(1/2 hour "contour" drawing, 6:30 to 7 a.m. -- 6B pencil on heavy weight, medium tooth surface, 9 x 12 Canson drawing pad, while listening to "Chants of India.".
I was looking at the corner of my living room near the windows, where my Suzuki keyboard is.
This morning I made my drawing time part of my yoga asana practice. As of today, I am calling my drawing posture "Lekhavidhasana, "from the Sanskrit word "lekhavidhi" meaning "the act of drawing or painting" and the word "asana" meaning "posture or pose." When I draw, I sit in a cross-legged pose on a comfortable chair.
What has been happening is, since I have been drawing daily in the early morning, I have not been doing my early morning yoga practice. So I decided that I would do "Lekhavidhasana" just before doing Savasana (The Corpse Pose) at the end of the asana part of my Yoga practice.
In order to add Lekhavidhasana, "The Drawing Pose", I have to let go of doing a number of other poses, but the benefit I get from drawing daily feels equal to the benefit from the poses I won't have time to do.)
I love stories. Stories from all traditions. Here is something from a A Child’s Christmas in Wales, by Dylan Thomas:
"Go on the Useless Presents."
". . . a celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound, a mewing moo that an ambitious cat might make who wished to be a cow; AND A PAINTING BOOK IN WHICH I COULD MAKE THE GRASS, THE TREES, THE SEA AND THE ANIMALS ANY COLOUR I PLEASED, and still the dazzling sky-blue sheep are grazing in the red field under the rainbow-billed and pea-green birds . . . "
I love the way Dylan Thomas finishes his remembrance:
". . . I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept."
As I've been writing this post, I've been listening to "Apple Scruffs," a song written by George Harrison. Listen here for a clip.
4 comments:
I love that Dylan Thomas short story. Indeed, all his stories and many of the poems. Remember "The Peaches"? Thank you for reminding me of it, especially apposite today. Coincidentally, I used to sell his books throughout England & Wales. I remember a grocer's shop in Laugharne (where he lived for a long time and is buried)used to display rare out-of-print Dyan works among the cabbages and canned vegetables... You would find elderly Japanese professors rooting around in there amongst the butter beans and the bara brith...
solitary walker -- I hadn't read "The Peaches" before but found it on the internet. Dylan Thomas certainly has a fine gift of conveying a clear vision of how complex, rich and textured, is the inner life of children.
From "Fern Hill,":
Time held me green and dying, though I sang in my chains like the sea.
Bara brith. That's new for me. Thanks so much!
Yes, absolutely. There was always something childlike about Dylan himself. Though very much a fallen angel. If you don't know it already, take a look at the superb biography of him by Constantine Fitzgibbon.
I like the sketches; much more sense of place than photos. And I do believe that's the first Dylan Thomas I've ever read. Seems he was quite good. Thank you.
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