Something I need to share with R today

"Grandson, I want to shake your hand.  That was pretty damn powerful what you just did."

(Elder speaking to Supaman)

This is where R and I met on December 14, 1966, when we were 17 years old.  None of the buildings you see were there then.  The only building there in 1966 was the old Miramar Hotel which burned down not long after I met R.

Supaman reminds me of you, R.  What I see in him is what I saw in you from the beginning.

The Impossibility of Nature / "... the Dog of Art turns to the world the quietness of his eyes." / Briefly Losing My Blog / Learning to ask for help appropriately

With gratitude to a friend who is an artist and who introduced me to the work of Shona Wilson this week.

With gratitude to Denise Levertov for:

The Dog of Art

That dog with daisies for eyes
who flashes forth
flame of his very self at every bark
is the Dog of Art.
Worked in wool, his blind eyes
look inward to caverns and jewels
which they see perfectly,
and his voice
measures forth the treasure
in music sharp and loud,
sharp and bright,
bright flaming barks,
and growling smoky soft, the Dog
of Art turns to the world
the quietness of his eyes.

(Late in the day yesterday, my blog disappeared.   My immediate reaction involved a sense of doom (!) followed by disbelief (trying this and that to get it back), followed by becoming philosophical ("Oh well, I'll just start another one.  So it goes.").  It was too late in the day for me to attempt anything strenuous.  I just let it be.

This morning when I woke up at 4 a.m., rested and renewed, I felt curious about my missing blog and as a result, I contacted Blogger for help through its chat format.  A man named James immediately figured out what had gone wrong and walked me through the process of unlocking my blog.  The problem had to do with having obtained a domain under an email address that was "unverified."  Although I bought the domain a week or so ago, there was no problem until yesterday.  By following the instructions given by James and changing the email address on my domain to one that is verified, I was able to unlock my blog.  You can imagine my relief and gratitude to James.

It has taken much of my life to learn to ask for help appropriately when things go wrong and to trust those I ask for help.  As I child I learned not to ask for help because I learned not to trust those whom I had once believed could help me.  I am eternally grateful for what I have learned from my experiences and the experiences of others in the practice of asking for help when help is needed.) 

Someone I loved

The Uses of Sorrow

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

—Mary Oliver

With gratitude to Beth.

In the studio 2012 / Not alone / Welcoming the inner demons with love this time

In August of 2006, I vowed to go back to the studio, sixteen (!) years after having lost nearly all creative momentum in the wake of the First Gulf War in 1990 and Richard's descent into the later stages of alcoholism. The earliest manifestation of the above scratchboard drawing was the result. A year later in August of 2007, I brought that scratchboard out, made a few more marks on it and dated it. In 2008, four months after Richard died, I brought it out, made a few more marks and dated it again and wrote, "This isn't working, is it?"

A few weeks ago, I came across the scratchboard again and scanned it with my new Canon printer/scanner, bought with the thought that it is time to pick up where I left off in the series of black and white drawings that ended a few months before Richard's death, with this moonlit image of Scudder Pond:






















Today I have my first cold in years, along with a renewed desire to get back to work in the studio again in whatever form that takes.

It is just occurring to me that since December of 2006, this blog has been my studio. I have been working creatively and steadily, although not in the form I envisioned in August of 2006.

Interesting that as I was re-watching "Vietnam, Long Time Coming" yesterday, someone from Ho Chi Minh City visited my blog, and that yesterday I had about twice as many visitors to my blog.

Time heals, after all--although the clock that marks that kind of time has no hands.
(Suze Rotolo, from A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties):


















One of the great features of studio life is the capacity for renewal. Daily love manifests itself and is a fairly reliable prod. Some projects can be measured in no time at all. Sometimes three or four projects can be performed and completed in a single day. Other projects progress over days or weeks, dependent on the uncanny sleep-work that lies between. “Love does not just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new. (Ursula K. LeGuin):






















In the arts, as in life, everything is possible provided it is based on love.”
(Marc Chagall):





















Still, the joyful insists on getting a word in.
(R. L. Bourges):

















A gift of love from Richard from January 2008, three months before he died, an artist to the end: