Art

Bacchants

Bacchants
after
Velásquez

Go down to Queen Street
on a summer evening,
or walk to Odell Park
and look in the dark
beneath the trees:

you’ll find them
gathered round a fire,
drinking meths or after-shave.

Fly Karsh from Ottawa.
Lodge him in the Beaverbrook
then bribe these Bacchants with free
booze and bring them to him.

One day their photos will hang
with those of Hatfield or Robichaud
in the New Brunswick Hall of Fame.

That’s what Velásquez did
when he painted his dwarfs
and topers, and you can see them
in the Prado today,
as famous as
Spain’s King and Queen.

Pilgrim

Pilgrim

Santiago de Compostela

She drew me out from inner darkness,
told me to rise and walk.
“But first,” she said, “your wounds.”

She washed them in laughter,
dried them with her smile.

I left that night
walking west beneath the stars
to where the red sun
dips beneath the horizon.
South I wended my way,
where winds are warmer.

Hope flowered anew each day.
Dew on the morning grass
gifted both food and water.
Birdsong raised its morning voice
to the creator and her creation.

Sunlight flooded my body.
It flowed out through my heart,
a beacon to light my way.

At night, when star song
brightened the owl’s path,
I saw my road
stretched high above me.

Pilgrim through once barren lands,
the light she lit for me
burns within me still.

Rain, sleet, snow, ice, fire:
they’re all the same.
No lion shall me fright.
I’ll with a giant fight.

“Constant,” she said to me.
“Come wind, come weather.”

El Cristo de Carrizo

El Cristo de Carrizo

For Tanya Cliff

“Contemplate this crucifixion.

Each time you sin
you plant a fresh
thorn in your savior’s
crown.

Each misdemeanor
spears the sacred side
or hammers a nail
in hand or foot.

Christ lives in you.
your daily misdeeds
nail him daily to the cross
he bears for you.

No death, for him,
no resurrection:
just an everlasting hanging
from these nails you daily drive.”

Cave Paintings: Altamira

IMG_0177 2.jpg

Cave Paintings
Altamira
(11,000 BCE)

Cold rock presses on shoulder and neck.
Sunshine dwindles until daylight is a distant star.
A great weight of earth weighs me down.

The tour guide strikes a crimson spark.
Firelight flickers, shadows dance, animals appear:
deer, elk, boar, buffalo.

Magic illusions
created from fat, charcoal, red ochre, ash …
how long have these huddled herds
grazed their way across these walls?

My spirit sweats as elders anoint
my flesh with bear grease (for strength),
with greyhound hair (for speed),
with wolf blood (for tenacity on the trail).

They brush my eyes with eagle feathers.
Now I am a hunter.

I envision the animal my arrows will pierce.
My backbone arches like a bow.

I shoot thought arrows:
my beloved dances her death dance on tip-toe.

Court Dwarfs: Velásquez

Court Dwarfs

Calabacillas, the idot of Coria;
Francisco Lezano, the child of Vallecas;
don Diego de Acedo, the cousin;
and don Sebastián de Morra
in his red velvet coat:

a pride of lion-hearts,
these medieval jesters,
blown up
in some practical joke to
a full life size
that competes with their majesties
for our dialogue
with this time and place.

Their captive souls
run the gauntlet
of their canvas jails.

Their eyes
recall those of Segismundo,
imprisoned in his tower,
drugged, then dragged
from darkness
to the palace’s brightness.

On his return to prison:
“Man’s greatest sin
is having been born,”
he cries.

Heir to a kingdom,
surviving in darkness,
rags and chains
binding his royal flesh:

“Life is a dream,”
he sighs,
“and every dream,
a lie.”

Velásquez’s Secret

Velásquez’s Secret

Two large paintings
hang on the wall,
one in front of the other:
Las meninas.

I gaze at the serving maids,
the royal princess,
the court dwarf,
the sleeping dog.

The painter,
stranded behind his easel,
paintbrush waving,
stares back at me.

I turn around.
The second painting
is not a painting:
It’s a mirror.

There I am,
standing by the princess,
one of the family.
I move my hand
and wave at myself
across the centuries.

Like the four court dwarfs
staring out from their wooden
prisons on the walls in another room,
I emerge from obscurity
and join the élite:

the painter
waves his magic wand
and
Velásquez
paints me
as I stand beside
the king and queen.

Metalanguage

Metalanguage I

I wonder what I’m doing here, so far from home, sitting
at the bar, with my beer before me, my face distorted
in half a dozen esperpentic mirrors, surrounded by
people half my age, or less, all smoking, cursing, using
foreign forms of meta-language, gestures I no longer recall:
the single finger on the nose, two fingers on the forehead,
the back of the hand rammed against the chin with a sort
of snort of disapproval. It’s way beyond my bedtime; yet
I am held here, captured, body and soul, by foreign rhythms,
unreal expectations of a daily ritual that runs on unbroken
cycles of time: morning coffee, pre-lunch wine and tapas,
home for the mid-day meal, a brief siesta, back to the café
for a post-prandial raising of spirits, more coffee, then back
to work at four and struggle on until seven or eight when
the bar routine begins again with pre-supper tapas and wine.
Time, divorced from this cycle now lacks meaning.
Time within this cycle is meaningless too.

El Rincón
03 VIII 2005

Metalanguage II

I wonder what I’m doing here,
so far from home,
sitting at the bar, my beer before me,
my face distorted in half a dozen
fairground mirrors,
surrounded by people half my age,
or less, all smoking, cursing,
using foreign forms of meta-language,
gestures I no longer recall:
the single finger on the nose,
two fingers on the forehead,
the back of the hand rammed against the chin
with a sort of snort of disapproval.

It’s way beyond my bedtime;
yet I am held here,
captured, body and soul,
by foreign rhythms,
unreal expectations of a daily ritual
that runs on unbroken cycles of time:
morning coffee,
pre-lunch wine and tapas,
home for the mid-day meal,
a brief siesta,
back to the café for a post-prandial
raising of spirits,
more coffee,
then back to work at four
and I struggle on until seven or eight
when the bar routine begins again
with pre-supper tapas and wine.

Time,
divorced from this cycle
now lacks meaning.

Time
within this cycle
is meaningless too.

Idlewood
24 IX 2016

Sun & Moon

Sun and Moon was published on Amazon and Kindle today. This is the second (revised) edition of Sun and Moon, the first edition having been published in 2000. Although this is the second edition, I have returned to and revised the original manuscript. It is clearer, stronger, and better than the first edition. Here is the description of the book as it appears on Amazon and Kindle.

“They tore down our walls,” Mono whispered, “stone by stone. A new church they built on the land they stole from us.” These opening lines begin the verbal adventure of Sun and Moon. Written in Oaxaca, Mexico, between 1995 and 1999, the poems tell some of the tales of the voiceless, of the conquered, of the displaced, of the survivors, of the people who eat and sleep in the streets of Oaxaca, spinning their myths and legends and recalling their oral histories and memories. Sun and Moon traces the relationships between two civilizations, the indigenous and the conquerors, from the first contacts between Europeans and the people of the Oaxaca Valley up to the modern day interactions between locals and tourists. In these pages, some of the ancient ceremonies and beliefs, as described by indigenous people, are brought back to life in vivid images and colorful metaphors, so sharp, they can be grasped between the fingers and examined by the light of the sun by day and the moon by night. The multiple voices in the poems are those of human beings who, like the author, himself an émigré, find themselves in exile, lost, abandoned, and displaced. As the final character cries out in the final poem: “You do not worship at our sacred places … you don’t know even know the meaning of my name.”

Writer’s Block

Writer’s Block

Every day, well, almost every day, I meet people who tell me that they cannot write anymore. They have abandoned their current project. They sit in their work space and stare at blank screens or empty walls. They have come face to face with the dreaded Writer’s Block.

While some consider Writer’s Block to be an actual illness, others flaunt it like a flag or a badge of honor:

“Don’t touch me — I’ve got Writer’s Block: I wouldn’t want you to catch it.”

“I’m having a bad week: I’ve got Writer’s Block.”

“Sorry, I can’t make the writer’s meeting, I’ve got Writer’s Block.”

According to Wikipedia, “Writer’s block is a condition, primarily associated with writing, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work or experiences a creative slowdown. The condition ranges in difficulty from coming up with original ideas to being unable to produce a work for years. Throughout history, writer’s block has been a documented problem.”

We have probably all experienced the sensation of being unable to write, unable to think, unable to continue. I have found that it happens frequently in examinations with young students whose minds suddenly go blank when faced by a white page and an awkward question. This form of Writer’s Block comes at the most unfortunate times. Students need to be switched on just when their minds switch off. And something similar happens to writers.

Examination Block can be overcome. In many cases careful preparation for an exam will reduce or eliminate examination block. These preparations may well include correct pre-examination note-taking and revision procedures, no last minute all-night study the night before the exam, a good night’s sleep, proper food, water, and appropriate physical exercises before the exam starts. All these things prepare both body and mind and free the student for that most important task: the struggle with the blank page and the awkward question.

Will a set of pre-writing preparations work for Writer’s Block?

In order to answer this question, I would rather take a different approach. Instead of seeing Writer’s Block as a physical / mental presence that stops us writing, why not look at it as an absence that can be overcome.

What can we call that absence? Personally, I look upon it as an absence of creativity. If the creativity isn’t there, then writing creatively won’t happen. So what do we do?

Let us define creativity. For me, creativity is the expression of the creative principle that dwells within all of us. It is there, within us. We may suppress it or we may let it be suppressed. We may ignore it or we may deny it: but it is still there. It is always there. Sometimes it is beaten out of us; or we think it is. But it is still there, beneath the surface, waiting to be called on. The Roman poets spoke of it as Deus est in nobis … the God that dwells within us.

Creativity, for me, is like a river that vanishes underground and then reappears: it will be back.

The most important thing in my opinion is what you do when you’re not writing, what you do when you’re faced with that wall of blackness, what you do when you stare at that blank screen and nothing makes your fingers dance on the key board.

Here’s what I do. I make up my mind not to force myself to be creative. Forget about writing. Do something else. Ignore all idea of Writer’s Block, or the End of the World, or the Imminent Disaster of not being able to write. It may take a mental effort, but forget about it.

Now do something else, something positive. Different people respond to different stimuli. Here’s what I do.

(1) I read books

I read other people in their creative moments. I love reading people who write in other languages that I speak and read, because my own mind tries to recreate their images, their stories. This re-creation is a form of creation in itself. New words, new ideas, new combinations, rise to the surface of the mind, like bubbles on a river.

(2) I color and draw

As any who have seen my drawings know, I cannot draw. However, I can take a line for a walk. And that’s what I do. Then I color the spaces I create. My friends thought I was wasting my time and I believed them until I read one of Matisse’s sayings: “My ambition: to liberate color, to make it serve both as form and content.” Voilà: I have my raison d’être. Nature abhors a vacuum. When you create a space, color and meaning rush in.

(3) I take photos

The capturing of a moment: a sunset, a new bird at the feeder, deer wandering through the garden, a black bear visiting, rain on a spider web, sunlight through a prism, a cat made out of cherry stones … the re-creation of the moment is the creation of the memory. More bubbles flow on the surface of the stream.

(4) I go for a walk, look at nature and the world around me, people too

It is incredibly important to do this. A visit to the local coffee shop, a walk around the super-market or corner store, a seat in the park on a sunny day … just be, watch, relax, look and listen, empty yourself, let the world flow back in … look at the ducks on the lake or the goldfish in the tank … more bubbles on the water, more ideas floating down the stream …

(5) I listen to music

De gustibus non disputandum … we can’t argue about taste. Where music goes, to each his or her own … the music I like fills my mind, relaxes me, flows out when it ends, takes my mind for a walk and leaves … a vacuum … into which dreams and colors, words and ideas, build like clouds …

(6) I cook

Cooking has always relaxed me. Sometimes the repeating of an old recipe helps clear my mind. Sometimes I have a need to invent something new. Hands and mind occupied, the secret, sacred underground river of creativity flows on …

(7) I sew

Last summer, an unexpected event led me to join a quilting group … oh what fun … a man quilting among a dozen women … I learned so many things … so many different ways of looking at the world … so many concepts that I would never have dreamed of on my own … Sewing runs in the family: I still have my grandfather’s sewing kit … darning and sewing needles that served him for two years before the mast … that darned his socks as he survived in the trenches of the First World War … it bears his name and I use it with pride … and what memories arise in my mind as I choose the needle … his needle … the one that will lead me into the next adventure, be it quilt, button or patch …

(8) I keep a journal

… and come hell or high water, I write in it every day and have done so since 1985. That’s 31 years during which I have scarcely missed a day. The writing maybe banal, it may be nothing but a note on the weather or a comment on a sporting event … but it’s there … a vital challenge to the idea that Writer’s Block can take me over and can win. This journal is 95% drivel … maybe more … but bobbing along the stream of words are ideas, verses, rhyme schemes, choruses, stories, flashes of inspiration, jokes, memories, magic moments, falling stars, … the secret is to catch these falling stars, to recognize these rough diamonds and to return to them and polish when the moment is ripe … and it will be, sooner or later … for bubbles are buoyant and will lift you to the stars.

(9) I believe

Through all this runs a thread of belief … belief that the black cloud of despair will not win. The Writer’s Block will go. Creativity will never be not lost. It is there, beneath the surface, always ready to be contacted, waiting to rise and take you over again. And all too soon and quite unexpectedly, one form of creativity slips into another and the creative writing (it never really went away because of the journal) comes back.

Writer’s Block: it does exist. It’s how we deal with it that’s important. Creativity rules: forget Writer’s Block and let creativity and the multiple ways back to creativity grow and flow. Sooner or later the clouds will lift, the sun will return, the block will unblock and the words will flow again.

Remember the words on the Roman sundial: Horas non numero nisi serenas … I count only the happy hours. And remember: the clouds will lift, the sun will return.

Trust me.

And believe.

Re-reading the Codices Flash Fiction

Re-reading the Códices
Bistro 22

The Mixtec Códices, indigenous screenfold books written on deer hide,  are Pre-Columbian pictographs that record the history of the Mixtec peoples.  There are no words: only brightly coloured scenes containing information about rituals, gods, heroes, and ceremonies.  Only a few very precious documents (Zouche-Nuttall, Vindobonensis, Borgia etc) survived the ravages of time  and the continued purges of the Spanish priests.  The following text, self-explanatory for the main part, verbalizes typical symbols from the códices.  Clearly, such symbols, as the poems suggest, are ambiguous  and open to radically different interpretations.

“Two breasts: one green, one yellow, symbolic of the hill where the church stands; the church itself bi-colored, strong stone walls, a spire. A large red heart symbolic of the love we bear for you, our masters. Two feet walking the path of enlightenment you opened before us; two hands pointing the way. The feet below the heart; the hands above the heart, like wings; and the heart becomes the body of the new place you have built for us. And in the heart is our sacred symbol: the Earthquake, a sign of leadership and power used only by those of Royal Stature and the Noblest Blood. Attached to the heart is the Numeral One which means Lord of the Earthquake; for you are Number One in our Hearts. Attached to the heart is a speech scroll showing felicitous words of praise; below it is the sacred earthworm, and beneath that the serpent head of wisdom and the flint knife promising strength through sacrifice.

But be wary: for our symbols are double-edged.

The colors of the hill are divided, as the hill is divided, showing strife and division. The church is on top of the hill, for the symbol has conquered the people, and the people are starving, subject, and destroyed. The feet are pointing in opposite directions, for the people are stalled. They have no forward movement, nor will of their own. For they are conquered by the sword and not by love. And the hands are pointing in opposite directions; for the right hand knows not what the left hand is doing. And the hands are reversed showing anguish and distress. The sign of the heart is the sign of the disembodied heart, torn from the heaving chest of the vanquished and thrown to the dogs. The sign of the earthquake is also the sign of movement. And that movement is a bowel movement. And one movement in the middle of the sacrificed heart is the victor excreting on the vanquished and treating them with scorn and contempt. The scroll protrudes from the nether part and says that the victors are speaking words of excrement, that verbal diarrhea issues from their lips. And the serpent has no feathers; it cannot fly. It is as a snake treacherous and bitter, crawling on the ground. The head of the serpent is two tongued and tells of treachery and of deceit. The flint is attached to a heart; it speaks of the heart that is as hard as flint, knowing no mercy.

And at the end that heart will receive no mercy in its turn.”