back porch art

at the back of my house on the porch - two pieces of art by the cool alex lobus of the south pittsburgh hills . . .

alex makes his art from repurposed wood . . . 

salvaged from old houses . . . 

one small feature . . .

one small feature of my working life is that i leave the building two or three times a week to ensure the safety and well-being of the students at my school as they play on our vast and beautiful school yard ...

this is one of many days over my 23 year career where it has been of no trouble at all to undertake such a mission!!!!

the hand that held the paintbrush . . . .

i once shook the hand of a.y. jackson.

i looked into his eyes washed pale with age.

we held each other's gaze for slightly longer than was socially comfortable.

bridges

bridges - both real and metaphorical - have always been fruitful sources of play, anxiety, and in retrospect ... grace in the form of truth and a sort of baring of the work i have to do in this place.

they can be so skeletal and intense, so scruffy and unkempt, and then so tentative and unlikely . . .

but they require a focussed intensity and purposefulness in order to be built and to allow continued movement across otherwise wretched or discomforting circumstances . . . .

i remember seeing the runcorn bridge being built . . . across the canal. it started at both sides and was to meet in the middle. the image was burned into my subconscious and figured largely in many dreams and nightmares as the metaphor it was.

the latter part of october . . .

some of the branches are bare. like old fingers. spindly and dry and clawing . . . .  while others have held onto their extraordinary foliage . . . merely delaying the inevitable.

stopping on the london street pedestrian bridge

angel waves

angel waves

the water sits still enough to let colour and form
double
without condition

there really is no
above
and below

it doesn't matter

it really doesn't matter
what is and isn't earth
and heaven

their separation is a game
of comfort

its architecture
only as necessary
as the need
for my eyes to find the dividing line between
what is real
in this image and what is reflection

autumn river

last night the wind and rain together blew,
the wall-curtains rustled in their autumn song.
the candle died, the water-clock was exhausted,
i rose and sat, but could not be at peace.
man's affairs are like the flow of floodwater,
a life is just like floating in a dream.
i should more often go drunken through the country,
for otherwise i could not bear to live.

li yu

happy birthday mum!!!

this is an image almost entirely unimaginable during my teen years (and perhaps at times after that),

but here we are - my mum and i - able to truly express our love and affection for each other

as people who have been there and more than done that and lived to tell the tale.

what is truly wonderful is that "telling the tale" has become a matter of truth and straight upness and not so much the carefully manicured pieces of life before we fnally got each other and understood much of what had gone before. now we live in the hope that we have many more years to share our stories, our joys, our struggles, our simple appreciation for a life that is so astonishing to each of us, given not only where we came from, but where we imagine we are going to.

we are each on a trajectory that sees us bringing whatever goodness we can in the time we are given to whatever and whomever crosses our paths.

happy eighty second mum. 

i am so deeply grateful for the goodness you taught me to look for and create in myself, 

and then also for the goodness you continue to bring into this world!

with my love

steven

autumn marsh

 yet now the dew-drop, now the morning gray,
      shall live their little lucid sober day
      ere with the sun their souls exhale away.
now in each pettiest personal sphere of dew
the summ'd morn shines complete as in the blue
big dew-drop of all heaven: with these lit shrines
o'er-silvered to the farthest sea-confines,
the sacramental marsh one pious plain
of worship lies.

excerpted from "hymns of the marshes" by sidney lanier

flickers of gold

i love the flickers of gold through the trees . . . 

kitty kieland

kitty kieland ... i know what she saw . . . 

what is astonishing to me, is that she could paint what she saw.

 Sommernatt

Sommernatt i Sandviken (1891)

recreation

everywhere i look, nature is busily recreating herself . . .

simple wonder

i wake and scrape the edge of sleep off my body and then off my mind and welcome back the spirit that i am by riding beside this simple wonder every morning!

there and back . . .

around eight fifteen in the morning on the west shore of little lake in peterborough . . . 

on my way home  following the east shore of little lake in peterborough.

nothing but reflections and fallen leaves . . . 

after the storm

after the storm, the shoreline was rich with fallen leaves . . .

there's a storm a coming

for colour

seek the light

that flower

that flower

this flower

it falls

petal by stem

into a perfect rendering

of itself

as it wishes to be seen

and is it guilt

that renders me

apparently useless

until

i

become its partner

its paranthetical mirror

in my perfect rendering

of myself

as i wish it

to see me

closing the phrase

of our knowing

of each other

the long way home

it's nice to have the luxury some evenings of taking the long way home . . .

along the eastern shore of the otonabee river . . . . 

through beavermead park . . . 

stopping to take in the beauty of a lagoon in the autumn . . . 

and a shoreline filled with all the complexities of nature . . . . 

upwards

an early autumn sky through the tracery of trees. 

this is the view upwards from my back porch . . . . 

early october fog

the sun blurred by an early october morning fog . . . .

a simple feathering of colour against the grey scale of the fog-shrouded river.

these hills

there are in my life these long hills.

i've learned after a very very long time of thinking, that the reason they are there is not to challenge me to ride them as fast as i can; rather, they exist to offer me the opportunity to stop, and to look back at where i have come from and then, to look at what i still have to look forward to.

and then, after the crest has been reached, i get to marvel at the beautiful view, and most amazingly, i get to race down the other side without consideration for rocks, cracks, holes, gullies, sand, sudden flat tyres, scurrying squirrels, and especially my own mortality. because my own mortality is present in every moment .............

the cabin

"though eight o'clock, it was still dark outside, and the cabin was lighted by a tallow candle thrust into an empty whisky bottle. it stood on the pine-board table in the middle of a disarray of dirty tin dishes. tallow from innumerable candles had dripped down the long neck of the bottle and hardened into a miniature glacier. the small room, which composed the entire cabin, was as badly littered as the table; while at one end, against the wall, were two bunks, one above the other, with the blankets turned down just as the two men had crawled out in the morning." jack london

play!

lying on my back and looking up into the autumn sky . . . 

colour sponge

i am absorbing as much colour as i can before winter's grey scale returns . . .

the self-same fires

a solemn land of long-fulfilled desires

is this, and year by year the self-same fires

burn in the trees.

mary webb