progress of a portrait. day 2

progress of a portrait. July 16, 2009

work in progress

this clumsy living...

So many camels kneel to take their burdens,
what choice do we have but to go down?

The salmon has to weave through so many waters
before she can return to her old home.

So many stammerers labor to speak one word.

from a poem by Robert Bly

wings of the morning

If I take the wings of the morning,
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
Even there shall thy hand lead me,
and thy right hand shall hold me.

Psalm 139: 9-10 KJV

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