This Moment - October 31, 2010 7:39 A.M.

For over an hour there has been nothing but silence and the emerging light to keep me company. The anthracite sky is being slowly chipped away to reveal pockets of silver. I've spent this hour in the company of Proust, learning to retrace my step back to the place before. In the village of before, I am seven, and live in my oak tree reading and painting, pretending to be the captain of a great ship, clasping branches to navigate rough waters. Lights appear across the street in what I know is my neighbor's kitchen. Traffic is beginning, the number of cars shushering down and up the street predicting a busy Sunday. The trees have shrugged off the heavy cloak of night and are emerging persimmon and squash colored. Even surrounded with beauty, I return to before. In the city of before, I am eighteen, and live in the studio of color and light, holding a stick of charcoal like a compass. My dog is asleep at the foot of my bed, his nose tucked into his left paw. The sky is the color of old ash. Rust-tinged leaves clutter the lawn. In the metropolis of before, I am twenty-one, I am lost and live inside words that make the world real as they are spoken. The dog is awake and snarling, play-biting my hand, his tail a curl of joy, as if my hand were something other than my hand under the covers. A train pointed north rocks the house with its passing, and I think yes, this is how each of us are: trains gently rocking each other. Geese are flying over the roof on their mysterious road of air.

Where I'd Like To Be At This Moment - Cathedrale de Notre Dame, Paris, France,

Gargoyle Paris, France - Tracey Capone TCaponePhoto.etsy.com

Cathedral, translates to the house of the mother. Yes,I'd like to be inside the womb of Notre Dame today.

Poem Therapy at 11:30 A.M. October 28, 2010 - Peter Spagnuolo

Hatra Apollo


Interpol 22019-1.7: The Head of the Hatra Apollo
Peter Spagnuolo

Missing from the National Museum, Baghdad, April 2003

No light can gild the sun god’s cheek but strains
through burlap now, Phoibos the refugee,
his head a marble cabbage in a sack
jouncing east by pickup down a dirt track
across Seleucid wastes, Parthian plains,
once more fortune’s tourist, bobbing free.
Or not—just stashed behind a rubbish mound
where bare-boned goats might crop a scraggy meal,
scant miles from the museum’s shattered room.
Stripped of laurels, his oracles, his loom
of sacred strings, no Horai here spin round,
just pacing men who wait to close the deal.
A goatherd sings, slings a Kalashnikov:
the godhead mute since looters hacked it off.

Artists are precious. Art is precious. Remember this.

Artists, visual, literary, etc., are our most precious resource. The art they create is all we have of them. All we have to remind of us, of who we once were, who we think we are, who we can become.

Art is precious, especially art curated for the express purpose of being exhibited in museums, (and the tricky thing about this is that some of the art in these museums were appropriated from occupied countries, but in a few instances the art has been returned to its home country, but let's save that for another rant).

Art is precious, but it is not a commodity to be traded on the market, any market, whether Wall Street or the proverbial black market.

I'm not talking about art in private collections, or about the artists that create paintings, sculptures, photographs, etc. Visit any gallery, or art festival, or innumerable venue and you'll see a wide variety of artists plying thier wares. artists should be paid,and well, for their work, for their energy and vision, their contribution to humanity, because all we have of the past is the art and archetecture, the literature, the thoughts of great men and women.

I watched the looting of the Iraq Museum, watched as theives walked out of the museum carrying thier booty. In the chaos no one stopped them. I finally turned off the news and swallowed a lie that the stolen pieces, some the only evidence of our shared ancient history, would be recovered. Someday.

To those who steal and desecrate and secret art away, you deserve Shakespeare and Psalm 58's venom: "A plague on both your houses." "O God, break the teeth in their mouths; tear out the fangs of the young lions, O LORD."

If you're interested in seeing all the art lost during the pillaging of the Iraq Museum, check out this link. (fyi: this will take you to the google page, so click on the first subject item to view the powerpoint presentation).

I think the photo of the museum worker embodies despair.

Willow Tree Lane Field with Geese

October 24, 2010.

I took this picture midmorning after coffee with my father, uncle, and neighbor. The geese had flown in early morning and they stayed the majority of the day harvesting the newly plowed ground. If you enlarge the picture and squint, you can see the geese.

This field is one of the last open spaces in the bedroom town in which I live. One day the lane will be a paved road and the fields will be rows of track homes. As long as my father remains on earth, so will his land remain wheat, alfalfa, onion, and watermelon fields, with a garden of tomatoes, basil, tobacco, sunflowers, and home to fox, deer, racoon, quail, hawks, and frequented by a local falconer, beekeeper, bowhunter, and by residents walking their dogs.

The Coffee Project: October 24-27, 2010

October 27, 2010. Yet again post Shakespearean drama. Happy smiles all around.

October 26, 2010. Autumn roast coffee at Einsteins, and conversation ranging from inheritance to pets.

October 25, 2010. Life imitating art: post King Lear Act I scene i.

October 24, 2010. Post surgery sad sacks.

Poem Therapy at 10:21 A.M. October 26, 2010 - Rae Armantrout

Djinn
Rae Armantrout

Haunted, they say, believing
the soft, shifty
dunes are made up
of false promises.

Many believe
whatever happens
is the other half
of a conversation.

Many whisper
white lies
to the dead.

"The boys are doing really well."

Some think
nothing is so
until it has been witnessed.

They believe
the bits are iffy;

the forces that bind them,
absolute.

As Day of the Dead approaches, I've been thinking of those who have passed on, and wonder if it is possible that they are aware of us. I like to think that they are, even though I lie to the dead, my dead to be precise. I tell my own djinn, the one I sometimes feel watching me, I explain my reasons, give my excuses, and wait for absolution.

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.