fragile wings

The wings we have are so fragile
they can break from just
one word, or
a glance void
of love.

I wanted to live in the cloister of light's silence
because, is it not true, the heart
is so fragile and shy.

Catherine of Siena
translated by Daniel Ladinsky

study for icarus series

study for icarus series, originally uploaded by Mark Horst.

Is the story of Icarus just another way of reminding us that rising up will lead to no good and that we'd all be better off keeping our heads down and our feet on the ground? Is that what Pieter Bruegel wants us to know?

Maybe the story points to the inevitability of this golden, flighty, puer energy--and the need to rise up in order to escape from the prison of life's every-day-ness? What if the story says that this flying becomes it's own trap and that falling is also a kind of freedom. What if this falling and death is how life begins?

j.l with hand on soulder

j.l with hand on soulder, originally uploaded by Mark Horst.

There is something here that speaks into me: is it the sense of being bound and working for freedom and motion; the sense of being in shadow and emerging into light; the sense of struggle, of wrestling, of searching, of finding; is there a question held in this image about the difficulty of being in the world? whatever it is, I can't get enough of it. If I could eat this drawing I would swallow it in one gulp.

jewel-like beauty

Any Chance Meeting

In every gathering, in any chance
meeting on the street, there is a

shine, an elegance rising up. Today
I recognized that that jewel-like

beauty is the presence, our loving
confusion, the glow in which watery

clay gets brighter than fire, the
one we call the Friend. I begged,

“Is there a way into you, a ladder?”
“Your head is the ladder. Bring

it down under your feet.” The mind,
this globe of awareness, is a starry

universe that when you push off from
it with our foot, a thousand new

roads become clear, as you yourself do
at dawn, sailing through the light.

Rumi

that wildness of heart

“He was a reasonable man and he believed that there was love in his heart.
There was not. Nor does God whisper through the trees. His voice is not to be mistaken. When men hear it they fall to their knees and their souls are riven and they cry out to Him and there is no fear in them but only that wildness of heart that springs from such longing and they cry out to stay his presence for they know at once that while godless men may live well enough in their exile those to whom he has spoken can contemplate no life without Him but only darkness and despair…”

from "The Crossing"
Cormac McCarthy

lovett children. first state

lovett children. first state, originally uploaded by Mark Horst.

I'm working on this portrait... I like the lightness in it--and the gesture of the children. There are some areas to clarify, even though I plan to keep it more suggestive than polished.

looking in no. 3

looking in no.3, originally uploaded by Mark Horst.

piling everything on an altar

“To see God everywhere is to see Him nowhere. We go from day today, one day much like the next, and then on a certain day all unannounced we come upon a man or we see this man who is perhaps already known to us and is a man like all men but who makes a certain gesture of himself that is like the piling of one’s goods upon an altar and in this gesture we recognize that which is buried in our hearts and is never truly lost to us nor ever can be and it is this moment, you see. This same moment. It is this which we long for and are afraid to seek and which alone can save us.”

from The Crossing
Cormac McCarthy

nourishment like light

from Rumi
(Sheikh Sarraze comes in from the wilderness)

…There is nourishment like
bread that feeds one part

of your life and nourishment like light for another. There
are many rules about restraint

with the former, but only one rule for the latter, Never be
satisfied. Eat and drink

the soul substance, as a wick does with the oil it soaks in.
Give light to the company.

journeys still to be ours

A group of us were painting in Pepin, Wisconsin last weekend at Barbara McIlrath's farm. I found this poem at Barb's. It's how I feel painting: "imagine! imagine! the long and wondrous journeys still to be ours." The poem is Mary Oliver's.


Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me

Last night
the rain
spoke to me
slowly, saying,

what joy
to come falling
out of the brisk cloud,
to be happy again

in a new way
on the earth!
That’s what it said
as it dropped,

smelling of iron,
and vanished
like a dream of the ocean
into the branches

and the grass below.
Then it was over.
The sky cleared.
I was standing

under a tree.
The tree was a tree
with happy leaves,
and I was myself,

and there were stars in the sky
that were also themselves
at the moment
at which moment

my right hand
was holding my left hand
which was holding the tree
which was filled with stars

and the soft rain—
imagine! imagine!
the long and wondrous journeys
still to be ours.

Mary Oliver