Heart Like a Compass Needle

These days my directionless heart twitches like a compass needle. The mind wants to hold it firm -- steady north -- but the heart longs for the wild meander; wants to skip a beat; to race, breathless; to dance to its own syncopated music. Shrugging off the mind's stubborn grip, where will the heart point? Where will it wander? And toward whom?

I want to feel my life, even when it jangles the heart. I want to exist fully, intensely, inside its expanding borders. The world has suddenly opened up in all directions, revealing both turquoise seas and thorned thickets, blinding sunlight and startling darkness. I want to look both joys and shadows directly in the eyes. My pupils constantly dilate and contract. Which way shall I head out into this flickering light?

As guidance, my friends and family offer amazing advice, comforting wisdom, and their own experiences. One of my "invisible friends," superb singer and songwriter Wendy Lewis, came to me as an unexpected gift through poet Guy Reed. A fellow participant at a group Riverine anthology reading in Poughkeepsie, Guy thought Wendy and I would appreciate each other's creativity. We absolutely did. We have never met or even heard each other's speaking voice, but I have listened obsessively to Wendy's powerful singing and lyrics on CD's of her music she assembled and mailed to me. She gave permission for me to quote some of her wise words from our e-mail correspondence.

Chris: I like what you said: "You seem lighter -- and denser, all at once." You're insightful ... that sums it up somehow. I do feel lighter, but more intense, more focused, more me. After all those months of being in robot warrior mode, it feels good to start peeling off some of the armor. Only problem is, it makes you vulnerable. Hey, it was good/essential to get stronger, just don't want to permanently impair the sensitivity and trust.

Wendy: Yeah—"stripping off of armor" does make a person more vulnerable, but I guess I've always seen vulnerability as strength. It takes a lot of courage to surrender to ones' circumstances, roll on your back and just float down that river, trusting the current to take you somewhere, anywhere away from where you've been. The armor is all about protection—and I think both you and I would agree that life doesn't work that way for long, if ever. Clearly, from your entries over the last year, your sensitivity has been intensely illuminated and I've come to understand that trust is as ethereal as humanity is fallible.

Yes, "vulnerability as strength." Thanks, Wendy ... and thank you to all the others who have stood by me, pointing my heart in the right direction.

The above photo seemed like a good match to Wendy's words, as well as the post topic. It's another meaningful/symbolic shot, taken on July 12, 2008, a day of momentous decisions, at Ward Pound Ridge Reservation in Cross River, NY. (Yes, I will float. Onward!) To enlarge the photo, click on the image.

The Newborn Face of the Poem

At the end of August I went with three of my oldest friends to the wonderful sculpture garden at Art OMI in Ghent, New York. So many intriguing and mysterious works of art grace the fields and woods. A huge sheet of riddled metal suspended among the trees captivated us for quite a spell. The reflections were a funhouse mirror paradise. Later, the resulting self-portrait above gave me a little surprise. Examined more closely, I can see my mind being siphoned by one of the powerful black holes. When I looked even more carefully, I noted a strange little newborn face emerging from my pointed head, near the rim of the bullethole abyss. Must be the face of a poem just being born. Yikes -- it's slippery, somebody catch it before it vanishes into the darkness.

Saturday night I joined editor/poet/musician John Amen and The Pedestal Magazine to read at KGB Bar in NYC. Thanks, John, for the invitation to read. What a delight to be in a room crowded with people who respect and believe in the power of the poem. How rewarding to look up while sharing a prose poem and see every face actually paying serious attention. One of the pieces I read was "They Seek an Inky Elixir," which first appeared in Cerise Press. It was just recorded and is now available online at Whale Sound, a terrific new audio anthology of poetry. If you would like to hear this prose poem read by another voice, the haunted and elegant voice of Nic Sebastian, click here to listen:

They Seek an Inky Elixir

For additional references to the piece, scroll down to the July 1st post, reached by clicking "Older Posts" at the bottom of the page. The words to the prose poem are there, with links to Cerise Press.

The photo was taken 8/28/10 at Art OMI in Ghent, New York. Click on image to enlarge.

YES

YES.

This photo was taken in my yard on May23, 2009. I have been eagerly awaiting the perfect day to post it. To enlarge, merely click on the image. Feel lighter? Oh yeah.

Orange Unfurling

I love this blossom! Just took this photo a little while ago in my neighbor's vegetable garden, on a stop on my walk. I went back uphill to get my camera to capture its intricate unfurling. It makes me want to draw.

From Walt Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry":

The glories strung like beads on my smallest
sights and hearings, on the walk in the street
and the passage over the river.

-- Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)

And a perfect thought -- why not? -- from Whitman's "Song of the Open Road":

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am
good fortune.

-- Walt Whitman

Click on photo to enlarge image.

The Staircase in Her Eye

While doing sit-ups the other day, I looked up to see this riveting reflection. My line of vision and the angle of light combined to create this collage of my younger and older daughters' self-portraits from high school. I love the way my older daughter's face looks down the stairs from the landing into the eye of my younger daughter and the way my younger daughter's eye contains the staircase leading to my older daughter. The way my eye holds them both.

Here are some related words from John Steinbeck:

Man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.

-- John Ernst Steinbeck, from The Grapes of Wrath (1939)

The picture was taken 7/25/10. Click on photo to enlarge image.

Nature's Infinite Book of Secrecy

In nature's infinite book of secrecy
A little I can read.

-- William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra (Act I, Scene ii.)
The Soothsayer's words

Apparently, I keep reading the same passages over and over in nature's infinite book. Every summer I take countless photos of the wine berries on my road, gorgeous in color and texture at every stage of development. I never tire of those multi-hued jewels that emerge from the purple-whiskered casings. I keep coming back to the crimson, orange and chartreuse of the ripening berries, glittering against the green foliage.

The picture was taken on the 4th of July this year, uphill from my house. Click on the photo to enlarge the image.

Box of Green Light

There were plenty of twinkling lights at my cousin's graduation party, but there, in the shadows of the garage: a box of green light, glowing like a treasure chest of kryptonite. In reality, it was a cardboard box of glow sticks and glow toys. One of the youngest cousins shared my delight at discovering this container of celebratory light. Inspired, he quickly and decisively selected pieces from the collection to create a bold and clean design on the floor. It looked like a neon hieroglyph. Then he wanted to photograph it. At eight, what an eye! I loved observing the young soul of an artist, glowing.

An artist observes, selects, guesses and synthesizes.

-- Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, from a letter to A. S. Suvorin, October 27, 1888

Click on the photographs to enlarge the images.