STRANGE WEAVING OF PURPOSEFULNESS AND BEAUTY

I often think about art and the value it adds to our lives.

At times art-making seems like such a pointless exercise and I question the value I place on beauty - whether it's shaping clay, making a painting, taking a photograph, singing an opera or crafting words.

At the other end of the pendulum, I'm swept up by an all-consuming urgency to create something out of nothing - feeling as close as I can to the Divine, knowing that act to be a confirmation of my created-in-the-image-of Godness. No one can express this turmoil and creative angst better than one of my favourite artists, Madeleine L'Engle (from her book Two-Part Invention):

"I do not want ever to be indifferent to the joys and beauties of this life. For through these, as through pain, we are enabled to see purpose in randomness, pattern in chaos. We do not have to understand in order to believe that behind the mystery and the fascination there is love.

But love has pitched her mansion in
The place of excrement;
For nothing can be sole or whole
That has not been rent (Yeats)

There are many times when the idea that there is indeed a pattern seems absurd wishful thinking. Random events abound. There is much in life that seems meaningless. And then, when I can see no evidence of meaning, some glimpse is given which reveals the strange weaving of purposefulness and beauty.

In the face and weight of present misfortune, the voice of the individual artist may seem perhaps of no more consequence than the whirring of crickets in the grass, but the arts do live continuously, and they live literally by faith; their names and their shapes and their uses and their basic meanings survive unchanged in all that matters through times of interruption, diminishment, neglect; they outlive governments and creeds and societies, even the very civilizations that produced them. They cannot be destroyed altogether because they represent the substance of faith and the only reality. They are what we find when the ruins are cleared away. And even the smallest and most incomplete offering at this time can be a proud act in defense of that faith."

Today I will add my stone to that altar, burn my stack of carefully gathered experiences and build with small acts of faith - may it be a worthy offering!

AFRICA IS NOT A SKIN YOU CAN SHED

bone marrow fusion and cruel sucking despair
richest of riches
poorest of poor
warmest of warmth
cruelest of cold

lurks in the blood of your beating calling again
walk away? forget?
born of this soil
bounded by ties
stronger than old

unquenched spirited look my doleful suffering state
screaming defiant still
treacherous traitor skin
raptured rapist
war of enemy and kin

Africa is not a skin you can shed­

OLD MAN OCTOPI

                                                            graybeard gangly octopi

                                                            staring at me old-man-eye

                                                            behind him inky soggy sky

                                                            blotchy violent violet rust

                                                            breathing oceans dangly bust

                                                            stirring milky daddy dust

                                                            rasta's bloated body bag

                                                            moving such a bloody drag

                                                            trying utmost not to sag

                                                            spongy sucker shake toupee

                                                            frolic frantic bay to bay

                                                            harbour hippo anchored quay

                                                            pouting louting parrots’ beak

                                                            camo'd creepy calamari squeak

                                                            floater boater alien deep

                                                            mantled mollusk mighty toad

                                                            remember drilling silly hole

                                                            dismember rancid roiling ’bode

                                                            tri-heart

                                                            die-hard

                                                            friend of nautilus

                                                            where, oh where to, cephalopod?

Winter is dead

Funny how we only really start appreciating something when we realise that it can possibly be lost or even worse, once it's forever lost.

That is how I feel about sunlight at the moment. I love the feeling of the sun on my skin and my favourite kind of morning is when I can walk around in the garden basking in beautiful light. Many epic fables invoke the light of the sun as the essence of well being. Narnia is doomed to an eternal winter under the sway of the White Queen. The Game of Thrones centers around an anticipated hideous deep winter.

I am considering moving away from sunny South Africa to the land of relentless winter, Canada. It's as if I'm trying to grasp as much sun as possible; as if I can store it in some secret place deep within my being. But lo, I cannot...

Flowers store the memory of the sun in their roots and that is what awakens them to bloom. This image of my sunny daffodil is the only way I can store images of sun and light in my heart...

“She turned to the sunlight
And shook her yellow head,
And whispered to her neighbor:
'Winter is dead'.”
(A.A.Milne - When we were very young)


Let there be light!

EXULTATION is the going
Of an inland soul to sea,
Past the houses, past the headlands,
Into deep eternity!
Bred as we, among the mountains,
Can the sailor understand
The divine intoxication
Of the first league out from land?

This is one of my favourite Emily Dickinson poems and it's never been truer than right now - I really miss being close to the beach! I love the North West's wild landscapes and magnificent cloud formations, but there's just something about the sea... It clears my head and draws me in when I get scattered all over because of life's frantic pace or when I lose touch with what is vital. Looking at these images I exult in the beauty of beaches, hazy ocean breezes, caramelized sand, and pristine light. How I miss my precious Cape Town friends!

I love CLOUDS and TREES. Here's a sampling of some of the images I took with my phone.

“The humble Cumulus humilis - never hurt a soul.”

― Gavin Pretor-Pinney, The Cloudspotter's Guide

Braam, Adele & Klara

This is a shoot I did for Braam, Adele, and Klara. Klara did not cry once while shooting and in the middle of the session peacefully dozed off. She's got huge dolls eyes - actually, it was a bit disconcerting because her eyes are larger than life! What a lovely family!