame Butterfly set him free… A disk of blue light extended till the circle on the floor, wrapping the voyager who felt his body dissolving like fog. Again.

The strange tall man took Laura’s hand. The little girl looked at him puzzled. “Who are you? What is your name?”. He smiled “I’ll tell you when you’ll be older”. The man opened her hand and, rapidly, placed something in it. A short lightning spread from her closed fingers but, when she opened them, there was nothing. A wind moved her long, black hair. The man smiled again. “We will meet again, when you are ready Laura”. The girl was completely confused, but at the same time, she felt comfortable. She knew he wouldn’t hurt her. He pointed to something behind the girl. A bird was waiting on a roof. She turned on her side and when she looked again to him, he wasn’t there. He had disappeared.

Rose The One, Happy Birthday Rosa

2010-04-30T06:06:00.000-07:00

It is so nice to have another day for celebration:)
Have a wonderful Birthday dear Rosa,
Thank you for sharing with us your creativity and Inspiration:)
Lots of hugs and kisses

Happy Birthday Zoe!

2010-04-26T21:09:00.000-07:00

Color of Mind

"I have dreamed in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind."

Emily Brontë

Created for Zoe...additional artwork (inserted card) by Aaron Goland.

Zoe Blue

2010-04-26T20:29:00.000-07:00

I love YOU

Zoe Blue

The Sandcastle...Let's play

2010-04-14T06:33:00.000-07:00

Rob Gonsalves-Castle on The Cliff

The Sandcastle, it never lasts long.

To build it: is it right or is it wrong?

Nobody ever lives in it.

Why does anybody even bother making it?

The first rain or tide will wash the walls away.

Will children even remember their play?

The splenid Sandcastle will become again

nothing more then a sand, dull and plain.

But what can we ask for more?

We live for new ideas to explore.

Time is not only measured by sand,

We measure it any way we can comprehend.

Vesna

13/04/2010

Please feel free to add to the post...

The Best Thing In The World

2010-04-13T08:00:00.000-07:00

The Best Thing In The World

"What's the best thing in the world?
June-rose, by May-dew impearled;
Sweet south-wind, that means no rain;
Truth, not cruel to a friend;
Pleasure, not in haste to end;
Beauty, not self-decked and curled
Till its pride is over-plain;
Light, that never makes you wink;
Memory, that gives no pain;
Love, when, so, you're loved again.
What's the best thing in the world?
—Something out of it, I think."
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

An Ignorant Witch and A Tall Scared Man

2010-04-11T20:38:00.000-07:00

I HAD to run. His shadow covered mine. The Moon became his partner and Moon followed me too.

Then she appeared. She looked up and I realized I AM a tall man.
“Can you help me little witch?” I asked, “I am a monster, a man afraid of himself”.
She couldn’t be less interested. “There is full World of those”, she said and flew away on her broom towards the full Moon.

Revenge

2010-04-09T17:53:00.000-07:00

“I have never seen something like this”

John stares the long white bared body on the red floor, unable to move.
“And he is not dead, that’s what the doctor says, he is not dead”.
“No he is not. His heart is still beating slowly but steady, the drug is keeping the body alive in the throes of death”.

He looks around… the shoes on a puddle of blood, a table, two cups, the knife, the wooden rosary and the cassock, …

“John, come here! Look at this!” In one of the shoes he finds a syringe, on a written paper:
“Suffer the long dying, as you made me suffer last two years, father – Emma”

-Migue
(For Prompt 2).

The Incarnated Fear of Forgetting - Prompt #2

2010-04-07T14:19:00.000-07:00

photography by Diane Powers

Victor was an ill mannered man of staggering genius. A lean shadowy giant with long wiry fingers dressed in elegant rags. He lived in a dark neglected manor, avoiding all. Shoes creaked the floor boards as he walked the halls. Remnants of a painful beautiful past. Doll creations from a conveyor belt that he fashion from the steel of an abandoned factory. No matter what her face forever appearing in the porcelain.

A Gift

2010-04-05T14:07:00.000-07:00

Twenty years passed since she met a tall, shadowy man for the first time. His name was ancient almost like the Universe itself. Laura was playing with a ball in the courtyard when he appeared. The man approached to her:”Fasten the laces of your pretty shoes or you'll fall down, Laura”. Something shining appeared in his hand. “This is a gift for you. Take care of it”. That was the beginning.

--Rosa
(for the March 20/April 12 prompt.

ONE MORE THING

2010-03-21T19:15:00.001-07:00

No more supernatural talk, Toots, you never knew what hit you.

More than the weight, it was its bottom edge that killed her.
More than the bucket, my anger. Yoho and a bucket of zen.

She, elegant yet limp in her robe, dragon flame from the mouth of death.

Confess, reader: you made me do it.

--by eric

Prompt: Deadline April 12

2010-03-20T11:57:00.000-07:00

Given the character of a tall and shadowy man, write a story in the genre magical realism, using the subject shoes and the theme man versus the supernatural.
Word limit: 72
Time Limit: 13 days

*Don't forget about Madame Butterfly!

The Bucket

2010-03-12T13:56:00.000-08:00

She passed by him in the hall. Her handbag flailing confidently at her side. What made him think of her as a little girl, arms flailing her bucket on the beach? "Unaware," he thinks to himself, like the innocent child in the sand. How can she possibly know her fate? That he would be her death.

Photography by, Diane Powers.

Detective Maddie

2010-03-12T11:39:00.000-08:00

I was nervously running to the crime scene.
It was my first detective assignment.
She was passing by, serene,
carrying a bucket.

I thought:
"She is too pretty for a cleaning lady".
I feared:
"You are too stupid for a detective, Maddie".

My confidence won.
Elegantly dressed Dragon Butterfly
Will be in the jail for long.

The Last Case

2010-03-12T10:34:00.000-08:00

Here is zoe's offering for the March 9th microfiction prompt:

The end was there in the beginning, in that accidental glimpse of a green shimmer peeking out from what she was calling a neckline. The green shimmer held me so I never saw what hit me. And then the old man with the gold-filled bucket was painting someone else’s name on my door.

--zoe

"The Last Stand"
by Patrick Richardson

The Mystery

2010-03-12T06:50:00.000-08:00

Here is Rosa's hard-boiled story in response to the microfiction prompt....

She felt His presence before seeing Him. The red-bright eyes of the Evil were pointed on the black gowned young lady. The waiter poured some champagne from an iced bucket into two glasses. “I feel, he is here”. Firstly,the lights lowered, the detective shivered. In the darkness, a scream. ”This is the end”. Silence.

-Rosa

56 ladies boiling in a bucket

2010-03-11T20:03:00.000-08:00

--Migue's 56-word noir tale, in response to March 9th's prompt:

“56 ladies boiling in a bucket”

The detective takes a glance to the bucket and back to him.
“ What do you mean?”
“Stupid”- he sniggers.
…
“Why 56 ladies… in a bucket?” - she notices the doctor’s looking at her legs.
“When he came here” – he looks up again - “he brought that bucket with 54 rings inside.”
“And?”
“A nurse was killed two days later.”

--Migue

Glowing Review, and a Prompt

2010-03-09T05:47:00.000-08:00

I think that was the best sentence yet!

So, we have created the character of Madame Butterfly:

Madame Butterfly, a disturbingly womanly dragon, seemed mystified by sudden changes and fleeting ghosts from Nowhere. Her Nowhere was communicating telepathically with a primal Entity deep within metaphysical meaning, wordless. Then little distortions started interfering with the flow, and thus sad feelings overwhelmed Madame's soul. Bright orbs showed visions emerging from mirrors surrounding her ever more.

(PLEASE CONTINUE to explore the life of Madame Butterfly in the comments section!)

PART II:
I am curious, given the limit of 56 words, which is how many we used to create her character, if we could make an entire story, a microfiction piece. If you've read Migue's latest post, you can see where several writers created entire stories in 6 words, so it should be possible! This time, each person is responsible for his/her own entire 56 words. I am giving a prompt below. POST YOUR STORY wherever you like, but also post it here in Continuum! If you do not have access to create posts, hit the "contact me" button to the right, and we will fix the situation.
Have fun!

**Given the character of an elegantly-gowned young lady, write a story in the hard-boiled detective genre, using the subject a bucket and the theme man versus the supernatural.

Word limit: 56
Time limit: 2 weeks (deadline is March 23).**

I got this microfiction prompt template from:
http://www.wgz.org/chromatic/projects/microfiction/

Save Madame Butterfly!

2010-03-01T15:39:00.000-08:00

photograph by, Sarah Moon

Madame Butterfly, a disturbingly womanly dragon, seemed mystified by sudden changes and fleeting ghosts from Nowhere. Her Nowhere was communicating telepathically with a primal Entity deep within metaphysical meaning, wordless. Then little distortions started interfering with the flow, and thus sad feelings overwhelmed Madame's soul.

Collaborators, Don't Give up Now!

2010-02-23T11:03:00.000-08:00

All right, we're on our way to a paragraph, here...Let's give Madame Butterfly's telepathic communication a purpose, shall we?

Madame Butterfly, a disturbingly womanly dragon, seemed mystified by sudden changes and fleeting ghosts from Nowhere. Her Nowhere was communicating telepathically with a primal Entity deep within metaphysical meaning, wordless.

A first word....?

I thought I might add a bit of inspiration here, now that we have a character. I was thinking....
a disturbingly womanly dragon...

The above drawing is Milton Caniff's Dragon Lady, drawn for Terry and the Pirates, a comic strip from back in 1934. He based the drawing on Joan Crawford. The eponymous Terry was a kid who had inherited a treasure map, and the friends he took with him on his journey. Lai Choi San, the Dragon Lady, was one of the many dangerous pirates they came into conflict with along the way--but perhaps the most dangerous, as sometimes she appeared to be an ally, and other times, a villain.

Anyway, nothing wrong with pirates, and we needed some kind of visual stimulus, right?

Collaborators, Continue to Unite!!

2010-02-19T06:09:00.000-08:00

Let's allow Madame Butterfly an entire paragraph of existence, at least, shall we? So here, we have the first sentence. I added an "ly" to woman, in order to pull disturbingly and dragon together, and dropped the "ly" from ghostly for the same sort of reason. Any other suggestions are always welcome.

Madame Butterfly, a disturbingly womanly dragon, seemed mystified by sudden changes and fleeting ghosts from Nowhere.

SECOND SENTENCE, FIRST WORD:

Her...

NOTE: a suggestion has been made which seems to me (zoe) very helpful:
"After reading the first sentence of "Madame Butterfly" (I contributed with a "woman"), I thought that, if you write "nowhere" as "Nowhere" it becomes an imaginary place. This way, the "womanly dragon" will interact with a defined imaginary place and not to nowhere, that is difficult to imagine for a person. In this sense, the second phrase "her nowhere was communicating telepathically with a ..." could be continued mare easily... maybe! :S This tale seems to belong to the fantastic literary tradition.. "
--Rosa

Collaborators, Unite!

2010-02-16T10:15:00.001-08:00

A week ago, I discovered the blog of the author of one of my top, top favorite books. The book is The Manual of Detection; the writer is Jedediah Berry, the blog is The Third Archive. On the blog, I found this post:

"Some weeks ago, Wah-Ming Chang and I started writing a sentence together. We took turns writing it, one word at a time, in the comments section of this post, and completed it yesterday. Here it is:

Mr. Bluemoon, of that exceptional tribe named for its perpetually growing sense of devotion towards miniature galaxies, never once imagined he himself would stand, with thirteen engines sounding like thirteen ghoulish mourners, aboard the Flying Wastrel, hand flat against the lever that directed heaven’s temperament.

We’ve decided not to abandon Mr. Bluemoon quite yet, so the rest of his story will be written right here, using the same method. I for one am curious to find out what happens to him."

Ladies and gentlemen, this is, as I recall, a collaborative projects blog...and we have been lazy. I suggest that this is the perfect task for us. Each person contributes one word every day, and we will meet back here to pet and coo at our first sentence.

Just add a word in the comments section. Once there is a complete sentence (the person with the last word also adds the punctuation), we will start the next post, which will contain the first complete sentence, and so on until the end of time. Or something.

FIRST WORD:
Madame

Passing Through the Curtain

2010-02-07T11:04:00.000-08:00

Entering the Magic Garden:
A new collaboration with the lovely Vesna:

A New Scent

At first, I saw only the bright light, I sensed something new. My mind couldn't immerse itself in the beautiful details until the heart sent its approval. Or, was it the other way around?
Is it all right to enjoy this? May I go on with this adventure now, here? How will this change me? Should I warn somebody that I may be gone forever? Will I be recognized when I come back?
"I can't come back", I said to myself. Time travels only forward, and life just goes on.
So, I relaxed, and let myself indulge.
It was a new scent.
The scent filled my nostrils and therefore forever changed my breath.
The scent covered my face and softened the way I look.
The scent gently landed on my eyelids and made me close my eyes and see more.
The scent flooded my mind, it sank old chains and balls and let new ideas be born.
I felt the scent as it traveled down my spine.
It was powerful like an ocean wave; it was unavoidable like an arrow arched from the birth of the Universe.
My body became the house to the fire, like a volcano. My hair turned red like lava.
My lips and my heart became One: Speaking of nothing but Love from that moment on.
--poetry by Vesna

The painting was also inspired by this piece by Vesna:

Inspiration
Her hair today again had a new shine. It was more red and made a different kind of frame around her face. “I’ll never finish this portrait”, he thought. He really needed the provision from this painting but he didn’t feel angry that the work was prolonging. Little Elizabeth, his daughter, brought light and warmth to the studio with her presence. One day her hair would have the color of gold, the other day the color of a young chestnut, or, like today, the shine of bronze. He looked through the window and saw his wife planting purple flowers. It seemed to him like the grass around her was all blue. His heart sent colorful fireworks through his eyes. “Maybe it is time to paint what I feel, not what I see,” he thought. Then the inspiration came by itself, he didn’t have to call it.

Notes from Zoe:
The plants that her image begins to appear through are all versions of the Hellebore. I had been thinking of the hellebore because of its legendary ability to cure insanity--thus, it formed a symbolic curtain between this world, filled with insanity, and the world of the magic garden, where one could suddenly and naturally be cured of it, and filled with magical abilities as a result...The idea was for there to be a certain location in a garden where, at a certain hour of the night, one could pass into an otherwise invisible garden, where certain plants grew that one had to have special knowledge to use. The hellebore is one of those plants.
In A Contemplation Upon Flower: Garden Plants in Myth and Literature, by Bobby J. Ward, it says:

“...the black hellebore, presumably Helleborus niger, was supposedly favored by witches who used it in their charms because they believed that one ‘finger’ of its lobed leaves was evil. According to legend, only a witch knows which one!....
Traditionally, even the collecting of black hellebores was considered dangerous because of their connection to witchcraft and sorcery. It had to be done in a specific, prescribed way; Pliny instructed drawing a circle around the plant with a sword and while lifting the root saying certain spells or prayers, entreating permission from the gods. The mystic rites for collecting, according to some versions, suggest looking to the east to be sure that no eagle witnesses the process; if it does, the gatherer will waste away and die within a year.”

Legend has it that the Black Hellebore (so named for the color of its root) successfully cured many famous cases of insanity, including that of Heracles, and that of the daughters of Argos, who had been driven completely wild by Dionysus.

Its use throughout history went in and out of fashion, because of the dangers caused by using it carelessly--whereby it became a poison (Hellebore is the ancient Greek word for food that kills).
In The Anatomy of Melancholy, it says “They that were sound commonly took it to quicken their wits, (as Ennius of old, Qui non nisi potus ad arma--prosiluit dicenda, and as our poets drink sack to improve their inventions)...” but later it began to be rejected as a poison; for example “Constantine the emperour in his Geoponicks, attributes no other virtue to it, than to kill mice and rats, flies and mouldwarps...” Later, it was picked up again as a medicine, and those that use it say it only has to be prepared correctly to work as a medicine: Brassivola “brags that he was the first that restored it again to its use, and tells a story how he cured one Melatasta, a madman, that was thought to be possessed, in the Duke of Ferrara’s court, with one purge of black hellebore in substance: the receipt is there to be seen; his excrements were like ink, he perfectly healed at once...” Some used a linen dipped in a warm concoction of hellebore and placed on the forehead to cure melancholy, some put it in an inhalant or a perfume.
And Paracelsus told us, “It is most certain...that the virtue of this herb is great, and admirable in effect, and little differing from balm itself; and he that knows well how to make use of it, hath more art than all their books contain, or all the doctors in Germany can show.”

The large bloom at the bottom left is from the type of Hellebore called the Christmas Rose, because it blooms as early as December. Its delicate scent and large, lovely petals bloom heartily even in the snow. We were imagining these winter blooms appearing in a corner of a larger garden at a secret hour of the night, their dew-strengthened scent opening the curtain between worlds, and the girl shimmering out of one and into the other.

Question

2010-01-05T07:09:00.000-08:00

Photo by Diane Powers

Question

I have clouds in my pocket,

I have Sun in my hair,

many rivers in my body

and a blue star in my head.

I have forest in my heart,

I have a tiger in my foot,

I have a white rabbit in my left hand

and coloured lakes in my veins.

I have a China Wall on my skin,

I have a handkerchief at my eye,

I have a train on my lips,

I have oceans in my ears.

I have a silver dolphin on my shoulder,

every finger is a different wind,

I have sand on my face

and a one-way ticket.

Will you come along with me?

by Vesna

Touched by an Angel

2009-12-23T07:40:00.000-08:00

We, unaccustomed to courage exiles from delight live coiled in shells of loneliness until love leaves its high holy temple and comes into our sight to liberate us into life. Love arrives and in its train come ecstasies old memories of pleasure ancient histories of pain Yet if we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls. We are weaned from our timidity In the flush of love's light we dare be brave And suddenly we see that love costs all we are and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free.
Maya Angelou

Text by Maya Angelou. Photography by Julia Margaret Cameron

from zoe, to my angels:
thank you for the wonderful treasure of your friendships this year...

"Dream of Angels" by Anne Bachelier

...and on to new magical journeys! :)

(by Anne Bachelier)

Wherever friendly paths intersect...

2009-12-12T16:14:00.000-08:00

Botticelli (segment from Primavera)

One never reaches home, but wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a time.

HERMANN HESSE, Demian

I Ask You

What scene would I want to be enveloped in
more than this one,
an ordinary night at the kitchen table,
floral wallpaper pressing in,
white cabinets full of glass,
the telephone silent,
a pen tilted back in my hand?

It gives me time to think
about all that is going on outside--
leaves gathering in corners,
lichen greening the high grey rocks,
while over the dunes the world sails on,
huge, ocean-going, history bubbling in its wake.

But beyond this table
there is nothing that I need,
not even a job that would allow me to row to work,
or a coffee-colored Aston Martin DB4
with cracked green leather seats.

No, it's all here,
the clear ovals of a glass of water,
a small crate of oranges, a book on Stalin,
not to mention the odd snarling fish
in a frame on the wall,
and the way these three candles--
each a different height--
are singing in perfect harmony.

So forgive me
if I lower my head now and listen
to the short bass candle as he takes a solo
while my heart
thrums under my shirt--
frog at the edge of a pond--
and my thoughts fly off to a province
made of one enormous sky
and about a million empty branches.

Billy Collins

Divine Heirs Perfumery, LLC

2009-11-06T15:05:00.000-08:00

Inside Divine Heirs, each wall is its own shade of blue, but your mind automatically files them all under “ocean blue”. The office is set up as if Manny had hung a series of full-length mirrors on the supply closets to the right of our desks, unfolding his kingdom out of unlikely corners into a series of incongruous hallways and perspective points, extending on and on to create its own universe. A million little cubicles, every wall a different blue. Different angles of the sun on water, different depths, different climes. It is his universe. The ceilings are painted in ripples.

The other thing about Manny is the way his little sex-kitten heart purrs in orange. Manny wears an old man’s suit to the office, but his pumps, his wedges, his boots, his spikes, they are all some variant of orange. Damien and I name patterns of his moods based on the direction of the stripes of his stockings: carnival for vertical, little girl for horizontal, pizzaz for zigzag, or obscene for the furry-textured zebra prints, and the fine detail of his temper is hinted by the particular cast of orange of the shoes they escort. Huddled over my desk, we spin tales of the nighttime company that led to the creamy shades, the spectacular hangovers bringing miserably flat shades, the evening plans foreshadowed by swirls of flashy orange, but though we sit uncomfortably close to what seems like an awfully intimate secret, there are many things we don’t know about Manny. Like today, his spiked boots are Mars Popsicle, like a cold fire, his heels little snapping firecrackers that draw your body into a cringe. I tell Damien how he had company all morning and through lunch, a visitor who, against all form, went straight past me to Manny’s desk and tried to make some point or threat or just tried to dominate his attention, and how, for hours, Manny read to that visitor from the scrolls of our product names at the very peak of his vocal chords, high-pitched yet operatic, formal, even, until his company, face puffed and flaming, sweating and completely defeated, simply dropped off the planet. Diminished. Was sapped of importance, until you didn’t even notice he’d left, except that Manny had stopped singing.

We look over to him now, licking honey from his caller’s ear and wonder how he knew to pick those boots ahead of time. And who could be so angry with Manny?

For Diane, with Love

2009-11-05T10:08:00.001-08:00

On your birthday I engraved a heart on the bench in the park.

I did it spontaneously, without any plan.

A bit out of ordinary for me, to do that, I may say.

There was something new in the air, a new shade of purple or red or blue in the sky.

I am not sure.

There was something warm in the cool breeze that was messing with my hair.

I remember the feeling,

I don't remember the facts.

It was that feeling that took my hand and drew the heart.

I wouldn't know who or how or why drew the other hearts;

every day I would see many new ones.

It makes me smile, it is so like you: to inspire and to create this happy place.

I love you Diane, happy (belated) birthday!

may my heart always be open to little

2009-10-05T07:54:00.000-07:00

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile

- ee cummings

"may my heart always be open to little birds...whatever they sing is better than to know..."
(photo by anke merzbach)

"and even if it's sunday may i be wrong...there's never been quite such a fool who could fail pulling all the sky over him with one smile..."
(by anke merzbach)

"I am not able, and I do not want, completely to abandon the world-view that I acquired in childhood. So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information."--George Orwell (Why I Write).

"Wilde was deeply impressed by the English writers John Ruskin and Walter Pater, who argued for the central importance of art in life. Wilde later commented ironically when he wrote in The Picture of Dorian Gray that "All art is quite useless". The statement was meant to be read literally, as it was in keeping with the doctrine of art for art's sake, coined by the philosopher Victor Cousin, promoted by Théophile Gautier and brought into prominence by James McNeill Whistler. In 1879 Wilde started to teach aesthetic values in London."--on Oscar Wilde, from Wikipedia

finally, i add something....from zoe:

In the medieval bestiaries, the salamander (from the Greek salambeander, or chimney-sweep) is defined as a creature impervious to fire. Often, the salamander is depicted not only in the midst of flames, but also by an apple tree, with an old man looking rather ill and holding a bitten apple collapsing next to it, showing the salamander’s dark reputation for poisoning fruit. According to The Medieval Bestiary, one bestiary shows “the salamander as a snake spiraling up an apple tree; the snake has an apple in its mouth, making the scene very similar to some manuscript illustrations of the temptation of Eve.A man holding an apple stands near the tree, a hand to his head and looking sick.” I’ve chosen to pursue a different aspect of the poison stories, however: I would rather suggest that this whole idea of the apple that causes so many problems in The Garden (which some say was actually a pomegranate--and I’ll come back to that) is really fear of the new. Everything is set in Eden: the rules are in place, the Father runs things. Then the children reach the age where they become their own people. It becomes time for the old order to undergo an upheaval, for changes to be made, for the young to implement their own ideas. This part of the process of life shows up in all mythologies. For example, in the ancient Greek myths, Cronus, the youngest of the Titans, overthrew his father and became the new ruler, and then tried to have all his own children killed so that the same could not be done to him. But one of his sons, Zeus, escaped, and he grew up to overthrow his father and become the new leader. In those stories (as in the story of Oedipus), the idea of the “Old Guard” trying to hold onto its power past its time is shown in a particularly ugly light--as killing one’s own children. But in the story of Adam and Eve, it is the “upstarts” that become the sinners. The idea of assuming they might one day know as much as or more than their father is unforgivable, and the day they choose not to follow his rules is the day we all become exposed to the idea of an eternity of burning in hellfire. The depiction of the salamander poisoning the apple tree shows another possibility for this story, however.
As St. Augustine says, not all that burns perishes in the fire; some fire is cleansing, in fact. And the salamander, here, is an animal that can walk through fire, bringing you to the other side. So though Eve eats the apple that this salamander/snake has offered, and apple depicted (in a sense) as having been poisoned by the one offering it, she is not necessarily then condemned to burn eternally in hell-she could, instead, ride out of the fire on the back of the salamander--that is, she could follow her new ideas through the difficult process of “revolution” and into a new, fresh world.
So, the woman riding the salamander here could be Eve, though when I was drawing her, I was thinking of St. Sophia, who was born two months premature, at the end of the frost but in the midst of a village fire. She was brought into a world in flames and as soon as she was born, her family evacuated the village along with everyone else. She became the saint responsible for the end of winter, and was called upon to protect the harvest from late frosts. So she is a good representative for the end of the old ways, of something "frozen" in place, and the process--the fire of passion--that leads one to the new. The flames thaw that ice, and allow for new growth.
And here, it’s interesting to note that the tradition of stringing up lights during the winter holidays dates back to festivals surrounding the winter solstice--the longest night of the year--when fires were lit in an effort to coax light back to the world. The end of the old year, the beginning of the new.
And as for that apple that might really be a pomegranate--that brings us to another Greek myth, the myth of Persephone (or the Roman Proserpina), who was abducted by Hades and brought to the Underworld to be his wife. Her mother turned the world dark and wintry as she searched for her missing daughter. When Persephone was found, it was discovered that she had eaten of the pomegranate that she’d been offered while in the Underworld, and the rules stated that whoever ate while in the Underworld stayed in the Underworld. However, because no one wanted the world to be dark and wintry forever, the gods got together and forced a compromise on Hades which allowed Persephone to rejoin her mother for part of the year, during which Spring would come and the world would flower again. So, though she ate of a forbidden fruit, which condemned her to eternity in the underworld, Persephone was able to survive it--and to bring new life to earth.

In his book “A New Earth,” Ekhart Tolle adds another detail to the life of the salamander (an amphibious lizard) as he describes the slow and difficult process some water creatures underwent, facing down the difficulties of gravity and air in order to learn to live on dry land. First, they only lived in water, then, slowly, they became able to drag themselves out for small amounts of time, until finally they could travel farther and farther away from the water and still survive. In the book, he posits that it is unlikely those creatures would have gone through such a struggle if it had not been necessary, by some danger, or some new lack of nutrients, to do so. Because of their need to shed the old way of life, they became entirely new. And then:
“Most crawling reptilians, the most earthbound of all creatures, have remained unchanged for millions of years. Some, however, grew feathers and wings and turned into birds, thus defying the force of gravity that had held them for so long. They didn’t become better at crawling or walking, but transcended crawling and walking entirely.”
Thus, even the laws of genetics were overcome--no rule, it seems, is all that hard or fast when necessity strikes. If we want to enough, we can pass through the fires of hell and keep walking. If we so desire, we can quit walking entirely, and fly.

So that is the story here: She rides on the back of the salamander through the flames, which become wings for the salamander. Notice its offspring, leaping with new found wings from the tree. Notice the long body of the next-generation bird, and then the smaller, rounder form of the highest one. Sophia/Eve/Persephone’s snowy dress falls away, and the new material blooms Fire Lilies (not the orange lilies, but the ones which depend on fire in order to flower*), one of which she breaks off to offer her ride. A pomegranate tree blooms from the flames, new leaves and blooms and fruit forming on its trunk, distinct from the snow-covered hedge and frozen fountain further behind.

*I used the ones in the Taschen Book of Botanical Prints as my models. The hedge and gate were borrowed from the beautiful lawn of Clive Hicks Jenkins.

Te miro y se me abre la mente

2009-09-30T14:09:00.000-07:00

.

Ni siquiera una mirada, para verte
sólo he de cerrar los ojos.
Oigo tu voz sin que hables
susurrándome caricias al oído.
Sin tu presencia, siento tu cálido respirar entrecortado
en mi cuello.
Atrapas mi pensamiento, lo esclavizas.
Estás ya dentro de mí y no puedo hacer nada,
mientras avanzas por mis venas como veneno
del que no me puedo deshacer.
Veneno tan dulce por otro lado.
Dulce, pero incurable, quisiera que fuera incurable.

by Miguel A.C.

[zoe]

(please press the photo, then the magnifier for a larger size to see the connecting lines...)

[Te miro y se me abre la mente:The Thread]
This illustration was inspired by Vesna's creation of the title phrase of this post (I look at you and my mind opens), and her initial photo.
I tried to incorporate the spiral connectedness of the shell, linking the various threads around the drawing. The image also fits with the first line of Migue's poem "Ni siquiera una mirada, para verte," as the central character--the clown gazing upon the simple string carried by the bird which inspires the opening of the possibilities of his world--is aware of the presence of all the other characters somewhere within himself. I was playing with the idea that he creates them with his imagination but also that they are there, unseen until he opens his imagination. And that one's imagination can be opened simply--with nothing more than a glance from another or of another. The bird could be the soul of the girl, here shown at different stages in her life all at once.

The vines draped over each of the young trapeze-artist's arms are loosely (the plant is not actually a vine) based on the drawings of the Adonis flammea in The Book of Botanical Prints by Basilius Besler. According to that Dressendorfer and Littger, who edited the book, "their red flowers recall the legend of how the flowers grew from the blood of the handsome favorite of the gods, which is why the plant has had this name since the 17th century." Adonis was a Greek god, a son of Cyprus, closely linked to the rebirth and vegetation deities of several other cultures. Wikipedia says, "He is an annually-renewed, ever-youthful vegetation god, a life-death-rebirth deity whose nature is tied to the calendar." For these reasons, I felt the plant to be a good symbol for the stages of the male aspect of the drawing.

One of the reasons he is linked with the cycles of death and birth lies in his beauty. Again, Wikipedia: "As soon as Adonis was born, the baby was so beautiful that Aphrodite placed him in a closed chest, which she delivered for security to Persephone, who was also entranced by his unearthly beauty and refused to give him back. The argument between the goddess of love and the goddess of death was settled by Zeus, with Adonis spending six months with Aphrodite...and six months with Persephone."

[end zoe]

[vesna]
He woke up with a mind like a Harlequin;
to whom thinking feels like a pain.
She dresses like a Mannequin,
She winks to the mirror, a bit vain.

His face is perfect: no apparent flaws.
Beautiful Adonis, ready to shine.
She sings: "He glows."
She believes:" He is mine."

He moves around the town,
feeling tall and proud.
One day she will pick the wedding gown;
One day they will fascinate the crowd.

Their story continues to live;
Their love has a magical power.
There is so much beauty to give:
she is a bird, he is a flower.
[end vesna]

We are the time. We are the famous by Jorge Luis Borges

2009-09-12T11:35:00.000-07:00

We are the time. We are the famous

metaphor from Heraclitus the Obscure.

We are the water, not the hard diamond,

the one that is lost, not the one that stands still.

We are the river and we are that greek

that looks himself into the river. His reflection

changes into the waters of the changing mirror,

into the crystal that changes like the fire.

We are the vain predetermined river,

in his travel to his sea.

The shadows have surrounded him.

Everything said goodbye to us, everything goes away.

Memory does not stamp his own coin.

However, there is something that stays

however, there is something that bemoans.

Jorge Luis Borges

"Narcissus' Nightmare Becomes a Dream" (by zoe jordan)
[zoe] He looks into the pool--living, not stagnant--and sees not his own reflection, but that of his other... [vesna] image. The image broken into pieces, transformed into some unrecognizable shape, was looking back at him. Narcissus felt broken and unprotected, it seemed like the living pool was reflecting his inner self. His nightmare was there in front of him, so alive and scary: there is this floating ugly creature convincing him that his beauty is invisible, that his fears are out there for the world to see. Narcissus closed the eyes...
[zoe] He wished to see beauty, but new beauty: he wished to look into his reflection and see something more beautiful than himself, himself but more beautiful. He squeezed his eyes shut, and he willed it. And with his eyes shut, his other senses began to take over. He could smell a blossom, some blossom...what was its name? And a gentle, singing voice floated across the air, barely reaching his ears... [vesna]

Alphonse Mucha, Princess Hyacinth

That was the smell of the spring, of his mother's garden full of white hyacinth, smell of her warm hug and gentle touch that was wiping the tears from his dusty face. He was a little boy again. Playful and careless. He only feared that the night will interrupt his play and he'll have to go to sleep. He didn't like nights and sleep when he was a boy, they were bringing with them scary dreams...

[zoe]
...dreams of the forest before him, endless and dark, the monstrous roots and the hidden swamps, and the whispers of all that awaited his fall...the shivering trees that warned him, with sudden silence, of that dreaded arrival...

"Spooky Tress," by Gabriel Jordan