WEEDING AS A SPIRITUAL PRACTISE

It always seems as if I've never seen it before, that first intimation of

spring, and though I have watched for it, it always takes me by

surprise, as if inadvertant. There is always a day which mixes barrenness

with yearning, a wild cooped up feeling much like despair, and

another day which is more like hope. There is the day when to

step outside is to be born again. And the next day is to be born anew.

In the midst of this is early-spring gardening.

The lawn from the house to the pond is under old oaks; I am perpetually

cleaning up after them. Fall is a blizzard of acorns and leaves, like raking

back the sea, and now we are all twiggy from the spring storms. I rake it inch

by inch as my old Dad instructs me, the old rustic and his idiot yokel son

in absurd straw hats with brains of straw--or so I see us. This happens to be

a day of wild surmise, and while I rake, I grumble Sufi prayers,

so low does this earth seem to me, and how annoying do I find

the my Dad's instructions,f the sort made by the profoundly deaf.

This is rude, but I truly believe at moments that

it is deafness by design on my Dad's part, so the way things will be done

will be the right way to do them, which is his way. Even in his dotage,

however, it is perfectly clear to me that he is an altogether more

cheerful and reasonable human being than I am. I see this

from on high, as it were, which does not entirely improve my mood but

leavens it.Hence my role as bumpkin son--whathisname,

boyfriend of Mopsa.

The Sufi Prayers are no doubt an attempt to address God via a different

departmental mail-service and circumvent the Baptist vote.

Whether it is they or the raking which improve my mood or if--

as I believe-activity and prayer are ideal combinations--by the time I

am finished I am glad.And so it is every spring.

Every spring the hesitant unfolding of color from monochromaticism.

Every spring the budbreak shimmer, the rustling undercurrent of color.

All the while color has been changing its carpet undercover.

(2)

Throughout the winter something has been in bloom, from sasanquas to

mahonias to witch hazels to edgeworthia now to jonquils, quince,

camelia japonicae,forsythia. These early blooms

are brought into the house as if to cast out winter.The pond,

meanwhile, has been a curious claret color where it

reflects the maples abud. On the branches of the maple

themselves, the buds are disguised by threadlike leaflets

the color of thistle---which is to say no color at all--but

reflected in the pond they appear a clear wine red.

Otherwise the recent rains have polished the pond to an obsidian mirror

--which ripples!--the ideal metier for the reflection of massive cloud

cleaner than clean, Aeolian white, the Doric columns of the firmament.

3Weeding as a Spiritual Discipline:

.

Who I thought you might be was not as you proved; I am unamused.

Now I weed to remove you from my thoughts, thwart amour-propre,

and to stop telling you off to myself, and pull instead

this barbed weed from the bed, that chickweed or insidious

privet.

These are the evil deeds which I have thought,

the bridge I wished to push you off, the barbed thorn or bristle,

the briary patch to catch and scratch, the fire-ants' mongst melonplants,

the hidden thorn. I shake the clump of Johnson grass

and gradually you pass from concern.

The bed no longer overgrown

has benefitted from your scorn,

and I no longer mourn.

SOLITAIRES ANONYMOUS

The organization of which I am the only member, whose thousand-step

program consists of many small obsessive rituals, including the making of art.

The predominant belief of this religion is in the aesthetic afterlife,

the one in which one is appreciated, or understood,or even paid.The

emblem of this organization is Eros in shabby attire, much as in

THE SYMPOSIUM. We meet often.

"I HAD THE IMAGE OF A BLUEGOLD DOME"

" I had the image of a bluegold dome , those colors weaving in distinct

strands to the center of an oculus. But the painting came out blue

upon blue. Lovely, yes, but lovely in a way I have already

put behind me. It is too much of a time when I believe that
Paradise was nearby, in bliss, and now though I am not as sad

as I was, or jaded as I was once, I am puzzled...should a painting

affirm what one is unable to?

There is this blue Paradise. I did not know I was nostalgic for it

---if I am--and there it is. It may be done.

As I drove to the gym, I wished for someone else to tell me yes or no.

And thought of Francis Bacon who also wished for another painter--

working on the same problems--to verify or question the work

performed solitarily, without a yes or no. Who would this second self

be? It is impossible to imagine him or her considering what

one knows of other peoples' views. And earlier in history a common

language was shared, and to some degree a commonly shared criterion. ..

--No, that is not so; think of the sterile classicism which faulted Rembrandt

in Amsterdam c 1630. We think of earlier times as being simpler in their

demands, which was not at all how it must have felt.

Of one thing I am sure: art historians always oversimplify WHERE things come

from ,"influence" . Who would have thought that Rembrandt loved Mantegna

and faithfully copied an etching of his ? But he did, and such a thing is

in your hand thereafter. For the record, I remembered a Jean Fouquet,

and The Fall of the Rebel Angels in the missal illustrated

by the Limbourg brothers for the Duc De Berry, and the Oculus of the

Camera Della Sposi , and the Safavid Dynasty illustration of Mohammed's Descent

on the back of Buracq to the Throne of God.

My sacred blue paintings.

How well I remembered them, and to what degree,and to what ends is a

different matter, nor was this an attempt at a concious synthesis.Rather it was called out

and into being by a certain blue itself in some ambiguous zone between ultramarine cobalt

cerulean and that greeny-blue which is so different from them each

that in Russian color theory it counts (so I am told) as a different color

altogether."

(from a notebook of 1997)

LITTLE BLACK DRESS

Niece,

Have you noticed how in the tabloids those celebrities

cited as "fashion victims" all sprout plumes like

characters from THE GRINCH WHO STOLE CHRISTMAS, whereas

thumbs up are always accorded that little black dress?

Different people are said to be wearing it. It is said to

be by a different designer. And it is true that its

hemline varies. But close inspection proves it to

be of the same manufacture as the automaton who wears it.

In the future the balm of forgetfulness will be put on the popcorn

and we'll watch the same movie over and over again.

PAUL VALERY:MORNING

(Waking)

How gentle the light at waking, how lovely this living blue!

The word "Pure"opens my lips.

That is the name I give you.

Here, linked to the day that never yet has been, are the

perfect thoughts that will never be...

The Universal is a seed, the Universal experienced

without particulars, the Universal awaking sketchily in gold,

unblemished yet by individual affect.

I am born every where, far from this

Identity, in every sparkling light upon this hem, this fold,

the edge of this thread, that mass of lucent water. As yet

and effortlessly you are no more than a delicious effect

of light and expectation, a miracle of fire silk smoke

and slate, a complication of simple noises,

O Day!

...Why this morning should I choose myself? Why

must I shoulder again my goods and ills? Suppose

I were to abandon my name, my faiths, my habits,

and my chains, like the dreams of night, as one

who wishing to disappear and begin again,

leaves his clothes and passport at the waters edge?

(from POEMS IN THE ROUGH translated

from the French by Hilary Corke)

MARIA LUNA

(1)

We found the cavern's entry

halfway up the mountain

where the cedars grow thin,

and snow lasts 'til June.

There in the ground was buried

a cornice without inscription

it felt like a tomb though Maria Luna

swore it was not.

Rather the way to the chapel

of her ancestors,

those now disappeared from this earth,

there where a cure

may be found

And so we followed her first

through a cave which stank

of bat guano,

a tall hallway to judge by its echo,

and then through tunnels

which had to be crawled

o how it felt like

the weight of the world

was soon to be upon us

crushing our breath

only she knew the way

down the rickety stairway

or could find

the key to the door

at the floor of a well

carrying the lantern,

the vocative firelight,

among the mine's striations

refracted like a prism

or mineral bride

(sleep old Niobe sleep,

rock and cradled in grief)

2

Beyond the moonbeamish world of artifact,

stalactite and crystal,

Maria Luna where have you lead us?

Beyond reflective pools

in limestone grottoes

under the hill,

these tall columns

are caryatids if women,

atlantides, or Atlases, if men,

all of another age,our ancients:

but should they wake the world will end.

(sleep old Niobe sleep,

rock and cradle your grief)

3

Still I become as a moveless stone

or a nymph barked up in a tree,

salt of old time has stained my tongue

how the heart hardens

there is no rhyme

this is what turns when the spindle's done

the waters of Lethe are white

(sleep old Niobe sleep

rock and cradle your grief)

4

Nothing will be remembered when I am one,

nothing, not even the smallest detail,

simplest pleasure of simplest taste

all quite forgot and never replaced,

the rose aroma or fecal smell,

all quite forgot when I am one

when I am one I won't be alone

not with all that I've forgot,

neither the title or plot

neither the teller or tale,

neither the song or the spell

neither the snow or the sun

all will make sense when nothing is known

when I am one with what I've forgot,

I will be like a stone in the sun

who does not care

how the battle has gone

neither the teller or tale,

neither the song or the spell,

neither the title or plot,

neither the snow or sun

I will be one with what I am not

nothing will be what I am not

neither the snow or the sun,

neither the song or the spell,

neither the teller or tale,

neither the title or plot,

I will be one with what I've forgot,

I'll be like the snow on the stone

and the snow on the stone in the sun

(sleep old Niobe sleep

rocked and cradled in grief)

(march 11/ 2010)

( from a fragment in an old notebook)

SPEM IN ALIUM(2)

There is a Palace which is also a kaleidoscope of gold.

The pilgrim entering it enters the rose of heaven petal by petal

turning on the sacred wheel, and with each step of this roundelay

comes closer and closer to the eye of God.

To enter this eye is oblivion,

To then be restored

A component of the unity, a ray of the emanation,

swirling in the dance, the celestial machinery.

(from the margin of a notebook of 1998)

A PEOPLE OF STATUES

Just as there was in Rome, in addition to the Roman People,

a people of statues, so there is in addition to this real world

another world, an almost mightier world of delusion in

which most people live.

(Goethe)

LIKE TEARS

languages and languages

blowing him like the fluff

of a newborn chick

across a widening chasm

funneling like a tornado

reeling on wheels of fire

enlarging across the plains

like an arabesque of mist

electro-shocked on his eyeballs

less than a leaf, a speck,

a smidgen,

like tears

(from the margins of an old notebook)

MAGNIFICATION THEORY

Whereby nothing is actually "abstract" or for that matter ideally

representational, whatever criterion might be applied to form the latter (!).

Rather everything is perceived as through a degree of magnification,

ranging from the subatomic to the telescopic. At some degree of magnification

between these both every abstract painting is actually representational

or vice versa. Calibrate this to the degree of personal optometry and

Van Eyck and Ingres can swiftly be seen to need different corrective

lenses ,as it were. Impressionist glaucoma, expressionist astigmatism

all might be accounted for on a physiological basis. All painterly perceptions would

be seen as being as typological as a set of fingerprints, or the laser-scanning

of the iris of the eye for security reasons.

FROM A SPIRAL NOTEBOOK:FACE

News Item:

Tokyo:

For couples who worry about how their unborn child will look,

or how they will look after 40 years of marriage, and electric

company says it has the answer.

Matsuhita Electric Industrial company says it has developed

a computer program that can use photographs of faces to

predict the aging process, or turn the clock back to

produce a more youthful image.

By combining the facial characteristics of the prospective

parents, it can produce a portrait of the likely offspring,

the company says.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

It can not predict a deformity, or devastating disease, or

even a minor sorrow. Yet these appear on the face.

(1992)

FROM A SPIRAL NOTEBOOK

Snow. The willows have begun to bud. They are a curious green/gold/ocre

(a callow sexy color) and hairy. There on the pond is an archipelago of

snow, a funny deco swirl with empty round places in the middle of it

like Mickey Mouse ears. The shape is so like something I've been

working on in this week's drawings that I laugh aloud with recognition

when I see it. If God had written I love you in footprints in the snow or in

pigeons crossing the sky, I would not be more taken with it. I think.

I stood on the Japanese bridge and memorized it. Memorized also

the way the overlying branches made shadows at the ice's edge and

how--wonder to behold--the pattern of the melts was almost identical

to the shadows, kind of a visual pun yet again. Nature in perpetual

contrapuntal imitation of it self, inside and out, and on all levels

signalling processes and imagery on others. There is inside and

outside, of course, but thousands of gradients between--semi-imi-inside

and vice versa. At anyrate, I smiled at the ice melting on the pond

untilI got cold. Then went to the museum where I studied a

Roman Sarcophagous with Dionysus and entourage (Dionysus seated on

a panther)and the ruined busts of many great Romans, including Hadrian,

and Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus, and Etruscan bronzes--

there is a jar handle made in the form of two winged boys carrying

their dead companion--and another such trio, the two youths

now wingless.

Returning home, I crossed the bridge again, but this time the snow

had sunk beneath the water, and the pattern was submerged.

(new york; feb. 1991)

A STORY OF VENICE

"...My grandmother was very beautiful, and had many lovers

even when she was quite old. A short time before she died

she was in Venice with my mother, her daughter, and one day

floating up some canal in their gondola, they saw a little

palazzo of pink marble, and my mother said," I don't believe anyone

lives there, what about trying to see the inside?""

"So they rang the bell, and an old servant came and said

that no one had lived there for years, and he would show it to

them if they liked. So they went in and upstairs to a salon which had

three windows looking over the canal and which was

decorated with fifteenth century plasterwork, white on a pale

blue background. It was a perfect room. My grandmother seemed

strangely moved and stood for a long time in silence. At last she said

to my mother,"If in the third drawer of that bureau there

is a filigree box containing a small gold key on a black velvet

ribbon, the house belongs to me.""

"And my mother looked, and there it was, and it did..."

(Nancy Mitford:The Pursuit of Love)