I stop and let myself lean
a moment against the blue
shoulder of the air.
~Alison Luterman, from Invisible Work
Notes: Photo: lello d’anna with Blue (Erchie, Campania, Italy). Poem: Thank you Beth @ Alive on All Channels
Lightly Child, Lightly
September 27, 2018 by 15 Comments
I remember how [the sparrow] felt
When I got my hand, and how it burst
that hand open
when I took it outside, a strength
that must have come out of hopelessness
and the sudden light
and the trees…
— Stephen Dunn, from “The Sudden Light and the Trees,” in Landscape at the End of the Century
Notes:
- Photo: Sparrow by © sergey_polyushko
- Prior “Lightly child, lightly” Posts? Connect here.
- Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”
Lightly Child, Lightly
September 6, 2018 by 19 Comments
A certain day became a presence to me;
there it was, confronting me – a sky, air, light:
a being. And before it started to descend
from the height of noon, it leaned over
and struck my shoulder as if with
the flat of a sword, granting me
honor and a task. The day’s blow
rang out, metallic – or it was I, a bell awakened,
and what I heard was my whole self
saying and singing what it knew: I can.
~Denise Levertov, “Variations on a Theme By Rilke” in “Denise Levertov: The Poetry of Engagement”
Notes:
- Photograph by Marta Bevacqua via see more
- Prior “Lightly child, lightly” Posts? Connect here.
- Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”
Lightly Child, Lightly
August 30, 2018 by 27 Comments
In recent months I have become intent on seizing happiness:
to this end I applied various shades of blue…
I am trying to invent a new way of moving under my dress…
yet the thigh keeps quiet under nylon…
draw nearer my dear: never fear: the world spins
nightly toward its brightness and we are on it.
~ Carolyn “C.D.” Wright, from “Crescent,” Tremble: Poems
Notes:
- Photograph via Newthom
- Prior “Lightly child, lightly” Posts? Connect here.
- Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”
Monday Morning Wake-Up Call
April 16, 2018 by 16 Comments
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.
~ Lisel Mueller, from “Monet Refuses the Operation” in Second Language
Notes: Photo: Blue Ridge Mountains by Richard Terpolilli. Poem: Poetry Foundation
Lightly child, lightly.
October 5, 2017 by 22 Comments
I’d go out into a great big field all alone or in the deep, deep woods and I’d look up into the sky—up—up—up—into that lovely blue sky that looks as if there was no end to its blueness.
And then I’d just feel a prayer.
~ L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
Notes:
- Photo: blue sky thinking by Mick. Quote: (via antigonick)
- Prior “Lightly child, lightly” Posts? Connect here.
- Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”
Flying Over I-40 N. Moments, Sparkling. Moments, Not.
July 21, 2017 by 40 Comments
2006. July. (I think.) Barcelona. I’m sitting in a conference room in the basement level of an aging hotel. You know the hotel – the one where all of the investment was poured into the lobby, and you don’t need to search to find disappointment, it finds you, at every turn. This Barcelona could have been anywhere – a Days Inn within a cab ride of O’Hare in Chicago, or a budget hotel in Newark, or a refurbished hotel in downtown Philadelphia serving small, short tenor business meetings. Yet, it wasn’t. The room was windowless, the walls were free of art. There was dim overhead lighting, the florescent tubes emitting a low sizzle. There was a whiff of fresh blue paint, cheap plastic surgery fooling no one. Beneath its blue skin, the bones of the room emit traces of hand rolled tobacco from 50 years ago. It’s an hour after the working lunch, Hour Six of a day long meeting, and stupor is settling in. There was no audio visual equipment. There were no extra notepads or pens. There was no coffee. No bottled water. In the center of the table, stood a one quart jug, fingerprints visible on its belly, and a slice of lemon, not dressed in its distinctive canary yellow, but a dull yellow mustard clinging to the wall of the jug as if it were licked and pressed like a postage stamp, desperately seeking escape. The jug sweats, the air is thick, the overhead aluminum ducts rattle with the firing and re-firing of the AC system that was built for a building half the size. Hard back chairs surround the table and line the walls, with the butt cheeks of thousands of prior occupants having grooved and flattened the frayed cushions. Butt to cushion to metal, do-over and over and over. I can see the blue palette. I can smell the decaying Gyprock. I can feel the heaviness of the air. Yet, I can’t extract a single shred of why I was there and what was accomplished, not on this day, not on Day 2 which ran ten hours. The Blue Room returns and returns and returns and returns. The question is: Why?
~ DK
Notes:
- Inspired by: Saabye Christensen: “You store everything inside yourself and then one day, wherever you are, whatever the time, it appears just like that, just like I could smell wet lilac now, lilac after the rain, even though we were well into autumn.”
- Image Credit: Marius Tamosauskas with Blue Room 1
- Related Posts: Commuting Series.
When you are alone and you look in a mirror you never put on a pleasing smile. Well, you don’t, do you?
June 24, 2017 by 17 Comments
David Hockney was way ahead of today’s ubiquitous selfies. In the 1980s—already famous for his painted landscapes of California pools and suburban houses—he threw himself into drawn, painted and photographed self-portraits…
At first the Hockney self-portraits showed vulnerability and self-consciousness, according to Dr. Brooks. But over the years, he adds, they showed intense self-examination. Mr. Hockney has depicted himself with his mouth wide open in surprise, with a scowl or with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth at an angle.
The results, as well as Mr. Hockney’s wider interest in photographic collage, are the main focus of “Happy Birthday, Mr. Hockney,” a celebration of his turning 80 at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, opening in two stages, June 27 and July 18. Most of the versions of Mr. Hockney on view, though, don’t make for a cheery celebration. “I usually only draw myself in down periods,” Mr. Hockney told London’s Telegraph newspaper in 2001. “I suppose that’s why I often draw myself looking grim. I just think, ‘Let’s have a look in the mirror.’ When you are alone and you look in a mirror you never put on a pleasing smile. Well, you don’t, do you?”
~ Alexandra Wolfe, from Self-Portraits and Photos for David Hockney Birthday (wsj.com, June 23, 2017)
Notes:
- Photograph top: David Hockney with ‘Blue Terrace Los Angeles March 8th 1982’.
- Drawing: David Hockney ‘Self Portrait, 20 March 2012 (1219), iPad drawing printed on paper, mounted on Dibond.
Morning Call
March 15, 2017 by 26 Comments
Today, if you’re confronting an issue for the ten thousandth time, or feeling that your life is going nowhere, or panicking over how little you’ve achieved, stop and breathe. You’re not falling behind on some linear race through time. You’re walking the labyrinth of life. Yes, you’re meant to move forward, but almost never in a straight line.
~ Martha Beck, from The Labyrinth of Life
Notes:
- Quote: Thank you Beth @ Alive on All Channels
- Art by Gottfried Helnwein in “I was a child” exhibition; Payton Blue 2, 2010, Oil & acrylic on canvas, (via mennyfox55)
