'. . . All finite things reveal infinitude. . .'

Tuesday Poem - Patience by Randi Parkhurst

2011-11-29T01:01:00.003+13:00

For more Tuesday Poems, please click on the quill.
This week's editor is Keith Westwater with Polonius: Old Poet by Harry Ricketts

And while we wait for our election results to come in. . .

2011-11-26T17:47:00.009+13:00

. . . a slice or three of green to keep us buoyant and settle the ions after two days' relentless

(and I mean r e l e n t l e s s ) winds. . .

What bliss when the air finally lets up with its tantrum-ing. Although, perhaps this is entirely appropriate behaviour given what we want is to chase out the old and usher in the new. . . Change seldom happens without a certain amount of chaos, right?

It'll be a few hours yet before we know what the outcome of today's voting is. I'm off to nestle into the evening with a glass of red and my dog-eared book -

Encounters With Rainbows

2011-11-25T09:47:00.009+13:00

HAPPY THANKSGIVING Everyone. . .

It was a treat to encounter three double rainbows during the hour and forty minute drive home from the mud house. . .

Wikipedia has a wealth of information about rainbows, of course, much of it celebrating the physics of light, the laws of refraction, rainbows' symbolism and their metaphysical implications. . . There are essays galore elsewhere on the web about the seven colour rays and their esoteric significance.

I have a soft spot for flags. . . The use of rainbow flags has a long tradition; I love that they're displayed in many cultures around the world as a sign of diversity and inclusiveness, of hope and of yearning. . . This seems especially relevant given tomorrow is Election Day in New Zealand. These are confusing times to say the least; our local and global politics are all over the place. May the unifying energy and high integrity of the rainbow flag permeate. . .

red: stands for courage;
orange: offers the vision of possibilities;
yellow: represents the challenge that GREEN has kindled;
green: indicates a challenge to co-operators to strive for growth of membership and of understanding of the aims and values of co-operation;
sky blue: suggests far horizons, the need to provide education and help less fortunate people and strive toward global unity.
dark blue: suggests pessimism: a reminder that less fortunate people have needs that may be met through the benefits of cooperation.
violet: is the colour of warmth, beauty, and friendship.

Being something of an interdisciplinary nut, I love this excerpt from Wikipedia. . .

'. . . The Newtonian deconstruction of the rainbow is said to have provoked John Keats to lament in his 1820 poem "Lamia":

Do not all charms fly

At the mere touch of cold philosophy?

There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:

We know her woof, her texture; she is given

In the dull catalogue of common things.

Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings,

Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,

Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine –

Unweave a rainbow

In contrast to this is Richard Dawkins; talking about his book Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder*

"My title is from Keats, who believed that Newton had destroyed all the poetry of the rainbow by reducing it to the prismatic colours. Keats could hardly have been more wrong, and my aim is to guide all who are tempted by a similar view, towards the opposite conclusion. Science is, or ought to be, the inspiration for great poetry."'

An Appetite for Wonder - now that's a phrase to pin to the fridge; one to wear, sing, invite, invoke, uphold, sustain, weave into every moment. . . ?

Before I head off into the day, here's the irresistible Kermit (almost as irresistible as Penelope's Ratty & Lily the Pink) singing his rainbow song. . .

I wish you all much love, light and joy this Thanksgiving time. 2011 has been quite a year and yet here we all are, standing together - even when apart - in gratitude. Thank you for the many ways in which you enrich and illuminate life out here, for the wonders you continually wake me to. . .

In the Maniototo, silver chooks lay palest blue eggs

2011-11-24T17:10:00.003+13:00

See what I mean?
Such promise. Such prettiness.

Tuesday Poem - Emily Dickinson & the cheese grater at 22

2011-11-21T02:00:00.000+13:00

Last night, whilst tidying up after supper, our grater and the patterns it cast onto the metal surface beside the sink got me thinking of Emily Dickinson and - perhaps not entirely surprisingly - the relationship between illusion and truth.

Do you find yourself as captivated by the spaces and shapes in and around an object, as you are by the object itself? I do. Do you appreciate the rests between musical notes as much as the notes themselves? Yes, me too. I love the way a scent, sound or object interacts with its environment and as it does so becomes an expression of more than itself, more than its source or initial appearance. It gathers influences and the presence of 'significant others' along the way; is seduced or repelled by this, that or the next thing. . . Our grater, for instance, was elevated by light, shadow, rhythm, perforations and pattern and defined just as much by each of those elements as it was by its pyramidal steel framework, parmesan shavings and clunky black plastic feet.

I recall a conversation I had on the subject of truth and illusion with an older male friend - a poet - some years ago. He tended to equate illusion with deception and lies. (I disagreed.) Afterwards, he wrote to me, 'A lie is a truth also' and then he went on to suggest that 'every truth was once a lie.' Hmm. I'm not so sure. But this is territory for the bold and I'm far from being a bold creature at the moment, so I'm going to drape these ideas over the back of the chair and allow them to dangle there a while. If you feel prompted to to pick one up and turn it around, please do. As for me? I'm going to stick to my grater. . . (Ha ha. Wouldn't that be funny?)

Would we recognize a grater 'just' from the way light and shadow tease the eye, distorting, dissolving and courting its form whilst at the same time abandoning it? I find it thrilling that risking a more deliberate glance into the crazy funnel/black-hole vortex/empty belly of this humble everyday object, we happen upon all manner of unexpected things. . . an alphabet of ancient symbols, a dying star, a base-jumper's paradise, a city of holographic skyscrapers, a sheer rock face awaiting pick-axe and cleats, a flimsy biplane dodging lightening in a thunderstorm?

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant---
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightening to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind---

Emily Dickinson

For more Tuesday Poems, please click on the quill.
This week's editor is Orchid Tierney with pidgin peace meal by Iain Britton.

I'm heading away for a couple of days - a certain old mud house is in need of bit of time and TLC. Home Thursday. . . ish.

Salt And Stone

2011-11-16T12:10:00.006+13:00

Today, a short story I wrote in memory of my dear friend, C, who has been much in mind lately. . .

SALT AND STONE

The first time Tristan came to see me was the Thursday before Easter, scrolls of tightly-rolled drawings under his arm. He greeted me with a nod, walked silently across my office space to the plans chest in front of the window and set the drawings down. Without speaking, he scanned the view of the city beyond my office - telephone wires threading their way around stone and concrete, stealthy, century-old yews, the mute bell-tower of St. Catherine's cathedral.

His initial letter of contact served as an introduction to himself and his proposed project. He’d outlined his ideas and intentions, clarifying at the outset that should I choose to work with him, my involvement would be professional, but peripheral. Nothing in his plans could be changed. There was to be no probing, no questions asked. His intention was not to be in any way awkward or obstructive – to the contrary, he would go out of his way to facilitate the process - but it was imperative that the project baton remain firmly in his hands. Plainly, I was useful to him - a man with contacts who could offer him easy access to builders, stonemasons and crafts people. Besides, he trusted my reputation for site sensitivity and my creative use of traditional materials: these had been the prompts he'd needed to come and talk to me in the first place. How else would he find the right person to create the stained glass windows? To whom could he entrust the intricate carving of a pedestal font?

He would, of course, see to it that my contributions to the building were appropriately acknowledged. Did I think we’d be able to work together on such a project? Did I think I could tolerate his restrictions?

In my office, he unrolled his drawings, carefully flattening them out on the chest’s wooden surface.

Lightening sparked from somewhere inside the piles of paper.

Despite the day’s high blue sky, I heard the far-off growl of thunder.

Dust motes collided in sudden stripes of light.

He had brought layers and layers of detailed working drawings. Black and white draughtsman-like diagrams were at the top of the pile, followed by increasingly expressive renderings of the small chapel he had in mind. I was mesmerized, under their spell.

At first glance, his line drawings appeared stiff and brittle, embedded deep within the weave of the paper. They seemed lifeless, stuck down fast. But as we moved from one page to the next, marks begin to tremble and stir. They detached themselves and slid across the page, re-arranged themselves in the top left hand corner, mid-page, off-centre right bottom. Every now and then, one threatened to leave the paper altogether, to take off and dart instead around the room. I ducked instinctively. There was a passion in his plans that betrayed the calm and quiet of his meticulously typed letter, his careful shirt and tie. By the time he’d begun introducing colour to the windows of his building, I was shaking my head and nodding, diving to my desk for contract and pen.

Outside the window, clouds churned and massed on the horizon, misshapen athletes lining up for a race, waiting for the starters’ gun.

He’s insisting on a basic rectangular ground plan. There’s nothing complicated about this building. It’s a small, simple stone structure, foundations laid out precisely along the axes of a compass. North. South. East. West. It’s the stained-glass windows that are complex – after all, he explains, it’s the windows that will tell the story. He wants fourteen of them, is as adamant about this as he is about everything else. Ten or twelve won’t do. Yes, he knows, it’s a tiny space, but by his calculations (and given the high vertical thrust), fourteen would not present a problem.

He’s designed the two short walls to accommodate the widest, three-paneled windows. Facing due East and West, they will describe the beginning and end of the story, deliberately positioned to catch the light from the rising and setting sun. His drawings give the impression of a continuous unbroken window – a luminous wall of coloured light, held up by roughly-chiseled stone blocks, interrupted only by the necessary support of the slimmest stone pillars. Floor-to-ceiling stained glass will tempt light into the room, he says - hold it there like a slow inward breath.

Have I noticed how effectively light nudges shadows into corners?

The two long sidewalls will reveal the finer details of the story, coloured glass the perfect medium to chronicle a life – her life - chapter by chapter. One window for each of the years he had with her, for the combined age of their children. One for each day of their two-week holiday. Fourteen windows for the fourteen minutes it took from the time she entered the sea – laughing her way in, her sun-browned hands scooping up the waves – to that final moment when bitter salt water flooded through her body.

I read what he doesn’t tell me in the drawings of the windows. They describe it all - deliberate groupings of line and pattern following the passage of time, the subtleties of light moving across the hours and moods of a day. A predominance of orange and yellow glass set into the Southern wall takes me to the beach where I stand at ease, bare toes burrowing into gritty warmth on what seems like any ordinary morning. I hear children. They’re a little way away, carting buckets and spades, paddling in the shallows. A group of tanned teenagers play volleyball. Bluebottles lie washed up on the sand, foam stuck half-heartedly to their deflating balloons. Crabs sidle up to empty shells and sandcastles.

She drowned on a Sunday. First up in the morning, she’d tiptoed out of the house around sunrise, closed the door on him and their sleeping children, and gone out for a walk around the Valley. They’d woken an hour or so later to find her in the kitchen, humming - a bunch of freshly-picked flowers loosely arranged in a jam jar and set out on the kitchen table. A raw chicken sat unprettily on the marble cutting board, dimpled legs modestly crossed, attempting to conceal two lemon halves, one red onion, the obligatory head of unpeeled garlic. At the front door, the new red umbrella, four folded swimming towels, a brown paper bag filled with organic oranges…

Tracing the blue North wall now, I hear her cry. Shadows fall. Darkness stalks an unsteady sea. I hold my breath, dive below the surface, swim into the watery silence of a thousand shapes of clear blue glass.

The light in my office shifts. I turn on my feet.

There’ll be no apse or nave, he says.

Just enough room, I say, for a font, a single pew, a jam jar of flowers.

The windows at All Saints' Tudeley (Kent, UK) are a memorial tribute to Sarah d'Avigdor-Goldsmid who died aged just 21 in a sailing accident off Rye. Sarah's parents commissioned Marc Chagall to create each of this tiny stone church's twelve stained glass windows. This image shows a detail from the East Window.

Tuesday Poem - from the image suite 'Love The Waters'

2011-11-15T10:12:00.004+13:00

On the tide line

red kelp

the heart's small garden

(From a suite of small 'Oil on Paper Poems' I'm making for a group show that opens in Dunedin next Saturday.)

For more Tuesday Poems, please click on the quill.

This week's guest editor is Australian poet Janet Jackson

with Fortified by performance poet, David Vincent Smith

2011-11-11T22:35:00.002+13:00

Tuesday Poem - Absence of Birds

2011-11-08T00:12:00.002+13:00

The mountains

do not remember

asking the forests

to shelter birds

with silent tongues

and wings of bark.

CB 2008

I wrote this short poem whilst on board the conservation yacht, The Breaksea Girl. A group of us were fortunate to spend six days and nights in and around Doubtful and Dusky Sounds in Western Fiordland, a protected, once-pristine area of black water, red kelp, primordial forest, 'vanishing' waterfalls and - until quite recently - a cacophony of birdsong. Sadly, predators - cats, rats and stoats - have resulted in a severely diminished bird population and significant damage to the forest floor; this in turn has led to the canopy thinning which implies potentially dramatic long-term changes to the ecology in the area. We were shocked and saddened to witness firsthand what felt like the loud absence of birds. . .

For more Tuesday Poems, please click on the quill.

This week's editor is Helen Heath with Bookcase Full Of Closed Books Wants To Sing

by Joan Fleming

Tuesday Poem - It Depends How You Look At It

2011-11-01T10:15:00.001+13:00

IT DEPENDS HOW YOU LOOK AT IT

Inside the stone the world is round. A woman wears jeans and a clean white T-shirt. There’s a canvas hammock in the garden, strung between the magnolia and a flaming red maple. Her family’s washing hangs on the line, snapping its way towards freshness. A taste of summer.

Inside the stone the world is beige. Flat. Bland. Pale. The sun’s light is tepid, the sea runs a pale wet tongue across the beach leaving behind a faint tea stain. The sand is a crushed malt biscuit.

Inside the stone the world is an apricot. Wind loosens the ripe scent of sex and soft fruit, of wet and round and orange. Men and women peel off their clothes, step out of their shoes. They stride past work on cool, bare feet.

Inside the stone the world is a puzzle, a thousand pieces strewn across a landscape. A man is gathering them up, constructing a scene from the inside out. They remain out of focus until he picks them up, transforming at once from flat and grey, to monumental, three-dimensional structures; his dream of a different life keeps him captive.

Inside the stone puddles are pewter ovals, sleeping.

Inside the stone is a black world, a place with neither windows nor doors. The woman searches for a trapdoor, any means by which she might escape the darkness. But there are only concrete walls and wooden floorboards that threaten to split. She can smell the sticky stench of bitumen, the singe of a hot, high fire.

Inside the stone is a soft wax world. Children know the silent slide of honey. They walk with candles; lights tilted to flatter the forest, they highlight moss and lichen, outline fallen pine needles with a subtle edge of gold.

Inside the stone the world is populated by flocks of primordial birds. They burrow their way out of the dark soil in our gardens and look us straight in the eye. Their skin is damp and pink as a Desiree potato. They carry the dirt of the world on their backs, feed on mass nouns and ripe plums.

Inside the stone the world is a bulletin board. Sharp corners stab and cut. People and events are paper cut-outs, underlined, trimmed, pinned to its surface with cold stainless steel pins. Cold. Steel. Pins. Disturb the layers to see what lies behind or beneath and everything will turn to dust. Take heed. The printers’ pigments will leave telltale stains on your fingers.

Inside the stone is a trapped storm.

Inside the stone a spill of full-cream milk spreads across a linoleum kitchen floor, splashes down the back doorstep and out into the garden. It flows down the slope, past the exuberant yellow peonies and flowering cherries, gathering speed and doubling in volume as it travels. By the time it has crossed the neighbourhood boundaries, it is a wide white river; the children and untethered lambs of the suburbs run along its banks sploshing, stretching and bending, drinking their fill.

Inside the stone a miniature narcissus threatens to pull up its roots. It shakes its head, catapults its scent across the sprawling grey of the city. Perfume drizzles down street lamps, drips onto sidewalks, sticks to the dusty flanks of buildings. Industry blushes and for a moment steps out of the shadows.

There is a universe inside a stone.

For more Tuesday Poems, please click on the quill.

This week's editor is Catherine Fitchett with Country Life by David Howard.

Teapot Shock/Shocking/Shocked

2011-11-01T09:40:00.004+13:00

A group of friends came for a studio visit on Sunday. We had a merry time with wine and samosas, much hilarity and gritty, probing conversation. Late-ish in the afternoon, there was the suggestion of tea. I reached for my favorite big old teapot (softly dimpled, pewter-glazed ceramic) and asked Lesley if she would do the honors while I went to find a book in my bedroom. Well, ahem. She called after me with a question, 'Er, Claire, how long is it since you made tea in this pot? You might want to take a look?' The rest, as they say, is history. . .

We drink a lot of tea in this house but most often use the small teapot with the red knitted jumper and dangling Licorice All Sorts, or the one that lives beneath the sassy striped ski-type beanie Jackie B made. Next time, I'll be sure to stick my nose into any and all pots before offering them to others for any tea-making ritual. So saying, the (weeks'-old?) mold is kind-of pretty, don't you think? (Kind of. . . ?) I can't help thinking of Lascaux and Alta Mira, the cave paintings of Chauvet and rock art of Africa, from whence I came. . . how much of everything is dust and smoke? And water. Always water.

What do you see?

2011-10-31T08:41:00.004+13:00

This Fragile Earth iii

2011-10-28T22:13:00.006+13:00

The ground - the world over - weeps, seeps and shakes.

Oh Turkey. . . _/\_ Thailand. _/\_ Bangkok.

Closer to home, on the news tonight we learned that engineers hoping to be able to tack and brace Christchurch cathedral have concluded it will need to be dismantled, pared back to basics and rebuilt - 'a marriage between the old and the new'. Remarkably - triumphantly - part of Christchurch's CBD is to be opened to the public for trading tomorrow; the first time since the earthquake struck the city on 22 February. I am humbled by the community's tenacity and courage.

Oil from the stricken Rena is still seeping into the ocean off the coast of Tauranga. Too tongue-tied to write about this when the container ship ran aground on the Astrolabe reef in the Bay of Plenty a week or ten days ago, I turned to my drawing board instead. . . Pamela of Shroedinger's Tabby wrote a moving tribute to the sea birds impacted by this environmental disaster.

And the sea? How it murmurs. How it murmurs. . .

Charcoal & Pastel on Paper - CB - October 2011

Forgive me my absence; I'm not sure where or what I'm up to as far as blogging goes these days. There's so much going on here, work- and other- wise. . . I do hope you are all well and finding your way(s) forward during these ordinary, extraordinary days. L, C xo

Tuesday Poem - Tread Lightly

2011-10-18T01:47:00.002+13:00

Step

out

onto

white

not

body

bearing

any

weight

but

feather

might

think

ink

quill

drawing

cantata

out

light

Tracking III - Ink, acrylic & pencil on a gessoed plywood crate lid - CB

For more Tuesday Poems, please click on the quill. Tim Jones is this week's editor with a poem titled The Force of Things by Majella Cullinane -

"Your breaths
are the quivering feathers
of birds. . . "

All Colour Depends on Light

2011-10-15T08:58:00.003+13:00

These fragile candle-bearing porcelain vessels live on the mantle*piece in my bedroom; they were made by artist and dear friend Katherine Glenday. Katherine lives in Cape Town; we'll be working together on various collaborative projects (a porcelain flotilla?) when I return to South Africa for a month or two this coming December/January. . .

And don't you love the word 'mantle'? Like every grain of sand, it contains the universe. . .

*mantel |ˈmantl| (also mantle)nouna mantelpiece or mantelshelf.ORIGIN mid 16th cent.: specialized use of mantle 1 .mantle 1 |ˈmantl| |ˈmøn(t)l| |ˈmant(ə)l|noun1 a loose sleeveless cloak or shawl, worn esp. by women.• figurative a covering of a specified sort : the houses were covered with a thick mantle of snow.• (also gas mantle) a fragile mesh cover fixed around a gas jet, kerosene wick, etc., to give an incandescent light when heated.• Ornithology a bird's back, scapulars, and wing coverts, esp. when of a distinctive color.• Zoology an outer or enclosing layer of tissue, esp. (in mollusks, cirripedes, and brachiopods) a fold of skin enclosing the viscera and secreting the substance that produces the shell.2 an important role or responsibility that passes from one person to another : the second son has now assumed his father's mantle. [ORIGIN: with allusion to the passing of Elijah's cloak (mantle) to Elisha (2 Kings 2:13).]3 Geology the region of the earth's interior between the crust and the core, believed to consist of hot, dense silicate rocks (mainly peridotite).• the corresponding part of another planetary body : the lunar mantle.

This weekend I hope to post word re; the environmental nightmare that's pummeling our North Island coastline. . . Our hearts are in our mouths. Meantime, please love the waters - wherever in the world you are - love the waters and light candles. . . ? Thank you xo.

Tuesday Poem - The Conjugation of the Paramecium by Muriel Rukeyser

2011-10-11T06:33:00.004+13:00

The Conjugation of the Paramecium*

This has nothing
to do with
propagating

The species
is continued
as so many are
(among the smaller creatures)
by fission

(and this species
is very small
next in order to
the amoeba, the beginning one)

The paramecium
achieves, then,
immortality
by dividing

But when
the paramecium
desires renewal
strength another joy
this is what
the paramecium does:

The paramecium
lies down beside
another paramecium

Slowly inexplicably
the exchange
takes place
in which
some bits
of the nucleus of each
are exchanged

for some bits
of the nucleus
of the other

This is called
the conjugation of the paramecium.

Muriel Rukeyser

*paramecium |ˌparəˈmē sh (ē)əm; -sēəm|noun Zoology - a single-celled freshwater animal that has a characteristic slipper-like shape and is covered with cilia. • Genus Paramecium, phylum Ciliophora, kingdom Protista.ORIGIN mid 18th cent.: modern Latin, from Greek paramēkēs ‘oval,’ from para- ‘against’ +mēkos ‘length.’

Helle Jorgensen

Whilst on the subject of sea creatures, please follow the links below. . . Helle Jorgensen is a master in the art of crocheting what most of us would consider the impossibly complex. . .

http://hellejorgensen.typepad.com/gooseflesh/2008/07/entropy.html

http://hellejorgensen.typepad.com/photos/coral_garden/index.html

http://hellejorgensen.typepad.com/photos/artcraft/index.html (recovered plastic bags become yarn out of which Helle crochets elaborate sea creatures. . . see Echino below)

For more Tuesday Poems, please clink (I mean, click) on the quill. Janis Freegard is this week's editor on the TP hub with Vivienne Plumb's prose poem 128 Abel Street.

Skedaddle

2011-10-09T11:58:00.003+13:00

It's been a Big Week. (When is a week not big these days, I ask you?) Suffice to say, this morning's quiet is welcome after a run of higgeldy-piggedly days and a night of unexpected shenanigans. I'm home alone for the first time in ages and was woken from deep sleep at midnight - outside, the leer of sirens, throbbing truck engines and loud shouting. A sojourn into the garden (don't you love being outdoors at night; bare feet on damp grass; stars ablaze in the deep, deep dark?) revealed a blazing fire on the scrubby footpath just below my house. Thankfully, the fire service was there, taking charge with their fire-quenching hoses and a certain boisterous efficiency.

I stood under the arch of my old wooden side-gate, watching proceedings from the hedge, a safe distance away. The patterns created by the luminous stripes on the firemen's jacket's took me back to my walk along the beach at Aramoana this time last week. There was plenty of evidence of 'boisterous efficiency' there, too - nature's artistry everywhere I looked; her handwriting authoritative; her rhythms lyrical, playful, insistent. I never cease to be surprised by her tenderness and force, by the beauty she offers up even in things fragmented or worn. I was struck then - as I am in this moment - by the way nothing is ever lost, every thing we encounter seems to be an echo-expression of some other thing that precedes it or postdates it. Everything's in a state of forming and reforming. . . even when it may seem otherwise?

This sea lettuce (as weightless and soft as a damp silk handkerchief) particularly entrances me - how is it possible that flotsam so light can leave so determined a track in its wake? It looks to me as though it seized a moment when no one was looking, careened across the sand and skidded to a halt a split second before I happened upon it. (Sitting there quietly - innocence personified - you'd think we don't know it has willpower and wheels secreted below its green skirt? Ice and mushrooms play these tricks on us, too - have you ever seen a frozen wave form, or caught a mushroom in the act of rising up out of the earth?).

Sea lettuce skedaddles

Tuesday Poem - Too Many Names by Pablo Neruda

2011-10-04T11:31:00.000+13:00

Too Many Names

Mondays are meshed with Tuesdays

and the week with the whole year.

Time cannot be cut

with your weary scissors,

and all the names of the day

are washed out by the waters of night.

No one can claim the name of Pedro,

nobody is Rosa or Maria,

all of us are dust or sand,

all of us are rain under rain.

They have spoken to me of Venezuelas,

of Chiles and of Paraguays;

I have no idea what they are saying.

I know only the skin of the earth

and I know it is without a name.

When I lived amongst the roots

they pleased me more than flowers did,

and when I spoke to a stone

it rang like a bell.

It is so long, the spring

which goes on all winter.

Time lost its shoes.

A year is four centuries.

When I sleep every night,

what am I called or not called?

And when I wake, who am I

if I was not while I slept?

This means to say that scarcely

have we landed into life

than we come as if new-born;

let us not fill our mouths

with so many faltering names,

with so many sad formallities,

with so many pompous letters,

with so much of yours and mine,

with so much of signing of papers.

I have a mind to confuse things,

unite them, bring them to birth,

mix them up, undress them,

until the light of the world

has the oneness of the ocean,

a generous, vast wholeness,

a crepitant fragrance.

Pablo Neruda

One Ocean, One People - Oil on paper - CB

For more Tuesday Poems please click on the quill.

Sea leather

2011-10-03T10:18:00.003+13:00

and a whiskery old man of the sea

What do you see?

2011-10-01T11:31:00.002+13:00

Image - Cyril Obadia (University of Geneva)

Tuesday Poem - At Home In Antarctica

2011-09-27T00:32:00.002+13:00

It's that time of the year again - August/September marks the beginning of the summer research season in Antarctica. The annual migration has started. Originally 'destined' to accompany my old team of scientists and ice divers down to New Harbor field camp this coming season, I will not in fact be going South this year. I will be staying home instead - and it feels right so. The resonances from previous seasons will endure for a lifetime. Besides, I can't help feeling increasingly conflicted by our presence in Antarctica. . . (Would I stand by that statement had I never been there? Or if circumstances were different this year? All things considered, yes, I believe I would.)

It's no secret that I was one of those who fell in love with the white continent the moment I set eyes on her. I still feel an ache of homesickness for her from time to time. There are places skin, eyes and heart cannot un-remember.

Where there is ice, there is music iv - Pastel on paper - CB 2009

AT HOME IN ANTARCTICA

In this place, silence has a voice

wide-ranging as the continent.

Some say it’s on the cusp

of madness, the way it hums

and stutters, mutters to itself

in quietest tones.

In this place, nostalgia

roams, patient as slow hands

on skin, transparent

as melt-water. Nights are light

and long. Shadows settle

on the shoulders of air.

In this place, the universe

brims. Inside absence,

presence. Inside distance,

dust and our sleeping earth

dreaming beneath her thin blue

mask of ice.

Time steps out of line

here, stops to thaw

the frozen hearts of icebergs.

Sleep isn’t always easy in this place

where the sun stays up all night

and silence has a voice.

CB

Tracking I - Ink, pencil & oil on a gessoed ply crate lid - CB 2006

For more Tuesday Poems please click on the quill.

My turn to be editor on the TP hub this week. . .
I have chosen Miner's Cook by fellow NZ artist and poet Meliors Simms.

Tuesday Poem - Still Life With Zinc Bucket

2011-09-20T16:08:00.000+12:00

STILL LIFE WITH ZINC BUCKET

Conversation winds around review articles

the contradictions that intimacy and objectivity

cannot help but provoke from inside
this full-frontal still life. Talk curves
common objects, a shard of buried porcelain,
the way a bent garden fork with misshapen clods

of earth states its attachment to the sun.

He assembles and re-assembles

scattered pieces of nature’s detritus

a torn bird’s wing (feather stirring

with striking yellow stripe, the stilled thread

of flight). There are hints at life’s other

layers, the masked existence of geological rhythms

in even the plainest of things. But look,

the space in the picture is collapsing, yet

he stubbornly provides no anchor of table

or solid ground, no convenient mountain backdrop.

Instead he sets the thinnest wash
of silver-grey floating across dampened paper.

In the end, it is the warped simplicity

of a single zinc bucket that makes me

leave the room to slake my thirst.

For more Tuesday Poems, please click on the quill.

This week's editor is Sarah Jane Barnett. Sarah has posted a TED video of John. G. Rives giving an electrifying performance of his poem Rives Controls The Internet.

Today has been

2011-09-19T16:54:00.004+12:00

delightfully bizzurd |bizˈherd|adjective strange or unusual, esp. so as to cause interest, incredulity or amusement; wildly unreasonable, illogical, unpredictable or inappropriate; arousing amusement; calling forth expressions of the bizarre, ridiculous or absurd
shaped a little like these

and these

What shape has your day been?

(is anybody out there?)

Dazzle

2011-09-14T08:44:00.001+12:00

Tuesday Poem - Folding the World

2011-09-13T09:25:00.014+12:00

In March this year, my youngest son, Tomas, (twenty-one-going-on-six-hundred-and-seventeen) left New Zealand to seek his fortune on the other side of the world. He has just returned to the UK after a three-week adventure in Morocco - an adventure his whanau back home are looking forward to hearing about! Tomas is easily the most self-contained person I know - a quality I admire and celebrate - and (yes, 'and' not 'but') one I very occasionally lament; he's, shall we say, unconventional when it comes to staying in touch - an opportunity for some us to practice patience? In time Tomas will regale us with his stories; his way is to fully inhabit the present moment, to dwell in the vivid details of a place or experience, absorbing the subtler textures of it all so that when he comes to write about it further down the track, everything's 'right there' as if it just happened. His letters, when they come, are well worth waiting for.

(As an aside. . . have you noticed how when we live in time, we worry less about all manner of things - and that living in time, we are generally on time?)

When we was a very small boy, Tomas developed a passion for All Things Egypt and - a year or two after that - for paper and paper-construction. He tended to take to things on an all-or-nothing basis, which basically meant there was no stopping him if he was engaged and no starting him if he wasn't! Paper-folding pushed his 'on' button. Over many months of intense engagement, he developed methods that were exacting and delicate; sometimes his creations were closer to engineering than origami. I loved - loved - watching his complex constructions taking shape. He'd spend hours measuring, tearing, folding, unfolding, glueing, reinforcing, adding bits, removing others, building, dismantling, rebuilding. . . such patience! The addition of wire, balsa wood, batteries and small motors allowed him to animate them and take his ideas in fanciful directions. For him, construction, function and process were what it was all about - he seldom, if ever, spent time decorating or embellishing the things he made. He'd make them, get them to work then move on to the next project. We shared our space with a cast of eclectic, eccentric things.

Anyway, this is a very long introduction to this week's Tuesday Poem! Tender memories have a way of taking us on unexpected detours. . .

FOLDING THE WORLD

for Tomas, aged six

My boy is captive to paper, mesmerized

by the crisp wafer crackle and bright

wrapper wrinkle of his tissue paper

playground; abandoned old telephone

books, corrugated cardboard fortresses,

towering newspaper pyramids.

He wraps, creases, folds his world.

His bedroom walls are busy sky

grazed by paper darts. A hundred planes

fly head-to-tail in a steady clockwise

stream; West to East they score

lines of latitude behind blue

unblinking eyes.

Seams in our old yellow wallpaper

are time-keepers marking strict, straight

lines of longitude. He crosses one, two

three time zones in a single journey

around the room - no instruments

required to fly his tri-planes, bi-planes,

classic and boxoid gliders, parrots,

hawks, level-track deltas, fighter jets

and - every now and then - an airborne

origami elephant.

Tomorrow - perhaps - he will fold

winged sycamore seeds, construct a camel,

design a paper boomerang.

Tonight he will crumple in sleep, dream

of Tutankhamun and a flimsy shrine

of gold leaf and turquoise.

He will wake with the desert wind

on his breath, whisper tales of Osiris,

Isis, papyrus and dates. He does not falter

in his fondness for scarabs nor question

his small boy's thirst for the deep wet

fragrance of pomegranates.

CB 1998/2011

For this week's Tuesday Poems, please click on the quill.

In recognition of the tenth anniversary of 9/11 this week, TP curator Mary McCallum has posted a film on the hub; listen to New Jersey poet Deborah Garrison reading four poems she wrote in response to this life-altering event.

May Peace Prevail

Deep Educational Responses - Ten Years On

2011-09-11T22:55:00.002+12:00

We have all been reflecting on 9/11 - the event that ten years ago brought us and our global community to our knees in profound, painful and heart-opening ways. Two essays that especially moved me are these - - -

(1) A piece titled Formulating a Deep Educational Response to Tragedy: Reflections on the Eve of 9-11, by Tony Jenkins, Director of Education at the National Peace Academy.

Jenkins writes ". . . 'Our quickest responses are those that use the least of our imagination and are framed in unquestioned and familiar ways of looking at the world. Human tragedy and suffering will always be shocking, but the increasing frequency with which these violent events occur is evidence that our responses have not gone deep enough.'

Articulating further what I mean by a "deep" response is where I return today in my reflections about 9-11. "Going deep" is a provocative metaphor. In ecological terms we talk about digging deep below the surface to reveal the roots. While we may see and appreciate a tree from the trunk up, we know that it cannot survive without the root system that delivers water and nutrients to each leaf and branch. Belief, cultural, political and institutional systems operate similarly: there are often ideas, principles and values at the core of these systems that are poorly examined and invisible to the naked eye.

Facilitating learning that capacitates citizens to see and feel deep below and inside is one of the roles education can play in responding to tragedy. Providing opportunities that engage learners in processes of reflection, relating, re-conceptualizing, futures thinking, and rebuilding should be at the heart of that deep response. While not exhaustive, these processes are the building blocks of a transformative educational response to tragedy. . . "

You can read the full article here - http://myemail.constantcontact.com/NPA-Remembers-9-11.html?soid=110...

The second piece is a challenging and deeply reflective essay written by Timothy Cahill, Director for the Center for Documentary Arts at the Sage Colleges (Troy & Albany campuses) in Upstate New York. Timothy writes ". . . after the cruel destruction of that day and the bloodshed and destruction that followed, the one incontrovertible truth it has demonstrated is that aggression never works. Not in the long run. It will not affect the change you imagine and cannot set you free. Aggression is slavery, and if we are not to destroy ourselves as a race we must, must, must reject it. We must rise above our baser instincts to fight and accept our human capacity to cooperate, to collaborate, to experience empathy and feel compassion. Love—only love—is the hope at the bottom of Pandora's box. . . "

This link will take you to the full entry on Timothy's blog, Art & Document.

It is good to gather around the table with you again. Soon I'll be ready to return to more regular blogging. . . things are starting to pick up again in the studio, though more in the way of quiet and steady industry than wild flurries of activity - which feels good.

Blessings all -

A Word

2011-09-09T19:57:00.002+12:00

A WORD

This is the first year of the sea

between us. We are islands apart

but tuned to the same taut string.

I can feel the fear in his quaking

texts. 1) Christch is gon. Lideas lost

2) in littelton its all skwshd

3) wot hapns now

Between us the land widens, gulps

and fractures. The night falls deep.

4) i just thnk wot if all of a sudn

i had nuthng

You would have yourself.

5) is it enuff

You would have a lifetime of love.

It's the only word I can offer,

it's the one he knows best.

Jenny Powell

Dunedin 2011

Thank you, thank you to my poet friend Jenny for answering 'yes' in response to my request to post A Word here. This poem - written for her son, Wyeth - rattled my chest and shook my heart open when I read it this afternoon and did so precisely as and when I needed it. To echo Marylinn in her post from earlier today, there are angels everywhere; Jenny? Wyeth? Marylinn? Yes, yes and yes again. In her colourful homage - an 'honoring collage' - to a dear friend, Marylinn writes ". . . Look not askance at whatever crosses your line of sight today. Be attuned to the most hushed and coded whisperings of the unseen. Embrace what may seem unlikely and pay attention. . . " I appreciate the reminder.

_/\_

A Word first appeared in the September edition of The Dyslexia Foundation's monthly journal.

Jenny’s latest collection maps the country, people and places of Viet Nam. It forms a cultural and literary bridge between the country Viet Nam and the visit to New Zealand of a Vietnamese music teacher Hao, who lived with Jenny during his stay in New Zealand. “Is it possible to love a country you have never been to? Is it possible to visit a country in your imagination?” she asks in the introduction to Viet Nam: A Poem Journey. Viet Nam is an evocative, colourful and imaginative journey that confirms in her work the power of the imaginal world. Read more here.

Tuesday Poem - Scriptorium

2011-09-06T09:45:00.005+12:00

SCRIPTORIUM
for Melissa Green

The knot in your old oak table pulses in synch with the lighthouse
storm warnings; Cato – draped like night around your neck – smells
of salt water, gold leaf, barnacles, the blunt-sharp rocks of proximity

and doubt. He purrs in metronomic lighthouse time. The tip
of your fountain pen dips into black ink, shakes off the dark, ignites
a constellation of stars on the page. “I always write,” you say, “on yellow

paper; let it be as close to ochre as anyone can find, in honour of Lascaux’s hooves,
Nuri’s song lines, Altamira’s bison thundering; yellow paper, with dark blue
veins in the page to stop me trembling; ancient tributaries mapping my way.”

*

Away now from that ancient shipwreck of a house, that living catacomb – the unsafe
ark - words fly from your pen; those not already here, climb your apartment
steps, find their way in. Daily they come and never leave - always with you

and life in mind. Like the torches that illuminated the first cave paintings
they peel back the shadows: inside the page, lanterns are waiting to be lit;
the vaulted ceilings of Medieval churches; fresco figures beckoning.

Lovers meet at dawn. In silence they greet each other’s deep,
forbidden places. “I see,” you say. “I see,” I say. Your old oak table
has the presence of an altar, the rounded belly and arched back

of a much-loved cave. It’s a secret and a sacred stage.
The tea in our cups not tea at all, but terracotta rain
gathered in a downpour, shot through with molten gold.

CB - 14 May 2010/24 March 2011

_/\_

For more Tuesday Poems, please click on the quill. This week's editor is Emma McCleary with Where Thought Goes by Helen Lehndorf.

Alluring Aprons

2011-08-21T21:56:00.010+12:00

Dear friends

I'm thinking of taking a break from blogging for a while; I'm not sure for how long - a day, a week, a month or more? Neither do I want to put anything (de)finite around this intention. This past year has been a series of. . . how shall I put this. . . paradoxical, vivid and can-all-this-really-be-happening? experiences. Time has stretched into peculiar shapes calling for daily spontaneity and moment-by-moment responses. I've not been able to write any of it out here. For all its surreality and heartache, Life has also been miraculous, heart-opening, instructive, fortifying, faith-building and so much more. I appreciate the image of the willow tree standing deeply-anchored with its roots in water while the rest of its body dips and flexes, responsive to any and all elements and weather. Seems we are being given one opportunity after another to practice our moves, to refine our dance with ourselves, each other, life.

I'll be working longish hours in the studio these coming few months, absorbed in a rather different and quietly thrilling project; one that's been incubating for some years and that seems to be gently insisting now is the time. . . I'll document the process, of course, but am reluctant to disclose the finished series until brows have been mopped and crinkles smoothed out (both of which could take a while!). Meantime, I'm looking forward to visiting you and your blogs and anticipate finding my voice again in conversation with you on your sites.

Thank you for your company out here. I value you all heaps.

Till soon then. . . Salani kahle; stay well.

Return - Charcoal & pastel on paper - CB

Temple in the mist

2011-08-17T09:45:00.001+12:00

A few pics from my weekend retreat on Banks Peninsula. . .

Tuesday Poem - BUTTON SHOP

2011-08-16T12:34:00.001+12:00

BUTTON SHOP

Via Cappellari, Rome

There is no front door; the way in is through

a gash in the old man's chest. Behind his ribcage

centuries-old buttons regulate the beating

of his heart. His chambers are bordered

by pleated velvet, the arch of his aorta embellished

with medallions carved in ivory and horn.

His ventricles are red-ruched satin, stitched

by hand, reinforced with the bleached baleens

of whales. You have only to press your ears

to the walls of his chest to overhear murmurs

of treason, bear witness to acts of love

and betrayal in the eighteenth-century court

of Versailles. His floating rib transmits

the sound of insects colliding with candle light,

street lamps and crystal chandeliers. Stand close

to detect the whirr of industry - in his blood vessels

the heat and light of theatre sets

and behind-the-scenes machinery.

He is centuries old. His superior vena cava echoes

with the metal of wartime trenches

empty cartridges, abandoned ammunition belts

and lost belt buckles: there, too, the crack

and split of a sailing ship crushed

in the fist of a storm.

There is no front door;

the way in is through the gash

in the old man's chest. His body

is an apology of dull grey scaffolding

but his heart? His heart remains

a patient, all-weather place.

CB 2007

For more Tuesday Poems, please click on the quill. This week's editor is Alicia Ponder with the poem Shetland Ponies, Haast Beach by fellow TP poet, Tim Jones

Today's Button Shop is a re-post. This poem was originally published in 2007 in my first collection, Open Book - Poetry & Images. In my last post, I mentioned I'd be away from home for a few days - first for an exhibition opening and then for a retreat on magnificent Banks Peninsula. Our small country has been brought to a virtual standstill after days of (for us) heavy snowfalls. Much of both islands is under a blanket of white - very beautiful, if somewhat disruptive! I was lucky enough to make it over the hills and back to Christchurch before the AA closed the roads. And now that I'm here, I'm fortunate to be able to stay with dear friends in their warm home. We are off into the snow now (going to the gallery space ; )). . . I'll post a few pics of the temple and Christchurch's white environs later today. . . Meantime, this is where I/we were this time last year. . .

Salt water lions

17 August 2010

New from the studio

2011-08-12T12:20:00.005+12:00

Hi. I'm writing this from Christchurch. I flew up last night in order to attend the opening (at 5.30PM this evening) of En Masse, the first in a series of 'pop-up' exhibitions staged by my long-time dealer gallery The Arthouse. En Masse includes work by sixteen artists and is the first 'in-the-flesh' show Norma and Peter have staged since having to evacuate their beautiful space in the CBD after the February 22 earthquake.

Below are two works I completed for this exhibition - Murmur and I meant it to be a poem about sparrows and the silence that followed. . .

Murmur - Charcoal & pastel on paper 2011

I'm immersed in a sequence of drawings and paintings at the moment that are an attempt to address the profound and progressive wounding we have inflicted - and continue to inflict - on our earth, and to give voice to the urgency of our engagement and of our doing what we can to facilitate her preservation and healing. When it comes to matters of protest, my intention is always to find a way 'through the gaps', to communicate in language that evokes rather than provokes. I want very much to make work that acknowledges current realities in all their darkness and starkness and at the same time focusses in on beauty and wonder, mystery, poetry and lyricism. I hope to pose questions and to peel back the 'layers of the obvious' revealing the subtler notes that suggest there's a 'world of more' breathing below the surface of everything we know and that resides beyond what we can see and/or understand. (This may in part explain the appearance of X-ray-type imagery in this new work?)

There's a synchronistic little story behind the second image I'm posting here. This drawing was already well underway when I came upon The Sparrows, a poem posted by Christchurch-based writer, Helen Lowe. Helen had posted The Sparrows as her Tuesday Poem; this poem is one in a series she refers to as her Earthquake Witness sequence. The opening and closing lines of The Sparrows resonated particularly powerfully for me and seemed to be speaking directly into/out of the drawing I was engaged with. I asked Helen if I could 'borrow' the opening two lines as a title and possibly also include the poem with my finished piece on this exhibition. She generously agreed - and it will be great to see her at the opening a few hours from now. . .

I meant it to be a poem about sparrows and the silence that followed. . .

Charcoal, pastel & watercolour pencil on paper - 2011

Following the 22 February earthquake in Christchurch, the birds fled the city, rendering the broken landscape all the starker through the absence of birdsong. . The closing lines of Helen's poem read -

". . . And then, finally, they came / their wings clouding the sun."

It would be wonderful to see Christchurch blogging friends at the opening. . . This is late notice, I know, but please do come if you can? Activities get under way at 5.30PM this evening. Where? Upstairs in the NZ Health Food Co. building, 215 Wooldridge Road, Harewood. For friends further afield, I invite you to browse the work online by visiting Norma & Peter's virtual gallery (web technology is amazing, really - you can 'walk' around the space, zoom into images and see the mark-making with absolute clarity, swirl, twirl and whirl. . .)

Sending best thoughts to you all.

PS. I forgot to mention I'm going to be away - on retreat - out on the magnificent Banks Peninsula for a few days following this exhibition opening. . . Back home mid-next week (weather permitting - heavy snow is forecast this weekend ; )).

Tuesday Poem - Keeping Quiet by Pablo Neruda

2011-08-09T00:09:00.001+12:00

KEEPING QUIET

Now we will count to twelve

and we will all keep still.

This one time upon the earth,

let's not speak any language,

let's stop for one second,

and not move our arms so much.

It would be a delicious moment,

without hurry, without locomotives,

all of us would be together

in a sudden uneasiness.

The fishermen in the cold sea

would do no harm to the whales

and the peasant gathering salt

would look at his torn hands.

Those who prepare green wars,

wars of gas, wars of fire,

victories without survivors,

would put on clean clothing

and would walk alongside their brothers

in the shade, without doing a thing.

What I want shouldn't be confused

with final inactivity:

life alone is what matters,

I want nothing to do with death.

If we weren't unanimous

about keeping our lives so much in motion,

if we could do nothing for once,

perhaps a great silence would

interrupt this sadness,

this never understanding ourselves

and threatening ourselves with death,

perhaps the earth is teaching us

when everything seems to be dead

and then everything is alive.

Now I will count to twelve

and you keep quiet and I'll go.

Ode to Keeping Quiet by Pablo Neruda

-from Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

for more Tuesday Poems, please click on the quill.

This week's editor is Robert Sullivan with Envelope by Anna Jackson

When fire = poetry

2011-08-06T09:09:00.007+12:00

Seattle-based Japanese artist Etsuko Ichikawa writes, "My work is a continuing investigation of what lies between the ephemeral and the eternal.

Moment and memory, absorption and evaporation, light and shadow are some of the triggers that inspire me and relate to my work. My “glass pyrographs” are made by drawing hot molten glass, which is one way to capture and eternalize the immediacy of a moment, while my hanging and floating installations are about ever-changing states of mind. . . "

"The yin to Etsuko Ichikawa's soft-spoken, intro-spective yang is fiery, molten glass. Handling while aglow at 2100 degrees F, she loops, stretches and presses the smoking mass of lava atop paper to create abstract drawings known as pyrographs. Filmmaker Alistair Banks Griffin captures the dramatic choreography of Ichikawa's art in this short film for The Anthropologist*. . ."

For more vids of the artist at work, visit this page on Etsuko Ichikawa's website - http://www.etsukoichikawa.com/video.htm

Thanks +++ to RachvB for introducing us to the meditative, alchemical work of this remarkable artist.

* rich pickings await you at The Anthropologist