I think the British government is learning that you can't just cut social programs for the poor so that the rest of the populace can maintain their --- lifestyles. Will the riots be a wake-up call? For ethical fiscal management.

Surely the cost of clean-up/rebuilding, over-time for an extended police force, riot-control gear, ammunition etc., and jail and court (for who knows how many when the final count is in after witch hunts through Facebook photos and whatnot) will out weigh the costs of those programs that were rudely cut for those at the bottom of the economic scale.

There is obviously some power in the anger of the downtrodden. Too bad it's anarchy. Britain right now is almost in a situation of civil war - between unemployed youth and an employed middle class. (The upper classes are probably all vacationing out of the country.)

I'm not saying I support the riots, not at all, and I'd be one of those mothers yelling at the kids smashing and burning and stealing, but I surely don't support the fiscal decisions of the government cutting funding to centres and programs for these young people either.

The straw that broke the camel's back?

Five-pointed mandala star with inscribed symbols, 1997, found in a journal, probably watercolour pencil, markers and acrylics, though I don't know for sure, and small, 10.5cm x 16cm, 6" x 6.25"

Here is the entry that follows the image in my journal:

April 26, 1997

We legally separated on Thursday, April 24th during a "Separation Ritual" at my house with a number of friends (John, Janet, Chris, Sally, Anne, Ingrid, Theo). John and Janet, who were our witnesses at our marriage, also witnessed our separation.

It was quite lovely. We began with group drumming, as well as rattles and bells. The drumming was a means to creating a sacred space, clearing the day we'd had, getting in touch with our underlying rhythms, creating a group bond.

Then we sat in a circle and I talked about how we were commemorating the completion of a cycle and the beginning of a new one. That Brian and I had known each other since 1974, for 23 years, that we were friends long before our 3 years of living together, and our 12 years of marriage, that our relationship was not ending but only transforming as we begin a new phase.

I said that I felt that the theme we were working with was one of forgiveness and release.

And I offered Brian some gifts of the heart:

• self-renewal
• self-confidence
• inner strength
• fun money

'Fluid Dreams in Green, trying to break free. Rising.' 21cm x 29.5cm, 8.25" x 11.5", India and acrylic inks, oil pastels, acrylic, Molseskine Folio Sketchbook A4.

The pencilled in words: The woman who is trapped, trying to break free. Rising.

The scanner's light tends to wash out the dark colours, and for some reason, makes everything more yellow than it is. This time I used a blue filter at 25% and, with some adjustments to mid-tone contrast and deepening the shadows, it seems to have worked.

Am I happy with this painted ink drawing? Uh, I find it quite hard to look at - but then, after I get used to what happened with the inks and paints on the paper, I begin to. People like pretty, they like sublime, not a woman rising as if out of a forest floor of mulch, slime. Yet, despite my painterly difficulties with its not being polished, and my hesitation and then determination to leave it raw, I understand the psychic process. This morning, for the first time in months, I felt refreshed, and there was a welcome torrential cloud-bursting rain storming the windows too.

The thought came that perhaps I should try and do one drawing/painting every day for a week, but carving out of my imagination one of these Moleskine Folio pages takes everything out of me.

I don't know if I'd have the emotional stamina to work on this excruciating excavation every day.

moon
         light
from the window
                         seeps
  
around the ghost

envelops it in a milky aura

folds into   its body   as it glides
through walls


in a cowl of ghosts, I would
twirl in slow motion around
their twirling pirouettes
their disconnected
hands and feet
dangling from bodies
that radiate a white gauze of light, the
fingernails of silver scratches
that graze the furniture


hovering in the air 
of our mutual dreams

_

Dave wrote a ghost poem, and then it became a prompt for a gang of ghost poems in the comments: If there were such things as ghosts

I'm joining the Ganga line with this ghostly poem. [thinking of the Hindu Goddess Gaṅgā who reincarnated as the Ganges River.]


                              

A woman with an old Olivetti
on the street corner. Brunswick and Bloor, across from
Future Bakery. She wore a floral dress of orange and
pink flowers on black. I wasn't sure she was real,
her sign read, "Prose Services." A man had
paid, and she was typing.

Surely a prose poem with the heat of the city's
pavement coiling in tendrils of green ivy, sweat
dampening the pulse points under her dress. Her
hair, red and swept back like Lucille Ball's, her lips full
and dark as an espionage spy.

What can a writer offer passersby for a few
coins in the cap?

I almost asked to take a picture of her clacking
away on the old typewriter keys, but thought she'd
charge me, demand toll from the faint
woman disappearing into the moon
hanging in half
over the alley.                               

Irfan - Jamendo

These Oriental chants, with influences of Dead Can Dance, Byzantine Church, Bedouin (tribal, Arabic), folk music, and singing in the Alps to the forces of being itself, are beautiful. A Bulgarian group with a female lead solo whose unearthly yet earthy voice I could listen to endlessly. This album takes me to places I've never been before. My soul sang a strange and beautiful song with them. Each track superb. It starts slow, with instrumental, and then builds into a series of Oriental chants. A tour de force of an album. Kudos. A stunning offering, indeed. Thank you, Irfan, for sharing your considerable talent.

From last.fm's Irfan page:

"Irfan is a Bulgarian band that was founded in 2001. The band’s name is taken from the Arabic/Persian word ‘Irfan’, meaning “gnosis”, “mystic knowledge” or “revelation”.

Though similar in style to established bands such as Dead Can Dance, Love Is Colder Than Death, Sarband, and Vas, Irfan is known for its extensive use of a choir of male singers in addition to the female vocals of Vladislava Todorova, and in in combination with an assortment of traditional mediaeval percussion, stringed, and wind instruments, including the darbouka, daf, bendir, oud, saz, santoor, ghaida, duduk ,and bass viol. Irfan’s music and reliance on traditional instruments is based on a blend of the musical influences common to Bulgaria, and thus represents a blend of mediaeval European, Balkan, and Middle-Eastern styles."

Granted, it may not look very interesting. But the pattern was on sale. Nightgowns in stores are usually too short, and the fabric thin enough to see through. With grown children about, I prefer long and opague. I'm not crazy about Victorian-style nightgowns due to the amount of material and how long it takes to get all the creases out as you yank and toss and turn getting comfortable to sleep. Besides, I nattered to the dubious-looking saleswoman, it's all in the fabric.



And I learnt how to turn a regular 5/8" seam into a French seam after you've sewn it. Turn in carefully, and pin. Edge sew. No ends to fray. Perfecto!





I went to Queen Street in Toronto, the 'garment district,' and found the African-style print below for $4./yd - at 3 yards, that's $12.00! I liked it so much, I went back and picked a floral. I think it makes me look Pre-Raphaelite.

There are a few reasons why I like this particular style in 'unexpected' fabric. It's like a lounge-gown. Very comfortable in the mornings and evenings. Also, with a belt quickly snapped or buckled on, I feel comfortable letting the dog out. Who would know it's my nightgown?

How perfect is that?

My daughter took these photos late last night and perhaps we should have had more lights on. Still, fun!










                              

Why does it take like 8 different tries, and each of those tries, well I can't tell you how much work, before... the voice, the emotion, the content, the meaning, the whole gestalt of it comes together in a reading that's beyond the-me. Criteria? If I can stand to listen to it.

I know I have to strip myself bare. Be wholly vulnerable. Ouch...

Comments are rare, so I have no idea if it works for/on anyone else. Only occasionally, years after, I'll get a phenomenal response in a private email where the listener found the recording opened them and then they matched the intensity of the original with their own intensity - and their own interpretation that spilled into their own work.

Truthfully, I like a bit of emotion in a recording, even a little bit dramatic. This connects me to the poem in ways a cerebral reading doesn't. And I remember the recording and the poem better after.

Something to do with that amygdala's processing of memory through our emotional response to someone else's emotion? :)

But it has to hang by its shreds on the emotional, over the gaping void, and can never be too emotional, for that would ruin the quality of the poem.

See previous post for text. I wrote the words of the prose poem from what I was thinking about while drawing this drawing. I am hoping to create a short video of the drawing and some other moving images I have found on the NET with this reading.


whaleskin, 2011, 20cm x 25.5cm, 8" x 10", India ink, graphite, watercolour pencils, Moleskine Folio Sketchbook A4. (Click on the images for a larger size.)

Into my Bengali spice tea of cinnamon, vanilla, ginger, chicory, carob, black pepper, cardamom, cloves and nutmeg, I add blackcurrant. Ahh.

whaleskin, 2011, 20cm x 25.5cm, 8" x 10", India ink, graphite, watercolour pencils, Moleskine Folio Sketchbook A4. (Click on the images for a larger size.)



Anchored in my mind all day, a koan. What in death does not die? I brush a wash of India ink onto paper. Ground burnt bones thickened with resins. Words in the wet wave. Words in the black tusk of the whale whose skin swims with algae, barnacles, skeletal memories of cattle, the backbones of live fish in the orange sunset that beaches the creature like a hammerhead of knuckles. The creatures of the world fight for their lives. In the mass extinction. In the radioactive orange water into which the sun has fallen. The salty sludge-lined ocean, layers of plastic bags hugging the sand, shopping for the moment.

It was a Zen moment.

What in death does not die.