A walking gilt trip and the woes of the journey packed into the old kit bag that bends your back and weighs down your shoulders.
Take care lest you stumble, for if you stumble you will surely fall, and every fall is a precipice that will never allow you to get back up again.
Where is the stranger, the faceless one, the as-yet-unknown one who will care just because he cares and will help you stand up once more on your own two feet?
Take root where you stand. Plant your feet solidly into the ground. The winds of change will blow, but they will not topple you.
Raise your eyes to the sunrise. Strive upwards, ever upwards, turn towards the light, that fragile lightness of everlasting light.
Sometimes we twist ourselves into knots. We double-think our thoughts, put our feet in the wrong hole in our jeans, slide our socks on backwards, put our shirts on inside -out.
Poor twisted mortals, we have made up our minds that all is well, that everything is for the best in the best of all worlds, but we are not candid with each other and sometimes we are so twisted we cannot see the truth even when it is staring at us from the mirror.
Alas, my front tooth is chipped. My hairline is receding. My whiskers are turning as grey as my thinning hair that has already lost its curl and now falls straight forward in the Julius Caesar cut that belies the closeness of the Ides of March.
Surrounded by beauty, a magical paradise trapped for a moment in a sunlit mirror, the past laid out before me, the thought, word, deed of a painted reality, of painted realities really, visions leaving the mind only to be caught in line, color, shape, and paint, and frozen in time, each one date-stamped, and placed here, there, everywhere on wall after wall, until I am surrounded, breathless, within this circular vista of visions filled with inherent beauty.
Striving onwards to the light I don’t need a ladder nor an Aladdin’s Lamp to transport me upwards, not to stardom but to the sun and stars that wait, day and night, outside my window.
Prince of Mirth, soon to be Lord of Light, I will wear my hibiscus crown for a short time, but with joy and pleasure, a treasure I will treasure until the natural end when stars, sun, and crown come tumbling down, leaving me alone, naked, yet clothed in, and surrounded by, light.
On days like these, the center must hold, but not just hold, it must writhe and strive to live longer, be stronger, to hold together so that the periphery understands that it too is at the center of an extended web of life that contains us all, you and me, past and future generations, in a great chain of being alive and knowing that yes, we are here, we are, at heart, really only one, and totally unique, is spite of the sameness that sometimes surrounds us as time’s spider-web unravels, oh so fast, so slow, and yet still we are here, and still the center holds.
On a sunny morning, the sun lights up my bedroom wall. Each day he arrives earlier and earlier, a minute a day. Now days grow longer, a sure sign that spring is on its way.
As I lie awake, waiting for the sun, I sing my morning sunshine song. It keeps me warm and comforts me. I also count the birds that fly across the garden in search of sunshine and food.
Crows come first. They perch atop the highest trees and watch and wait. Mourning Doves come next and their dawn song is a mourning chorus, “Who-who-who’s next? called from branch to branch. With the sun come Chickadees, Pine Siskins, lazy Blue Jays, Juncos. These are all regulars.
Irregular are my neighbor’s Cardinals, orange and red, American Goldfinches, two small woodpeckers, a Downie and a Hairy, a Nuthatch.
Gone now are the Gray Jays, Gorbies, Whisky Jacks, those ghosts of the woods. Lost too are the Greater Pileated, the flocks of Grosbeaks, Evening, Pine, and Rose-Breasted.
They may come back, but somehow, I doubt it. For now, the Blueness of Jays, the Blackness of Crows, and an unsubtle dawn chorus of Caw-Caw-Caw-Caw-Caw.
Mood music caught between brush and paper then trapped in notes that sing in acrylic colors.
Colored music and music expressed in colors that dance on the page and light up my face and the room with joy and light.
What figurines dance here, before your eyes, partners, each one different for each of us, moving in a musical mood that captures a moment of magic, brush magic, with silent colors flowing but all too ready to burst into song.
Paintings: doors you can walk through, windows that open onto visions of another, more beautiful life. Deeper than the paint, the thoughts and words that formed them, brushed them into life, an ephemeral life, so brief that butterflies seem to last longer and flowers live for all eternity.
Transience and insubstantiality. Change is all around us, we are surrounded by change. But the deepest changes, the ones that affect us most are internal, set deep within us, death’s eggs hatching slowly since the day we were born.
Life is indeed short, and art endures. Carved five thousand years ago, in stone, this magnificent henge, first Wood-henge, then Stonehenge, majestic at the dawn of time, with its sarsen stones, pillars, post-holes, and labyrinths, circling within circles, a frail spider-web of sunlit brilliance.
Lost now, the message, as my own message is lost, covered by paint, though words emerge in the strangest places, allowing us to peer in through windows as long-lost words and worlds whirl out through carved and painted windows and everlasting doors.
Doors First version
Paintings are doors you can walk through, windows that open onto visions of another, sometimes better, life. Deeper than the paint are the thoughts and words that formed them, brushed them into life, an ephemeral life, so brief that butterflies last longer and flowers live for all eternity, or so it seems.
Transience and insubstantiality. Change is all around us, we are surrounded by change. But the deepest changes, the ones that affect us most are internal, set deep within us, death’s eggs hatching slowly since the day we were born.
Life is indeed short, and art endures. Carved five thousand years ago, in stone, this Towie ball with its labyrinths and circles. Lost now, the message, as my own message is lost, covered by paint, though words emerge in the strangest places, allowing us to peer in through windows as long lost words and worlds walk out through carved and painted doors.
rogermoorepoet 