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...

embarkation (2006)

Embarkation

The night grows late
but not as aged as I feel.

This heart wants to be lost
in my emotions,
leave everything behind;
this corporal existence.

Though I know there
is no exit out of this space;
this space of my head;
this space of my heart.

I wish for easy exit,
to let go and say goodnight,
but I know better.

I can't myself dumb down;
I can't myself let go
as if it were fiction;
someone else's book.
Conciliation or
reconciliation
comes sooner or later.

Readiness is pointless.

When in The moment,
the body shall die
and my world will stay
insignificant, without matter.

Yet consciousness only
rubs in this very existence.

Horizon of experience,
this is all I have:
a flame transfers ignis,
leaves consciousness as smoke.

trouble is a redhead [illustration friday]

The Self Banished
by Edmund Waller (1606-1687)

It is not that I love you less
Than when before your feet I lay,
But to prevent the sad increase
Of hopeless love, I keep away.

In vain (alas!) for everything
Which I have known belong to you,
Your form does to my fancy bring,
And makes my old wounds bleed anew.

Who in the spring from the new sun
Already has a fever got,
Too late begins those shafts to shun,
Which Phœbus through his veins has shot.

Too late he would the pain assuage,
And to thick shadows does retire;
About with him he bears the rage,
And in his tainted blood the fire.

But vow’d I have, and never must
Your banish’d servant trouble you;
For if I break, you may distrust
The vow I made to love you, too.

the scapula

one of my favorite passages from Jeanette Winterson:

"THE SCAPULA OR SHOULDER BLADE: The scapula is a flat triangular shaped bone which lies on the posterior superficial to the ribs and separated from them by muscle.

Shuttered like a fan no-one suspects your shoulder blades of wings. While you lay on your belly I kneaded the hard edges of your flight. You are a fallen angel but still as the angels are; body light as a dragonfly, great gold wings cut across the sun.

If I'm not careful you'll cut me. If I slip my hand too casually down the sharp side of your scapula I will lift away a bleeding palm. I know the stigmata of presumption. The wound that will not heal if I take you for granted. Nail me to you. I will ride you like a nightmare. You are the winged horse Pegasus who would not be saddled. Strain under me. I want to see your muscle sheath flex and stretch. Such innocent triangles holding hidden strength. Don't rear at me with unfolding power. I fear you in our bed when I put out my hands to touch you and feel the twin razors turned towards me. You sleep with your back towards me so that I will know the full extent of you. It is sufficient."

– Jeanette Winterson. from Written On The Body

little things

little objects go a long way, they carry stories with them for any attentive observer of a moment or moments experienced and preserve them to be re-experienced everytime the person looks at the little things again...

ungloved

rain came again this evening. as i sit here in front of my bedroom window, i can hear the gently taps on the roof and wall. it is a light rain but it is like the sky's tambourine, beating a light rhythm that i find so soothing. the smell of the air is slightly different too. after several rains, the grime of the streets, the grease, gasoline and oil will be washed away and the scent of the trees and plants will come through. how i wish i could smell the creosote and sage of the high desert...

that life is so far from me now in many different ways. i wonder when i will see signs of it again...

shorter days

the days are shorter now. even if i didn't look out the window, i could sense it. i could sense when the light hits the windows a little later in the morning and how it leaves a little earlier in the evening.

signs of things to come...

Omens

Omens
by Louise Glück

I rode to meet you: dreams
like living beings swarmed around me
and the moon on my right side
followed me, burning.

I rode back: everything changed.
My soul in love was sad
and the moon on my left side
trailed me without hope.

To such endless impressions
we poets give ourselves absolutely,
making, in silence, omen of mere event,
until the world reflects the deepest needs of the soul.

after Alexander Pushkin

sienna (2006)

Sienna (2006)

This afternoon
the grey overcast sky
broke out with a light rain.

First of the season.
The air smells good now,
after the rain.

Now the sky is cracked
with sunshine
and dramatized

by dark grey patches.
Summer is
indeed gone

and my friend
has come back
to stroll with me

among fallen golden,
umber and sienna leaves,
crushing underfoot.

gifts

saturday ends with a sunset just a tad earlier than previous weeks. transition. violet in the sky comes earlier. the coolness evening does not wait for moonrise. all these things i gladly welcome. the downslope of autumn, the inevitability of the test of cold, dark and barrenness lie ahead and i feel quite at home.

such feelings and sensory experience remind me of how precious the few abilities i have are worth – all things that i take for granted. the ability to visualize what others can't. i visualize too much, too often and at the wrong times so sometimes i try to stash them away. once in a while i am gifted with a good friend who reminds me of the worth of my gifts.

so again i will go to sleep and keep my wish to wake when the orange orb breaks the horizon...

before i woke

before i woke this morning, i had a dream of a good friend that i had not seen in a long time. it was a pleasant surprise. it was good to see her so i went looking for a way to express what i felt...

She Walks in Beauty

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

– George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824)

fluidity

i flow like liquid from places i've been
sometimes as nectar
sometimes as sewage

i float briefly like a lump of coal
surfing the surface of running magma
light as a moth and just as flammable

i fly like particles from places i've been
sometimes as ash
sometimes as smoke

i swirl and ascend like fleeing angels
tumbling upward in raging emotion
light as thought and just as fragile

i try to hold this fabric together
my time, my space, my breath
and will to wake when morning comes

(2006)

between fair and midland

thursday came and went with a soft grey backdrop. relatively uneventful. which is not bad nor good. there are moments when it seemed like one would want to push a moment one way or the other. being in the center can sometimes be an awkward thing especially when one is used to being left of center, i tend to be there.

it can be like having peace and then getting bored. the lust to do something to turn the situation is strong like the scent of carbon dioxide to a female mosquito. but today, i refrained...

one step closer

the sky reveals its grey lining for the first time this season. morning came cloaked in a dull 20% grey, accompanied by seagulls far from water with matching patches of pigment on their wings. they hover in the distance outside my bedroom window like monitors of a school hallway, ready to ask for passes.

the air is noticeable cooler, cool enough for me to partially close the window that has remained untouched and open for at least three months. soon there will be more moisture in the air, the dry smell of dust and exhaust will be replaced by the damp of trees bedding the ground beneath them with fallen leaves and broken twigs.

i look forward to the brilliance of organic decay made more luminous by the dull light and desaturated sky...

on the edge of something

laisse moi (2004)

leave me
leave me to these thoughts where one shouldn’t follow

this is not a medium for sentiment
not a place for a flat tire of the heart
no one will come to fix you

it is a moment of extreme
not a place to dredge up the once long ago
not a moment to feel the places where you have been

don’t say what you’d like
don’t do what might be normal, for you
this is the place where you find the green sign

don’t think of exit as a matter of leaving
it is just another opening
but this time it is on your own accord

make the best of what you can’t see
your history only haunts you when you are enemies
so lay your knife and open your heart
you only get to be this vulnerable once

fault line

late afternoon/early evening.

there is a fault line that threatens to shift. it runs vertical in between my shoulder blades and on the left of my spine. tension built up there during the night, probably from whatever dreams in the darkness that have found their way into the afternoon sunlight now growing gold and giving way to the eastern blue to lavender sky.

recalls from last night's dreams are only in fragments today. they are more unclear than previous days. their blurry imagery is accompanied by the dull pain in my sinus, like a left on water hose behind my right eye. perhaps being on the left side of my brain, this is a signal that i am thinking too much.

perhaps i should let go of the thinking, pull out my tarot cards and play with the universe.

monday's journal

"It is a little like an emotion that changes from despair into [accepting] inevitability and in doing so it tries to extract the most beauty out of what life there is..."

lundi matin

woke refreshed yet still wanting more sleep but did not give in because the feeling of wanting to do a lot today was stronger.

last night's dream was strange. i played the part of a protector of some woman i didn't even know. she was living in a trailer of some sort, like an airstream and the person who rented it to her had a trapdoor or peep hole in the floor of the thing. so i sat in the trailer waiting for the perp to try to poke through and whamm-OOO!!! i let him live. it was not a violent dream or anything but the emotions were intense. i woke up in a cold sweat. whoaa!!!

all fixed with a nice cup of green tea!!! (Camelia sinensis).

so it's hammer, duct tape and green tea that is in my survival kit for any situation...

air of autumn

the light streaming through the window in the morning is cooler today, a shade more of violet than the cerulean blue of summer.

if my nose wasn't plugged up from having a cold, i might guess that the air might smell differently. i know it would if i were out on the calm surface of lake sonoma on a canoe. i might go back there every week and watch the foliage slowly change. by late next month, i could find sienna, umber, ochre, scarlet and gold reflected on the dark still water on the warm springs creek arm. it would smell of dry bark, moss and lichen untouched by rain through the hot summer.

the coves would sound out the rustling of rodents collecting acorns, diving through inches of fallen leaves. the occasional caw of a crow. deep into the brush where the creek trickles into the lake there might be a great blue heron patiently waiting for the stray minnow. early in the morning and late in the day there will be sights of migratory birds stopping by.

lake sonoma is a waystation like crystal reservoir on the other side of the golden gate as thousands of winged travellers move south.

these things i miss, being stuck with drywall around me and asphalt beyond. there is no dirt beneath my toes...