Glimmerings

There is a sense that things simply arrive or else have been there, waiting for me. There is a rhythm, each thing to its place. These elements of ephemera represent pauses; a place where I bent down for a closer look, an irrelevance that became relevant beneath the caress of my primate thumb. A place where the world stopped me, where stillness reclaimed me.

I want to be willing to allow it to remain a mystery, the reason for this absurd marionette, this playing-at-god: fragment- suspended between idea and material. How does this peace utter the particularity of a wound, the mission of this insignificant-essential Atom?

Unexpected Visitations

Practice is a frame into which I pour my mind. It is a method of alignment, a point of orientation. My practice sessions have a score: I mark the edges, define the area of inquiry, lay out aspirations. Yet an equal measure of unguarded territory is necessary. A door must be left ajar for unexpected visitations. In every session, I reserve time for improvisation. Improvisation is where seeds of the best work are dropped. When expectation is abandoned and agendas are replaced with listening, waiting and attention, this is when beauty that I could not have planned emerges. (From Voicings from Underground; The Slow World p 60)

The Middle Path

i walk the path between. to my left four lanes of traffic. traffic. traffic. sometimes it rushes. sometimes it is a black clot of oil. always it is impatient in its pursuit of destination. art is like a levee: on one side, this irritated flow of metal and mental, and the other:

the other side is ravens over cornstalks yellowing and an indigo sky full of storm.

at my feet is an exodus. an envoy from the mythic mind? there is satisfied beauty in the burnt umber wings with black bars, the domed head like the globe of a frog’s eye. they appear confused, made frantic perhaps by the mid-September heat or the crushed bodies of their allies nearby. many die on this humble bicycle road.

the envoy make their journey, adorned in colors that speak jungles and remind me that size is relative. they pull like a gauze veil, the empty, ominous, windy quietude of the wild lands behind them. they whispers, softly penetrating my racing mind.

Her Cities

internal history
is written on
her cities
her roads
her sewers
her tunnels
it is to be read
on graven bones
and a thousand
etcetera of
personal adornment
sepulchers
unveiling
the inner arcana