I am still waiting for clarity– sometimes I think about the things I can’t see and I wonder how to place them inside my mind–
Out of the dark and still I am dreaming of colors liquid currents of sound moving in all directions between the gaps–
Do our visions swim cataracted with refractions– flooding the invisible barriers of the portals into our eyes?
As I told Phil, this week’s Kick-About prompt, fundus photography, was made for my watercolor mandalas. First, photographing the inner eye naturally makes for roundness, and the liquid state calls for watercolor to represent it.
I did 4 watercolors and embroidered on 2 of them. If I exaggerated the colors a bit, well, my eye often does the same.
My poem “To Cleave” has been posted at Visual Verse. As I’ve done in the past, I’ve written a greatly distilled version, above. You can read the original poem here.
The art is my ink and neocolor interpretation of Tanya Layko’s prompt photo. I’ve been trying to do more work in my sketchbook, inspired by the journals of Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson. I got the book “Raggin’ On”, based on an exhibition of her work, out of the library. I knew her textile work, but not her drawing and painting. She often draws freely in ink, and then paints or draws or writes over and around the drawings just as freely. What I learned most from her work was not to labor too much, to get the essence down without trying too hard. Robinson had a full and interesting life.
Above is the original drawing I did, and below is Layko’s photo.
just fragments reduced to a series of numbers– take a photo to remember, to contain the unknowable
reduced to a series of numbers, ink on paper, blurred now, salty–
take a photo to remember the spirits now dispersed, unable to find a vessel
to contain the unknowable– all the infinite subtractions– what remains has no name
A trimeric poem for Grace at dVerse. It’s very like a pantoum I think, so of course I like it.
I did this torn painting 6 years ago ago for a post mourning the fact that governments all over the world were destroying ancient art if they did not like the culture or religion it belonged to. Like the earth’s resources, once it’s gone it can never be replaced.
sleepless I reach deep skyward, wish ing for wings to appear– my hand pauses, empty, catch ing only moonlight
Colleen chose me to provide this week’s #TankaTuesday image, and I sent one of my artworks, above. I always enjoy reading what others see in what I’ve created. I haven’t done a shadorma in awhile.
I went back to the original post with this image, which was in 2016, to see what I had written (a san san based also on another poem), and used it as a starting point for what I wrote.
always digging deeper– roots that grow below, restore– listening through decay beyond stillness,
a place that is neither dark nor light, yet full, aware, gathered germinating into witness,
distilled light casting words that linger as counterpart– revealing mysteries in all that is
held on the wings of birds, circulated through the heart, absorbed into the spiraling axis
It’s poet’s choice of form at Colleen’s Tanka Tuesday, and how could I resist a syllabic form called “kerf”? I meant this also to be for the earthweal challenge this week, earthcraft, but obviously did not finish it in time.
I found this painting/collage the other day–I know I’ve used it before, but I thought it would be useful for something else, so I saved it in my ideas space. When I read the Oracle’s message this morning, it seemed like she knew ahead of time where it belonged.
recall the dreamlight time as a living being shadows shining through the raw sky
did what you thought you never needed show you how
to still the stormcry into moonships singing the language of seaforests?
I can almost hear them echoed on repeat through my bones spiralled gifts collected in the overlap of landsea the fluid movement that follows after what hasn’t happened yet cleansing
sheer sound waves etched in side winds calling I can see them sometimes—doubled visions currents vibrating against a blurred sky gyring like the shadow of a raptor glimpsed briefly between the singing of reflected light sailed whole
In my mind the Prospect Cottage prompt from the Kick-About, below, intersected with the Otherworld of Brendan’s earthweal prompt and then merged with my shells, collected over years of visits to the ocean. The shore is where I lose myself and meet “Not Here” and Prospect Cottage felt like it was a portal into that suspension of the normal framing of time and space. “Like landing on the moon,” as the narrator said.
Most of my shells are still in storage, but I’ve carried some weathered whelks along with each move I’ve made, both to look at and draw. The spirals sing, and bring the sea to me. I drew three of them from different angles on the same page–first pencil, then colored pencil, then with a brush in gouache.
I decided to add grounds. It’s not always easy to tell when you’ve gone too far, but I think I definitely did so with the colored pencils. I may take an eraser to the ground to fade it so the shells don’t get so lost. I was trying to capture the garden of Prospect Cottage.
The pencil drawing was impossible to photograph well, but I like the weathered effect. I wrote words around and connecting the shells, which you can see better in the close up. These are quotes from the video interspersed with my own observations. This one has exactly the feeling I wanted, of secret messages, indecipherable voices on the wind.
The painted shells–it felt so good to get my gouache out of storage and paint with it again!–captures the colors I was feeling from both prompts–a sense both of otherness and belonging, of being just exactly in the right place without time.
