Short Poem on Aging: Surprise

Can't understand how I grew so grey.

It crept up over 10 years or more.

Inside I feel like I'm 22,

except when I feel like I'm 94.

......

Cumulative power of tiny specks....

Landscape at Saint-Charles, near Gisors, Sunset  by Camille Pissarro

We always doubt the power of the small, the contained. We doubt our single, individual lives, wonder if we can matter at all.

The power of a bit of dust lies in juxtaposition with other unnoticed specks. It's in the whole where a speck has its best effect. One star in a sky of stars. One life in a history of lives.

  This is my favorite picture from the current Clark Art Institute exhibition. It's called Landscape at Saint-Charles, near Gisors, Sunset  by Camille Pissarro, 1830-1903. The application of color is in spots and specks. The effect is cumulative and it almost glows on the canvas.  

Specks, little dots or points of paint are featured in a technique called pointillism pioneered by Charles Seurat. In this picture the museum notes, Pissarro was experimenting with that technique.  We could experiment too, try to see ourselves in the context of our country, our continent, our planet, our solar system, universe, multiverse.  As we zoom out, our speck-ness seems more and more natural, comfortable. We are in places as it were. Right here. Right now.

Two from The Clark, Degas

The Clark had a free admission day on Easter. I took photos of my favorites. I'll start with two juxtaposed works, Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen, and Portrait of a Man both by Edgar Degas.

Peace for the New Year: Hope over Fear.

Well it's 2018. How did that happen.... And the world needs peace more than ever. And it seems less likely then ever.  We can try to put hope over fear, and move forward, one small step at a time. It's all we can do - one moment at a time....  We can mind our own yard at least. See what near-at-hand  nature might need, what cheer we can bring the people around us. Maybe we cannot change the whole world. But we can change our own world. Make it so.

Curious encounters with nature

This is an old smudgy pencil sketch of mine. Not sure an actual horse would react as calmly to the half-man half-butterfly thingie in its meadow - which probably, being self-aware of its halves is having doubts of its own. Once the wings were moving I think there would be a hasty, slightly hysterical horse retreat....




I'm kind of low energy these days as you can see by this kind of sad poem.

Doldrums

A tickle really, a night breeze passes, barely touching
In darkness I orbit the neighborhood's circle,
pass the same facades repeatedly.
Anchored by the hum of the highway,
maybe a celestial dipper or two rising
or a flock of little porch lights 
where a few someones live, 
I appreciate their seeming elemental persistence.
Even now I point a bobbling flashlight to ward away shadows, 
though I have nothing to say to shadows these days.
No one minds my silence.

I originally put his up at https://april30poems.blogspot.com/2016/08/unusual-encounters-with-nature.html?showComment=1472256583013#c7537839509355428630 and added it here also...

Hug them close whoever they are....

This is oil pastel on card stock. It's rather old. It's also cut out and ready to collage into something else. I do like it all by itself as well.

Had a scare today. Something about a large pickup blocking the view of a crosswalk. Not using that location again, neither for walking or driving.....  Things could have gone differently. Tragically. So glad the outcome was the status quo. 

The Angry Surprise.....

Didn't make this ink drawing for BREXIT but my oh my, we have seen some similar expressions in the news on Brits expressing their dismay!!!!