festoon and globes

festoon or globes
Originally uploaded by equusignis

This morning I spent in the city to attend a focus group. Afterward, I walked around the Union Square area as if it was a beautiful sunny day while almost all of the rest of the people on the streets were scrambling for cover and away from the dense but tiny sprinkles of moisture coming down. In fact, it was dense enough that you could tell that it was coming down at a 45 angle. Later, I came into this café that I have passed by countless times but have never gone in so I went in and ordered a pot of tea and watched the sparse traffic going by. After a while, I realized that I really missed living in the city. That is going to have to change.

Prose

A found quote:

"A prose writer gets tired of writing prose, and wants to be a poet. So he begins every line with a capital letter, and keeps on writing prose."

– Samuel McChord Crothers

Love show

What I feel like today...

No shame (needed) plug. Brushes & Petals: A Benefit Show for Children in Vietnam

I am showing a selection of my photos and watercolors this coming weekend in a two person exhibit. The photography will be a combination of photos from last summer and fall as well as of a Ikebana arrangements by my friend Ivy. Part of the proceeds of the show will go to a non-profit called ICAN.

For those of you in the Bay Area, please drop by if you can. It's for a good cause.

RECEPTION
Saturday, January 26, 2008: 3pm - 7pm

EXHIBITION
Friday, 1/25/08: 3pm - 7pm
Saturday, 1/26/08: 10am - 7pm

ICAN is a 501 (c)3 non-profit organization whose mission is to help Vietnamese children realize their potential and become caring and contributing members of their family and community. ICAN's programs aim to create strong family and community networks to support the children as well as provide the children with skills, confidence and opportunities to succeed in life.

For more information, please visit www.ican2.org

Tragedy

found quote:

"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die."–Mel Brooks

We are like sculptors...

found quote:

"We are like sculptors, constantly carving out of others the image we long for, need, love or desire, often against reality, against their benefit, and always, in the end, a disappointment, because it does not fit them."

Anaïs Nin

Shadows (of things that get overlooked)

Today seemed overly productive, for a while there, so I decided by mid-afternoon it was time to stretch my legs with a photowalk outside. The sky was clear and cold so I walked. Oddly, I walked and walked and even got on a bus and I was uninspired to take a photo of anything. Not good. I boarded a bus and headed to a local bookstore. It was depressing. It looked like it was trying to regain itself from the Holiday rush. I considered seeing a movie but that seemed contradictory to my getting out of the house.

It was not until I was almost home that I started to click the shutter. It seemed odd because they were at places where I saw almost everyday and found a couple of new things. So...



And when I looked at the photo, this came to me:

Shadows as veins
Reveal past damage
Shadows as lines
Reveal ages past

January 7, 2008

Six of Swords

"...the Six of Swords shows the necessity to take a look at where you've been and where you're going. This mental clarity will also serve to smooth the way ahead, and make the passage from negative to positive as peaceful as possible. Though the waters behind are choppy, there are no rough seas ahead to slow your progress...Instead of ruling the emotions, the Six of Swords actually offers a highly controlled balance of logic and intuition. This is how true mental clarity arises; you can use your intuition to guide you through easy situations and call upon your impartial and analytical nature when it is needed for a more complex decision. Do not seek to suppress your emotions any more than a sea captain would want to eliminate the water. Rather, respect their presence and their power in your life, and use them to your advantage. When a balance between head and heart is achieved, truly great things can be accomplished."

–James Rioux from www.ata-tarot.com

The Pond

It has rained all day today. Feeling nolstagic, I donned my coat and grabbed my camera and went for a walk, half-heartedly wishing that my walk was taking place in another continent, in another place. The sky reminded me of winter days in La Tour-de-Peilz or Dundee. When I think of these places and all the moments of laughter I had there I find a bittersweet flavor in the core of my heart. Constantly we compare the moment of now in some sort of dissonance and look back to other times when we laugh as a matter of natural response, not a practiced effort. Still, I did find some kind of little joy in my steps today, listening to the rain drops pelting my hood even with earbuds in and listening to the moment's soundtrack from my iPod nano and feeling the swing and thump of my camera hanging around my neck and tucked in under my coat.

I managed to get a couple of photos without destroying my camera in the downpour...then when I came home, I found the poem.



The Pond

Night covers the pond with its wing.
Under the ringed moon I can make out
your face swimming among minnows and the small
echoing stars. In the night air
the surface of the pond is metal.

Within, your eyes are open. They contain
a memory I recognize, as though
we had been children together. Our ponies
grazed on the hill, they were gray
with white markings. Now they graze
with the dead who wait
like children under their granite breastplates,
lucid and helpless:

The hills are far away. They rise up
blacker than childhood.
What do you think of, lying so quietly
by the water? When you look that way I want
to touch you, but do not, seeing
as in another life we were of the same blood.

Lousie Glück

downtown

today's acquisition.

over the years, i've had the opportunity to work in manhattan, staying there just long enough each time to enjoy all the good and great things a huge metropolis has to offer but never staying long enough for the city to get under my skin and leave its bitterness. i remember coming across a review of this book a while ago and when i saw it on the shelf of a dollar store today, there was no question.

halves

they were like two halves of a missing sculpture like two halves of a perfect pear cloven and that was their story before they even knew it beyond distance they could trade words their thoughts meshed like the sea met the sky on a misty day as time passed they didn't know where one ended and the other started and they had this crazy idea that that was how their lives were going to unfold, like a piece of endless, elegant origami unfolding and with each leaf and crease undone there were to be art and love escaping from the thin recesses of their mingled lives and then the burr came it was not new it had been displayed or mentioned or talked about but it was not full so when it came it killed all they had together like a plague like a black death as if they were a continent of humans they all died he lied or he didn't lie he lived his own lie in his life so it was the truth so it came out as a lie even if he didn't want to lie there was the terrible fright there was the terrible fright of losing the only one he had met after all the years who was an equal there was the terrible feeling of wanting to tell yet it receded into the empty part of his soul where he thought it would not come out but it did and it did and it was horrible it was the crystal castle coming down, weighed with such darkness, it was like all the feathers of a thousand doves turning to lead and falling on the earth, falling on the earth when the earth is made of glass and everything broke apart and violently flew in all directions and it was the beginning of the end and it was the beginning of a new beginning and so he patiently, now, watches the sun and lets it set beyond the horizon and in the darkness he sees things and thoughts and emotions and realities that were too subtle for the bright light of day and his heart begins to calm knowing that it did not matter what he knew but it was about what he might see

i could not sleep in these hours before dawn

so i wandered and found this...

Demian

Some years ago, an old friend sent me a letter and she said I was her Demian. I had no idea what she was talking about. Recently, someone told me that was a very high compliment. So today, I went out and bought a copy. It's been some 16 years since that letter so it is high time I figure out what she was trying to tell me...

Happy Birthday Papa

For a moment this morning when I drifted from sleep to wakefulness, I thought what it might have been if you were still here on this earth. I thought how it would feel as an adult to have a close connection with my father. Thoughts as these give rise to ideas that make me feel that I should be a writer full time. That may happen yet...

Meanwhile, happy birthday papa.

grey morning, transparent clouds

rolled out of bed way too early this morning or at least that is how it feels. it wasn't too early though. it was 8:05am. my body was no longer interested in sleep even though i wanted to drift back into lucid dreams. there seemed unfinished business or lack of recall from some of the dreams. the whole night seemed to be some sort of odd recapitulation of excerpts from my life, actual characters replaced by new faces in some cases. the brain trying to draw lines between the dots and make connections while the other-reality part of the brain was presenting mobius loops and introducing unlikely or impossible trails to follow.

the strongest and most lingering recalls:

a woman who was either completely new or a composite of several people (i was reading about herman hesse's novel damien. perhaps influence by the character of frau eva?); an ambivalent relationship somewhere between platonic and intimate; a man who completed the triangle with more ambivalence; distances traveled everyday––something about the connection between a rural place and an urban setting; a place where everyone knows you; restraint in my own natural urges.

a return to art center, my alma mater. it was not clear why i was there. there were many familiar faces. we all came with our "kits," ready to design, draw, whatever. perhaps thoughts about me starting to teach next month. something i've wanted to do for a long time and it is finally happening.

in any case, my head was active and clear on this early winter day and i have the instinct that the feeling of this morning will stay with me for a long time to come...

Winter Sarabande

Strewn across his vision
are fragments of hues
and luminance; souvenirs
of the moments of a year.

White pale light conducts
fragments of remembrance,
matching chroma and senses
like a kiss telling a truth.

Written from Al-Zahra

a found poem

From al-Zahra
I remember you with passion.
The horizon is clear,
the earth's face serene

The breeze grows faint
with the coming of dawn.
It seems to pity me
and lingers, full of tenderness.

The meandering waterway
with its silvery waters
shows a sparkling smile.
It resembles a necklace
unclasped and thrown aside.

A day like those delicious ones
now gone by
when seizing the dream of destiny
we were thieves of pleasure.

Today, alone,
I distract myself with flowers
that attract my eyes like magnets.
The wind roughhouses with them
bending them over.

The blossoms are eyes.
They see my sleeplessness
and weep for me;
their iridescent tears overflow
staining the calyx.

In the bright sun
red buds light up the rose bushes
making the morning
brighter still.

Fragrant breaths come from the pome
of the waterlilies,
sleepyheads with eyes
half-opened by dawn.

Everything stirs up the memory
of my passion for you
still intactin my chest
although my chest might seem
too narrow to contain it.

If, as I so desire,
we two could again be made one,
that day would be the noblest
of all days.

Would God grant calm to my heart
if it could cease to remember you
and refrain from flying
to your side
on wings trembling with desire?

If this passing breeze
would consent to carry me along,
it would put down at your feet
a man worn out by grief.

Oh, my most precious jewel,
the most sublime,
the one preferred by my soul,
as if lovers dealt in jewels!

In times gone by
we demanded of each other
payments of pure love
and were happy as colts
running free in a pasture.

But now I am the only one
who can boast of being loyal.
You left me
and I stay here,
still sad, still loving you.

~ Ibn Zaydun
(died 1070) (Córdoba)

The River

for Benazir Bhutto

There is this sadness and comfort
As if everything is okay
Today when I walked beneath sheltering trees
The shade gave me a grace
I never thought was possible

There was for a moment
That I really am not alone
And tonight the stars
Would break open for me
And shed celestial light

I stopped in my tracks today
And looked down at a fallen leaf
So rusty and coppery in the midst of summer
And I saw myself in its colors
Always in autumn no matter the season

And in that moment
I let a bite of hope enter my heart
As if I didn't have to walk this path
With only my footsteps as companion
The road to the river won't be so far

all i ever get for christmas

touch

touch
Originally uploaded by equusignis

sometimes all you need is a touch...