a happy list

Dear Dawnley,

Will you see this post? If so, when? It took me a couple months to notice the last time you posted on this blog. In fact, I deleted all my other blogs, but this one I still have faith in. And today, I feel like sharing a happy list. 10 things that make me happy, the 10 things I thought of first:

1. My baby sleeping cuddled up with me in a sling, with her hand under her cheek against my chest.
2. Evening walks in the cemetery by our house with my husband’s arm around my waist.
3. Organizing my home office.
4. Reading past journals, especially the ones from high school and childhood (especially the one where I wrote, probably as a 6-year old, "I wich it was when I was three beace then things went beter." ...nostalgia, anyone?)
5. The pine trees on top of the hills I see from my window.
6. New shoes that only cost 6 dollars.
7. Summer storms, especially when the evening sun lights up the raindrops like crystals.
8. Making a tasty, healthy, and satisfying dinner without a recipe.
9. Wearing my hair curled.
10. Seeing my baby smile at her daddy when he comes home from work.

Love,
Kirsten

Centered on a clean street like a freeway, there were buildings.
At the left of the street. Where she stood they were at the end of the city.
The street stood clean. No car's nor people walking down side walks.
In the horizon stood nothing but a cement bridge in the distance. An over pass.
She looked towards the horizon where the over pass stood. Watching the sky that stood the same.
A foggy musky clouded thick sky. No sun in sight.
The day was a dreary held no color.
Black's. Whites. Gray.
She watched the horizon for some time.
Listening. Waiting. Watching.
Her knees buckle & bend into a metal chair beneath her.
Sharing shelter under umbrella light.
Alone.

She wasn't alone.
In this chair.
Ten or fifteen feet behind her & the still standing horizon. Someone was there.
A significant gray jacket.
Then She falls asleep.
Sleeps in the dream. She could have woken up. Could have tossed then turned. Trying to fall into sleep again. She might have...She thinks she might have...
Rise & she wakes. Gazing, still looking towards the same horizon where the overpass stands.
It starts. The spill of rain.
Not the kind of rain that drip drops from above till it finally pours but, It was the kind of rain that you can see in the distance that approaches.
Moving. Approaching. Coming. Approaching.
It approached, She saw it & then She woke.
Woke uneasy.
Standing.
Moving from the chair.
Walking back towards the city.
Both the boy & i.

I have never seen anything more beautiful & decrepit.
Caitlin Hackett is nothing more than fascinating.

12.2.10

Stand with your feet open.
Stand on the sides.
Stand on the left.
Stand on the right.
Stand with your feet wide open.

-R. Dawn Smith

Dear Dawnley,

Remember how we use to be pen pals? I am sort of thinking of this blog as a collection of letters... I always loved yours.

I want to share this picture with you. I'd never seen the painting until I found it in the MoMA (the New York Museum of Modern Art) last month. It's another Gustav Klimt. It brings back lovely memories of laying down in the grass at the park or on a front lawn and staring up at the light shifting through stained glass twigs and leaves. I am in love with trees. They are sturdy and romantic. In this painting I see them protecting me, chattering with me in all their flighty shades of green, and pointing out to me where the light is, when it's time for me to go.

Does it seem like anything special to you?

....blur the line between fine art and body art....

For as many tattooed friends ive run into, had and dated ive never been fond of the idea of getting a tattoo myself until a particular artist's abstract design and work came into my hands.
Take a look at her website! It's lovely.

http://www.amandawachobtattoo.com/

nearby there must be a jeweled tree

We've all seen this, right?

But did you ever read this nice poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti ?

I wanted to include it here, but I can't reproduce the visual effect with blogger technology, and the visual effect is very important.

I have always been fascinated by the places where visual art intersects with literary. My favorite kind of art is words evoking images or images words.

I love paintings, and I always want to write about them. I want to create the same feelings that paintings do but with words instead of paint.

Therefore I have also often wished I had Synesthesia, a "neurologically-based condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway." or in other words, you see the number 4 and it makes you think of the color green, or something along those lines. In my terms...I would see this painting and think of some incredible perfect words that I could use to etch the painting into the minds of others the way it was etched into mine.

I don't know if Ferlinghetti is a synesthete per se, but he has that talent that I covet for using one sense to express another.

By the way, Dawnley, I think that's what this blog is all about. You tap the visual medium and I try the written and we experiment both ways. What do you think?