Shelley on what we Modern Americans Need to Do

“Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number-
Shake your chains to earth like
dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you
Ye are many-they are few.” 
― Percy Bysshe Shelley

Who tells the story....

“Who tells the story, who recasts the characters and changes the tone becomes very important: no story is ever the same as its source or model, the chemistry of narrator and audience changes it.”

                          Marina Warner

Melancholia

Francesca Woodman

“But I can't do anything for him and he can't do anything for me. We must wail in our own corners.” 
― Iris Murdoch

Paul Gauguin

Paul Gauguin

Portrait of Suzanne Bambridge

I am very interested in the colors and composition of this portrait. Gauguin has always been a fascinating painter, especially with color.  The colors used here are simply beautiful.

Creating Art Quotes

“Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them,so unconcernedly silent and vast. I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything!”

                                                  Rainer Maria Rilke

Things I have learned in the last 5 years about writing

No matter what an author writes, the author cannot hide. Be it the author's subject matter, the sentence structure, the diction, or even tone, the writer's personality is going to be revealed. The author is his or her work and the kind of work does not matter. It can be high art as in literary writing or more common genre writing, a memoir, or a year's string of tweets or Facebook posts, even a song. But the exposure is the same. A personality is divulged.

Yes, some beliefs are openly stated. But others can be eventually discovered in the actual words that an author uses. After all, all writing is about experience, whether it is merely described experience or interpreted. I have come to understand that the best writing is interpreted and is done so, with great sensitivity, the kind of perceptiveness that is made visible.  There is a distinctiveness, a peculiar sound and meaning.

This is one of the most valuable things that I have learned about writing in the last five years, not just the intellect of knowing it as a truth, but observing it in all kinds of people. This new way of looking and paying attention has taught me many lessons, even about myself.

It has changed how I pay attention to the world and how I look, and also how I read. But mostly how I now live my daily life. 

Who knew words could be so powerful.
Who knew that finding interest in the everyday things, in what might be missing counts.

Remembering Mother on her Birthday

l-r Virginia and Pauline Church

Remembering Mother, who was born 100 years ago today in Moorhead, Mississippi. Pauline Church Harrington, born October 13, 1919, died August 27, 2009. An incredible human being. A force of nature. She had many gifts. Her love of books and reading was one of them. She could spin a tale out of thin air and loved a good story. Queen of the Day Trip and Color commentary on life. Fantastic cook. In her 70s, she rode in the back of a pickup truck, over land, from Louisiana to Alaska, with her baby sister, Belle. She outlived six siblings, carried five pregnancies to full term, married two men, buried both of them. It's true, her life was detailed by hardship and suffering, but she was a survivor. On life, she told me, "All I knew was my family, especially my brothers and sisters. I was like a mother to the younger ones. We almost starved one winter. It defined the ones who lived together after Daddy died."  On death, she told me, "It's nothing. Just the end. Everything ends. Think of me as  sleeping."

Sleep well, Mother.

Creating art

An artist must be passionately in love with his art. Obsessed or possessed ― go mad for what you believe in.”


                                  – Charlotte Eriksson

I am a witch wife.

She is neither pink nor pale,

And she never will be all mine;

She learned her hands in a fairy-tale,

And her mouth on a valentine.

She has more hair than she needs;

In the sun 'tis a woe to me!

And her voice is a string of colored beads,

Or steps leading into the sea.

She loves me all that she can, 

And her ways to my ways resign; 

But she was not made for any man, 

And she never will be all mine.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

I have witched you!

“I kissed you! I witched you!
I laugh at the afterlife’s dark.” 
― Marina Tsvetaeva

Paysage Bleu  by Marc Chagall

Ginger Baker of Cream

Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, Jack Bruce
aka Cream

Ginger Baker died on October 6, 2019, after years of illnesses. He was eighty years old. Baker, along with Eric Clapton, formed Cream in 1966. High tempered and maybe suffering from conduct disorder, Baker was often violent. His relationship with Jack Bruce bordered on the psychotic, and the two were often engaged in physical confrontations. But Baker was also one of the greatest musicians ever. With Clapton, he also founded the supergroup Blind Faith and yes, it only lasted one album. I think a lot of Baker's problems were inherent conduct disorder, acerbated by heroin use. But whatever, Cream was and is (always) my favorite band. And I certainly appreciate the art and music he helped create. White Room is my song, and I am a Tired Starling. Smiling. Thank you, Ginger, for the powerful drums. Cream is missed.

The Witch by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge

Whistler's The White Girl 1862

I have walked a great while over the snow,

And I am not tall nor strong.

My clothes are wet, and my teeth are set,

And the way was hard and long.

I have wandered over the fruitful earth,

But I never came here before.

Oh, lift me over the threshold, and let me in at the door!

The cutting wind is a cruel foe.

I dare not stand in the blast.

My hands are stone, and my voice a groan,

And the worst of death is past.

I am but a little maiden still,

My little white feet are sore.

Oh, lift me over the threshold, and let me in at the door!

Her voice was the voice that women have,

Who plead for their heart’s desire.

She came—she came—and the quivering flame

Sunk and died in the fire.

It never was lit again on my hearth

Since I hurried across the floor,

To lift her over the threshold, and let her in at the door.

The Last of Summer

It's very warm today but a cold front is moving toward us. It's due. The first of October has never been this warm since records were taken. I went outside to walk the lawn and look at the flowers, took this photo at the gate. The sun was in my eyes. I love the sun in my eyes. I know it's been very hot this summer, but I shall miss it. Winter is never kind to me.

Rilke on Beauty and Terror

“Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final”

― Rainer Maria Rilke