Writer's Island 02/29/08 "Empowered"

Declaration

by Constance

Exultation—

Exclamation—

Hear now what I say!

From this day forward

I shall not be afraid.

No more dread of laughter,

no more fear of pain

It’s time to start the process

of living

once again.

I don't know who pushed,

and caused me down

to slide, but

I have my suspects,

they're living deep inside.

Corgi Thursday!

By Anonymous Request. :)

Maximus


Merlin (With Max accent)

Everyone's A Critic

Anubis D Cat inspects my work on the Wyoming Spring Socks. His whole stance suggests disdain, from the dyeing to the design to the knitting. Despite his withering disapproval, I forged ahead and finished the socks. They are a gift, and will soon be in New Zealand with Elaine, who gets to vacation there for three weeks. The other reason the socks are green? I'm jealous. I want to go to New Zealand with them. :(



Yes, they look huge, but they aren't really, they're just on sock blockers, stretching out after a final wash. Interesting striping, I'm never sure how some of the dye jobs will look on a finished product, the color variations here are much more subtle than the picture shows. 3 shades of green, and two of brown. Of course, everything looks good in a skein.

I've dyed my colorways of Wyoming Spring, Summer, Autumn, and all I have left to do is a Winter colorway. Could turn out slush gray, scoria red, and traffic cone orange at this rate...

Yet Another Reason I Love Wyoming

The incredibly awesome, super-duper sky. Where on clear nights, you can see the Milky Way, and oh, yeah, nifty things like a lunar eclipse. Now I know why eclipses freaked our ancestors out. A nice copper-amber shade crept across the moon, little by little. Coyotes howled, and the wind rose, then fell into an eerie silence just as the moon was obscured. You have to freeze your butt off to see it, but hey, good things come to those who can operate a camera with wool mittens on.

Right?

Of course, it took me about as long to find my tripod, drive towards Montana to a dark spot, and set up as it did for the eclipse to reach this phase.

According to my old reliable copy of CyberSky, the dot in the lower left is Saturn, the one on the right is Regulus. After paying homage to my old friend, Orion, and refilling my awe-o-meter on the Milky Way, I fled back to town and the warmth of indoors.

Thank you for viewing another episode of "Whim-based Photography" Theater. Donations to the Pneumonia Fund would be greatly appreciated...

Writer's Island 2/19/08 Time Travel

Lithic

by Constance

Pot sherds scattered through

the site, spiral petroglyphs

etched on basalt. Burned

rock refuse among the midden.

Too early for post molds, late

for Clovis, the leaf-shaped,

fluted points place us in Folsom.

The debitage yields a mass of flint

flakes, a few blades. Survey

discovers a rock cairn, leading

to an abrupt cliff several miles

away. ............................Buffalo jump.

In the pit— dart, spear, arrow tips,

knives, and bones, layers and levels

of bison bone, exposed, twenty

feet deep. When my spirit leaps

from my body, let my material

remains rest among the relics

of the past, and become an integral

part of the plains stratigraphy.

Writer's Island 2/12/08 "Changed"

Monumental

by Constance

Sculpture today tries

to distress and alarm.

It should back off,

and allow us to gape,

awestruck on its

monolithic vestiges

as we once did at great

paintings from dead

masters. Museums

carry Carrara marble

busts, gloriously veined,

polished oak and walnut

statues, reclining, age-

darkened bronze generals,

enameled and gilded Egyptian

glass. Bisque fired raku,

black-figure amphoras,

ivory netsuke.

In the Modern wing,

quartz rocks are dropped

into a pile of carefully

arranged abstraction,

clashing with artistically

set jumbles of junk throw

away, usually for good

reason, now resurrected.

Mixed up rusted metals,

plastic poured in molds

to replicate the living

palm trees outside the

window. We gaze intently,

desperate to connect to last

week’s trash, cheeks red

and strained. Equally

embarrassed, contemporary

sculpture stares back, tail

wagging, an anxious, seven-

legged puppy sculpted

from the brush of

Hieronymus Bosch.

Writer's Island, 02/03/08

Sympathetic Magic

by Constance

Having been connected

for so many years, I find,

much to my chagrin, we

continue to react upon one

another. The relationship

is long severed, such a thing

should not be possible,

given the physical distance.

I am not unsympathetic, just

bemused by cause-and-effect.

Cleaning the closet I found

several of your shirts, lost,

in the back. I took them apart,

ripped carefully along seam

lines around the shoulders

to make square rags of cotton,

I planned to craft a quilt

at a later date and time, not

some witches ladder. You tore

your rotor cuff that week. I

don’t know what possessed me.

In consideration, I fashioned

a puppet from the plaid cloth,

careful to sew the seams

with small, precise stitches.

A Game of Chicken

I should be writing. I should be working on my Year of the Rat print. I should be finishing the Lace Socks from Hell. I should be doing anything but dabbling around with paint. I just realized how tired I am of eating chicken for dinner...


Of all the paintings, on all the drafting boards in the world, THIS had to emerge from mine.

I blame the gnomes.