Category Archives: Art and Culture

Art and Culture, Myth and Story, Writing

The Ifrit

April 15, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Bee Hiving Moon

Entering the edits and revising the Ifrit took longer than I expected. Sigh. When touching a work, I can’t resist fiddling with it. Still, I finished before noon. Then, I began to search my sources for short story markets. I found several, but following their submission requirements will require some time, so I only submitted to one, a contest for emerging writers that had April 15th at 5 pm EST as its deadline. Since that was only an hour and a half from when I found it, I decided to prioritize that one.

This is in service of building writer’s credentials, as well as selling/getting work out there, too, of course. I admit I’ve not done this stuff as well as I could have (hardly), but I pushed myself over the hump before I left for Tucson and I find myself with increased vigor around it. Submissions still send a shiver of fear down my spine (Will I survive constant rejection? Answer: of course, but tell that to my spine.), so I wouldn’t call it easy or routine, but I’m trying to get there.

Gives the old guy something to shoot for.

(Angels bow down for newly created Adam, whereas Iblis (Satan, dark, right) refuses. Islamic Persian miniature from before the 19th century.) Ifrits are djinn that serve Iblis.

Art and Culture, Family, Garden, Weather +Climate

Saturday

April 12, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Bee Hiving Moon

Business meeting. Money continues to come in and go out. Life in advanced stage capitalism. Third life, that is.

The rain today waters in the nitrogen I put down yesterday and soaks the seeds, giving them that first shot of liquid and snugging them in their rows. The chill, raw temps are why I did that yesterday afternoon. This is the next week’s weather, roughly, according to the weather forecasts.

Kate and I see Mountaintop at 1 pm today at the Guthrie. Bill Schmidt’s description of it made it interesting to me. Also, in all these years of theater going, I’ve never seen a Penumbra presentation. Looking forward to this one.

A kind thought to all those recovering or about to begin recovering from one medical intervention or another. Especially Tom’s thumb and Frank’s back.

Art and Culture, Faith and Spirituality, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase, Translating Metamorphoses, Weather +Climate

Solar Lighting

April 7, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Bee Hiving Moon

The days are getting longer. The large calendar I have with the yellow egg-yolk like mass in the center and the months around it in a circle grows closer to the calendar’s inner circle day-by-day. The yellow mass represents hours of sunlight, thicker and closer to the calendar as we grow close to the summer solstice, then gently beginning to pull away until a large gap exists by December 21st, the winter solstice. It’s a clever way to visualize a prime seasonal driver, hours of sunlight per day.

My order for nitrogen is on the way and I’m hoping the soil will at least be workable enough to plant the cool season crops before we leave for Denver. Kate and I look forward to the gardening time, though we’re also glad for the break during the winter.

I moved further into Book I of the Metamorphoses today. Deucalion, the son of Epithemus, the sole male survivor of the deluge, says, “Earth is the great mother (and)…the bones in the earth’s body are stones.” He and Pyrrha, daughter of Prometheus, and the sole remaining female after the flood, will repopulate the earth by throwing stones behind themselves as they walk and the stones will become humans.

[Deucalion and Pyrrha Repeople the World by Throwing Stones Behind Them, c.1636 (oil on canvas) by Rubens, Peter Paul (1577-1640)]

Her bones are still turning into people today.

Anoka County, Art and Culture

Crawling

April 6, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Bee Hiving Moon

What a day. Sunshine, blue skies, warm temperature. A perfect day to take in the North Studio Crawl. Or so you’d think. Kate and I went to a garden art studio, a metal worker, a glass blower with jewelry, a potters and woodworker with jewelry and finally a blacksmith. We made the final three stops last year, but the first two were new for us.

We bought something at each place: gifts for the grandkids, a ceramic container for tea, a greenman in concrete, an interesting toad stool, a metal turtle, a necklace and a metal treble clef that functions as a dinner bell. Not a high aesthetic piece among them, but pleasing to us and we support local artists.

The most gratifying part of the day is seeing actively creative people who live here in Anoka County. Down many streets and roads and lanes there are folks working with glass, clay, wood, metal, photography, paints, even concrete in interesting ways. And these are just the ones who sign up to be part of the two day event. Who knows how many others are here? Kate and I are. She in her sewing room, me at the computer. Lydia, our neighbor across the street makes shirts, bustiers and angel wings which she sells largely on the Renaissance Fair circuit. We discussed being a stop next year. There were no textile artists this year and I’m thinking about making chapbooks.

I said so you’d think because some of the artists said traffic had been slower this year. In spite of, or because of, the beautiful day.

Art and Culture, Dreams, Faith and Spirituality, Humanities

Excited

March 25, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Hare Moon

The turning of the great wheel to the season of birth and rebirth and the celebration of this golden moment seem now poised to reinforce some new work, at least a major insight.

Today begins the life integration workshop, the last of the three, and the one which ties together the inner and the outer with an eye toward the future. This morning I had a big dream. Its content was driven by work I’ve been doing over the last four days.

(Jacob Wrestling the Angel, Marc Chagall)

That means I’ll have a meaty piece of inner life to take into the integrative work of the next two days. It has something to do with my spiritual life and seems to suggest working in and through the time period when I decided to return the ministry in the late 1990’s.

It’s exciting to me to have such relevant and significant material to work with in the concluding hours of this intensive journal workshop.

Art and Culture, Bees, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Friends, Garden, Latin, MOOCS, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Now

March 22, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Hare Moon

The first of three workshops has finished. This one, life context, positions you in the current period of your life. It’s been, as always, a moving and insight producing time. These workshops move below the surface and defy easy summary, but I have had one clear outcome from this one. I’m in a golden moment.

I’m healthy, loved and loving. Kate and I are in a great place and the kids are living their adult lives, not without challenges, but they’re facing those. The dogs are love in a furry form.

The garden and the bees give Kate and me a joint work that is nourishing, enriching and sustainable. We’re doing it in a way that will make our land more healthy rather than less.

The creative projects I’ve got underway: Ovid, Unmaking trilogy, reimagining faith, taking MOOCs, working with the Sierra Club, and my ongoing immersion in the world of art have juice. Still.

I have the good fortune to have good friends in the Woollies and among the docent corps (former and current). Deepening, intensifying, celebrating, enjoying. That’s what’s called for right now.

Art and Culture, Friends, Poetry

2nd Thursday

March 13, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Hare Moon

“An angel…his whisper went all through my body:

‘Don’t be ashamed to be human, be proud!'” Romanesque Arches

Discussed Tomas Transtormer and his poetry today with two docents, Jane McKenzie and Jean-Marie. Shows how meager my grasp of contemporary poetry is. I’d not heard of him, a Swedish Nobel Prize Winner, and a damn fine poet. His work has a crystalline edge, images cut with words as facets.

“The man on a walk suddenly meets the old

giant oak like an elk turned to stone with

its enormous antlers against the dark green castle wall

of the fall ocean.” Storm

His poetry suggests a tour focused on image. What is an image? How do we know one? What is the same, what is different between the image of a poet and the image of a painter? Of poet and sculptor? Of poet and photographer? What is there about an image that makes us yearn to create them, remember them, see them, hear them?

The Matisse exhibition shows an artist focused on and struggling with this very question. How can I use paint, color, line to say woman, flower, wall? Is it different if I ask the same question of bronze and clay? Who might guide me? Van Gogh? Cezanne? Seurat? Monet? Early in his career he answers yes to all these guides and works to see the world through their eyes, yet imprint it, too, with his own vision.

Due to a collecting idiosyncrasy of the Cone sisters (patronnesses of both Matisse and the Baltimore museum) the show jumps from his experimental years and works in a mid-career but still formative stage to the bright lights of the last gallery, the wonderful prints from his book, Jazz, and other colorful pieces. This is a joyful painter who thought long and hard about his work, wanting it to appear effortless.

Matisse took line and color to reveal the essence of image. And he makes it look easy and the human beings in his work are proud, just as the angel whispered they should be.

Art and Culture, Family

Aside February 20, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

Took Kate up to Rogers, the Hampton Inn there. She’s in her room, napping as the snow falls. Her sister, Annie, will be coming up later. It’s a quilting retreat. Which, literally, is what it is. That is, the quilters come together, bring all their own stuff-sewing machines, stash, other projects, food-and sew on things they would do at home. It’s a group mentoring experience where problems get worked out, praise is given and a sense that you’re not in this quilting thing alone is nurtured. (The Quilting Frolic 1813 John Lewis Krimmel)

Art and Culture, Woolly Mammoths

Men Being Men

February 17, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

(Arnold Bocklin – War)

This on a drive home from Wayzata, after a wonderful meeting discussing maleness and maleness in our time. Tom suggested we bring images or other art work. Tom chose three black and white photographs: a D-day landing, men working on the high steel with wheel-barrows and silhouetted couple dancing on a brick street. He also chose three Symbolist pieces, two by Caspar Friedrich and one by Munch. (and the Norman Rockwell Boy Scouts) Frank brought a photograph of Standing Bear, a Ponca chief, Michael Collins, a key mover in the fight for Irish independence and a painting of the spirit world by an Ojibwe painter.

Scott had a world tree with people and technology boiling up toward the sky, a wonderful mandala from Tibet done in gold leaf. Stefan brought a Rothko and a Rilke poem about the ancient tower. Bill Schmidt brought a Lonnie portrait of Regina, a selfie he drew some time ago and a new piano piece composed by a friend in Regina’s honor. Warren had a coat of arms made by his sister when she was 14, his paperweight from the glass blowing evening (Bill brought his, too.) and a ceramic piece of old man smoking his pipe, hand clasping his head.

“Liebesfrühling” (Franz von Stuck)

Mark Odegard, Jimmy Johnson and Paul Strickland all contributed through e-mail: Jim’s piece is a little hard to describe but it involved a yak or a Highland steer with a snake above it and some birds. Mark sent a page of journal with drawings of gold panning equipment among other things and a self-portrait. Paul sent a photograph of himself in a mask, himself with his grandson and son, himself and Sarah in Maine and a photograph of his grandfather’s grave.

Tom’s nephew-in-law by marriage once removed and sunny side up, Jordan, a newly minted nurse and a nurse-anesthetist to be, attended as well.

Conveying the conversation would be too difficult for easy summary. We touched on sweet honey in the heart, a strong sword arm. Of spreading our long-winged feathers in widening orbits around the ancient tower. Of man the spiritual being and the man the relational being. Of men to some extent set free from past constraints and expectations. And most of all of the men we are, we Woolly Mammoths, who gather twice each month and see each other, man to man

(Franz von Stuck)

P.S. Forgot to mention the birthday cake. Thanks, guys.

Art and Culture, Myth and Story, Translating Metamorphoses

Apres Deluge

February 15, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

Finished the Deucalion and Pyrrha story in the Metamorphoses. This is Ovid’s flood narrative, one he shares with other classical writers, the Enuma Elish and, most famously in our culture, Genesis. Unlike the other long passages I’ve translated I’m stopping here and returning immediately to the beginning. My goal this second time (third in the case of some of the verses) through is to work on polishing, creating as pleasing an English form for Ovid’s work as I can. This will force me into the nuances of translating rather than the brute force, literal work I’ve done up until now.

(Léon-François COMERRE (1850-1916)

My pace has picked up though it’s not yet where I want it, but I’m still very much focused on the grammar and the syntax, trying to produce a faithful and mostly literal translation of Ovid’s Latin. This is a distance from a good English translation for several reasons. The range of meanings for each word. The syntactical demands of Latin and English. Certain grammatical constructions that don’t appear in English or become clumsy when translated. The fact that Ovid wrote for an audience with far different background knowledge and expectations of poetry than ours. The meaning of the work in its own time and the inevitable distortion of it when read in ours. And so on.

None of these are insuperable. There are many translations of so many works. Yet each does a certain violence to the home text, wrenching it out of its natural medium and forcibly inserting it in another. Translating is both art and skill. I’m finally getting the skill necessary to give the art a try.