perhaps a king

A Chair in Snow

by Jane Hirshfield

A chair in snow
should be
like any other object whited
& rounded

and yet a chair in snow is always sad

more than a bed
more than a hat or house
a chair is shaped for just one thing

to hold
a soul its quick and few bendable
hours

perhaps a king

not to hold snow
not to hold flowers

Arceneaux/Menou/Borgeau Belgian waffles

Arceneaux/Menou Belgian Waffles

I'm anticipating Christmas...nothing new there.  This Belgian waffle recipe passed through my mom's family--complete with cinnamon and nutmeg--is one of the tastes of Christmas to me.  These waffles are not the light and fluffy kind you eat with syrup.  They are dense and dry, best with a glass of eggnog. A stand mixer is easiest for the batter; my mom has broken several spoons attempting mixing by hand.  

 My great-great grandmother, Julia Bourgeau Menou Arceneaux, made these waffles.  Their signature shape is irregular, so as not to waste any batter spilling out of the waffle iron.  Now my mom and several of her siblings make them, some with their own special flair.  

o tidings

Thankful for family, friends, health and a job I like this Thanksgiving.  

God rest ye and all of yours.

what language would love to be

Plein air painting, like gardening, I think I like the idea of a lot more than I do the thing itself.  It seems romantic and natural, kind of the way things should be done.  It also requires a lot of movement of supplies and inconveniences. 

I use my computer for most art projects, with guidance from Google images or other photographs in digital form.  However, I do enjoy a rare moment when I can bring a small piece of outside indoors, and study it in the comfort of my familiar environs.  :)

In the last few weeks, I listened to "The Inner Landscape of Beauty, an interview of poet and philosopher John O'Donoghue" by Krista Tippett.  (https://onbeing.org/programs/john-odonohue-the-inner-landscape-of-beauty-aug2017/)

Among the topics discussed is Celtic music.  Both acknowledge its particular capacity to summon up the great joys and sorrows, somehow at once.  Donoghue attributes this to he fact that it contains the lines of landscape, and the history of the people.  He reflects, "I always think that music is what language would love to be if it could."  

The other weekend I heard Jarlath Henderson, one of the artists at the Richmond Folk Fest, who happened to come from Northern Ireland.  Em, he's worth a listen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwfmgGzfPxU

On Nana's 98th Birthday

I've been writing some poetry over the last year, keeping a new year's resolution to write 1 poem a month.  It's been a nice, quiet, non-messy divergence from my usual visual art.  In honor of Nana's 98th (!!) birthday today, here's one.  

Intersection

Boundaries

are what the child knows.

That you can start to cross the street before the car has passed

is what the mother knows.

That you can again find a center of balance

is what the man on the bike knows.

At the intersection is a doctor’s office. 

My grandmother, ninety-seven, is inside

filling out a medical questionnaire.

When she comes to the part requesting 

the medical history of her parents and 

grandparents, she laughs, making even the clerk look up.

That it can demand stillness 

is what the intersection knows.

But that there is no other intersection for miles

is what the street cannot know, 

which is what the child knows,

is what the mother knows,

is what the man on the bike,

dropping hands from handlebars,

knows.

I once asked a bird

"It's like somebody's plugged a light in"

oil, 11x14"

Enchroma glasses allow people who are color blind to see colors on the spectrum they have never seen before.  You can watch videos of adults seeing colors for the first time:   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fbaouj5EsXs

With the glasses, many people take a few moments to adjust to their new environment.  Some react emotionally.  Some verbally process the experience in a way you wonder if a newborn would, if he or she could.  They are childlike in their exploration of the environment.  It seems purple is especially striking.  Several choose to have this "first" experience in a garden.

(Also worth watching are videos of people with cochlear implants hearing for the first time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbe7x8GP2Ds) 

This painting marks my return to oil painting after more than ten years.  Oil is the preferred medium for many professional painters due to its vibrancy, texture, and endurance over time.  It also comes with additional particularities: it takes a long time to dry, it requires special solutions to wash the brushes...until now, with the development of water-soluble oil paints which require no toxic cleaning solutions and come with no associated smells!

I painted this for friends getting married today who enjoy contra dancing.  As usual, I don't like painting people, so I'm hoping the vibrancy of color can help make up for, say, the lack of faces...  Here's to many more dances to come!

flow

"For the boys -- some of whom can't swim -- the most dangerous part of the journey out of the labyrinth cave system remains the first kilometer, in which they are required to pass through a flooded channel no wider than a person. During this process, rescuers need to hold the boys' oxygen tanks in front of them and swim pencil-like through submerged holes." CNN

I am catching up on the week's news, including learning about the rescue mission of the Thai boys' soccer team from the Thailand caves.  The rescue effort is increasingly time sensitive due to impending monsoons.  I am thinking about the amount of drive, skill and bravery directed at this place.  

Then, I picked up the book I'm reading, Flow, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi:

"We have seen how people describe the common characteristics of optimal experience: a sense that one's skills are adequate to cope with the challenges at hand, in a goal-directed, rule-bound action system that provides clear clues as to how well one is performing.  Concentration is so intense that there is no attention left over to think about anything irrelevant, or to worry about problems.  Self-consciousness disappears, and the sense of time becomes distorted.  An activity that produces such experiences is so gratifying that people are willing to do it for its own sake, with little concern for what they will get out of it, even when it is difficult, or dangerous."

May God withhold the rainflow.

Upside Down Cake: What Maya was Making the Day King Died

Upside Down Cake: What Maya was Making the Day King Died

April 4, 1968, Dr. Maya Angelou's 40th birthday, was also the day of MLK Jr'.s assassination.  Maya was cooking dinner for friends.  She had promised to support King in his fundraising for the Poor People's march, but said it would have to wait until after her birthday.  

Decades later, the memory stirs Maya (https://www.inverse.com/article/43273-google-doodle-maya-angelou-connection-to-martin-luther-king-jr).

Her NYC apartment was saturating with smells: Texas chili sans beans, baked ham, candied yams, pineapple upside down cake.  She left the dishes to walk to Harlem when she heard the news.

For years afterward, rather than celebrate her birthday, Maya would send flowers to King's widow.

Hear her voice: "On the Pulse of Morning:"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9nTt2F0Kdc

http://mentalfloss.com/article/75541/11-facts-about-i-know-why-caged-bird-sings

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/nation-world/la-na-maya-angelou-martin-luther-king-jr-20180404-story.html

"Couldn't I have done better somewhere?  I wish I'd known better so I could have done better." - M.A.

Holy Saturday

sane and ebullient

I spent Saturday at Richmond Hill, an ecumenical retreat center, for an Art & Spirituality retreat.  The hill was home to a private mansion in the late 1700s and in the wake of the Civil War was claimed by 6 Sisters of the Visitation, whose mission was to pray for healing over the city of Richmond.  The sisters established a school but later closed it with the decision to embrace a contemplative life, producing communion hosts for the diocese and running a print shop.  When the Sisters moved out in the 1980s, an ecumenical group assumed the Sisters' mission, and in 2004 Richmond Hill opened its doors once again to pray for the city below.

The day had a schedule but we were encouraged to wander the gardens 

and visit the chapel and library.

A grandmother-mom-daughter trio participated.  

The mom's artwork represents the 3 generations plus her grandmother, 

whom she has never met, but whose attributes she feels are represented in the other 2.  

This woman was inspired by the chapel's stained glass.  

She is deciding whether to place a silhouette of her friend holding the phone taking a photo of the window.

I was curious to explore the library, where I came across The Genesee Diary: Report from a Trappist Monastery, by Henri J.M. Nouwen.  The book read as a journal and seemed appropriate given the setting.

Here is an entry.  It reminds me of the response attributed to famed mountaineer George Mallory to, "Why do you want to climb Mount Everest?": "Because it's there."

"

'If I see three oranges, I have to juggle.  And if I see two towers, I have to walk.'  These remarkable words were spoken by the tightrope-walker, Philippe Petit, in answer to the question of the police as to why he had walked (at 7:50 A.M.) on a rope shot with a crossbow from one tower of the New York Trade Center to the other.  When Phillipe had seen the two spires of Notre Dame in Paris, he had done the same.  'L'art pour l'art' is this highwire artist's philosophy.

I have been thinking today, off and on, about this beautiful man Philippe Petit.  His answer to the police is priceless and deserves long meditation.  We always want answers to impossible questions.  Why do you love her?  Any answer to such a question is usually ridiculous.  Because she is beautiful?  Because she is intelligent?  Because she has a funny pimple on her nose?  Nothing much makes sense.  Why did you become a priest?  Because you love God?  Because you like to preach?  Because you don't like women?  Why did you become a monk?  Because you like to pray?  Because you like silence?  Because you like to bake bread without being bothered?  There are no answers to those questions.

When they asked Philippe Petit why he wanted to walk on a slender wire strung between the two tallest towers of New York City, everyone thought he did it for money, for publicity, for fame.  But he said, 'If I see three oranges, I have to juggle.  And if I see two towers, I have to walk.'

We don't believe the most meaningful answer.  We think that this man must be insane.  In fact, they took Philippe to a city hospital for psychiatric examination but soon found out that Philippe was as healthy as could be.  'Sane and ebullient,' says the newspaper.

His is the true answer.  Why do you love her?  When I saw her, I loved her.  Why are you a priest?  Because I must be a priest.  Why do you pray?  Because when I see God, I must pray.  There is an inner must, an inner urge, or inner call that answers all those questions which are beyond explanation.  Never does anyone who asks a monk why he became a monk receive a satisfying answer.  Nor do children give us an explanation when we ask them, 'Why do you play ball?'  They know that there is no answer except, 'When I see a ball, I have to play with it.'

The police who arrested Philippe Petit seemed to understand this because they dropped the original charge of trespassing and disorderly conduct in exchange for Philippe's promise to perform his aerial feats for the children in Central Park.  That at least brought some real humanity back into the picture. Meanwhile, I keep saying to myself, 'If I see three oranges, I have to juggle.  And if I see two towers, I have to walk.'
"

I loved these oil colors.  

This woman works in an office, finds time for art precious, and has a goal of painting a portrait of each of her grandchildren.  

My product.  Tuscany, not Ireland, though it was St. Patrick's Day.  But the top 1/3 is reminiscent of the Irish flag, eh?  And it's done on cardboard backing so you could say it's green. :)

I wonder how it was that each of the participants found solace in art to the extent that they would treasure setting apart a day to fully engage with it.  I imagine some of the answer may be that unknowable response to the supplies and blank canvas that, like a tightrope or a mountain, beckoned. And that may be all the answer needed.

16x20", acrylic

I hadn't done any acrylic painting in a while, but was inspired to take to the canvas after my coworker introduced me via instagram to Paolo (http://www.findingpaola.com), a woman who lives life with flair.  From Haiti originally, she catalogues life in NYC and a recent move to Austin.

Paolo's work (her husband's photography of her) most often features herself in bold colors.  One of her mantras is "Be the Color You Wish to See in the World." 

This painting is the combination of 2: the first an ocean view in Maine (see the remains of red boats?), which I liked parts of but not the whole, with an overlay of Radio City Music Hall featuring Paolo.  Laziness won out in recovering the entire canvas, so behold, you might call it artistic. 

in time to plant radishes

"...The spring of 1928, Dorothy and Tamar returned to the beach from yet another dismal apartment in the city in time to plant radishes on Tamar's second birthday."

Planting radishes is one of the thing Dorothy Day does, as described by her granddaughter in Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty.  

"Love, motherhood, religion--how many of us on finding ourselves embraced by any one of these would have stopped, rested, and remained?  But this is the mystery of those forces that led her to go one step further, and another step, and another...

Isn't this that in-between time, that liminal space cherished by the Irish, that mysterious time of waiting and wandering?

...In coming to this part of the story, I feel I'm holding in my hands my mother's most treasured memories and her most vulnerable self."

I'm into Part 1 of the memoir, but Hennessy does a superb job describing the winding path of Dorothy's growing years, her loves, her struggles, her hopes, her starts and false starts, her uprooting and new planting.

red cabbage

That's all.

by way of this contact

Recently I've enjoyed the lyrical music of 

The Innocence Mission (Bright As Yellow: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA4ZfLzy1VM).

I've also been perusing Brain Pickings (https://www.brainpickings.org), which is where I came upon the above quote.  Here are a few unassociated thoughts by Maria Popova, the blogger, which she gave in an interview.  Emphases are mine.

"And I think that’s very much true of knowledge itself. The reason we’re so increasingly intolerant of long articles and why we skim them, why we skip forward even in a short video that reduces a 300-page book into a three-minute animation — even in that we skip forward — is that we’ve been infected with this kind of pathological impatience that makes us want to have the knowledge but not do the work of claiming it. I mean, the true material of knowledge is meaning. And the meaningful is the opposite of the trivial. And the only thing that we should have gleaned by skimming and skipping forward is really trivia. And the only way to glean knowledge is contemplation. And the road to that is time. There’s nothing else. It’s just time. There is no shortcut for the conquest of meaning. And ultimately, it is meaning that we seek to give to our lives."

"Well, there are certain core beliefs, I guess. I think a lot about the relationship between cynicism and hope. Critical thinking without hope is cynicism, but hope without critical thinking is naïveté. I try to live in this place between the two, to try to build a life there. Because finding fault and feeling hopeless about improving our situation produces resignation, of which cynicism is a symptom, a sort of futile self-protection mechanism. But on the other hand, believing blindly that everything will work out just fine also produces a kind of resignation, because we have no motive to apply ourselves toward making things better. I think in order to survive, both as individuals and as a civilization, but especially in order to thrive, we need to bridge critical thinking with hope."

"We never see the world exactly as it is because we are how the world is. I think it was William James who said, “My experience is what I agree to attend to, and only those things which I notice shape my mind.” And so in choosing how we are in the world, we shape our experience of that world, our contribution to it. We shape our world, our inner world, our outer world, which is really the only one we’ll ever know. And to me, that’s the substance of the spiritual journey. It’s not an exasperating idea but an infinitely emboldening one, and it’s taken me many years to come to that without resistance."

It's true that there's much for us to attend to.  Joyful people I know often seem to be able to be interested in a myriad of things.  But, maybe able to do all this without being fragmented by it.  

In The Holy Longing, Ronald Rolheiser defines the human universal of desire as "an unquenchable fire, a restlessness, a longing, a disquiet, a hunger, a loneliness, a gnawing nostalgia.  A dis-ease."  Spirituality is our response to desire.  It's what we do with that madness.

He uses the example of how 3 women channel desire differently: 

Mother Teresa fits Soren Kierkegaard's definition of a holy one: someone who can will the one thing.  She poured out her eros for God and the poor.

Janis Joplin, also possessing a rare energy, willed many things, eventually exacerbating her restlessness and tiredness. Rather than achieving integration, she encountered dissipation.

He compares Princess Diana to most of us who wrestle with choice and commitment, sin and virtue, some of her choices creating greater integration and others that tear at body and soul.

He identifies 3 things that challenge our interiority today:

narcissism (excessive self-preoccupation)

pragmatism (excessive focus on work and achievement)

unbridled restlessness (excessive greed for experience)

and casts them as the source of our heartaches, headaches, and insomnia.  

We all have finite energy and finite time.  As Maria Popova reminds us, we do not lack choice, our mode of being in the world.  Including choosing what to attend to.

Innocence Mission, Brotherhood of Man (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPjcbogp2Jg).

"and he smiles through the limbs"

"though I did not learn her name, amid the subway din, a stranger lit my way"