Claude Monet ~ Waterlilies

Much has been written of Claude Monet's failing eyesight and how it would have affected paintings such as the Portland Art Museum's Waterlilies painted during the period 1914-1915. As early as 1905 Monet no longer saw colors with the same intensity as he had done before. Time marched on and his perception of color continued to deteriorate. In 1912 he was diagnosed with nuclear cataracts in both eyes by a Parisian ophthalmologist. Although he finally consented to an operation on his right eye in 1923 he spent many years seeking other solutions all the while refusing surgery. He was aware of the poor results on others including Mary Cassatt. Lisel Mueller presents another view of Monet's perception of color and image.

Monet Refuses the Operation

BY LISEL MUELLER

Doctor, you say there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don’t see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don’t know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and changes our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

Anish Kapoor ~ Hexagonal Mirror Inspired Poetry

Six of us docents entered the gallery in which Anish Kapoor's Hexagonal Mirror hangs at the Portland Art Museum yesterday. As we approached this reflective piece our individual and collective realities were altered. We each saw a slightly different perspective of our group and the room as we moved forward, stood still, move backwards together. As we explored and talked, our world changed. Hundreds of eyes, then hundreds of mouths, then our faces would appear. And as the images in each reflective six sided piece of reflective stainless changed, we found our voices amplified. Whispers from the bench were amplified and carried across the room. We were alone, together, whole, fragmented. Kapoor's piece is definitely a reason to visit the Portland Art Museum even if you have seen or don't want to see China Design Now or Raphael's La Velata again. I'd recommend all three but I'd recommend starting with Kapoor.

Each of us docents wrote for eight minutes towards the end of our time at the museum. We could write whatever we chose. Here is a piece written by one of our group - I chose it for my love of eyeglasses of which I have five active pairs, only one diamond but five glasses. The special perks of being one of the writers of this blog is to choose what is posted...

A Moment of Clarity

(with a nod to Anish Kapoor's Hexagonal Mirror)

I wake up with a start
Then a slow inkling
A Blur Feast at dawn

I reach over to the bedside stand
groping for my designer glasses .. my Anish Kapoor
coolest glasses ever
Shiny reflective
I-see-You-but-You-can't-see-me-Anish-Kapoor-Alternative-Universe-Spectator-Spectacles


There You are next to me
reflected, refracted,
fragmented,
scattered
all over the room.

I move and the wall curves
the picture colors pulse like
goldfish mouths O-O-O-O

Get it together! You can't go out
in the world all schizoid like this
multiple personalities writhing like snakes on Medusa's Head

And You talk fast at me with your myopic words
Take off those Anish Kapoor specs right now!

And I say low and slow NO Never! You blind man.

Florine Stettheimer ~ Cathedrals of Broadway

Florine Stettheimer painted her Cathedrals series over the course of fifteen years. All four of the paintings are part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection although they may not all be hanging on the gallery walls at any one time. Cathedrals of Broadway is a perennial favorite and shows Stettheimer's distinct style. Once you've seen a Stettheimer how could you not recognize the bright colors and figure filled images as being hers. She paints a New York that is much like it is today, a city that never sleeps. In Cathedrals of Broadway painted in 1929, about the same time as the Portland Art Museum's Portrait of My Teacher this week's piece, you can take in a time of change. Silent movies are on the way out and are shown with the word Silence roped off. The talkies have arrived and are symbolized by the newsreel clip in the top center showing the beginning of baseball season. As she did in many of her paintings, Stettheimer included herself. In Cathedrals of Broadway, she is entering on the painting's left with her older sister Stella and her cousin Walter Wagner.

Cathedrals of Broadway inspired poet Naomi Shihab Nye to writed "The World, Starring You" that was included in Heart to Heart a book of poems inspired by Twentieth Century American Art. Nye is quoted in the introduction of Heart to Heart as she talks about Stettheimer's work ... "her scenes woke me up with their beautifully luscious shapes and colors of flowers and figures, and gave me a deep feeling of closeness with the times in which she lived." Here is Nye's poem that accompanied Stettheimer's Cathedrals of Broadway.

The World, Starring You
Naomi Shihab Nye

Florine, we would live inside your colors! Red joy,
golden rushes of hope, the 1929 we will never see.
Names of radiant theaters flame your sky – RIALTO – ROXY –
citizens mingling in pearls, top hats, inside a glittering flare.
Where have they gone? a ticket booth waits like a small domed mosque.
An usher – or is he a policeman ? – wearing white gloves and yellow cape
pivots between welcome and EXIT. Even the mayor looks smart.
Frills and flgs, banners, tiny dancing sprites . . .
You painted the flurry and flux,
abundant addresses of Broadway welcoming crowds.
I like the fanfare, the dreamy dazzle, canopies of light!

Florine, the early 20th century chimed like a chord,
but we are hobblers at the millennium, cleaning out our drawers,
nothing looks enough like you.
The age of gracious penmanship was yours.
Balance your globe on tipsy clock,
lift the darkness with arches and stars.
And ever, ever, a roped-off fluted SILENCE at the center.
Take us where you were and where you are.

Van Gogh ~ The Ox Cart, Fog

Position yourself in the gallery at the Portland Art Museum near Van Gogh's The Ox Cart and you'll usually hear someone comment on what a gray morning it seems to be. The grayness stands out now as it did for Van Gogh in 1884. He had moved to Neunens to live with his parents after a failed attempt at being a minister. He wrote to his brother Theo in Paris of his life in this northern part of The Netherlands.

Out of doors everything is mournful. In fact the fields consist entirely of patches of black earth and snow; on some days one seems to see nothing but fog and mud; in the evening the red sun, in the morning crows.

There are a number of works of poetry about fog but this one by Giovanni Pascoli seems to capture the grayness of Van Gogh's Neunens.

In the Fog

I stared into the valley: it was gone—
wholly submerged! A vast flat sea remained,
gray, with no waves, no beaches; all was one.

And here and there I noticed, when I strained,
the alien clamoring of small, wild voices:
birds that had lost their way in that vain land.

And high above, the skeletons of beeches,
as if suspended, and the reveries
of ruins and of the hermit’s hidden reaches.

And a dog yelped and yelped, as if in fear,
I knew not where nor why. Perhaps he heard
strange footsteps, neither far away nor near—

echoing footsteps, neither slow nor quick,
alternating, eternal. Down I stared,
but I saw nothing, no one, looking back.

The reveries of ruins asked: “Will no
one come?” The skeletons of trees inquired:
“And who are you, forever on the go?”

I may have seen a shadow then, an errant
shadow, bearing a bundle on its head.
I saw—and no more saw, in the same instant.

All I could hear were the uneasy screeches
of the lost birds, the yelping of the stray,
and, on that sea that lacked both waves and beaches,

the footsteps, neither near nor far away.

--Giovanni Pascoli

The Peach Tree

I love C.S. Price. For him it was a Willow, and for me it was a Peach Tree.

The Peach Tree

Stretched down like a knotty branch
of Wheeler's peach tree loaded to falling
with ripe harvest, is mom's arm
"You'll make yourself sick again."
The drip, drip juice on my skin dries sticky
Bits of hay fall from air stiff with gas fumes
Wheeler's tractor roars, it is caked and cracked
with dry dirt like the skin of old elbows.
Wheeler is a road without lines just gravel
Where I learned to stand. Now I use sidewalks
like grey skillets that cook my shoes
Along them people sip coffee on balconies.
My wheels are attached to a chair in an office
Where the air is conditioned
The baby chicks I used to spy on in cattails
Are city chickens I keep in a cage
On the weekend I drive away to a farm on the edge
I ask the ripe peaches to fall, if they’re ready
I ask the baby to come, if it’s ready
I’ll stay home and buy a rocking chair
Set it up by the potted tree, on the back deck
Listen to shopping carts loaded to falling
In my skin healed of grass cuts I’ll smile
with peaches make myself sick again.

Kiki Smith ~ Collaboration with Emily Dickinson and Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge

Ray Bradbury once wrote in Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Within You of the value of reading poetry – it expands how we think and how we see the world. I've taken his advice to read at least one poem a day to heart and have read at least one poem a day since 1982. So this morning I decided to search around for poetry related to Kiki Smith, the artist of the week here at Fifty Two Pieces. Out there on the internet you'll find she has collaborated on at least three books of poetry.

The first, Sampler, is a singularly beautiful and unique publication of Emily Dickinson's poetry published by Arion Press in San Francisco. Sampler is a selection of two hundred poems by Emily Dickinson each paired with a print by Kiki Smith. To prepare for this project, Smith made images of samplers that had been the means young women traditionally used to show their domestic skills . She combed the collections of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to find examples of this work. Arion Press describes Smith's process to create her prints for letterpress.

The artist Kiki Smith has made prints for every page of the poetry, as well as the half-title page and a portrait of Emily Dickinson on the frontispiece, 206 images in all. These are original prints. Kiki Smith has made the matrix for each image. She scratched lines in the emulsion of photographic negatives with an etching needle and other sharp-pointed tools, thus allowing light to pass through them in the making of photopolymer plates for letterpress printing.

And here is a description of the book, a work of art in itself.

The type and polymer plates were printed by letterpress in black ink for the type and red-brown ink for the plates. The paper was made by hand at the Twinrocker mill. The sheets are hand-sewn with linen thread over linen tapes. The binding has a red-brown goatskin spine, with title stamped in gold, the boards covered with tan cloth, the front cover embroidered with red thread for title and author and artist names. The book is presented in a slipcase.

Goodness, my senses are overwhelmed by the elegance of this work. To read more about the collaborative process used to make Sampler visit Arion Press here.

The other two examples of Kiki Smith's collaborative work with poets are two books published with the poet Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge. Berssenbrugge has a Portland connection. She holds a B. A, from Reed College where she graduated in 1969 after first attending Barnard College in New York.


Endrocinology was published in 1997















and Concordance in 2006.


















To round out this post and to add more poetry to your life here is a video of Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge presenting poetry at lunchtime ...

Louise Nevelson ~ Arnold Scaasi, Arnold Newman and Edith Sitwell

If you were friends with Louise Nevelson, you could be fairly certain that any night out with her would include scavenging the streets. Arnold Scaasi, the renowned dress designer who has clothed the very rich and famous, recounts such events in his interviews and books. In his book Women I Have Dressed, he devotes an entire chapter to his client and friend Louise Nevelson. His memories include dining with Nevelson and her companion Diana MacKown at a restaurant near Nevelson's home on Spring Street. While there Nevelson waved to her many Mafia friends, men who made certain she was taken care of in those perilous days of the sixties and seventies near Little Italy. Like with many other dinners and events, including those when they were being driven in Scaasi's car, Nevelson would command that the driver stop the car, she would exit, pick up bits of wood and other detritus. With the help of all of the other occupants including Scaasi and his driver, the bootie would be loaded into the trunk and carried away to Nevelson's Spring Street home.

Scaasi will always remember Nevelson's love of black. In addition to his home on Central Park South, he owned a home in the Hamptons, a natural shingle mansion of sorts. One weekend he invited her and MacKown to spend some time away from the city. Lured by the promise of lobster (she loved that from her days in Maine), she was holding court one afternoon and cheerily proclaimed that Scaasi's house would look ever so much grander if it were painted black. Within the month, Scaasi had implemented that suggestion and became the talk of the neighborhood. He did love his all black mansion though.

Arnold Newman, the world renowned photographer, had a special affection for Louise Nevelson. His photograph of her is on the US Postal Service's stamp honoring her work as a sculptor. The photo on the left was taken at a fundraiser and shows Arnold with Louise's granddaughter Maria Nevelson. Maria is also a sculptor and had met Arnold when she interviewed him about her grandmother. Louise Nevelson's family relations were strained so Newman was able to provide her granddaughter with an insight into her that Maria was unaware of. Especially poignant was Newman's story of the time he photographed Nevelson at the Whitney in 1980. This was the day she learned her brother died. They continued the photo session even though Louise was visibly upset. Maria stated "I had never seen my grandmother cry, always strong and composed." Juxtapose that with "My work is delicate; it may look strong, but it is delicate. True strength is delicate. My whole life is in it...." and you get a clear picture of Louise Nevelson's inner psyche. The photo on the left is of Newman, Maria Nevelson and Newman's photo of Louise Nevelson.






Knowing what someone reads is another insight into their personality. Dame Edith Sitwell was one of Louise Nevelson's favorite poets. Her Façade suite of 1967 was created in homage to Sitwell who died in 1964. It is comprised of twelve prints that involve photography, silkscreen, and collage on paper and acetate sheets, each including a Sitwell poem. To the right is the image that was created for Lullaby for Jumbo below.

Lullaby for Jumbo
Jumbo asleep!
Grey leaves thick-furred
As his ears, keep
Conversations blurred.
Thicker than hide
Is the trumpeting water;
Don Pasquito’s bride
And his youngest daughter
Watch the leaves
Elephantine grey:
What is it grieves
In the torrid day?
Is it the animal
World that snores
Harsh and inimical
In sleepy pores?
And why should the spined flowers
Red as a soldier
Make Don Pasquito
Seem still mouldier?
Dame Edith Sitwell (1887–1964)

Lee Kelly ~ Sculptor, Musician and Poet

Take a tour around the internet and you will find a few videos of Lee Kelly other than the one from Oregon Public Broadcasting one that I posted the other day. The first one I've linked here shows a group of men making music on one of Lee Kelly's sculptures. At the end of it, you'll see Lee Kelly climbing the sculpture and sitting on its summit. The second video includes many scenes from his sculpture garden in Oregon City as well as him reading a few of his pieces of poetry. The ending shows him scaling the same sculpture as in the first.



Continuing that tour of the internet and you'll be able to read two of his pieces of poetry, here and here.

And for your viewing pleasure here is the venerable Kelly Fountain at SW 6th and Pine here in Portland. There's nothing like the sound of flowing water, especially on city streets.

Robert Colescott ~ A Taste of Gumbo

In 1997, Robert Colescott represented the United States at the Venice Biennale, the first American artist since Jasper Johns did so in 1986. One of the 19 acrylic paintings shown at that exhibition was A Taste of Gumbo seen above. Looking at the image the scale of the painting is clear, large as well as bold. Tackling race again, there's something in this painting to offend most people. The white woman at center has decided to partake of the food created by blacks. What's in that gumbo though includes all of the other aspects of racial stereotypes in America. Look around the painting and you'll find the signs of poverty, slavery, garbage, jazz, card playing.

The five paintings currently hanging just inside the front lobby of the Portland Art Museum will probably be going off view soon. However, for those of us who live in Portland, Robert Colescott's Knowledge of the Past is the Key to the Future: Upside-Down Jesus and the Politics of Survival hangs on the third floor of the museum's Center for Modern and Contemporary Art. Colescott is so well thought of that there's at least one piece of his work on view at most museums in the United States. Looking intently at his work can provoke much conversation and thought about art and life. Yesterday Amy mentioned that we might never know what Colescott really meant when he makes his paintings. That's true. But we'll enjoy the process of trying.

While writing this week's posts, I found this poem by Quincy Troupe. He wrote it specifically for the occasion of the Venice Biennale. Here's a link to read "One-Two Punch" it in it's entirety and see an insight into Robert Colescott and his work,

before anything else, at the first crack of day
light, prowling around your studio,
during the hush hours after midnight, in the dry air
surrounding the desert where you live, a stone's throw
outside of tucson--obelisks of cactus standing tall
guarding the entrance to your sanctuary--
the first thing you do when you approach the white canvas,
stretched four-corner-square before you on a huge white wall,
is paint the surface bright red after thinking about it for days--
...
painted bright red, your adrenaline flowing now, colescott,
flowing onto the surface through your refiguring brain
birthing the idea, layer after layer of colors swirling through
the snapshot you have taken inside your head of what
you are about to do here, whatever comes to you,
like improvised music, will find its way up there,
stroked as images upon your sea of red primer,
where what the viewer first see will provoke "humor,"
then "pleasure," before fast becoming a "problem"

Gregory Grenon - Moth Girl "Her Fingers Reach for the Keyboard"

Moth Girl seems compelled to play the piano, much like a moth must fly to lights at night. Playing the piano is such a gift and for some it was a gift that came from much hard work. Today's poem by Diane Wakoski can be read in its entirety at Poetry Foundation.

Thanking My Mother for Piano Lessons

BY DIANE WAKOSKI

The relief of putting your fingers on the keyboard, 

as if you were walking on the beach 

and found a diamond 

as big as a shoe; 

as if 

you had just built a wooden table 

and the smell of sawdust was in the air, 

your hands dry and woody; 

as if 

you had eluded 

the man in the dark hat who had been following you 

all week; 

the relief 

of putting your fingers on the keyboard, 

playing the chords of 

Beethoven, 

Bach, 

Chopin

...

More of the poem at Poetry Foundation.

Albert Pinkham Ryder -- His Brother's Hotel and One of His Poems

The Hotel Albert, named after our man Albert Pinkham Ryder, is shown here in a Life Magazine photo taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt in 1951 . This was, in fact, where Ryder lived for some time thanks to William Ryder, one of his brothers. Albert had three brothers, two of whom served in the Civil War, one in the artillery and one in the infantry.  Albert wrote this poem about the war with Halpine in mind but probably also his two brothers. Ryder wrote any number of poems, some about his paintings, others about life.

Roll the muffled drum
Wail the shrieking fife
Halpine's in his home
Only his remains come...

And we hold the breath
In the presence of death
And we hold the breath
For the men who faced death
Veterans every one.

Now bursts the awful chime
As they pass in line
Shoulder to shoulder
As they sway together
As they vibrate together.

With music weird and strange
As sounds that range
Along the billowy shore
When storm rules the hour
Alas! Alas!
As they pass
As they pass.

Wakes within the brain
Ah so dull a pain
Wake within the frame
Both a chill and pain
Ah so dull a pain

The Hotel Albert is now an apartment building, the buildings around it having changed since Ryder's day and 1951 when the photo was taken. In its day though it not only was home to Ryder but also housed Robert Louis Stevenson's artist studio. In addition, Leo Tolstoy and Thomas Wolfe reportedly stayed at the Hotel.

Sol Lewitt - Double Pyramid, as seen by Burt Kimmelman

Sol Lewitt’s Double Pyramid
Whitney Museum Restaurant, 12.23.00


The other side of
the picture window,
its light borrowed from
above where the stone
blocks at street level

rest adjacent to
a hot dog wagon,
telephone booths and
people on their way
through the winter haze —

we hold whatever
glow there is, the clink
of dishes cutting
across the waves of
conversation, a

reprieve against the
dazzling colors on
the gallery walls.
How incredibly
lucky art is, its

shining like the sun,
undaunted – and we,
too, from below the
summit, in our odd
ways make it come true.

                                          from Somehow by Burt Kimmelman
                                         (Marsh Hawk Press, New York, 2005)

             Burt Kimmelman agreed to have Double Pyramid grace the pages of our blog. It's a beautiful poem as are all of his in his collection Somehow. Double Pyramid moves from the image of Lewitt's sculpture that sat outside the Whitney cafe to his thoughts on life and art. Sol Lewitt was probably quite pleased to have had this poem written (see Sentence 20 in yesterday's comment -- Successful art changes our understanding of the conventions by altering our perceptions.) Mr. Kimmelman's poem moves from line to line, five syllables at a time, a cadence you could use to climb one pyramid, descend and climb the next.

              Here's a street view of the Whitney for all of us to enjoy.

Frederick Childe Hassam Renamed by Poet Celia Thaxter

Childe Hassam was invited to Celia Thaxter's artist colony in 1890. Thaxter was a poet of some means who had travelled to Europe and enjoyed the company of artists. At some point Thaxter discovered that her new friend Hassam's middle name was Childe. She suggested that he drop his first name Frederick since Childe seemed much more like that of an artist. So Childe it was from that point on. The video below shows some of his many paintings. Enjoy them as well as the opening photograph from New York taken in June 2008. It could have been of Childe Hassam's block in New York's East Village some warm summer evening.

Some of you may remember Celia Thaxter for her poems surrounding her garden and birds, including the now famous Sandpiper. General A. W. Greely, on the other hand, remembered another more somber poem that he and his crew read and reread while abandoned in the arctic for two years. The woman who renamed Hassam could fire up the imagination. Here in part is the telling poem about the sinking of a ship.

A Tryst 

By Celia Thaxter (1896)

From out the desolation of the North

An iceberg took it away,

From its detaining comrades breaking forth,

And traveling night and day.

At whose command? Who bade it sail the deep

With that resistless force?

Who made the dread appointment it must keep?

Who traced its awful course?

.....

.....

Scarcely her crew had time to clutch despair.

So swift the work was done:

Ere their pale lips could frame a speechless prayer,

They perished, every one!

Ekphrastic Poems and Alfred Maurer

Today Amy and I toured a group from Portland State through the galleries of the Portland Art Museum. The members of the group were part of a graduate poetry class. Their aim in coming to the museum was to see art that they perhaps could write about in the future – ephrasis or ekprhastic poetry. We did look at Maurer's George Washington because this painting is the museum's best example of cubist art, a type of art they were intertested in seeing.

Since today is our last day with Alfred Maurer, I decided to seek out some happier moments in his life. Alfy, as he was known in Europe, was a very happy dapper man, well thought of and considered by many to be a great artist. He loved the night life and painted this scene (Le Bal Bullier), one which he must have loved because he submitted it to many shows. Alfy was well known by Gertrude Stein; she remembered last seeing him in Europe with his "girl" just before he left Europe at the start of World War I. He feared she would fall into enemy hands but felt forced to leave because his father had cut off his money in an effort to have him return to New York. That is the last mention I've found of a time when Maurer smiled and enjoyed himself.

In keeping with the poetic theme of the tour Amy and I gave at the museum today I did find an example of an ekphrastic poem written about one of Maurer's paintings. Since I wasn't able to find the exact painting it was dedicated to, we'll all have to imagine it.
“Suspended Sea” (from What the Blood Knows by Peggy Miller)
I imagine in this boundless sea
hunger is so large it seeps into the salt,
as if hunger invented life and will consume it.
As if hunger will persist when all else goes

Ekphrastic Writing

for poets it is generous, the artist
steps away from the inspiration
but leaves something there
for the poet to find in moments
of quiet, by looking.

And later, the poet steps away
in generosity to the reader, so she
can find something of the inspiration
in her attempt to understand
the words, by feeling.

Art like God, is not right or wrong,
but indefinable in language,
requiring itself to become emotion
To enter us like sun on the skin
in immeasureable ways.


The more I study the more I realize how fleeting is a muse, how artists have to move from one thing to the next and cannot live within any moment longer than the moment lives. It is a tragedy the ability to create a world in a world in a world. Because one is always hunting for the core but all the life is in the layers.

21 Etchings and Poems – Franz Kline Collaborates with Frank O'Hara

Having read several poems written about Franz Kline's work, I decided to search for more on the "internets". Late last night I found this work by Franz Kline and Frank O'Hara. Originally part of an artist's book called 21 Etchings and Poems, it embodies the collaboration of not only Kline and O'Hara but also that of poets and painters in the 1950's and 1960's. The book itself was the most significant collaboration to that point between artists and poets in America.



And here so we can all read O'Hara's work is a more legible version...
Poem (To Franz Kline)

I will always love you
though I never loved you

a boy smelling faintly of heather
staring up at your window

the passion that enlightens
and stills and cultivates, gone

while I sought your face
to be familiar in the blueness

or to follow your sharp whistle
around a corner into my light

that was love growing fainter
each time you failed to appear

I spent my whole self searching
love which I thought was you

it was mine so briefly
and I never knew it, or you went

I thought it was outside disappearing
but it is disappearing in my heart

like snow blown in a window
to be gone from the world

Those words stayed with me all night. I awoke to "I will always love you/though I never loved you". Words written by O'Hara, a man who loved life, loved New York and loved action painting. He loved everything that was in the moment that captured precisely the how and when of the present. I dedicate this entry to Amy, the one who embodies the love of the present in our lives. May you continue to give the rest of us the images of the precision of your emotions.

Seeking Serenity

To me you're not dying; you're very much alive. Sometimes I can feel you breathe. You never look up though, always so deep in thought. What is life all about? How do we know which way is right? Is there a right? Or is it important to just act? So many questions as I look at you. And then I hear Alison Luterman's poem, I Confess. I first read this poem on the wall of #15 bus. It remains in my memory a perfect moment.

I Confess

by Alison Luterman

I stalked her in the grocery store:

her crown of snowy braids held in place by a great silver clip,

her erect bearing, radiating tenderness,

the way she placed yogurt and avocados in her basket,

beaming peace like the North Star.

I wanted to ask, "What aisle did you find your serenity in, 

do you know how to be married for 50 years or how to live alone,

excuse me for interrupting, but you seem to possess

some knowledge that makes the earth burn and turn on its axis"

but we don't request such things from strangers nowadays.

So I said, "I love your hair."