While it's an explicit reference to our mortality, and I hope that's pretty obvious, I actually wrote the poem in a pamphlet put out by CLEO (Canadian Legal Education Ontario) entitled, 'Have you been fired or laid off?' on workers' rights.

I didn't have any paper, and so grabbed something at hand and wrote inbetween the paragraphs.

As you can see in my photo, with my bluetooth keyboard for my iPhone, and Songa, my adorable kitten. When I got the pamphlet to take a photo for you, she just *had* to get in on the action. :)

Anyway, I would perform the poem with a green screen of things like bread lines, perhaps headlines referring to the worsening 'recessions' since 2008, and especially the crises in Europe.

All of which, to my simple mentality, is due to the interest payments on debts.

I refuse to own any credit cards due to that interest payment issue. Nor do I have any loans, etc. While I live on the edge financially, I live without debt.

If the ridiculous interest payments could be deleted, and any payments from indebted countries, like Greece, Spain, etc., and innumerable third world countries, made on the actual loans themselves, the crisis would be over.

Why do we live like this when we are eating our own flesh, so to speak. Yes, yes, Shakespeare and _The Merchant of Venice_, but it's the greed of Capitalism itself that has installed itself in the hearts of the financially powerful.

I could froth all day. +Lena Levin and I had a long discussion (on G+) about credit cards recently, and I'm sure that fed into my poem.

Which you can find here:http://brendaclews.blogspot.ca/2012/06/can-you-be-fired-or-laid-off-without.html?m=1



--
Sent from my iPhone

Cling to the thin breast
of stars grazing your hair;
starlight shines vacant 
in your eyes.

On this globe revolving in mad
abundance, careening
off-course

in our dreams

where spiders feed us silk
from their mandibles;
and the strawberries are sour

studded with green eyes
watching from red lanterns.

What light to see by is this?

Scattered unripe fruit, the world
overtaken by insects.

Push the shopping cart through
the storm of shredded light.

Let breaking branches scratch
your face. The wind is your voice.

Night spins hallucinating
a starry nest.

We are broken illuminations
falling.

Dust of starlight.

Caught in a web
spun in silk fire fibres.

Pull your hair
from your dirty face.
Wipe off stardust, like grime.

Magic is a spider eye
in a world of compound debt.

Survival, man, woman,

is the song
to spin singing

on dangling
thread.

Midnight Sun, in-process, 2012, Brenda Clews, 28" x 22", 71cm x 56cm, oil on canvas.

A painting with a textual history, meaning a history of texture. It was another painting before. On my wall for half a year, and I couldn't look at it anymore. Deciding not to sand the canvas, or even prime it, I began painting over the original painting this afternoon (see the album of what is underneath here: Midnight Sun). It may be done, not sure. The true test is, how liveable is it?

(The colours are pretty good, but the main figure has pink in her body and that is not appearing.)

direct link: Kitten Plays with Origami

My niece is always busy with her hands. As she chats, she makes origami birds, and even balls like the one you see here.

Not having any 'real' cat toys, only string and such, I tossed one of Freya's origami balls on the floor and it was an instant hit!

However, the video clip, which I had grabbed my iPhone to record for my niece, was not to be about the origami ball after all.

It reminds me, rather, of days of management - like being a mother of young children again. The kitten is adorable, and fast, I think my older dog (who's mostly deaf) doesn't know what to make of her. Is she a squirrel to chase?

That's sort of what's happening today. But Keesha wouldn't harm her - Songa would be more likely to cause damage with her sharp little claws and the way she can aim a hiss spit right into the eye.

She sleeps on my pillow at night purring and first I thought, I'll give this 2 weeks, then, no, a month, but now I'm thinking give it a year. They might end up the best of friends.

(At the end, you'll see a tiny yellow origami bird lying on the floor, what I originally gave to Songa to play with, which also was made by my niece.)

Video taken with my iPhone 4, and edited in the iMovie app.

direct link: A Deer Trapped in a Backayrd in the Annex in Toronto

A frightened, lost deer leapt over a fence into a neighbour's back yard around 6am yesterday. A fellow walking his dog saw the deer leap (you can hear his voice in the video, which was taken near sunset).

The deer was there all day, and may be hiding under a bush in the downpour of the evening.

Animal Control said to leave the deer, that it will find its way out the way it came in.

My neighbours are quite alarmed, but waiting to see what happens, and what to do next.

We live in the Annex in Toronto, a downtown neighbourhood.

The deer is scared, as I realized when I was taking this video, and so hid myself from her, but he or she is also simply magical.

A magical visitor.
_____

It poured heavily last night, and I worried about whether the deer had any shelter, how it was doing. In the morning, it appeared to be gone from my neighbour's backyard, though I haven't seen them to ask what happened.

James Kalin on G+ said it was probably a juvenile male with rudimentary horns.

An elegant animal, and an extremely unusual sight in the density of an inner city.

what remains after the starlings have flown?

leaves shaking to stillness
where they held
caucus

____
Every day, with my morning coffee, I shall try to write a few lines in my 'writing' Moleskine. I have not made this task more difficult by insisting on an image as well. :)

After reading the news, and the issues that come up in Toronto City Hall's Council, which we are hearing far more about due to our strange and contrary mayor, and sitting by an open window, I wrote this little poem.

outline the skeleton
in red
make the lines of the bones
red

alizarin crimson, cadmium red
flame red, poppy bright

ok, blood too

the passion of death

as if death
were a passion


_________

It's taken many weeks for me to watch this great little instructional video on how to draw a skeleton. I've never taken anatomy, so I fully appreciate teaching tools like this (thank you Kenny Mencher!). I'll have to get myself a wee skeleton at a Medical Supply store at some point. :)

I meant to take a photo before I started working it. Ah well. It's not perfectly drawn because I don't want that.

The instructional video is here: http://kenney-mencher.blogspot.ca/2011/11/video-drawing-skeleton-front-view.html?m=1 (if, like me, you'll probably watch it later do bookmark it since it's an unlisted video you won't be able to find it on YouTube without the link)

I took the photo with my iPhone 4 using Camera+ and then a Clarity filter - later I'll blog it without the filter. It's just kind of neat with the tones the filter gives it.

I've been clearing out a lot of stuff the last few weeks, many bags of clothes to the drop-box, lots simply to garbage. This painting was one of the first I did with water-soluble oil paints in 2004. I did it on a canvas board - dumb, the cardboard warps, impossible to frame ever - and I didn't really like it. I drew it from an image of Nijinski in a dark body stocking, so always felt, though I love the richness of black skin, that this painting was a bit misleading even though it was grouped with my Celestial Dancer series and called it Celestial Dancer V.

Last weekend cleaning up my art supplies, I came across it wedged behind my desk, where it's been stored for years. I pulled it out, not sure what to do with it. The thought of standing on it to crack it in half for the garbage was too much at that moment.

On impulse, I took it outside and put it against the fence on the sidewalk. When I looked 5 minutes later, it was gone.

I hope whoever found it either likes it and has hung it on wall that needed 'something,' or has painted over it.

I'm so delighted that I did this that I'm considering what else I can put out! :)



When I looked for a photo of the painting on an external hard drive where the contents of my old computer are stored, I found it, not only easily because labelled, but that I had, as usual, taken images all along the way. And I even found the original image I drew! How wild is that. I have not, as yet, been able to re-locate the Nijinski on-line to see which ballet he was leaping about in a dark body stocking in! He had a slick of glitter on his costume that I did not add to my painting. :) This piece was done in my studio in Vancouver - as you'll see in the final image (they work backwards). I also used a wet-on-wet technique and so lost some of the detail in one of the arms that clearly turned into a lake of paint that dissolved out and in the detail of the hands.