Early June Watercolors {releasing butterflies}

 

 

Do not write love-poems. Avoid those forms which are too trite and commonplace: they are the hardest, for a great and mature power is needed to give of one’s own where good and often brilliant traditions throng upon one. Therefore betake yourself from the usual themes to those which your everyday life offers you. Paint your sadnesses and your desires, your passing thoughts and your belief in some kind of beauty

—paint all that with quiet and modest inward sincerity; and to express yourself use the things that surround you, the pictures of your dreams and the objects of your recollections. When your daily life seems barren, do not blame it; blame yourself rather and tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for the creative worker knows no barrenness and no poor indifferent place. And even if you were in a prison, whose walls prevented all the bustle of the world from reaching your senses, even then would you not still have your childhood, that precious, kingly wealth, that treasure-house of memories? Turn your attention towards it. Try to recall the forgotten sensations of that distant past; your personality will strengthen itself, your loneliness will extend itself and become a dusky dwelling and the noise of others will pass by it far away. And when from this turning inwards, from this retreat into your own world verses come into being, then you will not think of asking anyone, whether they are good verses. Nor will you try to get journals interested in these works, for you will see in them your own loved and natural possession, a part and an expression of your life. A work of art is good, when it is born of necessity.

Rainer Maria Rilke – Letters to a Young Poet

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Koa and Bone II (and on once being a Situationist)

(Follow the) Butterfly, Bone, Koa, String(s). Ink on trace paper. May 2010

Koa and Bone. Graphite and Watercolor. May 16, 2010

Some of you may remember my koa and bone set; here it is in ink and watercolor. The ink version is the one that surprised me the most: I noticed that by scanning the back of the drawing, the bracelet/string become more realistic, acquire thickness. The translucent properties of the trace paper and the shadows/distance/spaces created in the crevices lend this effect…something to keep in mind for the future.

We wander at night and are consumed by fire

I have been thinking and reading about Situationism:  there was once a time in which we were all Situationists.  I remember, as a teenager, roaming in the deserted streets of my neighborhood, on the ‘marina’ side of a small Calabria town. The whole neighborhood was a seasonal development and, in winter, my family (comprised of my mom, dad, and yours truly) was the only one living by the sea. Sometimes I would take off with my moped, the latest Stephen King tome and explore the abandoned villas, hide in construction sites, or walk over dried river beds– before exams, I would memorize historical dates while jumping from summer cabin to summer cabin, in the spring, when the grey beach and the deep sea were laying dormant, awaiting the summer sun, awaiting the brilliant cobalt colors and the golden heat…like they are probably doing now.

The Situationists would be proud of this roaming, untouched as it were by what they called ‘the consumer experience’.

Today I was an urban bedouin again, gathered in my scarves, on my pilgrimage (when you travel by bus it does feel like a pilgrimage, especially on Sundays) to the sea. Only grey waters reflecting grey skies today, but the sound was what I sought: this is my church and this is where I worship.

Entrance

Whoever you are: step out of doors tonight,

Out of the room that lets you feel secure.

Infinity is open to your sight.

Whoever you are.

With eyes that have forgotten how to see

From viewing things already too well-known,

Lift up into the dark a huge, black tree

And put it in the heavens: tall,alone.

And you have made the world and all you see.

It ripens like the words still in your mouth.

And when at last you comprehend its truth,

Then close your eyes and gently set it free.

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)

Translated by Dana Gioia

Poem via Bruce Matthes

Love me

I carry me on my fingertips

I carry on the galloping of my vision

I wrap myself with a swaddling of my skin

I embrace me longing for myself

I bless my flowing, gushing

I cradle me in my chest

I glove these budding hands with poetry

I clam revelation,

my engraving are on stone

my image carries water to thirst

and bait to fishermen’s nets

I spend the time of the tolling

of evening bells

sculpting.

I slept in my own shade

I wear my bedouin nature

to spite cities

I stroll within me

when I weary myself

I enter a garden

that does not entice myself against me

I love my impossible self,

the one whose feet

the earth does not know .

by Amal Moussa

Poem via Amina Alkandari

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