Amid a place of stone,
Be secret and exult,
Because of all things known
That is most difficult
-w.b.yeats
The lamb that ate itself to death...
Years ago l spent a winter on a cattle farm in Rolla, bc. I lived in a cabin and
worked on a painting. The farmer and his wife were so gracious and so lovely.
I would help bring in calves when they were born. Frozen white
ground and wind that would rush through you tearing at your flesh as it left.
I remember having to pull a calf out of it's mother. I pulled so hard,
the farmer and l pulled and pulled, l thought l would turn the cow inside out.,
I helped skin a dead calf, used a utility knife. We wrapped the hide around
another motherless calf in hopes the cow would smell her's and let it feed.
I drank beer in the rolla pub and listened to the farmer's sons sing,
sing, their music was like passion - ferocious.
Huge round bales of hay stretched out on the farm, stacked two high.
One day l noticed a lamb eating at the bales, all alone, biting, chewing,
tearing, all day she ate. The next morning l found her, dead. She had eaten
way too much in one spot, in one sitting, and the top bale had fallen on her.
There was beauty on the farm.
You don't die when you live on a farm
you just become part of the earth's mystery and secrets.
when the road's washed out
they pass the bottle around
and wait in the arms
of the cold cold ground
cold cold ground
tom waits
I"ve been ready to ka boom for a week
Put on your stockings and your powder and blush
Keep it all on the hush, hush, hush
-tomwaits
I have a love/hate relationship with "The old school house art gallery.
...but if your looking for cheap art, it's the place to be feb 1st to the 6th.
They are having a become a art collector deal, only 250. for any of the work.
I am giving them this piece above "the dragonslayers return"
So take a trip to Qualicum, buy some cheap art,
it's really not a bad way to spend money.
"This beauty is within us at the bottom of memory.
It is the beauty of a flight which revives us,
which puts the dynamism of one of life's beauties within us.
In our childhood, reverie gave us freedom.
It is striking that the most favorable field for receiving
the consciousness of freedom is none other than reverie...
it is in reverie that we are free beings.
A potential childhood is within us."
-Gaston Bachelard
...like a carrot still in the ground over winter, check fucoid
Memory open; memory close;
memory taught me to be a man.
It remembers everything.
It helps the little birds to sing.
It finds the honey for the bee.
It opens and closes,
opens and closes.
-harold monro
Lyle and l go way back, back to the beatles, back to styx and queen, back to
nazereth. We met on pym street, guess we were 15 or 16. The first thing he showed
me were the row of green mail boxes at the end of the street. We practiced picking
locks with bobby pins but no need to worry, we weren't really any good at it.
Cars were important, we bombed around in the bush. I had a 56 ford, my brother
had a 54 dodge and Lyle, well Lyle just navigated. But later,
Lyle got a 64 dodge polara, primer gray with bits of real red. He rebuilt the engine
but could never get it going after that. We even tried towing it down the bypass.
Tied to my mustang with a thick rope Lyle told me l needed to get up to 70 or 80 mph
because the polara was an automatic.
We had a race once - Vancouver to Princeton. Me in my fiat (cereal box) and
Lyle in his chrysler (tank). Ya okay Lyle technically won, but it was so close.
It felt like the "Cannonball Run" and l really wanted to be like Dean Martin.
We both lived in Princeton that summer. I worked in the mill and Lyle wanted
to work in the mill, he just ended up getting kicked out of Princeton by the RCMP.
We both talked of joining the army that summer, even filled out the papers.
Lyle moved to Edmonton, "lots of work out there", he said, "come on".
So l loaded the camero and moved to Edmonton, it was winter.
We lived outside of Edmonton, stayed with his Argentina friend Rod.
Rod was kindof funny. Lyle told me that he could only make out if he was drunk,
real drunk. Years later Rod disappeared, they found his wallet and truck in the
bush, searched for months but never did find him.
Lyle moved back to the island after a couple of months and l stayed.
I moved into a little basement suite downtown Edmonton and got a job with
a security company. I had to wear a uniform, it was pale and worn
like they had found it in someone's attic. and it came with this stupid hat
that felt like you were wearing a table on your head. I drove around at night,
the deep dear night, with a mopey german shepherd and the only good memory l have
is the memory of listening to Bruce Springsteen on the radio.
...singing "santa claus is coming to town".
Caress the Sleep of Mortals
Bound to the Mast of Longing
Friend, tie me to the ship's mast
To ride to the rim of life.
Wounded at the ear's edge
Branded in burnt blood.
Friend, do not let me leap
From love's fierce sensual fire.
On dark horses of rising tide.
Brave breakers in beauty's risks.
Friend, if I am empty, embered.
Fill me with your wild cleansing.
Let your siren song of exile
Heal these stripes of wounded will.
-ron atkinson
There are really three gifts, simultaneous in their effect:
blind hope, fire, and craft (techne').They open up wonders-
and terrors-to human creatures, the wonders and terrors
of being fully cognizant and sensitive creatures of earth.
-eileen gregory (summoning the familiar)
I like the idea of knights, of cowboys, l like stories from
the great depression, l like the history of the gold rush.
Rob has lived in the gully on and off since he was seven, he use to run away
from home and hide there, sleeping under the tree branches.
He knows how to keep dry...
They change their camp every now and then, sometimes because of the city,
sometimes because of the cops, sometimes for a change of scenery.
Rob, Cindy, and Bobby, this was the core - everynow and then
someone else joins, another body curled up on the ground, the
disheveled head of hair sticking out like a scarecrow.
Rob's a good person, like's my dog, tells me stories that l haven't heard before.
I am welcomed when l visit their camp. On cold mornings and when there is
a smoldering fire we huddle around it, feels like a Louis L'Amour novel.
A sense of belonging, a sense of longing.
We need communities based on this...
and the road was like a ribbon and the moon was like a bone
he didn't seem to be like any guy she'd ever known
-tw
What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice,
And everything nice,
That's what little girls are made of.
What are little boys made of?
Snips and snails,
And puppy dog tails,
That's what little boys are made of.
If I was a puppy dog in the early dawn
I'd make it to your house and sleep on your lawn
but I ain'ty no puppydog, you know my name
And the wind blows fortune, the wind blows pain
-tw
l found the perfect mummified rat...dried skin, full skeleton, even had it's tail.
It is really the tail that is the rat's downfall, otherwise we'd be petting them.
Well Cedar ate him, l had washed the rat and left it out in the sun to dry.
Reminds me of the time l found the perfect bat skeleton, l buried it in
a secret place, so secret l didn't even know where...
Running through the graveyard
we laughed my friends and I
we swore we'd be together
until the day we died
until the day we died
-tw.
...rob cindy bobby, more later...
The stars are close and dear and l have joined
the brotherhood of the worlds.
And everythings holy -everything, even me.
-john steinbeck (grapes of wrath)
Huey died two weeks ago...
I've written about huey before - here...
My friend mike was at huey's bedside when he died,
he listened to him breath and not breath
he saw his breaths grow short and disappear,
he saw his pulse slow and stop.
Mike was there when he died
and he gave huey love to take with him.
There is beauty in this...
In uncertainty l am certain that underneath their topmost layers
of fraility men want to be good and want to be loved.
Indeed most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love,
When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents
and influence and genuis, if he dies unloved his life
must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror.
It seems to me that if you or l must choose between two courses
of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try to
live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.
-john steinbeck (east of eden)
I travel your length, like a river,
I travel your body, like a forest,
like a mountain path that ends at a cliff
I travel along the edge of your thoughts,
and my shadow falls from your white forehead,
my shadow shatters, and I gather the pieces
and go with no body, groping my way
-octavio paz
The spiritual body exists wherever passion is dreamed of
as an ideal instead of being feared like a malignant fever;
wherever its fatal character is welcomed, invoked or
imagined as a magnificent and desirable disaster instead
of simply a disaster. It lives in the lives of people who
think that love is their fate...that it is stronger and more
real than happiness, society, or morality.
-denis de rougemont
and lay down here beside me
let me hold you in the dirt
and you'll tremble as the flames
tear the throat out of the night
-tomwaits
I bought a cell phone a while back, came with a cheap built in camera
...not even 1 mp, 0.02 l think, but it's fast and dirty...l like it.
a hundred or so years ago when l studied photography (ACA)
we had to buy a 4x5 format camera. A big box with an expensive lens.
I liked that camera too... l would take it downtown calgary on sunday
mornings, set it up and when someone passed by l would ask if l
could take their picture.
...then a few years out of college l started using a 2 and a quarter format,
a mamiya c330. That was a beautiful camera, a workhorse, big bulky but it
felt like you meant it.
After the large format cameras l realized what l needed. Low light
situations, non intimidating and quiet cameras.
I only needed one lens, but it had to be fast, f1.4. Sometimes a rangefinder,
and always canon. Kinda like ford and chev. I was influenced by what
my daddy drove.
I have trouble with digital but l had to make the effort.
A few months ago l bought a 12mp canon g9. A nice little
camera maybe a little light - l've been tempted to glue a piece of
wood on it for the weight. I understand the appeal of digital,
theres a freedom, "care but don't care"
You can snap a hundred images, without thinking and
sometimes that is good.
but...there's a craft to film. The feel of it, the feel and excitement
of pulling a wet print out of the tray.
I don't know...
One way or another, we all have to find what best fosters
the flowering of our humanity in this contemporary life,
and dedicate ourselves to that.
- Joseph Campbell
...my next painting.
All suddenly the wind comes soft,
And Spring is here again;
And the hawthorn quickens with buds of green
And my heart with buds of pain.
My heart all Winter lay so numb,
The earth so dead and frore,
That I never thought the Spring would come,
Or my heart wake any more.
But Winter’s broken and earth has woken
And the small birds cry again.
And the hawthorn hedge puts forth its buds,
And my heart puts forth its pain.
-rupert brooke (spring sorrow)
I walk the gully again. The winter months showed signs of settlers.
A camp by the river, ashes of a long night's fire and the start of a stone wall.
A plastic water pistol to ward off predators, in the dark we all look
menacing. There was a grocery cart as well, filled with cardboard boxes.
On the side written in black felt pen, "pictures from living room"
I've seen him in the early dawn, a huddled shape under a sleeping bag,
like a corpse waiting for an identity. When l go in the afternoon, he is gone,
sometimes his sleeping bag is stashed in the bushes along with empty bottles
of mouthwash. He has made a nest now, out of dried bramble, it looks comforting,
and warm and like it would be okay to go back there at night.
"For each person lives in layers of memory and desire
finding an outer form for an inner world space.
Querencia: the unique personality of our very own place.
Querencia: small subtle ways to make ourselves at home.
Querencia: the right of sanctuary to be one's self in.
Each must create by humble pride our den, nest, haven.
Rites of sanctuary find us freedom to be who we are.
-r.atkinson
...those words were written by my friend ron atkinson.
Ron is a brilliant and beautiful man.
...he knows love.
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