Turtles Flying

It Isn't A Dream

Fog in the brain, body, spirit. It isn’t unpleasant. It might even be sustaining.  What is missing is that edge of reach, that window maybe doorway - sometimes sharply defined sometimes liminal and discreet. What is missing is the thought that is a blade cutting into the fog which cloaks the stars and opens the piñata-like fruits of creativity hanging always nearby and out jumble ribbons floating like wings to dangle and entice or truly wrap round you and bear you flying beyond all boundaries and edges, dispersing the haze and sharpening the focus unto an intensity beyond anywhere but here, here in this fog. 

The fog is warm, soft, soothing, and everything that is highly sought after when anxious, sleepless, stressed, unable to be. It’s eiderdown to a cold bitter day, it needn't be night. Even so, even so, one shoves stubbornly against the sheltering fog because it is thought one should look sharp and out of that attentiveness shall come...something. Is one afeard that with comfort, creativity shall stall or even die?

Is this similar to an opium dream? Though in an opium dream, one isn’t pummeling and pushing aside the visions to look for a creative spark unless one is insanely driven.

January

January arrives portrayed by a two headed god. A new year begins and an old one ends on a calendar which follows the sun and forgets the moon. The computer faithfully registers the change by immediately eliminating the numeral two and replacing it with a three. Nature is indifferent.

More reflective of nature is the garden. It is encircled by trees and the ground beneath them grows wild and untamed. Leaves lie where they land sheltering wild flower seeds and bugs. The birds pick through them. The cat watches the birds. The dog chases the cat. The birds fly away. They will come back. 

Somewhere between nature and calendar, one small corner of the garden sits outright in the sun and is cultivated. It flooded unto desolation in December. As the water receded, wind bared the carefully tended plot into gnarly swirls of mud soaked straw. January topped it with ice. It will need a kind hand to be beautiful again. 

Other than the usual winter disarray, the garden left wild is undisturbed.

.......

The Man And His Mud

"More water." said the man as he stirred the muddy hole in the ground at his feet. "Where's that stupid boy? Where's he gone to now? Always disappearing when I need him. Useless."

He lifted the shovel and slung a large splash of grey mud onto the tall mound before him. 

"Almost finished. Another soldier." He dropped the shovel and began smoothing the damp sludge across the front of his statue. He carefully stroked the mud as it dried, creating half-closed eyelids on the statue's face. 

"Almost finished. It's a good likeness. I see life in this one." The man kneeled down and scooped up mud with both hands. He stood and slapped his hands downward on each side of his statue, evening out the shoulders.  "I feel life," he announced. He surveyed his ordered rows of mud pillars. "Too many to count," was his dismissal of those crumbling off into the distance. "Ah the fruits of my toil. Thick as trunks in a forest." He smiled. "If they were trees, by next year they'd be growing."

As he turned back to his work in progress, the statue lifted one arm, then another. "I've done it. It moves. It is alive." the man whispered then repeated his revelation as a command. 

The statue lifted one leg, then another and began walking away from the man, the hole, and the resultant legion of mud doppelgangers. "Come back, come back!" The man called out as he stumbled and fell. 

"Stupid man." said the boy as he wiped the mud from his eyes and kept walking. "If they were trees, they'd be stumps." 

Come back, come back, be with me, be mine..." the sinking man incanted over and over again from the hole where he had fallen, until the mud drowned him out. 

The boy kept on walking. "I already was yours. I am your son."

....

Blooming Colors

Oops. Lost the text. The photo of the flowers from my garden 
remained. Almost lost the blog. Technical difficulties. 
Timely though for I have but one or two more poems and drawings 
that belong in this picture book and then Judy Sevens
will be concluded. After that, I will either continue here 
or provide a link to my new URL.

......................................................................................................................................

Today, June 1st, I found the lost text that belongs with the photo of flowers:

Today's news from Space Weather - there is a new sunspot 'hurling plumes of plasma off the stellar surface'

The past few months have seen a succession of rainy days. Then the sun comes out and like everyone else I drop everything and go outside because each sunny day might be the last for weeks. Pictures, I'd rather take them than draw them. Writing, I'd rather be outside barefoot and barehanded. 

The climbing rose has gone crazy with blooming.  As soon as the sun warms the garden, we are outside gathering roses. I dug out my old stovetop hyddro-still. The baffles and gaskets are still intact and Libbs and I made rosewater. The first gurgle of hydrosol out the copper spigot spills the scent of roses throughout the kitchen and we make plans to distill the lemon verbena and rose geranium. They too are lush this year. But for now, it's all roses. I've ground up dried petals in the spice mill. Luckily the spices last ground they were those used in perfumery as well as for cooking. The resultant scented powder smells like exotic incense. I'm making Gulkand, a rose preserve by layering fresh rose petals and sugar in a glass jar then sealing it tightly. The climbing rose continues to bloom.

...............

That was last week. For three days now we've been back to the skies of gloom. The syrupy coating on the rose petals has re-crystalized into a cold, hardened lump. To make Gulkand, one must set the jar in the sun every day for weeks, so much for that. I saw not a single bee today. When bees are deprived of ultraviolet light, they remain in their hive, are no longer attracted to flowers, stop gathering pollen - much as people behave who are deprived of the sun. Lethargy. Depressed. Sulking? Still, the ever present greyness Marley and I walked out into this morning gave up to color amidst the varying greens of ferns, sorrel, and grass. Roygbiv is well represented out in the garden, sun or no sun. It didn't take long to gather up a bouquet.

Inside the house and without the dominant green surrounding each, the colors are overwhelming and their brightness suggests artificial pigment, impossibly unnatural or supernatural? The intensity produces something akin to visceral anxiety and the subdued lighting of the above photo provides relief by making the blooms appear more real, or I should say - natural. What or why this should be, I've no idea. And this is just by viewing the spectrum the human eye can see, generally speaking of course.  Somewhere amongst the flowers are the Forbidden Colors - the green that is red, the yellow that is blue - and the bee's ultraviolet and probable other spectrums. If we could see into the spectrums not visible, would the colors be even more overwhelming, nearly blinding, or would they merge with those which were heretofore  visible and present us with an altogether different hue?

In light of the colors blooming and the generally unseen, this is how this morning's world media news reads to me - gloom plus doom. I think I'll stick to the news of the sky to begin my day until the sun comes out again. 

The indigo eye opens to the spectacle before it. 

The true voice which is blue hides

in the shadows of many trees,

a small blue lily 

that shrinks from the sun.

The verdant field with its creatures of song 

pines for song's return

from its last fearless course

into the face of wonder.

Below the field a river like all rivers

empties into the sea,

upon its back the reflection

of eagle's yellow eye as it circles

high above this hollow earth.

and the bright orange poppy

that colors the field with its silken petals

has pulled into a knot

unopened by the sun.

At the beginning is the red dragon. 

When the wondrous poppy was called upon 

to heal the increasing pain

dragon fell sleeping 

within its orange petals.

The indigo eye sighs 

gazes upward

and waits

deep into the purple night.

Feeling Creative Lately?

Like they say, life looses its mystery when you're hungry and it's hard to be fancy free when you're footloose and it's winter and being without a home was not by choice. You see people enduring this every day. It troubles you and you can't forget about it when you turn your hand to your work. Fantasy still has its allure because it's cheap but you fantasize about turning the heat on full blast and to hell with the bill. Appreciation of the Theatre of the Absurd was never more appropriate though it's hardly light reading and your mind is absent. You find focus by cataloging life's inequalities, the more recent the better. Your dreams rarely soar and you are suffering a materialistic bent so that when you search for beauty in the humans around you, you suspect it's being concealed in the possessions and lifestyles which others hoard, the greedy bastards. Furthermore, the most accessible of all beauties, Nature, is being diminished every passing second through human machinations. You find comfort in the recognition that more and more people are loosing hope because validation is a comfort, of sorts. Then, as if that isn't bad enough, mainstream media streams through your life in amnesic inducing wave after wave after wave, each leaving in its wake a stagnant setting, a saturated environment where only the likes of ignorance and idiocy can find bliss...you have been sucked in and if you are not blocked off, your work either looks to you like a Hallmark greeting card or you have been 'getting involved' by writing stuff that increasingly resembles the rants of a madman...woman...

So what do you do? You tell yourself that some of the world's finest inventions, works of art, literature, music have been created under worse conditions than these - be they in reaction to, or in tribute to, in defiance of, or seeking refuge from...so what? You know this. This doesn't help...but at the very least, the creative works of these people are more deserving of attention than the destructive psycho...no, I haven't found a solution. I'm still caught up in the problem, but I'm not giving up. 

Of Veenas (and guns)

Jya ghosha is ancient Sanskrit for the twang of the bow string. The crack of a rifle is the result of a sonic boom.

You can unstring many bows, stretch them along a neck attached to a gourd and make a veena. You can leave the bow strung, add a gourd, and you have a berimbau. Pick up another bow, draw it across a lute, and you are using a fiddlestick. You can place one end of a bow against your mouth and play the umgunga. What can you make from a gun? 

Scholars disagree over whether the bow's first use was as a musical instrument or as a weapon. They agree in the claim that the origins of the gun occurred with the discovery of gunpowder during alchemy's search for immortality.  

The more modern the civilization, the more actively it seeks immortality through the breaking of sound than through its flow.

Island

This is Island, a continent surrounded by the sea. Around the edge of Island winds a great river, called Rhythmic. The Rhythmic runs wide, fast, and deep. It springs from the high most center of the continent, flows directly to its shore, turns and winds once around land’s edge, turns again and empties into the sea, into the path of the setting sun.

Near the source of the Rhythmic, atop High Center, stands Island’s only city. It is encircled with stones, placed there by its residents “to maintain the boundaries of our plateau.”

Island has a road. It travels faithfully beside the Rhythmic on its inland bank, crosses the spot of land where river empties into sea, bridges the river at its first deep turn and continues full circle around Island. Always there is movement upon this road.

While the dwellers of High Center, faces to the sky, piled stones around its edge, those who walk together followed the river below. The movement within this procession was always greater than its forward sweep. Forwards, backwards, sideways, yet forever in motion they moved as one. On they whirled and in their passage they inscribed the Great Road. This is the caravan, the wheel, forever circling Island and always in sight of its beloved Rhythmic.

Enclosed between the Rhythmic and the Great Road is River’s Bar, a slip of land joining the two on their tour around Island. Green, and open to the sky, River’s Bar is the shore to those who seek land, the watering ground to those who thirst. To the traveler who rests beside the Great Road, River’s Bar is the land of dreams.

Gentle slopes and many trees of one kind and another form a hoop around Island. One tree standing alone shelters. A forest conceals. Islands inner hoop is forested. It is concealed.

Beneath the needled boughs, between the massive trunks in a mist of ferns and moss resides a presence so vast the living silence is its companion. The lightest foot does not tread, the tiniest wing does not beat, the slimmest twig does not break in the Forest without the attentive gaze of a fathomless eye and the resounding hush of silence.

Everything gives way to something, even a primordial bower. Round topped trees with leaves that ripple in the wind slip out from beneath the tall evergreen spires and spill over the open field beside, blurring all distinction between the two. Here, silence is a stream, the stream of stillness between sounds.

And here stands the Woodlands, a place of roots and burrows and shape filled trees with leaves like wings. Warm, sun streaked colors and busy rustlings fill the gaps between their sheltering arms. Their trunks are the standing through which intricate layers of sound, scent, and motion burst and entwine. Their roots are the growing which prepared the soil for the forest to rise. A thousand eyes flutter through this wild profusion of foot, wing, and leaf, the shimmering eyes of the many-sighted spirit, the spirit of birth.

Beyond the outer banks of the Rhythmic, Island belongs to the moon. Twice every day, dim harbors and vague waterways disappear and reappear in the flooding and ebbing tides. Twice every day, the moon sends a slow wind coursing across Island into the face of the sun. Eastward every morning, westward every evening, the moon’s wind blows. Less than a whisper, unseen and unnamed, the moon’s wind blows.

Much of Island is yet to be seen. Much of Island waits for a name. Where imagination leads, memory follows and Island continues to emerge from the surrounding sea. Yes, everything gives way to something.

Triple Eyed Face

Give it a face. Whose face? Who amongst us when they first awakened were, of all things, so enraptured by their own earthly form they exalted their existence with incantations of superiority thereby evoking overtly inferior behavior towards everything not bearing their visage, that awful face they struck upon the dawn? 

Give it a body. Whose body? Whose rapacious havoc is awarded reason by those who seclude themselves within the oblivion of their own sanctified logic? Does anyone really think the intellect can endure those who ravage this body, this earth, this nature? 

Give it hands, if you dare.

Then, when this is done, give it a name.

Errol & Maggie's Porch

If I lived in a city, I would have a garden on my roof and so would all my neighbors.

 I'd cover mine with terra cotta pots and fill them all with dirt and flowers 

and scented herbs. In one of them, I would plant a lemon tree. My clothesline 

would be the spinning kind with umbrella spokes

 and my clothespins would be wooden. And if it rained on a summer's day 

the rainbow would be double.

...

Sketch

Now to get back to what I was doing before the computer and camera problems. This is a sketch of the front of my house, the thumbnail for a watercolor illustration for a poem called "Our House" - a poem I wrote when my son was little and we didn't have any money - about the richness of having a home. I thought if I took a photo of the sketch and put it up here, it would help motivate me to finish the picture. Or maybe I like it just like this. I won't know until I try. Laetitia Thistledown is still yet to manifest. She's a tricky one.

Window Vase

The rain does not stop. 
It still feels like winter. 
Every day, I look past the vase in the window to the garden
which is green because of the rain. 


We all have landscapes we look at everyday, 
faces that are so familiar 
we should be able to draw them from memory, 
but we can't. 


My garden changes in winter, 
I know it is different because some of it has gone
but I don't know exactly what is missing. 
The garden has changed slowly over time and
unless I compared it to a photograph, 
I couldn't point to what was once there. 


Winter is like this, 
I know the leaves have fallen 
but I don't know which fell first. 

The Time Of One

This is Island, a continent surrounded by the sea. Those who live here, even those who do not know much of anything, know the woodlands is the birthplace of the Bird Of Life. And, most everyone knows if they, themselves, were born in The Time Of One or The Time of Two.

Each dusk, a tiny bird lifts above the trees. It circles inland, then turns and flies directly towards the sea. It flies across the bare field, over the river and disappears into the white fog expanding the reaches of Island's outstretched fingers into the sky.

Each dawn, the tiny bird reappears through its foggy gateway from some unknown world beyond Island, perhaps beyond the sea itself, carrying in its beak one tiny seed. The little bird flies back over the river, across the fields, into the trees and buries its seed in the woodland's floor.

After many years of planting, one of the seeds, only one, begins to grow into a tree. When its crown reaches through the protective bower of the woodlands into the sun, seemingly overnight, the bird builds a nest on its highest branch.

The next morning when it returns from its mysterious flight, the little bird carries not a seed but a tiny white egg and places it in the nest. That same day, from out of the whiteness which is like the whiteness of the fog through which the egg appeared, another little bird is born. Thus begins The Time Of Two, The Days Of Song. For many years, the two birds sing and fly together through the woodlands.

One dusk, the two little birds fly side by side into the mists. In the dawn, only one returns, carrying a tiny seed in its beak. Those few who have seen this solitary flight swear that this seed is planted with a tear so small there can be no smaller tear.

This is Island, a continent surrounded by the sea. The sea holds Island much like earth holds the sea and, in turn, much like sky holds earth. Everything gives way to something. Yesterday gives way to today, the day of the smallest tear.

A Clay Figure

She is called "Elizabeth" after the name of the model who posed for sculpture class.  I made her by molding and carving damp clay I had shaped around a stick figure made of strong wire which is, in turn, supported by a metal pipe. She has stood for years between two windows in a corner of the old shed. The clay is very dry now and if she were to be moved or jostled, she would crumble away from her armature. As it is, she is both disintegrating and standing in time.

Dragon Under Wisteria

I just found this embroidery I began years ago. Maybe if I take a picture of it, I will want to finish it. Or not. Maybe I can't remember how to work with ribbon embroidery. Maybe I don't have the time. I also doubt I could even find the ribbon, should they make it anymore. Maybe I like it unfinished to remember those days when I saw things like a dragon in the garden underneath the wisteria. I used to think it was important to finish things then.

Pelargoniums

This 'rose scented geranium' is not that common in the garden shops that sell scented pelargoniums. It has slightly wooly leaves and might be Pelargonium capitatum sometimes called "Attar of Roses". I doubt it is the rose scented Pelargonium graveolens which is much more common in the gardens of this geographical area, the Pacific north coast of California, as the leaves are not lacily lobed. When the leaves are distilled, they give up the most lovely rosy scented floral water, the hydrosol. Every winter when there is a bit of snow, many of them die ulesss we remember to throw a light tarp over them in the evenings.

After the really cold winter we had a few years ago, it's taken many cuttings and until now for there to be enough to distill in my funny old pot still that we set on the top of the stove - one large grocery bag packed full of leaves.

I've never tried growing this plant indoors, though some sources say they do fine in front of a bright window. I think I'll take some cuttings before the night freeze comes which means I should do this tomorrow as their has been frost in the mornings and otherwise quite cold.

If I am able to keep the bulk of the rose geraniums from freezing this winter, next spring we'll be able to distill some hydrosol, perhaps a quart or two. 

Dirty Water

0ops. Lost the text. Will fix again later

Pumpkin Spider

In the fall, the garden is full of of large spiders, Pumpkin Spiders. This one made her presence known on her web beside the gate into the garden about two weeks ago. She has woven her web inside out beside the pathway. That's why we see her underside.

Every day she appears from her hiding place somewhere in the foliage at the edges of her web and sits in the sun for the entire afternoon. Every day at sunset, she disappears back into the leaves and makes herself very small. Anyone who has ever picked raspberries or blackberries knows how startling it is to reach for a berry and have one of these spiders run out from beneath the nearby leaf.  Now that the weather has changed, she waits until the rain has stopped and then only comes out in the afternoons. Her place of rest during a storm is now in the salal berries growing behind the white wooden slats.

She has probably lived here all summer and we didn't notice her before because she would have been very small. In the fall, there is much more food in the greenery which these spiders inhabit, and the pumpkin spiders grow enormous at a very speedy rate. Since their sudden and amazing surge in size makes them more obvious around Halloween and since their body resembles a pumpkin, it is believed this is why they are called Pumpkin Spiders.

So, to not get them caught in our clothes or hair - they are everywhere in the shrubbery and plants and thus somewhat out of sight of  the birds and those who come upon them unknowingly -  and since they eat so many bugs, in the fall we take a break from working in the garden and leave the Pumpkin Spiders to do their business. When we walk through the gate, we are careful not to brush against her web. She ignores us.

No one I know would ever willingly kill a pumpkin spider and they are not feared for their bite as are our black widows and brown recluses and more recently, the hobo which is said to be migrating south from Oregon and Washington. Some even say they don't bite. I don't know about this for certain as they most probably are capable. However, I've gotten them caught in my hair and on my clothes many times and I haven't ever been bitten.

Any day now, she will have a name, should one come to mind.

Dust and White Smoke

Before us sky and a river of white smoke. We were looking for something to follow.
We looked behind us, more sky. We couldn't follow the sky. It circled back on us wherever we went.

We followed the smoke single file, one behind the other, the one behind stepping in the footprints
of the one before so we wouldn't know we were lost. When night came
we stopped and squatted where we stood to protect our imprint in the dust.

After two days of this the smoke dispersed. After that we knew not in which direction we travelled. They were all the same, across the dust.

On the third day a cloud passed. We were by now walking so slowly we moved as one,
one shifting mound of dust.

On the fourth day a drop of rain fell from the third day's cloud. It caused not one ripple in the dust.
We waited. Not another drop fell.

On the fifth day we were possessed by a whirlwind, a dervish.
It disturbed our footprints but kept us moving through the dust.

On the sixth day a wall rose before us. We went no farther.

On the seventh day we circled the wall until the footprints of the one behind became
the footprints of the one before, a hoop. We stopped where we stood.
All that flowed was our blood. There was no white smoke.

On the eighth day we raised our eyes to the sky and stomped our feet on the ground.
The wall crumbled into dust.

On the ninth day someone called out, "A gate opens, a gate opens, a gate opens!" three times.
We entered the gate, eyes to the sky, watching for smoke. Our footsteps were unruly.
The one before left no footprints for the one behind to follow.

On the tenth day we saw it, the river of white smoke, and followed it with our eyes
back down to the inner city where we now stood.

On the eleventh day we walked in circles toward the source of the smoke towards the center of the city, towards a mound of black earth.

On the twelfth day we stopped where we stood and sat - nine circles, nine times nine deep - around
the mound of black earth.

On the thirteenth day we saw on the mound of black earth, a pile of grey ashes.
Atop it, one red burning coal. Upon the red burning coal, one tiny twig.

"The last burning twig!" Nine times nine voices fell - nine ripples deep - in the dust
around the mound of black earth. Still rising, the river of white smoke.

Buddy's Van

Here's Errol Linton himself beside the van with a couple of band members. They've just arrived in York and are getting ready to set up for the night's gig at The Speakeasy. Buddy is probably in the driver's seat. Resting.

The following morning, Buddy drove the band to the Knockengorroch Music Festival in Scotland. And then, on the next following morning, Buddy drove the Blues Vibe all the way down to Chichester at the southern end of the land in West Sussex. Here's Little George Sueref asking the question the answer to which everyone wanted to know hours ago, "Are we there yet?"

Mosgo's

After York, after Knockengorroch on the last Saturday in August, Adam goes back to California, borrows Lib's guitar, gets in Marlan's old ranch truck and heads down the road to Mosgo's. A London pub it's not - it's a cool little coffee shop complete with local artwork hanging on the walls, computers linked by wireless internet, lots of freshly baked pastries, and an efficient sound man.  No beer, but nobody minds. The music is great and everyone enjoys themselves, Adam and audience alike.

In a few days Adam will be back in London and on his way to a music festival with Errol Linton and the Blues Vibe in Buddy's van, not Marlan's pick-up truck, but this night he's playing the Blues in a small town in northern California and they like it.