While I simply cannot record this again, won't tell you the story though you can surely guess, and I dearly hope the volume is high enough (I'm using Audacity on a PC rather than SoundStudio on my old iMac), it is a plain and slower reading, no echoes, promise!
The text for Light Catches Diamonds may be found at my art website.
_______________ People have asked if you are supposed to pay for the recording. While I surely appreciate it if you do, no, you don't have to pay for it. You can listen to any of my recordings at SoundClick anytime (streaming is free). I switched from free download to paid because Paintings in the Sand was downloaded about 1500 times and, well, you understand...
.......................... The woman became spirit in the differentiated dawn. By an attic window of diffused sun with which she's not merging but emerging as light. Dust floats scintillating like myriads of reflectors. Bright as the birdsong of the world, her spirit an unburning flame, a panoply of sparklers, a cluster of luminophor, a throng of stars.
In secret transforming into spirit in the quiet of the dawn hidden in the turret of an old house.
I saw her when I lay down to rest, and remembered so that when I came back I could write of her for you.
Sometimes it's like that, the light burning behind your closed eyelids, the woman becoming spirit.
___ Lucubration: that which is composed by night; that which is produced by meditation in retirement; hence (loosely) any literary composition.
I think it was 1995 when I began mantra recitation, walking, during the hours awake in the middle of the night, while cooking or cleaning, during repetitive tasks at work. Like Hail Mary's, only not Christian, not even necessarily the Sanskrit of my yoga, often ones I made up to suit whatever my needs were.
Mantra filled my mind, plus the meditation I did every day of 15 minutes or more.
It stilled my mind; my mind needed stilling. I left my husband in 1997. There was an ongoing war in my mind. Mantra soothed it. Mantra lifted my weary spirit over and over for the ensuing decade and more. I've come to rely on it to bring me to a state of inner peace.
Two nights ago I decided to let my mind run rampant again. Be as unpruned as it is naturally. I woke at 2am and lay awake until 6am and didn't calm my tumultuous interior with mantra. An hour of extra sleep before rising suffices.
From now on I will only silently recite mantra during my actual meditations, and what a balm they are, those moments of forgetfulness, of not-being, of being gone. The relief of not thinking, of not carrying the pressure of everything, of letting it all go in the ease and peace that mantra brings.
Outside of actual meditation sessions, I will let my mind become what it is. It's safe now. The last thirteen years of honing and focus through continuous mantra have surely had an effect.
India ink on paper with acrylic matte medium brushed over the drawing, 73cm x 52cm, 28.75" x 20.5"
Prep drawing for a new painting. Combining figures from lifedrawing sessions and a very famous Venus, to become part my current work-in-progress: the Botticelli Venus Suite of Poems (I've included some tiny bits of text from my poems which may be lost in the paint, who knows).
Click on image for larger size, & the tiny quotes from which poems.
Irresistible! As an animal lover, this touches me and if you are, wonderful...
Also I spent ages 2-6 1/2 in Kafue National Park in Zambia living in mud huts with all the wild animals about and the lion who I called "blond," and who I told to "Stop roaring all night, you're keeping Mummy awake!"
Watching Kurosawa's Ran, very King Lear, but marvelously Japanese, that landscape, warrior fury, splendour of pageant, emotion moving under
Having been laid off recently, these recessionary times, I went to the Korean Video Store where videos apparently sell for $2. In budget! Korean films and a shelf of Chinese & Japanese. Two Kurosawa's later and one described as "very sexy" that won't load...
When I put the "very sexy" video in my laptop earphones in it smells vaguely of burning
...I wish I had more information, there is a Korean note, with "ONLY" in English
ONLY what? And what did the man in the store mean, "there are some scenes..." and selling me a burning disc with mystical Korean calligraphy
on a label on the disc for $2.? Tomorrow I shall go back and say to the old Korean lady who owns the store and who only takes cash, "It doesn't play..."
Is this part of the mystique of the very sexy burning movie ... I did ask for 'art films' in the Korean Video Store afterall.
Tax returns done, passing a tray of freshly baked cinnamon scone bits, yumhhmn, buying half a dozen, cloudburst, package of warm scones high under umbrella home
she says they are the best scones she's ever tasted watching the bliss with every bite how are little pockets of pure cinnamon
everywhere in the pastry like raisins only not raisins? Delicious treat, but we'll get used to them, like we did the Chinese sugar donuts
soft sweet twists of pastry fresh from the boiling kettle of oil rolled in sugar
Hidden mirrors behind the eyes. Like being looked at through shutters that are bright slats of sun.
You can't see anything but you know you're being watched.
Or tracked. Might be the eye of a camera, who knows. I passed a group in the patio of Mel's and all four heads turned and their eyes followed me and then I noticed the camcorder.
On my way to the supermarket to buy a large bottle of spring water with the old bundle buggy broken from dropping the 18 litre bottles into it and which is kept only for that purpose. I filmed them too. They are burned on my optic nerves and in my memory banks. They were as old or older than I, but had the look of the effect of drugs and alcohol, too much of both for too long. If I'd seen the camera earlier when I was closest to them I'd have asked them to turn it off.
I was thinking of someone who is a compulsive liar. The pose, the facade, an insistence that what is presented is the truth. Seamless illusions. Blatant proof otherwise is rendered insignificant with a shrug. And the way of being watched through the slats that reflect the twisting that is presented as truth. Why do I posit myself in a role of moral conscience? Who cares if the neuronal synapses have been forced to present a false version of a person's life and to maintain those appearances and whether in the final dementia there won't be a terror of not knowing what the truth and the fiction is anymore.
The slats are collages of life. Displaced images. Intertexual figments.
Truth is a fiction; fiction is always truth. The conclusion doesn't follow from the premises presented.
Or the eyeglasses that are mirrored slats for us to look though.