Kitchen Knives

Eight of Swords

5" x 7" watercolor and graphite on paper, 2006.

Kitchen Knives
by Christine Boyka Kluge

On the counter,
a forest of knives quivers,
vertical trunks burnished
and joined with brass.
They keep their dangerous mirrors
hidden.
Twisting pointed blades
in the butcher block stand,
they anticipate the grip
of your unwary hand
as you lift
your silver face
from the dark narrow slot.
You glimpse your own pale eye—
glimmering,
looking up like a lost blue star
from the sharp edge
of your tiny universe.

--

about the eight of swords: A woman is tied and blindfolded within a cage of swords. This is the "damned if you do, damned if you don't," card. The Querent is in a situation where they're afraid to move. If they move, they'll get cut. However, the ropes that bind them, the blindfold over their eyes, are their own fears, keeping them still, immobile. And so the longer they stay, the more they constrain and entrap themselves. Ever been in a situation where you're afraid to say anything, so afraid that you second guess yourself, end up saying nothing, tying yourself in knots? But speaking up is going to get you cut to ribbons? That's this card. The Querent must have the strength to endure the cuts, else they'll stay trapped. They must move, for the longer they let the situation continue, the worse it will get.
(source: aeclectic tarot)

Birthday

Morning's arrival was accompanied by cold.
The first dawn of the season when my bones
hummed the density of chilled violet air.

Apropos it was, it caused wonder in my head;
what events and intersections would reveal in this day?
I started a painting of a dying girl just in case.

Watching the transparent pigment lose themselves
in the field of scratchy divots had a certain comfort;
viridian green, cadmium yellow and always ochre.

Watching the pools dry, not unlike dewed grass
receiving the life of sky's golden orb; the warmth,
what looks so rough wet finishes like molten dunes.

As the sun rose above the neighbor's eaves,
I pulled myself away from the desk to make tea.
Walking downstairs into the empty great room

I found a metaphor of my entrance into my next chapter.
These new pages aren't acid balanced; have no guarantee,
but patiently i wait while tea brews, inhaling the fragrance.

October 28, 2006

dream journal: oct 29

last night i had a dream that i was watching an old man in prison.

it was of another time perhaps. he was old. he sat on the floor of his cell atop the strewn straw. he made little trinkets to be sold, perhaps to repay a debt for why he was in prison. i could not tell if i was in the same cell or in another one or just invisible. it was like being in some other place as an observer where no one could see me and i could not affect the situation.

it saddened me.

the trinkets seemed to be maltese crosses cut of tin or aluminum. the edges were rough, burn. they had wires that could stand themselves up or be hung. before waking, i felt very upset because he was gone. perhaps taken away.

i felt a strong sense of injustice. i remember muttering in my waking side that he would be lost among a thousand unknown faces and be forgotten.

i woke up with tears in my eyes.

En Prête? (2006)

There was a time when things felt different.
The oddity of light coming through
curtains disturbing silent fibers

brought about a sense of wonderment.
My eyes morphed into a child’s;
my knowledge replaced by curiosity.

It was a glow that comes faster
than Gabriel’s note, Hermes’s letter.
Now, glories of annunciation have gone,

replaced with “Is it time to go?”
I’m ready in this flesh and liquid of crimson;
only my mind is hesitant, like a loon in circles.

Then the writing on my palms say,
“Are you ready? The boatman awaits.
You must leave regrets here, your sadness too.”

It is time to go, I hear Rachmaninoff.
The piece found in a Scottish winter;
let it come, replace this earth bound vessel.

Mirage (2006)

It is another cold moment in the autumn night.
There are nightbirds and moths flickering outside

the dark window trying to get in.
(Why would creatures that could fly even

choose incandescent light over
phosphorus points on this earth’s ceiling?)

He stares at the semi-reflections on the window
trying to see past the double panes of memory.

Images present aren’t discernable between
objects in the distance or reflections behind him.

Behind him in his mind is not a physical distance
but frayed remnants of emotional wakes.

Traces (2006)

There are melodies deep in my heart
Somewhere in the past, she put them there.

There are memories in my vision
Of southern France, she placed them there.

There are verses in my book,
She put them there in Alexandria.

She keeps for me lines
In red silk.

She holds for me
faces of a past I have forgotten.

She shapes for me faces
In a future that has yet to come.

Réveiller

Since I saw a certain picture an idea that has been stumbling around in my head...


Reveiller (Octover 29, 2006)

Early in the cool autumn morning
my senses not yet functioning,
she brings me a platter of fruit

with a cup of jasmine tea.
The white blossom's aroma
assault the lingering sleep in me.

Her gentle hand on the back of my neck
stirs something deep inside,
taking me back to an undiscovered country.

The mind's eye tries to trip the shutter
like a camera needing a tripod.
The skin's raw nerves try to grip

the sensation like a mantis holding prey.
a streak of light from the vertical blinds
find a spot on my face, crossing my pupils.

Morning's luminosity push me from the fake death,
stirs my reality, forces focus and I find
myself alone clutching an unfamiliar silken scarf.

Ophelia

click on image to see it larger

watercolor and graphite on watercolor paper. 5" x7". 2006.

she came into my mind this morning. i don't know where from...

this is what 40 looks like

i woke up actually feeling refreshed from the best sleep i've had in weeks.

had strange dreams last night. the last one before i woke up involved me going to las vegas on a triste with someone else's wife (it seemed like an ex-girlfriend perhaps) while she was on a business trip and i was tagging along, as it were. i remember limousines, a very nice hotel room, her conference guide (it had something to do with graphic design) and me shedding my suit and tie for a t-shirt, jeans, expensive shoes and an extraordinarily heavy jacket after we had sex and were headed down to the conference floor.

strange huh?

the rest of the day was pretty low key. i got out of bed early and started a painting of a maiden. the maiden started in a standing position but ended lying on her back and eventually turned into hamlet's ophelia.

grandma brought by brunch as she headed to the senior center and said she'd come back to pick me up to go hang out. there was a pyrex of pepper roasted chicken drumsticks and a fresh loaf of sourdough baguette. it was a wonderful feast, something so simple yet dear from the hands that made them.


at 13h45 she and lien picked me up and we headed to stanford. she was determined that i get a haircut and was willing to take me all the way to palo alto to the person i prefer. so we spent the afternoon hanging out in stanford and then i got a haircut and then came home.

quiet. oddly quiet day.

now it is late and as i try to distill the day i am finding it a much easier task than i could have imagined. i can't say why. i just know that i didn't make it anymore difficult on myself as i needed to.

perhaps i have learned some things...

40

i turn 40 on saturday...

it's now eight minutes before midnight. you would figure that for someone who loves words as i do that i would have something significant to say about turning 40, huh?

no. i've nothing to say. at least not now. perhaps i'll do it in hindsight and by then i'll have the advantage of being a tad older. maybe that will be enough for me to impart some shred of wisdom.

maybe. you can hold your breath.

i am not going to...

the history of light

watercolor and pencil on watercolor paper. 5" x 7", 2006.

for anesh

the poem below is something that i've found to think about on the day before my birthday...

Field Guide to the Night Sky
by Jennifer Chang

No one witnesses
the history of light.
The sky litters itself
with dust and I’m unsettled
by the steadfast burn
of thinking.
The night sky reaches
inside me,
I am sleepless
waiting for each star
to cross
into its corner, flower
then dim.
I do not believe
in paradise:
to flower, then dim.

Hi Miss...

ok, so i go out this morning for brunch and shopping with my grandma looking just like this which is nothing out of the ordinary. but obviously something has changed because today i got an unprecdented numbers of "hi, miss" than ever before. i mean ever before.

now, i'm used to getting mistaken for a girl when i have long hair (which it is not even long right now) a lot and it doesn't bother me. but usually it is once maybe twice a day, today for three hours in a mall everyone i came into contact with except for two (male salespeople in the calvin klein and some other store figured i had to be a guy as i was looking at men's clothing) stared me right in the eye, smiled then said, "hi miss!" they even said goodbye, "have a great day miss!" what the???

when i lived in the deep south, the girls i hung out with laughed caused i got more cat calls than they did. that was understandable cause my hair was really long and i'm little. of course then there was that time jamie's grandmother thought i was his wife's girlfriend but anyway i've never gone out for a whole morning in a crowded public place and have everyone think i was a girl.

perhaps it's because i lost some weight from being sick and my face is a little different? i don't know what to think. i don't think i'm getting a complex about it. all of you readers say yes please!

i just don't know!!! ;p

end of life

i could not sleep so i picked up the pad and a pencil and she revealed herself from the depths of my fatigue and insomnia.

this is the poem i wrote after i finished the sketch. i edited it this morning and thought they should go together:

END OF LIFE (oct. 26, 2006)

it comes not with surprise
nor with fanfares of brass.
it is more like a season;

the centered calmness of autumn.
quiet gentle slopes sheathed in leaves;
sheathed in quieting noises
that wrap like a gentle repose
descending over the detritus of
summer's extravagance;
summer's vibrant spectra.

it comes not in malice raucous
but in a rustle of twigs, leaves and feathers.
it is an awaited sensation;

the shy touch of intimacy,
silky stretches beneath terminal sheets
undulating like a sleepy caterpillar
anticipating the chrysalis,
expecting the drunkenness of
autumn's frugality;
autumn's monochromatic tones.

end of life does not argue,
does not try to make explanations.
end of life seeps like soothing cold
finding no resistance in tired tissues.

lying on toadstools

the quilted pillow i'm laying on was made and given to me by the woman who was my nanny when i was a little kid. she lives in vietnam.

Terminal
by Sylvia Plath

Riding home from credulous blue domes,
the dreamer reins his waking appetite
in panic at the crop of catacombs
sprung up like plague of toadstools overnight:
refectories where he reveled have become
the holstery of worms, rapacious blades
who weave within the skeleton's white womb
a caviare decay of rich brocades.

Turning the tables of this grave gourmet,
the fiendish butler saunters in and serves
for feast the sweetest meat of hell's chef d' uvres:
his own pale bride upon a flaming tray:
parsleyed with elegies, she lies in state
waiting for his grace to consecrate.

mandala

i'm trying hard to feel calmer and better...

Kathleen Raine has a soothing effect on me:

"Shall I uncover his loved desecrated face?
Are the unfathomed depths of sleep his grave?
Beyond the looming dangerous end of night
Beneath the vaults of fear do his bones lie,
And does the maze of nightmare lead to the power within?
Do menacing nether waters cover the fish king?
I piece the divine fragments into the mandala
Whose centre is the lost creative power,
The sun, the heart of God, the lotus, the electron
That pulses world upon world, ray upon ray
That he who loved on the first may rise on the last day."

From Isis the Wanderer, 1948

ghastly

i was feeling ghastly this morning so i painted the feeling. i wanted to see how horrifying i could make perfectly happy, joyous colors.

i think i succeeded.

9 hours in 3 days

of sleep

this has got to stop soon or it is going to make for some very interesting drawings or at least dreams

last night's dream:

just before i woke up today, i had been dreaming of being with people who were familiar to me but i've yet to me with. there was a lot of water. the place was like an aquarium laboratory or something of that scale. there was a woman teaching and training me how to monitor and run the systems and the differences for type of ecosystems in each type of tank. they were huge tanks.

she was so familiar to me but i was awakened abruptly and my recall of details about her was lost.

that time of year

how i'm feeling close to my birthday...

Fleur de Saison
by Emilie Simon

Dès les premières lueurs
Oh je sombre

Il me parait bien loin l'été
Je n'l'ai pas oublié
Mais j'ai perdu la raison
Et le temps peut bien s'arrêter
Peut bien me confisquer
Toute notion de saison

Dès les premières lueures d'Octobre
En tout bien tout honneur
Oh je sombre

Je sens comme une odeur de lis
Mes muscles se retissent
Et j'attends la floraison
Mais qu'a-t-il pu bien arriver
Entre septembre et mai
J'en ai oublié mon nom

Dès les premières lueurs d'Octobre
En tout bien tout honneur

Oh je sombre

Oh le temps a tourné je compte les pousses
Des autres fleurs de saison

Je ne sortirai pas encore de la mousse
Pas plus qu'une autre fleur de saison

Pas plus qu'une autre fleur de saison
Ouuu-oouu-ouu-ouu

Il me parai bien loin l'été
Mes feuilles désséchées
Ne font plus la connection
Mais qu'a t il pu bien arriver
Entre septembre et mai
Je n'fais plus la distinction

Dès les premières lueurs d'Octobre
En tout bien tout honeur
Oh je sombre

Oh le temps a tourné je compte les pousses
Des autres fleurs de saison

Je ne sortirai pas encore de la mousse
Pas plus qu'une autre fleur de saison

Pas plus qu'une autre fleur de saison
Oouu-ouu-ouu-ouu
Pas plus qu'une autre fleur de saison ouu-ouu-ouu-ouu
Aaaaaaaaaaaa-aaa
Ouu-ouuuu-aaaaaaaaaa

Dès les premières lueurs
Oh je sombre

The Portrait

Maman et Papa (c. 1965)

The Portrait

I stare at the picture
of this man
I've never met.

There is something
in the eyes,
familiar.

I swear we have
met some time before.

I swear that his gaze
is something
I've drawn before –
or he has drawn me.

Sometimes
in the dark of night
I wonder which one
envisioned the other first.

The cant of his head,
the pools of his eyes,
are things I've
inherited without
lessons.

What am I to do?
pictures to be drawn,
poems to be written.

I'm a triangulation,
an extrapolation of him,
and the pretty woman
at his side.

Some kind of
strange prodigy;
a twist in reality,
a twist in sobriety.

(9 October 2006)

ideal

monday morning comes in a blue hybridized between cerulean and indigo yet brighter than a child's smile, if that is possible. the blue beckons me to come into the flood of the sun's rays yet i am still inside. the only light hitting me is the glow of the lcd screen. how momentarily sad and lame. soon, i will rise from this seat and venture out to enjoy the autumn sunlight.

had vivid dreams last night as usual. there were people i have not met yet. i know them in the dreams as i usually do but i have yet to meet them. venues and geography are generally the only clues i have as to when i might meet them. in some cases it was months later and in others, years passed. crossing of paths is inevitable though, i have learned that by now.

someone asked me this morning who was in the painting i just finished, people always assume i am painting someone in particular. but no, they are either people i've yet to meet or composites. composites can be useful. in the physical, character and other dimension one can craft the ideal person they would like to deal with. how much more convenient could it be to paint or draw a model who will never complain? especially if you depict them with a beauty they either don't possess or do not know how to show.

they become real. real enough anyway...