People Should Share Poetry (Part 3)

Snake and Shakespeare — Anything goes today . . .
This is Sonnet 64, and I do just love it. Time: at once marvel and mystery and villain. . .

When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced
The rich-proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the watery main,
Increasing store with loss, and loss with store;
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state it self confounded to decay,
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate
That Time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death which cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lose.


p.s. that's the snake that bit my 4 year old son. Somehow the sonnet and the snake are very connected in my mind.

This was fun - short and sweet.

Thanks JessLee - for the fun link to the World's Shortest Personality Test
It's quirky - some true - though I would never agree to "popular" — much too introverted for that!

My Personality Profile. . . hmmm. . .

You are dependable, popular, and observant. Deep and thoughtful, you are prone to moodiness. In fact, your emotions tend to influence everything you do. You are unique, creative, and expressive. You don't mind waving your freak flag every once and a while. And lucky for you, most people find your weird ways charming!

The World's Shortest Personality Test

Okay, tomorrow's Mother's Day. So here's what I got for my mom. It's a sticky notepad called Freudian Slips. (When you say one thing, but mean your mother.) What a hoot! Got it at Art Things in Annapolis, which is my favorite place to spend a rainy afternoon. My daughter got a button that reads "Get Real. If I were lying, wouldn't my pants be on fire?" heehee

Happy Mother's Day — to all moms (earth and otherwise) . . . who are all undervalued and deserve a hell of a lot more recognition than any Hallmark holiday can give.

This One, This Poem

(People should share poetry, part 2)

I love words — and I love the spaces between them. I love too many poems to have a real favorite. And I don't remember exactly how or why or when I found this poem, but for a long time, a very long time, I have found myself in it. Defined by it, perhaps. . .

It's a prose poem, from Kate Daniels' The White Wave.

HUNDERTWASSER AND THE SIX-YEAR-OLDS

I love Hundertwasser because so many people think his paintings look like they're done by children. "Even my six-year-old Joey could've done that," they cry, pointing to the framed Hundertwasser print on my mantle, the one called The Miraculous Draft. I love Hundertwasser because his joyous paintings with their brilliant blue backgrounds and tiny, fishlike people make me feel I'm in kindergarten again, when I wasn't afraid to make the world any way I wanted it to be. I painted tree trunks orange and purple, and the faces of mothers red or light blue in distress. I drew people taller than mountains and birthday cakes as large as swimming pools. I had a long, flat carton of crayons that thrilled me with its invitation to change the world.
In the Hundertwasser I have, the eight large gold birds are as important as the people. Their eyes are wide open and looking steadily in all directions. Each of them has one hidden eye looking into the canvas, and one eye looking out. Six brown people in funny hats, tourists, I think, are sitting in a gaily painted boat that is passing in front of a town. In real life, these people would be too big for the boat. They would sink, and the world would have another tragedy: "Six Drowned on Vacation" the headlines would say. There would be coffins and the bloated bodies and weeping relatives taking tranquilizers in the funeral home. But in Hundertwasser's painting these six saved people glide along in their fancy boat waving and picking fish from the water and dangling their legs over the side in a lighthearted way. They're on vacation for all of us. They make us feel better about every person who ever drowned because deep in the water beneath their overcrowded boat lies a turquoise semicircle full of big-eyed fish. It might be something as common as fishing net, the way a six-year-old would draw it. On the other hand, it might be an underwater railroad, the place drowned people go, out of the dangerous currents and fear of depths, out of real life where people act their age and paint like photographs.
We all knew how the world could be when we were six and we unleashed our powers on our fingerpaints and crayon boxes. What we didn't know was how it really was. So this is a poem for all the six-year-olds in Hundertwasser, the brave ones in the blue world who grew up and also refused to grow up, who are six and six hundred, who saw it all with one eye and painted it with the other.

mmmmhmmmmm. . . . .

The life you save may be your own

Sometimes I do look back and marvel. Much different than longing, I marvel that I survived being a teenager. Or that any of us do. I guess everyone has their share of near misses and stupid decisions, but they seem to come fast and furiously when you're that age.

I lost a lot of friends when I was just a kid. Car accidents mostly. Every one of them mind-blowingly tragic. A beautiful person no longer on this earth.

Those losses never completely go away. The only way I know to cope with them at all is through writing and art. It's critical for me to celebrate a life with a poem, a painting, a song. . . repairing the circle.

One thing we can always count on is change.

I have this great book by Fred Babb - it's called Go to your Studio and Make Stuff and his philosophy just resonates with me in the same way I dig Socrates and Aristotle. Really.

Here's a quote from Fred Babb: As children reach their teens, some find that the nagging self-doubt of childhood has become a gaping hole. To fill this void, some of these kids will turn to drugs and alcohol. Others will find the arts and fill the hole with large doses of their own self-wonder.

We are all beautiful, and we all have something of value to say.

And I haven't completely overcome the nagging self-doubt thing, either. I just know it now for what it is. And isn't.

I do know art saved and saves and will save me.

D'oh!

Okay, it's late. I'm taking a break from making play dough. 17 batches so far tonight. Purple, pink, green, blue. More pink. Neon blue.

I must say a brief thanks to my stand mixer, without whom none of this wonderful dough would be happening. We're trying a new marketing strategy tomorrow - handing out play dough and discount coupons for Art classes at the Easter Parade. Play dough is so fun. I usually like to make it with Kool-aid (smells great, tastes horribly salty). But for tomorrow it's food coloring, so, unscented.

I'm dreaming of starting a pottery studio. Yes, I love sticky dough, but clay is the most fun. Love to have my hands in it most of all. Even if all I make is a mess.

And yes, I make plenty of those.

Time's Fell Hand

Does it ever feel like time is slipping away from you?. . . like there is so much to do and none of it is meaningful?

Remember when you were a child and it seemed like forever passed between two of your birthdays . . .

And now that you're older they just go whizzing by, the birthdays, the months, the years. A relentless cycle that cannot be slowed.

Time. Whatever it is.
But the moment is so critical. Right now. Are you enjoying yourself right now? (I am, because blogging is fun - like journaling out loud.) How often do you check in with yourself to make sure you are loving your moments?

It's a good habit.
And like Aristotle said, "We are what we repeatedly do."

so what do you want to be when you grow up?