Transitions, Dreams, or Artistry

My dreams last night were beautiful, though I remember them so poorly. There was a beautiful forest of oceanic greens and blues, waving in slender, gentle hues and towering towards the heavens. I remember there were people, great and illustrious people, illuminated from within like angels, shedding auras of gold and drinking from crystal clear waters, singing in songs that moved the waters and the wind in an organic dance.

You always wake up, of course, without knowing where the people are going into the woods and for what, or whom, they sing. But I knew they were singing for me, and it was a procession of sorts, not unlike a wedding or funeral, except with a natural festivity - a religious festival.

Today, my drawing assignment was an apple, with light shadow effects. I can tell you that after less than a week's worth of practice, I'm still quite miserable at drawing, but I can already see a little difference in my outlook on things. Really, this is a practice in visual comprehension more than mechanical aptitude. Normally, I see a door and think: "functional; means of passing from indoors into nature or vice versa; opens in or opens out" and so on. 

Already, I've noticed a fractional improvement towards, "door: crimson red with small, indentations like a subliminal window underneath a low-sloped triangular threshold. Immediately over the door is a thin, rectangular window that allows little light through due to the overhanging threshold; brass, rotund knob, and no lock; door is constructed of a light, polished wood though paint is peeling; swivels outward onto a small block patio of cement surrounded by rhododendrons, with ivy crawlers sneaking up the walls on either side of the door" and so on. But mostly, shapes and shadows, moods and tones. What can I reproduce in simple pen or pencil sketches using my current knowledge of such things?

Even though this will be a long process, I'm excited for where the journey will lead me, and already I'm enjoying my little sketchbook and flipping through the pages, noting the small improvements and mistakes as I've learned tiny new tricks.

Virgo Rosas

A small hill before the larger climb

beneath the clear-blue sky, punctuated

by a low line of clouds
crowding in purple-white against the horizon

like the shadows of mountains, erupting

in the setting of the sun -

a purple, thorny coronet
around the heavens.

I summit the wide, eagle peak

spreading its craggy, ridged wings,

bald-capped, save a fairy ring of trees - 

it pauses before flight, locked in ice

and an angel in a tee and casual jeans

prays, kneeling, desperate for some way.

daisies braided in her hair, and roses, but

she's crazed and

a little fae from the nightmare of her days

she begs for love, and faith, and light

to guide her on the path that fades.

the sun descends and the owls, too,

ask unanswered questions, who

am I, passes through my mind, 

as the beautiful girl and the flowers

in her hair, become but ghosts in the mists -

who am I, Antheia, to love thee

Creation

There are writers and philosophers who say that nothing new is ever created, nothing new has been made since the beginning. And they are right, in a fashion, and wrong. But me? I believe nothing new is ever not created, and that creation happens constantly. If someone asked me to read Alice in Wonderland and write it from memory a  year later, making it creative as possible, the end result might possess a bit of the plot and setting of the same story, but the flavor would differ.
I am not Lewis Carroll, and, try as I might, my writing (save what I may have memorized) will never contain the dreamy, chaotic, mythical, fae, fanciful swirl that his writing so easily assumes in a way that states, clearly, "I am Lewis Carroll". My writing will never do that because I am not, in fact, him.
My creation may not actually construct any new matter, or invent any motifs that have never before been introduced, but that does not mean its arabesque of imagery, flavor, and artistic aroma are not, in a fashion, unique. There is an old joke regarding creation and God.
A man says to God: man has ascended, and can create just as God can. See all of our cities and how we've molded metal to our will, and how we've set the world beneath our feet and at our fingertips?
The man and God proceed to set up a contest of creation, where they will each try and grow crops and bring a plant to fruition. God starts, and grows an apple tree instantly, and takes an apple, sitting back to watch the man. The man smiles and stoops to the earth with a seed in hand, and starts digging a hole, until God leans forward and says, "no, no, no, no. You have to use your own dirt."
In this fashion, the philosophers and artists are correct, but I think that creation itself is a major portion of imago dei. What do we know about God in Genesis 1, when we are created in his image, save that God loves what is good, and creates? So writers, artists of every design, may not create new matter, new dirt and plants, but we can still plant and harvest and create, utilizing those tools we have been given. One of my favorite Neil Gaiman talks was his "Make Good Art" speech, in which he tells an audience of students to tackle the world and create something that only they can create, not because they are better than everyone else, but because each person has that potential.
Gaiman also said: "There are better writers than me out there, there are smarter writers, there are people who can plot better - there are all those kinds of things, but there’s nobody who can write a Neil Gaiman story like I can."
I really appreciate that sentiment.



What, on that first morn, did Eve say?
fashioned from that which captures
the heart, those ivory tusks that shut
man's dreams away in careful prison
know they, then, the secret trail back in?

--1-

is it only words crawling
up and down my spine?
you may surrender only so many ribs
before there's nothing left to give

--2.5--

i'm a glass dove
here's my broken cage around a weeping heart
fragile as feathers of rain in this hurricane
whose violent winds, shush, shush -
//--1--
what words did she say?

Mimicry

In a sense, much of our learning derives from mimicry. The magic of intelligence is not its mimicry, but its adaptive potential. One of my greatest foibles is a lack of abstraction. I see, I discover, I imitate, and when tomorrow arrives, I've learnt in a linear fashion, instead of dispersing that knowledge into connections. It is like a puzzle game where you see doors with a green lock all game, and eventually find the green key. However, if you only recall the location of the last green door, the rest of those connections you made on your entire play-through are squandered. 

In programming, old languages (and even new languages, sometimes) require the developer to consider memory. In those old languages, you specifically asked for segments of memory, and constructed pointers to access those memory instances. When you finished using that memory space, you cleared the space from the program's usage. This way, you don't end up with memory leaks in your code that lead to all your computer's memory disappearing and your program swallowing all your computer's computation and memory.

More modern languages abstract away that clean-up in a process called "garbage collection". When you lack abstraction, you aren't connecting those pointers. Your mental program is wasting space with leaked memories, floating about in your head without having revived those dusty corridors of brain-space. This is my artistic failing. I'm swimming in a sea of lost pointers and memory leakages, and every new fact is isolated and devoid of translation. 

Ghosts of Faces

ghosts of faces are passing by
past they fly
could they be your friends, or mine?
or I theirs? - it's fine
for on streets or trails there's no goodbyes
for passersby living their own lives
rarely intersecting lines

and what of friends in different places
gone ten million paces
witness distant times
sharing but a moon and stars
of the sky's -
not ours
mountains here, desert there
forests and valleys
or dunes and seas

our times may meet but never, or twice
And your eyes say,
I love
I fly
my spirit's a dove
you'll never watch scrape the sky
nor the tears,
it cries,
of the endless phantoms you never meet
never treat for cups of tea
or campfire retreats
where rivers run besides
and their stories, well
you can never tell
they might have changed your life
might have loved, too
if only you, they, had chanced to say
who are you?

-----------
We celebrated my mother's birthday today. Surprisingly, the weather held. Here's to hoping it lasts a couple more days, so I might hike along the ridge or up a mountain on Wednesday. It does not look promising. We drove to the beach and went to a restaurant that mother dearly loves, and we all glanced out the windows over the ocean and into the water as the ducks paddled by, the jellyfish bounced their way through the waters, the seaweed drifted in its soggy swirls, and kayaks drifted by in the amiable waters. The sun gleamed off the waters and the windows of passing boats, fishing, drifting or sailing in the brine with sea breeze gently pushing at the waters.
Matthew is going to Korea, tomorrow, which is my last outside-the-house friend in Washington that I'm aware of (currently in the area discounting his family and my family - sorry if I forgot you). It will be quiet, perhaps, though I've long needed a little quiet. And how quiet is it really when the word games get crazy? When the card games with the family get joyful? Not. So. Silent.
Or when the coyotes howl with the distant neighbors huskies or when the wind races through the valley, stirring all the trees into frenzied whispers and wooden groans. It is a good sort of silence, and loudness. A restful set. Maybe I'll finish a few more books this week, too. Time for some creativity, time for some art, time for story magic and myth.

Patterned Thoughts - Prying up Scattered Pieces of Poetry

Something in the lacklustre light, the chai tea seeping into my marrow, the morning lethargy of this coffee shop, transforms this dawning day into a poetry and "thoughts organization" day.

I was going to transform this one into a story, because it has a melancholy aspect that I suspect might make a tragic tale with, perhaps, a heartwarming (or devastating) end.

Rain pitter-pats down the roof
A faucet taps an equal tune
In a room where a carefully constrained fire coughed with the old man
Sitting in the rocking seat
Each dying of consumption.
Trophies mounted along log walls
Glazed eyes glaring down
Matching his now vacant stare
Remembering times both wild and strong, once unlike that old man
Staring there, past nowhere
Just sitting, listening now
Watching the dying fire.

---------------------------------------------------------

A floaty composition. Not so much a story as a dreamy compilation of words.



A dirge of footprints, en passant
Sorrow-filled, awash with want
Lamenting distant days and daydreams
Tie your hands tight to balloon strings
And sail away

Through stormy days and sunbreaks
Past sleet and rain and jet planes
Still racing on
Passing people holding hands, sharing smiles
Then waving, waving

Down below the city’s lights
Are fireflies
Mimicking the heavens
Dreaming stars in silken radiance
Floating on

Bursting bubbles, shifting sands
Falling falling
To fields of goldenrod and thistledown
Drifting round
Taxi
Beneath cherry blossoms and midnight moon
A dance, a song, a distant tune

(unedited, but finished)

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Yet the leaves drift with the wind

Iron bleeds in the soil here
A distant fear's great debts
Bought and paid in a crimson age
A soldier's high priced gift

Are they but men, our heroes dear?
Serving freedom you blithely wear
Iron seeps in the soil here
Yet the leaves drift with the wind

(unfinished - two incomplete stanzas)

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These last few days, my muse has been overactive in artistic contemplation. However, despite the absurd influx of ideas, everything has been stymied in a frenzy of life activity, disorganization, an over-enthused escalation of summer plans that has asphyxiated my attention to detail. Here are some things I wanted to write about: legos and the creative process; competition and its evolution; the great romance of the seas; Esther; and the Night Circus; Gambits and stories (Notebook, Ocean's Eleven, Fantastic Mr. Fox). I think there were a few more, even, but ideas often fall by the wayside. I'm certain I've captured at least a few in a journaling capacity.

Muse and Music

Etymology is a secret passion of mine. Super secret. I admit that I never liked taking Latin in my preppy middle school life, and only later realized how efficacious Latin can be in "guessing" meanings or deriving understanding with knowledge of roots. One of the recent words I glanced into was music. The obvious root word here is the same as that for muse: "Mousa", or even "Musa" (Greek and Latin respectively).
The muses were the 9 Goddesses of literature, art, and sciences.
The suffix -ic generally just means "of" or "about" or even "pertaining to". If you use the word "acerbic"(root word acerbus: bitter, sour), adding the suffix means "pertaining to sour" or "of sour taste", if you will. It might be easier to see with alcoholic: pertaining to alcohol. Music, therefore, is pertaining to the muses. The most well known example of muse was perhaps in Homer's Odyssey.
"Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero who traveled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy."
Music, then, pertains to those domains of the goddesses aforementioned: literature, art, sciences. There was a belief, or a mythos, that literature, art, and the sciences stemmed from these nine goddesses. Homer was being inspired into his musical rendition of Odysseus' travels. I love music, but it is not where I'm inspired. I delight in violin compositions, classical orchestras, folk traditions and the many and varied forms music assumes in our diverse cultures. Every now and again, when no one is home and the sky's turned dark and speckled with stars, I retreat into my room and light some scented candles, unpack my guitar from its casket, and pluck at the strings until I imagine I'm singing with the heavens.
My artistry regarding music is limited, but I see it everywhere. I see it in the stars as I approach the valley: twinkling, celestial lights spanning the twilight sky; I see it in summer trees, spring rains, winter fireplaces and blankets while charcoal clouds sprinkle outside; and in the autumn colors. I think that's why I appreciate the Silmarillion, and its metaphorical beginnings.
But certain nights exist, certain times, when the original music seems... closer. When the harp strings of heaven and the fluting of earth assemble in ensemble, and walking outside you forget that your bones are tired from running around - a long week. When you forget, even, those trivial worries that plague our everyday, and live. I can imagine myself anywhere in the world, with these stars, staring up and seeing nothing besides. On the cliffs of Scotland, waves breaking against stone beneath; in the heights of South America, among the ruins of Machu Pichu as an anachronism stuck between the ancient and the now; in the steppe of Mongolia, endless grassy fields and hills; in the desert dunes, cooling sands on all sides.
I'm everywhere, I'm nowhere, I'm between sleeping and waking, and the Sabbath rest begins.