Tag: writing
Drawing Practice
Hoary Urizen
The Sea came to us–from Seamarks
A Tale of Two Houses–a secret history of Port Madison
The rains have let up. I scan Port Madison’s northeast shore through binoculars to see the Farnham house, built above the old mill-site, where much of Bainbridge Island’s forests were milled in the mid-19th century. The house looks the same as when Judge John Farnham leaned on his hoe under his prize apple trees.
He first signed on the General Park Hill at the age of 12 and spent 3 years shipping cotton between South Carolina and Liverpool before trading in contraband silk between Shanghai and Hong Kong. He rounded the Horn in the rush of ’49 and headed north to Port Madison when loggers, ship builders and land speculators were rapidly displacing the indigenous Suquamish people. He commanded side-wheel steamers, worked as shipwright and, in an odd –if not downright ironic–turn of fortune, served as keeper of the Seattle Pest House.
This was when the Old Man House still stood; where creation was annually sung into being in the Winter Dances. It was the lofty, cedar temenos of the Suquamish tribe that was demolished by Albion’s brass-plated cannon of imperious might in 1870.
This is was the home of Princess Angeline.
After reading Jerusalem, I’ve come to see Blake’s Gothic, sweeping poetry entwined with the shadowy firs of Port Madison. A rummy wastrel turned Urizenic guardian of self-righteous law, Farnham became the very image of man’s fallen spiritual state, laboring eternally in the Satanic mills, separated from his Sophianic emanation and closed to the Divine Vision.
And I hear fair Angeline as the banished Jerusalem, still weeping over the bay for her lost and tender children.
Farnham’s end was tragic. He had begun exhibiting signs of odd behavior and was forcibly dismissed from office. He held out against the deputy sheriffs in the Port Madison courthouse (then the County seat) with a shot-gun for 3 days before being led away quietly–a man forsaken by his adamant God of Reason.
Ballasted with river rock, he boarded the Seattle ferry, planning to jump into the deep soundings off Elliot Bay. But the emergency crew fished him out and he died shortly after.
I honor John Farnham, respect his adventuresome spirit and outrageous character; whose salty yarn and prize apples are the true golden relics of another age.
A walk through the Memory Stations-an artwork in progress
The best way to approach an art exhibit is to work on all the pieces at once. I’m prepping 7 canvases, working on the memory stations and doing the memory practice. Here is a video to give an idea of how it works.
The Imagine Award
Thanks to Sue Vincent for nominating me for The Imagine Award. Jenn Mulherin, who created this award, has a blog called My Fibrotastic Life, The award was made to “recognize bloggers who express their passion and dedication towards their blogs through their creativity.”
Sue’s blog certainly qualifies in this regard. I love her imaginative writing about the ancient, Celtic mystery schools, her evocation of the lovely British Isles as well as strength of her prose (though I wonder how much credit should go to her dog.) Sue is also an artist. My favorites are her watercolors and encaustic paintings.
As part of the deal in accepting this honor, I nominate 5 bloggers who I think qualify for the honor.
The poetry of Wuji Seshat Nibada is a celebration of ethereal beauty. And he seems to come out with another every day-that’s dedication. For me, his work recalls the simple elegance of Japanese poetry.
In art, there’s Citta di Cartone, or Cardboard Towns. His cityscapes are executed in a deft, graphic shorthand with a unerring eye for atmosphere and texture.
Whatever category James Fielden fits into (maybe none-he is unique,) I nominate him for his serenely beautiful meditations on light and love. As a bonus, the recordings of his radiant prose come through loud and clear through the aural channel.
The Runningfather Blog. Jim Aldrich’s blog is a revelation. His poetry and prose conjures subtle spiritual states with concision and flair. I am looking forward to he second installment of his chilling, dystopic vision: Bishop’s Burden.
Then there’s John Wreford, Photographer whose heart-wrenching work from the front lines shows and tells of the brave souls who live in Syria. While John’s reportage may not be considered “imaginative,” I include it here because of his dedication, and because it rouses compassion for the suffering of our brothers and sisters in that war-torn region. Maybe there is no greater work of imagination than that.
To accept the Imagination Award you need to:
1. Copy and paste the Imagine Award into your post.
2. Thank the blogger who nominated you and link their blog page to your post.
3. List 3-5 things about the nominator’s blog that you like (that you think are creative.)
4. Nominate 5 other bloggers.
5. Notify your nominees.
6. Display The Imagine Award to your blog’s award page.
Update from the Studio
I want to thank Sue Vincent for nominating me for a most imaginative blogger award.
Sue has a special place in my heart for being the first to follow my blog. Her posts about her beloved English countryside and the rituals marking ancient mysteries are a revelation. To be honest, at first I thought her writing a bit too out there- too (as we say) (woo woo.) But I’ve since come to appreciate the power of her prose-as solid as the standing stones and menhirs she so vividly evokes in her work.
This is a hasty post, as I have to rush off to studio to prepare for my opening on November 1st.
Sue has inspired me to get back to work on my Raven Window painting. I thought I was past the Albedo phase, but find myself laying down even more swathes of white.
Here is another work in progress- my altar for Day of the Dead.
After I get show hung I want to make my own most creative blogger nominations. But there are so many creative bloggers out there.
Old Hand’s Babyonian Voyage part 5 – The 9th Wave
“Hang on to yer hat, lad. Looks like we’re in for a dusting.” McWhirr pointed at the darkening horizon and commanded: “Ready to man the pumps.”
“Aye, Captain.”
I scrambled aft and pulled the aged, bronze pump from the lazarette before looking up to see the immense, glassy wall looming over the masthead like the adamant finale of doomsday.
Old Hand rose up the vertical wall to its breeze-feathered crest and launched skyward with a spray of rainbow light. It was as if she sought escape from her natural element, to take her place amid the constellations as guide to unborn mariners of this tropic-this weary globe where man has long toiled on the treacherous seas.
We landed in the trough with a bone-jarring crash as the wave broke with a deafening roar astern.
Old Hand yawed like a stunned boxer shaking off a vicious right hook and steadied up, ready to meet the next one. We mounted the second wave of the set and were again hurled down it’s backside, until I thought we might sound the very depths of the Mariana trench.
Each time McWhirr counted each wave until, after the 8th had thrown us rudely on our beam-ends, he said: “This is it, lad-the 9th wave. Say yer prayers, this may be the end of our pleasant, little cruise.”
The sight that met my eyes as I braced against the wheelhouse was enough to make Blackbeard blanch and Ahab drop to his knees and beg for mercy.
“No, it can’t be that big,” I said, upon seeing the wave’s awesome height. It’s aspect was all the more terrible for its calm refulgence-as gleaming and resolute as an executioner’s ax. The crystalline beauty of it seemed to mock all our puny efforts to survive.
Again, we faced the interminable ascent. As it jacked up over the reef, it turned a back-lit, emerald-green hue.
Good reader, we’ve all heard how time stands still, and the imagination falls prey to odd fancies in times of extreme terror. So it was with me. I thought I saw strange shapes in that massive beast of a sea-spectral figures who swam before my eyes and vanished again like mackerel flashing upon the wave’s face. One such apparition was dressed in a flowing white shirt and tight pants. He had the angelic look of one inspired by the muses and held, in his delicate hand, a goose-quill pen. His melodic words seemed to echo above the dismal keening of gulls that circled overhead:
…My spirit’s bark is driven,
Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng
Whose sails were never to the tempest given;
The massy earth and sphered skies are riven!
I am born darkly, fearfully afar…
Poetry from Adonais by Percy Bysshe Shelly
Old Hand’s Babylonian Voyage-The Escape
Attention! Attention! Tsunami alert! Tsunami alert!
The speakers on the church walls crackled over the dismal howl of sirens.
Dust of crumbled masonry rose from the collapsed reliquary amid screams and prayers for deliverance. I ran into the streets and made for Old Hand. I leaped onto the dock as the engine roared to life above the frenzied tumult of the throng. McWhirr had just cast off the dock lines when a repulsive splog pirate wielding a cutlass grabbed my monkey jacket and said in a malodorous, rasping tone: “Are you sure you want to close your Babylon account?”
A blast from the ship’s deck sent him sprawling into the rank harbor. McWhirr threw aside his smoking musket and hauled me over the rail before jamming the ship full throttle and steaming for deep water. A glazzy spam-bot, with wires dangling from her stove-in side, gushed at McWhirr as we bore away from the pier-head: “Look! It’s Gregory Peck! I saw you on MeTube. Can I have your autograph?”
We headed for open sea just as a group of cyber-ruffians thundered onto the wharf with a volley of deprecatory oaths and small arms fire.
Once clear of musket range, I lifted my head above the rail to inhale the sea air. It lay calm and of a such a limpid sheen that I fell into tranquil revery. It felt as if all the fetid smog of Babylon were dispelled by the sweet Levantine zephyrs that wafted over the sun-dappled main like Mother Gaia’s beneficent caress. I silently offered a prayer for the gentle hand that had rocked the Adamic cradle of mankind. It was as if I quaffed from the verdant spring of the mystic Green One of Araby-that master of masterless souls who wander the globe’s Byzantine seaways seeking the vivifying elixir of immorality.
“Look sharp, Mister Spencer.”
McWhirr’s cautionary words roused me to behold the distant horizon demarcated by an edge of deep ultramarine blue that advanced steadily upon our gallant ship.
“We’re in for some fun and games now.”
A View from the Wheelhouse 