the purification of nations

white on white

How many distinct whites could Van Gogh articulate, anyway...never mind, yesterday I came across this passage in Nachmanovitch's Free Play, a trustworthy book on the creative process. He begins the chapter "Sex and Vioins" (!) with this...

"I am always between two currents of thought; first the material difficulties, turning round and round and round to make a living; and second, the study of color. I am always hoping to make a discovery here, to express the feelings of two lovers by a marriage of two complementary colors, their mingling and their opposition, the mysterious vibrations of kindred tones. To express the thought behind a brow by the radiance of a bright tone against a somber background. To express hope by some star, the eagerness of a soul by a sunset glow. " ~Van Gogh

Among whites, I imagine, there are the tiniest fluctuations that can constitute a landscape of difference. Smilla's sense of snow.

kitchen table nephology

Mystery formations photographed on a recent flight. I'm not sure how to classify them, more cloud study seems to be required. As soon as I think I've got it pinned down, I realize I got nothing.

saturday still life

Winter Whites

My painting from New Year's Eve, a start on my resolution to paint my daydreams. Although I'm not sure I have the dreams, or they have me, reality's so weird these days.

Did you know that these owls winter around here!? (The rest of the infomration I deleted due to improved conservation etiquette.)

white, blue, red, brown

While I was riding the elevator yesterday with a few others a man got on pushing a shopping cart containing a tray of white paint and a roller. For a second I thought he'd start painting the elevator and everyone on it. I was going to tell him "Don't bother, I'm already white" but bit my tongue until the delusion passed. In reality I'm really not that white. Not white like Teotihuacan in its heydey, before the denizens deforested the area in supplying firewood for the production of the lime plaster with which they fastidiously manicured the city's surfaces.

Mr. Indigo, Aboubakar Fofana, who I met today at work, is not too white either. There was some kind of hubbub which I learned was someone conducting an interview with this Malian textile designer and indigo artist. He is described as the heir to his culture's ancient expertise in creating all manner of blue from the exceedingly honorable Indigofera Tinctura, so I think it's fair to call him the Prince of Indigo. He's very tall with soft skin and a few very soft, long dreadlocks, wears a large ring on his right hand in the form of two very pointy breasts which symbolize fertility. He looks like the kind of man who does not wake up but is born every morning. I needed to know if his hands were permanently dyed blue so I could add him to my growing internal gallery of men with blue body parts, including Barack Obama with his bluish lips and Lord Shiva with his throat dyed blue from swallowing poison. Aboubakar's fingers weren't blue, but his fingernails had streaky patches of blackish blue that were permanent, the Prince's stigmata.

I can't say where I got the red stain that's under the surface of the toenail on my left big toe, but it also doesn't seem to be going anywhere. For sure I never plunged the toe in the Gowanus Canal, not when it was Lavender, not now. But my fingers may be reddish by Monday if I follow my whim to dye this slipcover I have a color called "soft orange" or the other called "light red." It's going to take 20 cups of salt, a handful of soda ash, and a half a cup of procion dye. Unless someone can loan me some indigo, which I hear doesn't bleed. Instead it grows richer with age. Or maybe I'll just spare the local waterways any more questionable effluvia and leave the cover dull Sparrow brown, and imagine it's red.

By the way, the textile above is not part of Mr. Fofana's oeuvre. I think his pieces have a more wide open feeling.

the green staircase

Beautiful isn't it? That's the staircase in my friend's 15th St. 12.5 foot-wide row house. She lives there with her husband and their 4 children, and their house is one of the coziest most inviting places I've ever been. One day she tolerated me combing through it with my camera, shooting one still life after another, as if I could fill myself up with the warmth and character I find in her house, warmth and character and beauty that belong to her.

I can count on one hand people who have simply blown me away with their kindness and sensitivity. They are few and far between, like my fingers. I'm sure she wishes she could turn it off sometimes, she's so tuned in to some wavelengths of support and appreciation that I can't even hear with my mere mortal ears. It takes quite a lot to get on her bad side. She's cheerful and upbeat long after I would have lost my composure. That's because, all in all, she's well composed.

The green staircase reminds me of knowing people like her, whose depth of tenderness causes some sleeping thing in my heart to reawaken. The green of the wall is the healing power of love, how it causes things to grow, how it covers this world's struggling beings with protection and warmth and support as necessary as the rain is to plants. The white steps lead somewhere beyond my powers of imagination, to a level of purity, peace, resolution and beauty unrecognizable to our worldly eyes. Heaven I guess. This is a climb I whole-heartedly want to make, which I've been attempting with great awkwardness all my life but with slightly more success over the last year. It's not my fault I've been such a pill, we all absorb poisons and beliefs that we then spew onto others in the form of competitiveness, elitism, aggression, greed, desperation, arrogance, fear...

So nice to be reminded that there's another way. Here's a handful of bitch coupons, Lalaleeloo, for your birthday, to redeem at your leisure on my time. So I can feel a little better about myself.

Happy Birthday!

Rose of Sharon

The fallen flowers might be even more beautiful than the open ones, though less functional. I read that blossoms of Hibiscus Syriacus are edible. Have you ever eaten one? Have you ever had tea made from the leaves? Would it be a good flavor for ice cream?

Glory Halleluja

I don't know if these are morning glories full of the glory of morning, or moon flowers drunk from a night under the thunder moon, but backlit as they were, they stopped me in my tracks.

The Thunder Moon

That's what the July full moon is called. I took this yesterday at around 10, when it wasn't quite full yet. I believe that happened at 3:59 this morning. Double click image to see the little star on the right - what is it, do you know?

I took this with the camera that I dropped in Sebago Lake. The moisture still in the camera is responsible for the size of the halos around the all the lights, I think. The moon at the bottom is the reflection caught by the black BMW that I used as a tripod. Not so romantic as a lake, but better than I hoped for.


So, anyway, how are you feeling?