The Annunciation by Arthur Hughes

 This is beautiful art from Arthur Hughes. The colors are just stunning.

I want to write about this in sections, because these are profound words from Joni Mitchell and I suppose this is about monogamy.

“I don’t know if I’ve learned anything yet! I did learn how to have a happy home, but I consider myself fortunate in that regard because I could’ve rolled right by it. Everybody has a superficial side and a deep side, but this culture doesn’t place much value on depth — we don’t have shamans or soothsayers, and depth isn’t encouraged or understood. Surrounded by this shallow, glossy society we develop a shallow side, too, and we become attracted to fluff. That’s reflected in the fact that this culture sets up an addiction to romance based on insecurity — the uncertainty of whether or not you’re truly united with the object of your obsession is the rush people get hooked on. I’ve seen this pattern so much in myself and my friends and some people never get off that line.

“But along with developing my superficial side, I always nurtured a deeper longing, so even when I was falling into the trap of that other kind of love, I was hip to what I was doing. I recently read an article in Esquire magazine called ‘The End of Sex,’ that said something that struck me as very true. It said: “If you want endless repetition, see a lot of different people. If you want infinite variety, stay with one.” What happens when you date is you run all your best moves and tell all your best stories — and in a way, that routine is a method for falling in love with yourself over and over.

“You can’t do that with a longtime mate because he knows all that old material. With a long relationship, things die then are rekindled, and that shared process of rebirth deepens the love. It’s hard work, though, and a lot of people run at the first sign of trouble. You’re with this person, and suddenly you look like an asshole to them or they look like an asshole to you — it’s unpleasant, but if you can get through it you get closer and you learn a way of loving that’s different from the neurotic love enshrined in movies. It’s warmer and has more padding to it.”

— Joni Mitchell

The Night was once very dark and black and feared.

🌚 “Night knew no bounds. Goethe, on a moonlit evening in Naples, was “overwhelmed by a feeling of infinite space.”

                              — A. Roger Ekirch 

                             from At Day's Close: Night in Times Past

When I was a small child, my grandmother lived in a very old house with little electricity. She was incredibly poor and each room in her house had an electrical outlet that hung down in the center of each room of her four room house. Each wire had a few sockets, the bottom one for a light bulb. She was very careful with extension cords used and so forth for as long as I knew her. No need to burn the house down. Most of the time we were in the dark after a certain time of night. Once I asked my grandmother what it was like for her as a child concerning the dark and she told me. Right then, I became acquainted with Night in a way that none of my childhood friends would ever consider. It made me wonder about past times and how Night was for ordinary people in villages and small towns across my country, and then across places I had studied in school, and later, all around the world. Once people thought Night was an entity, the dark simply rolled out as the sun set like a supernatural force. Cities and people once used torches and then candles, followed by lamplight of some kind. I walked around my house for three days with just candlelight last year just to see how it would be and I could hardly read a book. In fact, I did little reading and writing in that time. And I do not live in true Night or darkness. Not like these past people did. Even in the suburbs of a small city like Memphis, I have light in the sky. I have street lights. I have vehicles passing the street in front of my house. I have good flashlights. Even my Apple phone has a flashlight. So no, I am not in the dark of past times. But my grandmother lived in the countryside the first 20 years or so of her life and it was dark. Perhaps not dark as past times, but still very dark. They had oil lamps. No electricity until the 1930s for her. No indoor plumbing, no washing machine. Certainly no dryer and the refrigerator was some sort of antique that really did not work. But it was the light that my grandmother wanted. She taught herself to read and she loved to write letters and read magazines and the few books she could get from the county library when someone traveled to the next town. Electricity is something we all take for granted. It's just there. And are lives are not interrupted by Night at all, especially in large cities.

IN order to really grasp Night, I went to the planetarium in Memphis. Before the show, they turned out all the lights and it was so dark and black, that I could not see my own nose or my hand when I raised it toward my face. I felt an immediate sense of anxiety and because it was a social experiment, the blackness went on for minutes. During that time, I felt blind and as though I had been swallowed by Night. I couldn't even breathe properly. I lost, briefly, any sense of space and direction. In that moment, I felt as though I was in past times and I was out in the middle of the country, with no moon or stars, no light, nothing but darkness. It felt like an entity.

In Anthropology, we learned very quickly that fire was one of the most important possessions of early hominoids. Before they learned to make fire on their own, they captured it from Nature in various ways. Lightning strikes being one. Can you imagine living in darkness, moonlight or starlight your only source of light at Night and then one day you capture Fire? And then later you learn to make this Fire and it not only lights your Night, it warms you, and it also cooks meat and fish. It also scares some predators. Fire was a gift.

These three books have been valuable research for me, along with my own personal experiments to understand Night in past times and to experience candlelight, lamplight, and even firelight. This has been important research for my work-in-progress and also for my own connections to my grandmother and her mother and the people who came before them. When I read about Goethe or Shelley or other historical figures, I try to imagine how they lived in the Night. And even now, around the world, in less developed countries, people experience darkness in a way that we do not understand at all.

And then there are people who just arrive from afar...

"He said later it was propinquity. For him all relationships fell into patterns. You fell into propinquity or distance." — Michael Ondaatje

from The English Patient

I find that painting is sometimes akin to dream, magic and a landscape not of my own making.

"Work that is just about the technical or conceptual, personal or political, is fine; it meets the world with what’s in fashion. But there’s something else bordering on magic, that brings an artwork home, makes it land and resonate. You can’t really teach that so much as conjure it."

                               — 

Kara Walker

This is my future.

“I will spend the rest of my life assembling my own mind and my own soul. I will take care of my body carefully, not that it may any more please a man, but because it houses me and therefore I am dependent upon it.”

                        — Pearl S. Buck

I nurture the love I have for others now, for it's precious and rarer than painite.

“Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin

Seven Miles of Steel Thistles: DANSE MACABRE, a ghost story

Seven Miles of Steel Thistles: DANSE MACABRE, a ghost story: “I’m bored,” Philip whined. “Can't we go now?”             “Hush!” said Mum. He hadn’t been that loud. It was just that in this cold...

Exploring and writing truth with fantastical elements is how I work in both my art and writing.

 

Painting by Florence Susan Harrison.

"Fantasy is not antirational, but pararational; not realistic but surrealistic, a heightening of reality. In Freud's terminology, it employs primary not secondary process thinking. It employs archetypes which, as Jung warned us, are dangerous things. Fantasy is nearer to poetry, to mysticism, and to insanity than naturalistic fiction is. It is a wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe.” 

                       —   Ursula K Le Guin

This beautiful image and quote are from Terri Windling's gorgeous web page on the Symbol, Allegory, and Dream: The Art of Florence Susan Harrison, a thoughtful essay that also is a defense of writing the fantastical in good fiction.  Is this painting not gorgeous and all about surrender and passion and love. The link: https://www.terriwindling.com/blog/2014/03/symbol-allegory-and-dream.html

Windling, whom I have followed her entire career, wrote this piece back in 2014, and when I saw it, I really latched onto the idea that I could write a story about evolution and science in the form of a fairy tale. I had already written a draft or two of my novel previously. But I was never happy with it, and it wasn't because it was a rough draft or idea. It was its form and structure, it's arrangement of characterizations. I was reading Angela Carter at the same time, and I came across a story called The Erl-king, about the same moment I saw Windling's post and something clicked in my brain. I really could write a story about evolution as a fairy and folk tale. I would be able to do this with symbols and metaphors and even with a touch of allegory as Nathaniel Hawthorne used. It would be pure Romanticism, a sort of coming of age story and the narrator would be this rather ordinary human being who is faced with extraordinary circumstances, and it would be akin to my established patterns in my painting and other work, such as poems, etc. I would be exploring my thoughts on evolution and my absolute love of science and ideas and truth in a surreal fashion. But how? Laughing.

The devil is always in the details.

And as it goes in all art, I made mistakes, some that I could fix and some I could not fix with this project. At times, the work was impossible. I was limited. So limited.

I had to put this project away (many times), though I never lost sight of it. But it was not the first novel I had written and it was not even my "dream project." I have saved that for Second Book Syndrome, because I know exactly how that happens to writers. I now call my current work, The Ambitious Fairy Project. (It's hopeful because I have a #2 planned.) In the beginning, it was too damn ambitious and I did not even have the skill set needed to do it justice. And as the years passed, I began to believe I would never write and finish it. And there would be no second book because the first had never been completed. This is an awful reality for any creative. And I write this very sincerely. And even now, I have fears that I won't finish. I will never write another novel. I hold those feelings today as I write this post. But I am on the path. I am committed.  I even took a Cognitive Behavior Therapy program to help me get to this place where I could type the words,  I. HOLD. A. BELLIGERENT. COMMITMENT. TO. THE. WORK. And I have had to come at this project very differently than I worked previously though I had to keep my keen eye for objectivity, something that has been both a blessing and curse. I had to make order out of chaos, not only in my art but in my life.  Covid and illness plagued me. Yes, plagued me. The question of Prozac loomed large. Understanding the critical mind pressed me to the floor on occasion. And none of these things have changed. 

But I have changed. In bits and pieces. Fragile changes.

As the Le Guin quote alludes to, when we really work hard, we have to be vulnerable at the same time. We enter a dangerous territory where there is no safety and we have to find our way through more chaos and somehow organize it as we go. We cannot create order in the old, negative ways. We kind of have to surrender to it. As someone who works with intention and intellect, this has been very difficult to achieve. I am not someone who likes to be so intuitive in the drafting. I want more control. I want to understand it all. See the big picture. 

Yes, I can see the big picture. Laughing. But it's how I understand and deal with my critical mind THAT is completely different. How I am willing to let process overwhelm me and surrender.

It's funny and odd, but I kind of like surrendering right now. It's very passionate. How I fall.....

Smiling.

Heartsease would be a lovely name for a poem, a song, or a novel and it's also a lovely name for this painting.

John Brett
Heartsease 1862
Watercolor and bodycolor on card
'Heartsease' or pansies and fern-shoots; close-up study of yellow, blue and black pansies, delphinia, moss and fern-shoots. In the language of flowers pansies are associated with thought and the fragile beauty of young women. Brett was a British artist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement, mainly notable for his highly detailed landscapes.
— British Museum

Van Gogh is one of my favorite painters. Always.

Oleander by Vincent Van Gogh.

Is this what faith is?

“If the Sun and Moon should ever doubt, they'd immediately go 

 out.”

                   ― William Blake

I am reflecting on my mother, Pauline Church.

This is my mother, Pauline Church, on the right, and her older sister, Virginia, on the left. There is something absolutely breathtaking looking at this photo of them sitting there with the little umbrellas, wearing dresses trimmed at the bodice and sleeves, and wearing socks and shoes. I've had to reflect on my mother this last month, our relationship, and just the general overall dynamics between a mother and her child. We were incredibly close all her life, yet often at odds, I suppose because we were both very independent and not afraid to say exactly what we thought. Today I had to face the reality of how much we were alike but how different our lives were when compared. She dwelt with a lot of indifference in her younger life. She idolized a father who died young and doted on a withdrawn mother who never got over being widowed too young. There were 5 other siblings, all younger. Life was work. Her world was limited and censored and lacked the culture she craved. So she never censored me a day. I was reading by age four. We had books and lived in the library. She read all the time. She was an incredible reader and her memory was unbelievable. She could sew, keep house, and was a great cook. She loved gardening. And traveled all the time. Queen of the Day Trips. But her life was hard. Very hard. And she could not spare me certain traumas. And as a mother she wanted to, though I never quite understood those particulars until now. Both these girls loved their children. Loved their family. All their lives. I think now, I was extremely lucky in the mother I had, and Aunt Virginia was one of the best aunts. All the gifts I possess as a person are due to my mother and father, but they were shaped by my mother and the things she wanted for me, a Catholic education, a childhood uncensored, culture, art, books, conversation, ideas, ideas, ideas. Every day trip was an adventure. I had asthma, she put in the tub and made me breathe like one would be swimming. I learned to swim in my grandmother's bathtub. I had depth perception problems. She told me I could see everything as well as anyone else. I did. She said I was smart, I believed her and I was. Of course, I learned that the world was chaos from her, too. I miss her. If she had lived, she would be a 102 this month. I can't even process that yet. In CBT, I came to the realization that I have no triggers, and try as I might I could not write a single one down in the last month. And believe me, I've had enough trauma to fill a notebook. I think I owe that to my mother, too. Laughing. No matter what happened to her, and a lot happened to her, she just went on until the day her body stopped and even that was in resistance. What a woman! Both of them. (I look like my mother and I have turned out to be as strong as her, too. Who knew?)

Witches and trees fascinate me.

Edward Gurden Dalziel

Description

Forest scene during the night, with two old witches sitting under one of the leafless trees at centre, a young witch standing at left, holding up a torch, and a horseman with flowing cape approaching in background at right; four monkeys in foreground, two pelicans and flying parrot behind; an owl and another bird flying above the witches; proof illustration for the magazine 'Judy', Vol 22 p 187, 13 February 1878.
Wood-engraving on thin paper, touched with white body color

Witches and Trees. There has always been a relationship between witches and trees. And so this was one of the first images that I put in my notebook for my WIP. Because I wanted to think about witches and trees for a long time. I wanted those thoughts to marinate so to speak. And I have collected quite a few images of witches and trees. Of lovers and trees, too. Those from mythology. Trees, normally, are deeply rooted. That alone, made me very interested in the concept of people and trees. How we like trees. I know I do. And I love trees with lots of roots that run along the surface of the ground. I distinctly remember such trees from my early childhood. I would walk the roots round and round and round. I also drew lots of trees when I was very young, the same way children will draw little square houses and then post stick people out front of it as their family or themselves. I drew more trees than houses and sometimes the roots took over the entire page. These drawings bothered my mother at times. But they turned out to be harmless. I drew them like I would later draw heavy vines wrapping themselves around one another. I was very attached to the movement of the lines on the paper. But I am deeply rooted. It's the one thing I have known for a long time, even when I suppressed it. I am rooted to a place.

It's October 1.

Two things.

It's time to decorate for autumn outside.

And I am drafting again until December 1st.

Today is Truman Capote's Birthday.

"Sometimes when I think how good my book can be, I can hardly breathe." — Truman Capote

(I adore Capote. Several reasons. One, his first story about his childhood in the South is one of my favorite books. I often reread it. It's so real. His voice is so authentic. And I know this because I know people like he knew. And I had a childhood in the South. Also he and I both taught ourselves to read long before first grade and we kept dictionaries and marked words and wrote books when we were little. He always knew he wanted to be a writer. I never even thought of that though I was writing all the time. I wanted to be an Anthropologist, a Biologist. I wanted to understand human beings. We both suffered from disadvantages, but had visions of what could be. Today is his birthday. I always remember it. He died way too young. His disadvantages killed him. My disadvantages killed my career. Love never moved him forward. Love sustained me. Oh, the wishes he had. I have burned all my wishes, too.

The Goblin Market by Hilda Heckle

 

Some days I am sad and I appear without feeling.

“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.”
     

                — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Waking by Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.”

                      ― Theodore Roethke

Labels do not matter. Feelings are not always real. But self-awareness is.

 

“I am a complicated person with a simple life and I am the reason for everything that ever happened to me.”

― Charlotte Eriksson

(photo by Karen Elson)

Self-regulation has been the most difficult part for me since Covid. Doing better.

"An artist’s work is almost entirely inquiry based and self-regulated. It is a fragile process of teaching oneself to work alone, and focusing on how to hone your quirky creative obsessions so that they eventually become so oddly specific that they can only be your own."

— Teresita Fernández