This Moment - October 26, 2001 8:11
Through clouds of hard water stains streaking the glass of my studio office, I see the island emerging. The mountains to the west are covered with a light scurf of snow and a suspended Chinese water-colored cloud is slowly diffusing into nothingness. My students will be here in a matter of seconds, so I must unlock the secret chambers of my heart. Since I last looked, heavy clouds have descended and are furrowing their brow, proclaiming the mood of the day. Here now are the voices, the expectant faces looking to me to reveal the contents of my head. Here now is the sun.
Poem Therapy at 11:40 P.M. October 22, 2010 - David Baker
Blue Dream - Tigran AkopyanTigran Akopyan is an Armenian painter who lives and works in the beautiful old city Prague,Czech. He exhibits his work regularly in Prague and other European countries. You can check out his work at http://www.tigranakopyan.blogspot.com.
The City of God
David Baker
Now we knelt beside
the ruined waters
as our first blood,
our bulb-before-bloom,
unfurled too early
in slender petals.
Now we were empty.
Now we walked for months
on softer shoes and
spoke, not quite with grief.
This morning four deer
come up to the yard
to stand, to be stunned,
at the woods' edge
on their hoof-tips. Their
ears twist like tuners,
but they stay for minutes,
minutes more, while
we are shadows behind
windows watching them
nip at the pine bark,
nibble some brown tips
of hydrangea. It's
been a mean, dry winter.
The last time I prayed—
prayed with any thought
of reply, any
hope of audience—
I sat in a church
and the city smell
of lilac, fumes from
the bus line, filled me.
The joys of the body
are not the sins
of the soul.
Who knows
how many have come
to be with us? We
knelt, not as in prayer,
beside the toilet
and watched the first one
leave us utterly—.
They were deer. Now they
are fog.
Now the wind
pulls back though the trees.
We know it will
be this way always
—whatever fades—
and the dreadful wake.
As I read this, I was filled with regret, for the ones that came and were rebuffed. Who knows how many came to be with us, but were turned back, for reasons that seemed so reasonable at the time. I think living is better understood in reverse, when the consequences for actions are crashing down and the choice, the solution is so obvious and solid. But solids quickly turn to liquid and become gas and disappear.
The Coffee Project: October 20 & 21, 2010
October 21, 2010. War and work stories. Same shirt.
October 20, 2010. Different shirt. Tales of woe, the Depression years with a sense of humor.
The Coffee Project: October 18, 2010
October 18, 2010. Talking with his hands, he's back in the 1945-46 South Pacific.
Where Have You Been, Where Are You Going?: National Geographic's Genographic Project
Check out National Geographic's Genographic Project's A Landmark Study of the Human Journey. If you want to see for yourself your ancestors journey to where ever you are now, purchase your kit and wait patiently for two weeks for the result.
My family is participating and I'm excited to see our long journey from Africa to North America. While you wait, read the blog to see what other participants have discovered.
As for my family, I'm going to guess the following, based on genealogy, family lore, dreams I have had in which I remember speaking languages, and the origins of my childhood imaginary friend; (as always, a mix of logic and intuition, the ridiculous and the sublime):
Ghana/Ancient Africa & Egypt - Imhotep III era (Senya - imaginary friend abducted from homeland and brought to Egypt to serve in Pharoah's court - death by suffocation in sealed pyramid - her story follows the Aida opera very closely)
Sparta/Rome (death by arrow firing squad)
Friesland - 10th century(pregnant queen & fetus killed so as not to have regent rights)
Senegal - 17th century (snake wrestling initiation rite by moonlight - machetes featured prominently)
Russia - the Rus/Vikings
England & Germany
France 17th Century
Native American - Eastern tribes
Spain
My family is participating and I'm excited to see our long journey from Africa to North America. While you wait, read the blog to see what other participants have discovered.
As for my family, I'm going to guess the following, based on genealogy, family lore, dreams I have had in which I remember speaking languages, and the origins of my childhood imaginary friend; (as always, a mix of logic and intuition, the ridiculous and the sublime):
Ghana/Ancient Africa & Egypt - Imhotep III era (Senya - imaginary friend abducted from homeland and brought to Egypt to serve in Pharoah's court - death by suffocation in sealed pyramid - her story follows the Aida opera very closely)
Sparta/Rome (death by arrow firing squad)
Friesland - 10th century(pregnant queen & fetus killed so as not to have regent rights)
Senegal - 17th century (snake wrestling initiation rite by moonlight - machetes featured prominently)
Russia - the Rus/Vikings
England & Germany
France 17th Century
Native American - Eastern tribes
Spain
The Coffee Project: October 12-17, 2010
October 17, 2010.
October 15, 2010.
October 14, 2010.
October 13, 2010.
October 12, 2010.
This Moment: October 15, 2010 7:40 P.M.
The last blue shadow has merged into pitch-colored blackness. Blue light and white noise from the laptop are the lone sensory details. On the opposite side of this country a man, if he lives through the night, will have beaten his genes. His heart will be the sole survivor in a long line of men whose hearts have given up,on, or before their fiftieth birthday. Strange, that of all of his line, he, would live. Perhaps it is for his two daughters. One that lives with him, and for the other that lives upstairs, who doesn't remember that today is this man's birthday. And who can blame a child for forgetting a father's birthday, a man who long ago, forgot his daughter. The skies are crowded with planes making thier way over my house to and from opposites sides of the country. They fly through the darkness, but they are not blind.
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