Art + Word

The Coffee Project - December 16, 2010.

December 16, 2010.

Good news and bad news: The King Lear ordeal appears to be at an end; old age is not for pansies.

Words From the Past

I was just looking through my writing logs from the last few years and came across a couple entries that in retrospect, really captured each specific year. Both are entries I wrote in December:

12/13/05
You'll never find yourself until you face the truth. Pearl S. Bailey
Here I stand. I can do nothing else. Luther said this in defense of rejecting the church just as I repeat his words to the shadows of my ancestors. Truth can be illusive when one chooses not to look, and only glance sideways at the truth from the corner of your eye.

Here I stand. I can do nothing else.
I repeat Luther's words
to the shadows.
Heritage is a landscape
littered with landmines,
buried deep in the soil,
until the fatal step,
the final explosion.

12/6/06
Russian film as inspiration

bodies like birds,
defying folds in space and time,
legs like wings,
men are birds

The Coffee Project - December 14, 2010.

December 14, 2010.

Our conversations made a wide excursion back to the South Pacific, 1946, round to the present, and then back to a few decades in between.

The look on his face illustrates his mischievious sense of humor perfectly.

What I Made This Weekend - Fused Glass Pendants

First attempt at fusing glass.

I took a glass fusing class this weekend and spent an hour or so making these very rudimentary, (um, simplistic) glass pendants. I can see the potential with this process,especially using frit (crushed glass) like paint. I'll have to spend some time with this medium.

To see Pablo Cykman, master craftsman's work, check out his beautiful glass work at his website, Arte em Vidro.

This is one of my favorite pieces from his collection. The subtle color of this bowl, and all the pieces featured on his blog, is a reflection of the painstaking process of painting layer upon layer of color on the glass.

This is another favorite:

All I Want for Christmas...

...is books(not that I need any more books), starting with the Secret Teachings of All Ages: An Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Qabbalistic and Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy by Manly P. Hall.

This sounds fascinating as well, Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge by Jeremy Narby.

And also, The Lost Language of Symbolism: v.1: The Origins of Symbols, Mythologies and Folklore Vol I by Harold Bayley.

And finally, The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology v. 1 by Joseph Campbell. Actually, I'd like the entire Joseph Campbell library.

I'm in an esoteric frame of mind today, and with the off and on winter chill, hours before the fire reading about the origin of human belief systems sounds like the perfect way to spend the holidays.

As for literary reads, I plan to spend the year rereading Toni Morrison and E.L. Docotorow's collections as a kind of master class to get back on track with my writng

Willow Pine Lane - Snowless December

Willow Pine Lane - December 12, 2010

It's raining in December. All the snow from a few weeks ago has disappeared. Instead of a white Christmas, unless we get a big storm, it looks like it will be fall-colored.