Not Knowing

I didn’t know what I wanted to write about this afternoon. It’s Friday, the day I set aside for creative work. I’ve been lax in completing any kind of art. I’ve been culling, gathering, harvesting. Languishing while the mighty Ceres swings her scythe against the grain. I have filled countless journals with sketches and writing practices. I don’t know the end result. I do not know where I’m going. I envy artists and writers with completed bodies of work. They inspire me.

I’m reading the Three Tenets for a writing workshop this weekend. We’ll be doing two days of Writing Practice and a lot of sitting meditation. When I scribbled the daily schedule into my calendar, I could feel the resistance. I’m rereading The True Secret of Writing. I’m a few chapters into Standing at the Edge by Joan Halifax; this morning I read her blog piece Rites of Passage and the Three Tenets.

In the right light

In the right time

Everything is extraordinary.

-Aaron Rose

We all stand at the edge at some point in our lives. That place of not knowing. I’m standing at the edge of letting go of a day job I’ve held for 13 years. The edge of a geo-move next June when Liz and I pack up all of our worldly possessions and move to Montana for a year-long creative retreat. We have no idea what happens after that. It’s uncharted territory — leaving the familiar behind, cutting away the old. After nearly four decades of living in an urban Twin Cities landscape formed by glacial lakes, our new roots will break ground in the rural, more isolated and dry Bitterroot Mountain valley in western Montana.

Not knowing is letting go of preconceived notions of who I think I am and who I believe others to be. No attachments. It might look like it takes courage, but what choice do we have? Everyone tangles with birth and death. And all the messiness in between. We have little control. We are faced with choices each day for new direction. What do we choose?

We stopped at Noon for a webinar by Out of Chicago on A-Ha Moments in Flower & Plant Photography. Nine photographers spoke about the process and joy of photographing some of their favorite macro images. Grounding. Inspiring. Earthy. Perfect for the shift of Mercury into Cancer and a happy place for my Taurus Moon and Taurus rising. It’s the little things. A photograph. One footstep into Eloise Butler Wildlife Garden & Bird Sanctuary. To not know is to reconnect to the wild.

A few reminders from the photographers at the A-Ha Moments webinar:

• Take your shoes off. Go barefoot when photographing the wild.
• Details matter. Commit to work the scene. Experiment.
• Never give up on your vision.
• Pay attention to what turns your head.
• Spend time on what you love. Let yourself be taken.
• In the right light, in the right time, everything is extraordinary.  -Aaron Rose

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The Bardo

The Bardo, photograph by Debra J. Hobbs, © QuoinMonkey, August 15th, 2020.

I meant to do better. To take more Polaroids, roll more clay, shut up and write. But 2020 had other ideas. For my birthday in high summer, Liz gave me a new deck of cards — The Wild Unknown – Archetypes by Kim Krans. The art was created from the center of a dark night of the soul. I pull a card a week. Saturday, August 15th landed me in The Bardo. I was already there. What changed is my willingness to straddle the abyss, to sit in uncomfortable places — in this life and what I imagine to be the next.

In this life, a family member is recovering from COVID-19. Two long time friends are in treatment for cancer, maybe the fight of their lives. Two other friends buried their 6-month old kitten, lost to a disease of unknown origin. In this life, babies are born unseen by grandparents, couples are married on Zoom, people die unable to hold a loved one’s hand. In this life, cities explode, humans rumble and rattle, tired of gridlock, tired of the status quo.

In this life, last night we locked ourselves in the bathroom to the howls of tornado sirens and horizontal rain. In this life, we wear masks, cancel our travel plans, stack bookshelves to the top of 9-foot ceilings, rearrange our studio to hold Liz’s work-at-home office next to old Kodachrome slides and boxes of art supplies.

I am digging in. And expanding out. I am rattling old bones. Untangling ancient root systems. Beliefs are not truths. I am learning that denial is a form of grief. It’s not the Thing that is dead, but how I’ve been doing the Thing. Shine your light, luminous or liminal. That is the Leo energy of August 2020 (from Lindsay Mack’s August podcast, Tarot for the Wild Soul).

I meant to do better. Prayer flags wave against an overflow bookshelf above photographs of my great, great grandparents. I research the goddess Eris, sister of Ares, daughter of Night. I listen to old astrology tapes, a choir hymn hummed through face masks, the tingle of ghost chimes.

In the Bardo:

We may receive messages from those who are no longer with us or see visions of lives not yet lived. In the Bardo there is the potential to forgive the unforgivable, to say the unsaid, to see the unseen, to love the unloved, to let go of all the things that cause us pain. The Bardo suspends us in its spaciousness for just long enough to open us to higher wisdom. Its energy does not belong to the Earth as we know it, but rather to the Cosmic network of which we are a single thread.

—The Wild Unknown – Archetypes deck by Kim Krans

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December Bloom ∞ Looking Forward, Looking Back

December Bloom, Minneapolis, Minnesota, iPhone Shots, December 24th, 2019, photo © 2019 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

 

On Winter Solstice, after two years of dormancy and a flirt with death, the orchid bloomed. The Pacific Sunspots was a gift from Liz on a birthday that crossed decades. I remember opening the wrapper on the deck of Indria, our little cottage. We have moved into an apartment now, simplified our lives. The blooms fill me with joy.

But I have grown lax in my practices. We had been toying with the idea of meeting friends in Santa Fe this winter and signing up for a haiku retreat at Upaya Zen Center. On Christmas Eve, all the pieces came together. Plane tickets were reasonable and there were still openings. Liz and I texted our friends who were driving home from Christmas Eve dinner. We booked our flights and registered — we three were the last to sign up before the retreat was marked Full. The hair stood up on the back of our necks.

On the day after Christmas (at the New Moon Solar Eclipse), I juggled bins in the studio to try to set up a workable writing space. One old box was full of practice notebooks from Taos writing retreats. I pulled one off the top. It was marked October/December of 2006. The detail was mesmerizing; I had forgotten all the insecurities that surface in silence. It can be painful to sit with yourself.

There was a color photograph tucked into a card of a wintry gate near the pigeon roost at Mabel’s. I studied the faces of Natalie, Maria, and the 21 people who attended the four-season Intensive that year. Some have become teachers and grandparents, retired, or moved across country. Many have published their work. Several have passed on to the other side. What happens to our art and writing when we die?

I went back through the notebook with a yellow highlighter and revisited the words I had written at a different time in my life. There were writing practices about a trip to Georgia, a pilgrimage with my mother to research ancestry. We searched cemetery plots in the rain and finally found the overgrown grave of her step-sister who died shortly after birth (I’d like to turn these into a finished piece). There were practices of dribble where I never dropped down into my body. They offered up a study of the crazy minute-to-minute thoughts that go on in one’s mind.

There were writing practices about the ghosts in Mabel’s room, the four-poster bed Dennis Hopper wanted to cut up with a chainsaw, the dogs and coyotes I heard roaming the Taos wilderness at night. In the paper margins were notes on bell ringing, mudras, zafus, and zabutons, and a schedule of the day trip to the plaza and the O’Keeffe museum in Santa Fe. There was scratchy handwriting, sometimes barely legible, of erratic emotions and thoughts that spill on to the page when we stop talking.

I had forgotten so much; and remembered everything.

I’m excited for the possibilities of 2020: photography and practice, completing finished pieces, attending the haiku retreat in Santa Fe. It will be hard to drop into the discipline I once felt at the core. I could fail, but I have faith. When you look back a decade at your younger self, the creeping roots that once clawed their way into rich, black earth searching for nourishment spring forward like orchid tendrils in the sun — fortified aerial roots.

We were required to keep a log that year of our practices, a daily reminder of the commitment to ourselves and our writing. I’ll leave that practice from the old notebook in the comments below, a reminder from the ghosts of December past: Continue under all circumstances. Don’t be tossed away. Make positive effort for the good.

 

 

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Handwritten notes in my October/December 2006 practice notebook from dharma talks and one-on-ones with Natalie Goldberg. I am grateful for everything she has taught me. And for the community of artists, writers, and contributors who helped create redRavine. It is a place I can return to feel grounded.

• Follow the person behind you
• Everyone feels insecure. It’s just what happens when we sit.
• Rest. Make space.
• Don’t push. Let yourself be.
• Writing is manual labor of the mind.
• The best kind of structure should be organic.
• What can you be patient about? Make a list to remind yourself.
• Crash through what holds you back.
• Be willing to wait a long time for understanding.
• Show first. Then tell. Don’t give everything all at once.
• Don’t manipulate. Respect the reader. Slowly lead them where you want them to go.
• Read Siddhartha again. His total breakdown led to enlightenment.
• Push yourself to what you don’t know and make statements anyway. It pushes you into knowing.
• Sometimes you tell the writing. Other times, the writing tells you.
• You can’t just be a writer for a month. You have to be willing to go through the whole process, all of it.
• If you get stuck, go back to basics: I remember, I’m thinking about, What I see in front of me.
• Read Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life.
• Ride on the backs of the writers who came before you.
• You can’t read a poem enough times.
• Writing is about receiving. Sit still so you can receive.
• When you walk in the mist, you get wet. -Dogen

 

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Top Of The Foshay Tower

Top Of The Foshay Tower, Droid Shots, Northern Spark, Minneapolis, Minnesota, June, 2012, photo © 2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

It was 4:45am when we walked into the Foshay Tower lobby, hoping to catch the sunrise from the 30th floor observation deck. We had stayed up the entire night of June 9th for the second Northern Spark; it was now June 10th. After a random tweet from the Northern Spark app, I won a Jump The Line At The Foshay prize, a gift that proved fruitful. We walked straight to the front of the line and flashed my Droid screen toward the guard. “Wow, that’s cool. Off you go,” he said, shooing us in the direction of the packed elevator.

My stomach dropped on the ride up; the tower view to the east took my breath away. The light was just beginning to change. The deck was crammed with Northern Sparkers, waiting for the sun. It was the perfect ending to the Nuit Blanche, a community shared art event for the soul. Sunrise on top of the sky; a tour of the Foshay museum. Details. Details. Details. Not just tree, what kind of tree. Not just building, what kind of building. A Minnesota icon, built to last, still inspiring sunrises after all these years.

FOSHAY FACTS

• Named for Wilbur Foshay, the original owner & builder

• Modeled after the Washington Monument as a tribute to George Washington

• 32 stories high, tallest building in the Twin Cities for 4 decades
  

• Construction began in 1927 & ended August 1929. Built completely by all-union labor.

• Wilbur Foshay & Gottlieb Magney patented the shape and method of construction

• Faced with Indiana Bedford limestone, 750 window bays, able to stand up to winds of 400 mph

• Numbers: 447 feet, 3 inches high, mast on the top 160 feet; 81 by 87 feet at the base; 59 by 65 feet at the top; contains 2,599,666 cubic feet

• 60 feet below ground with four basement levels

• John Philip Sousa wrote the Foshay Tower-Washington Memorial March for the Foshay Dedication Ceremonies

• Tower Observation Deck is located on the 30th floor where you can see 30 miles on a clear day

• Foshay lights are 10 feet tall, 44 feet across, lit by 900 60-watt bulbs

• Placed on National Register of Historic Places in 1977

• In 1987 the Tower was adorned with a 50-foot by 50-foot banner (the largest ever installed on a highrise office building) congratulating the Minnesota Twins for their championship year

• In 2008, the renovated Foshay opened as the Foshay Museum & Observation Deck, part of W Minneapolis — The Foshay
  

Foshay Moon, Droid Shots, Northern Spark, Minneapolis, Minnesota, June, 2012, photo © 2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

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-related to posts:  Northern Spark — Twin Cities Nuit Blanche, Northern Spark 2012 – Night Owl Paradise, Northern Spark — Sunrise To Sunset

-posted on red Ravine, Wednesday, September 4th, 2013

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Northern Spark: Sunset To Sunrise

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Northern Spark kicks off on Saturday, June 8th, at 8:58pm in Lowertown St. Paul, Minnesota. This will be our third year attending Northern Spark (a little history of the Nuit Blanche movement in this piece). Last year we stayed awake from dusk to dawn, and ended our night viewing the sunrise from the top of the Foshay Tower. It’s more difficult than you think to stay awake all night, an insomniac’s dream!

Here’s a link to Northern’s Spark’s full schedule and two more to their Facebook and Twitter pages. Last year we downloaded the Northern Spark app on our Droids and highly recommend it. The slideshow is a glimpse into our night walk around Minneapolis at last year’s Northern Spark, and at a pre-Spark gathering the week before. We are looking forward to Lowertown, St. Paul. It’s a gift to share the night, the light, and the Arts in community.

-posted on red Ravine, Friday, June 7th, 2013

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Only An Eagle And I For A Moment

By Silver Grey Fox

This morning driving along a section of pines

the roadside vista reminds me of my glimpse

of the piney woods sections outside Houston

in Texas with the mixture of pines and shrubs

and the temperate nature of the forested area.

Then, rather suddenly I notice a bald eagle,

its white head distinct above its black raven-

colored body, sitting atop a solitary pine.

And, for a moment I pause on a turn-off

to observe its falcon-like instinctive pattern

of behavior when searching for and seeking

prey. Only for a moment, so it seems, am I

privy to its activity as it circles, then swoops

down earthward to snatch what I can’t quite

see until it climbs back above nearby brush.

Then, there, visible in its talons, is one of the

larger snakes I have seen in this section of

South Florida. Oh, sometimes I wish for the

spontaneous nature of such feathered creatures–

for the eyesight, for the instinct, for the ability

to move so gracefully at times and then also

having the speed to so naturally snatch its prey.

Ah, with the eagle nestled back somewhere

now in this piney woods to enjoy its catch,

I continue my drive back into my morning’s

activities—banking, shopping, laundering…

a far cry from my moment’s enjoyment with

the eagle sighting. Such is our connection,

my bird and I, such is our likeable difference.

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About Silver Grey Fox:

As a writer-poet, I continue trying to gain an understanding of the enigma that is mine and that which was the late Theodore Roethke’s own. He once said, “What I love is near at hand.” Thus, there is so much yet left to be explored; plus, as he noted, “Being, not doing, is my first joy.” What with nature’s beauty all around, and my continuing to reach out and touch, feel and appreciate such, along with having opted to re-open myself to love and life, I continue seeking to more fully define my identity, so I write and write some more.

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Links Of Interest:

On Theodore Roethke — Theodore Roethke (1908-1963) — Poetry Foundation

On Gary Snyder — Gary Snyder (b. 1930) — Poetry Foundation

On Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones — Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones Bio

On Black Holes — Black Holes — NASA Science Astrophysics

-posted on red Ravine, Thursday, February 28th, 2013

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Shuttlecocks, 1994 – 34/365

Shuttlecocks, 1994 – 34/365, Archive 365, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, April 2009, photo © 2009-2013 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

At a writing retreat in 2009, our host took us to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri. Like we had done at museums in New Mexico with Natalie Goldberg (see Diebenkorn Leaves Taos – Museum Walking Lives On), we walked around in silence, then gathered in front of the museum to do Writing Practice. I like the practice of taking photographs in the silence; this photo of the sculpture Shuttlecocks was snapped on a slow walk around the museum grounds. Museums are energizing places to find inspiration for writing and art.

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is a neoclassic structure designed by Kansas City architects Wight and Wight. Groundbreaking took place on July 16, 1930. The sculpture Shuttlecocks was created by husband and wife team Claes Oldenburg (American, born Sweden 1929) and Coosje van Bruggen (American, born The Netherlands, 1942), the same pair that created the Minneapolis sculpture, Spoonbridge & Cherry at the Walker (see my foggy winter photograph of Spoonbridge & Cherry in the piece White Elephants On Art). It is the scale of these sculptures that draws me in.

According to Nelson-Atkins, when Oldenburg and van Bruggen were commissioned in 1994 to design a sculpture for the space, they responded to the formality of the original neoclassical building and the green expanse of its lawn by imagining the museum as a badminton net and the lawn as a playing field. The pair designed four birdies or shuttlecocks (made out of aluminum, paint, and fiberglass-reinforced plastic) that were placed as though they had just landed on opposite sides of the net. Each shuttlecock weighs 5,500 pounds, stands nearly 18 feet tall, and has a diameter of 16 feet.

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ARCHIVE 365: Archive 365 is a photo collaboration between skywire7 and QuoinMonkey featuring images from our archives. We will alternate posting once a day in our Flickr sets from July 1st 2012 through June 30th 2013. You can view our photographs at skywire7 Archive 365 set on Flickr and QuoinMonkey Archive 365 set on Flickr.

-posted on red Ravine, Sunday, January 13th, 2013

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Tyrone Guthrie Outside The Guthrie — 64/365

Tyrone Guthrie Outside The Guthrie – 64/365, Archive 365, BlackBerry Shots, Minneapolis, Minnesota, photo © 2010-2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

The Archive 365 practice and collaboration continues with a photograph taken outside the Guthrie Theater in August 2010. With each new image, I feel compelled to look into tidbits about the subject’s history. It’s no secret that Sir Tyrone Guthrie and Midwest architect Ralph Rapson did not see eye-to-eye on the design of the original Guthrie Theater (the play Tyrone & Ralph was written highlighting this piece of history). The two fought over the thrust stage which Guthrie wanted and the asymmetrical design Rapson desired. They also disagreed over the color of the seats. Guthrie ordered Rapson to make sure the seats were all the same bland color; Rapson wanted brightness and vivacity and decidedly disobeyed. By the time the hundreds of multicolored seats arrived, it was too late for Guthrie to do anything about it.

In spite of their disagreements, Rapson’s modern design prevailed and the Guthrie opened on May 7, 1963 with a production of Hamlet directed by Sir Tyrone Guthrie; it became one of the most respected theaters in the country. An idea that began in 1959 during a series of conversations among Guthrie and two colleagues—Oliver Rea and Peter Zeisler—who were disenchanted with Broadway, sprang to life. They realized their dream to create a theater with a resident acting company that would perform the classics in rotating repertory with the highest professional standards.

Sir Tyrone Guthrie was the Artistic Director from 1963 through 1966 and returned to direct each year until 1969. He passed away in 1971. Architect Ralph Rapson died of heart failure in 2008 at the age of 93. The original Guthrie was torn down in 2006; the theater dimmed its lights 43 years to the day that it opened — also with a production of Hamlet. It reopened across town by the Mississippi River in a new, $125 million three-stage complex with the faces of Tyrone Guthrie, August Wilson, Lorraine Hansberry, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Anton Chekhov, Eugene O’Neill and George Bernard Shaw etched into its walls.

Resources:

Guthrie Theater History – The Guthrie

Ralph Rapson, architect of the original Guthrie, has died – MPR News

The Old Guthrie Goes Down – photos at The Masticator

Guthrie Theater brings curtain down on original home – MPR News

Guthrie & Rapson battle again – MPR news

-posted on red Ravine, Monday, September 3rd, 2012

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WRITING TOPIC — CLOUD

Missing Ely’s Sky – 23/365, Archive 365, Droid Shots, Ely, Minnesota, photo © 2012 by Liz Schultz. All rights reserved.

Taos, New Mexico, photo © 2007-2012 QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

Clouds are connectors. We see cloud formations as recognizable, weather predicting puffs of air. Clouds are classified using a Latin Linnean system based on a book written by a London pharmacist, Quaker, and amateur meteorologist named Luke Howard. In 1803, he wrote The Modifications of Clouds naming the various cloud structures he had studied.

New Hope, Minnesota, photo © 2010-2012 QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

The terms used by Howard were readily accepted by the meteorological community and detailed in The International Cloud Atlas, published by the World Meteorological Organization in 1896. They are still used across the world today.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) extended Luke Howard’s classifications into 10 main groups of clouds, called genera. These are divided into three levels – cloud low (CL), cloud medium (CM) and cloud high (CH) – according to the part of the atmosphere in which they are usually found. Types of clouds can be categorized by height and are divided up by the following names:

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Cloud level (ft)	Cloud type
High clouds – (CH) Base usually 20,000 ft or above	Cirrus Cirrocumulus Cirrostratus
Medium clouds – (CM) Base usually between 6,500 and 20,000 ft	Altocumulus Altostratus Nimbostratus
Low clouds – (CL) Base usually below 6,500 ft	Stratocumulus Stratus Cumulus Cumulonimbus

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The names of clouds are based on their height as well as their appearance. Common cloud names are derived from Latin:

• Stratus— means layer and refers to the group of clouds that form in big sheets covering the entire sky. Stratus clouds are made of liquid water and are called fog or mists when close to the Earth. The blend of altostratus can cause ice build up on the wings of aircraft.
• Cumulus—in Latin cumulus means heap. These are fair-weather clouds that we might say look like cotton candy or castles.
• Alto—means middle and refers to clouds that are in the middle layer of our atmosphere.
• Cirrus—means curl in Latin. These clouds are high up and look like wisps of hair. Cirrus are the highest of all clouds and are made up almost entirely of ice crystals.
• Nimbus—comes from the Latin word for rain. Whenever there is precipitation, there are nimbus clouds.

Shadow Leaves, Dusk On The Mississippi, photos © 2007-
2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

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What do you think of when you say the word cloud? Do you see the Universe, fog hanging on the mountains, the sky over the prairie? How many types of clouds can you name. Or maybe cloud to you is not that literal. Is your iced tea cloudy; are there clouds in your coffee? Is there a cloud over your day or your mood? Does your past cloud your vision of the future?

Get out your fast writing pens and write the Topic Cloud at the top of your spiral notebook (or start tapping away on your computer or Smartphone).

You can write a haiku, tanka, or gogyohka practice and post it in the comments.

Or you may be surprised at what you discover when you follow the rules of Writing Practice —- Cloud, 10 minutes, Go!

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Resources:

Cloud Spotting Guide — UK Met Office

Cloud Types for Observers — Reading the Sky — UK Met Office

Cloud Atlas

Common Cloud Names, Shapes, & Altitudes – Georgia Tech

Cotton Cloudiness, Top Of The Cedar Avenue Bridge, photo ©
2008-2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

-posted on red Ravine, Tuesday, August 21st, 2012

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Motorcycle In Taos

Motorcycle In Taos – 2/365, Archive 365, Taos, New Mexico, January 2003, Tri-X black & white film print, photo © 2003-2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

I miss black & white photography. I recently felt the old pangs for film when I ran into Tricia Vetrone’s work at Ingrained Photography while looking for peers for our Casket Arts 318 studio page (our brick and mortar art and writing studio. Would love it if you Liked us there). She shoots in black & white with vintage film cameras. Beautiful work.

Motorcycle In Taos was taken on one of my first writing retreats in Taos in 2003. It was a talking workshop, long before the silence befriended me. We were walking around the Mabel Dodge Luhan House with Natalie. I didn’t own a digital camera then and was still shooting with a Canon Rebel film camera and trusty Kodak Tri-X b&w.

It’s sad to me that Kodak declared bankruptcy this year. In a long history that began in 1888 with the slogan “you press the button, we do the rest,” George Eastman put the first simple camera into the hands of a world of consumers. He made a cumbersome and complicated process easy to use and accessible to nearly everyone. I’m sure in his wildest dreams he never imagined we’d be taking digital photos on our cell phones. Time changes everything; photographs capture time.

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ARCHIVE 365: Since the completion of BlackBerry 365, I have missed a daily photo practice. There are so many photos from my archives that no one has ever seen but me. So I asked skywire7 if she wanted to do a daily practice for one year, taking turns posting an unpublished photograph from the past.

Archive 365 is a photo collaboration between skywire7 and QuoinMonkey featuring images from our archives. We will alternate posting once a day in our Flickr sets from July 1st 2012 through June 30th 2013. You can view our photographs at skywire7 Archive 365 set on Flickr and QuoinMonkey Archive 365 set on Flickr.

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Northern Spark 2012 – Night Owl Paradise

Night On Fire, BlackBerry Shots, photo © 2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved. Original BlackBerry photo June 2011, part of Northern Spark — Twin Cities Nuit Blanche.

Northern Spark 2012 begins next weekend in the Twin Cities at dusk on Saturday, June 9th and ends at the crack of dawn, Sunday, June 10th. Northern Spark is a free, dusk to dawn, participatory arts festival that presents visual arts, performance, films, and interactive media. Tonight at the Stone Arch Bridge in Minneapolis we plan to attend the Pre-Spark Bridge Lighting where planners will flip the switch for Northern Spark’s signature artwork, Robin Schwartzman’s THINK AND WONDER, WONDER AND THINK.  They will also be giving out festival guidebooks to preview before June 9.

Last year’s inaugural Northern Spark was magical. In 2011, over the course of the night, there were 50,000 visits to 100 projects by more than 200 mostly local artists at 34 venues in collaboration with 60 partner organizations and sponsors. I have listed a few of the places we visited in 2011 and a little history of the Nuit Blanche (“white night”) movement in the piece Northern Spark — Twin Cities Nuit Blanche.

The three photographs in this piece were taken while I was standing in the middle of Jim Campbell’s Scattered Light installation, part of Northern Spark 2011. In Annotated Artwork: The Making Of Jim Campbell’s ‘Scattered Light‘, Jim says moving from 2-D to 3D art is about “exploding an image, tearing it apart, and spreading it out.” His tips: 1. Pick a spot 2. Grab Source Material 3. Turn it into code 4. Create depth 5. Consider the planet. Honoring point 5, he and his assistants revamped thousands of standard lightbulbs, sawed them open, stuffed them with LEDs, and glued them back together, making handmade, unique, energy-efficient hybrids.

I am looking forward to Northern Spark 2012. At the Northern Spark website, there is a Planning Your Night page with a full list of events, including a link to download their new Northern Spark mobile app. We’ve already got ours loaded on our Androids. I only hope there is enough time to make all the events we’ve listed. It’s perfect for all of our fellow NightOwls! Hope to see our local readers there! If you can’t make it, you can follow Northern Spark on their Facebook page and at Twitter @Northern_Spark #NSPK.

Out Of The Darkness (L), #NorthernSpark – Scattered Light by Jim Campbell 23/52 (R), BlackBerry Shots, photo © 2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved. Original BlackBerry photos June 2011, part of Northern Spark — Twin Cities Nuit Blanche.

-posted on red Ravine, Saturday, June 2nd, 2012

-related to posts: Northern Spark — Twin Cities Nuit Blanche, Suspended In Light (Reprise), Insomnia Haiku: Counting Syllables In My Sleep, Mickey’s Night Owl Sandwich, Dreams Of A Creative Insomniac

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Artist Frank Gaard — Top Ten Favorite Poets

My Top Ten Favorite Poets, acrylic on canvas 1995 by Frank Gaard, Droid Shots,
Minneapolis, Minnesota, January 2012, photos © 2012 by QuoinMonkey. All
rights reserved.

There aren’t many things more satisfying than the combination of music, literature, philosophy, and art. In January we attended opening weekend of Frank Gaard: Poison & Candy, a 40-year retrospective at Walker Art Center. The work is a visual feast. Layers of eye-popping color on canvas, vinyl, and CD fuse the past to the present with timeless themes that stretch far into the future. By the time I arrived at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD), Frank Gaard had been teaching there for 17 years and was a legend. From 1974 to 1994 Gaard was the mastermind behind Artpolice, an underground ‘zine about art, war, politics and life. The Walker show features over 50 works including portraits, illustrations, and sketchbooks (he has kept a dairy all his life) and runs through May 6th.

After attending the opening, I could not pass up the opportunity to hear Frank speak. Gaard On Gaard, his gallery talk on February 9th, woke me up. I’d like to listen to it again and write a longer piece. When you hear lifelong artists speak about their lives, you learn things about the craft that can’t be taught in books. The artist in me came away inspired by the strength of his voice; he was fearless. The writer loved the way he incorporated his love of writing, philosophy, and music into his art. My favorite paintings include his walls of portraits and his lists. Which of his poets would be at the top of your list?

RESOURCES:

Walker Salutes the Old Gaard by Mary Abbe – Star-Tribune, January 26th, 2012

Frank Gaard: Poison & Candy, Walker Art Center, 2012

The Life & Work of John Keats

Emily Dickinson Electronic Archives

Ezra Pound: The Poetry Foundation

Ted Hughes: Poetry Archive

Rilke at The Poetry Foundation

Bertolt Brecht at International Brecht Society

RPO Selected Poetry of Alexander Pope

Stephane Mallarme – Biography

Edmund Spenser at Poetry Foundation

The Life & Works of Vladimir Nabokov

Georges Bataille – 5 Poems

Frank Gaard Portraits, Droid Shots, Minneapolis, Minnesota, January 2012, photos © 2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

-posted on red Ravine, Tuesday, March 6th, 2012

-related to posts: Does Poetry Matter?, Got Poetry? National Poem In Your Pocket Day, Emily’s Freedom

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Oscar Nominated Short Documentary Films — Profiles In Courage

Documentary Shorts At The Riverview, Droid Shots, original photograph edited with Paper Camera, Minneapolis, Minnesota, February 2012, photo © 2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

When Liz was asked what movie she wanted to see before a belated birthday dinner at Blackbird, she chose the Oscar Nominated Short Documentary films at the Riverview Theater in Minneapolis. The filmmakers took us around the world, Baghdad to Birmingham, Pakistan to Japan. The presentation included four of the five films nominated for an Oscar in the Short Documentary category for 2012: Incident in Baghdad, Saving Face, The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom, and The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement. (The fifth nominee, God Is The Bigger Elvis could not be shown due to licensing issues.)

In 130 minutes, I swept through a full range of emotions. Saving Face moved me to tears one minute; the next I was smiling with the big hearted doctor who traveled to Pakistan to reconstruct the acid scarred faces of women attacked by their husbands. Incident in New Baghdad horrified me and reminded me how sheltered most Americans have been from the ravages of two wars.

The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom had a visual yin and yang quality. Grief, destruction, devastation, and loss following the tsunami in northern Japan; delicate blossoms of centuries old cherry trees restore hope in ways “beautiful but not showy.” James Armstrong, The Barber of Birmingham, walked steady and strong through decades of the Civil Rights Movement, and listened closely when he cut the hair of Dr. Martin Luther King. His mantra: “Dying isn’t the worst thing a man can do. The worst thing a man can do is nothing.”

The men, women, and children in these documentaries survived against all odds. They are impeccable warriors who teach me to pay attention, find my voice, and not be afraid to speak out. They teach me to show gratitude for the gift that is my life. They teach me about courage.  Through hardship and injustice, they show up and tell their stories to filmmakers who ensure their stories are heard. I hope you take the opportunity to see these films. They will inspire you to live life to the fullest, to take risks with your art and writing, and walk the way of the peaceful warrior.

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Incident in New Baghdad – 25 minutes – USA – James Spione

One of the most notorious incidents of the Iraq War – the July 2007 slayings of two Reuters journalists and a number of other unarmed civilians by US attack helicopters – is recounted in the powerful testimony of American infantryman Ethan McCord whose life was profoundly changed by his experiences on the scene.


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Saving Face – 40 minutes – Pakistan/USA – Daniel Junge, Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy

Every year hundreds of people — mostly women — are attacked with acid in Pakistan. The HBO Documentary SAVING FACE follows several of these survivors, their fight for justice, and a Pakistani plastic surgeon who has returned to his homeland to help them restore their faces and their lives.


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The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom – 39 minutes – Japan/USA – Lucy Walker

Survivors in the areas hardest hit by Japan’s recent tsunami find the courage to revive and rebuild as cherry blossom season begins. A stunning visual poem about the ephemeral nature of life and the healing power of Japan’s most beloved flower.


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The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement – 25 minutes – USA – Gail Dolgin and Robin Fryday

Mr. James Armstrong is an 85-year-old barber, a “foot soldier” and a dreamer whose barbershop in Birmingham, Alabama has been a hub for haircuts and civil rights since 1955. The dream of a promised land, where dignity and the right to vote belong to everyone, is documented in photos, headlines and clippings that cram every inch of wall space in his barbershop. On the eve of the election of the first African American president, the Barber of Birmingham sees his unimaginable dream come true.

-posted on red Ravine, Wednesday, February 22th, 2012. Read more about the films at the links and watch a trailer at the Riverview website.

-related to posts: And The Oscar Goes To…, Eloquent Nude At The Riverview

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Ode To Old Photo Books

Twin-Lens-Reflex Camera, illustration from Black & White Photography: A Basic Manual by Henry Horenstein, Droid Shots, original photograph edited with Paper Camera, Golden Valley, Minnesota, February 2012, photos © 2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

One of the goals that came out of my last writing retreat with the Midwest writers was to focus on organizing, storing, revisualizing, and selling my photographs. I took a photojournalism class this week from a journalist who makes a living from her stories and photographs. I spent much of this morning perusing old photo books while sipping French Roast (I have a Twin-Lens-Reflex in my collection just like the one in the illustration above).

Old print photograph and design books are inexpensive and inspirational. It is exciting to view the work of the photographers who came before us and to learn from their art. At MCAD, I focused primarily on black & white photography, along with alternative processes. I’d like to do more along those lines with my digital photographs. I remember…

-posted on red Ravine, Saturday, February 18th, 2012, with gratitude to Liz (one of my Muses) who consistently brings home tons of books from our local library

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Jewel Under The Bear Moon

January Bear Moon, Olympus Shots, Minneapolis, Minnesota, January 2012, photo © 2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

Jewel of the North Woods
under the waning Bear Moon —
will you birth your cubs
on Lily's birthday? Or three days later,
when Hope's Spirit comes to play.

NOTE: Jewel the black bear is in the early stages of labor (you can watch at this link: Jewel’s Live Den Cam or check out the links in the poem to see Jim Stroner’s photographs of the bears). Jewel is a wild black bear, the sister of the famous Lily the Black Bear who gave birth to Hope on January 22nd, 2010 (we lost Hope last September during the 2011 Minnesota hunting season). If I remember correctly, it is Lily’s day of birth today, January 19th. I wrote the poem before I read the Wildlife Research Institute update tonight stating that it will be biologist Sue Mansfield’s birthday on January 20th (Happy Birthday, Sue!). The mystery remains, on whose birthday will Jewel of the Northwoods have her cubs?

The photograph was taken a few weeks ago at the Full January Moon. Liz and I went out into the urban Wild to photograph the Moon as she rose. Depending on your background, the January Moon is known as the Wolf Moon, the Cold Moon, and the Bear Moon (among many other names). It’s the Bear Moon all  month long, not just at the Full Moon, and is usually one of the brightest Moons of the year. Stay warm, Jewel. It’s -6 in the Twin Cities and -15 in Ely, Minnesota. We are watching your every breath.

-posted on red Ravine, , Thursday, January 19th, 2012, with gratitude to biologists Lynn Rogers & Sue Mansfield

-related to posts: haiku 4 (one-a-day) meets renga 52, MN Black Bear Den Cam: Will Lily Have Cubs?

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WRITING TOPIC — I BELIEVE…

believe

Definition:	accept as true, credit with veracity, follow a credo, judge or regard
Synonyms:	v. 1. maintain, assert, opine, hold, consider, regard, conceive, trust, have faith in, confide in, credit, accept, affirm, swear by, have no doubt
Quotes:	♦ In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west; people create distinctions out of their own minds and then believe them to be true. — Buddha   ♦ I believe that every person is born with talent.  — Maya Angelou   ♦ The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just. — Abraham Lincoln   ♦ 20. Believe in the holy contour of life — Jack Kerouac from BELIEF & TECHNIQUE FOR MODERN PROSE
Antonyms:	disbelieve, distrust

I believe…

Do you believe in the Lock Ness Monster, the Man in the Moon, Santa Claus? Do you believe in finding Big Foot, flying saucers, ghosts in the machine? Do you believe this year will be better than the last? Do you believe in yourself, your visions, your dreams? The things I believe change from year to year, decade to decade. I used to believe in the tooth fairy, the Velvet Underground, peace, love and rock and roll. What do you believe?

In the 1950s, a radio program called This I Believe was hosted by journalist Edward R. Murrow. Each day, Americans gathered by their radios to hear essays from people like Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Robinson, Wallace Stegner, Helen Keller, and Harry Truman—anyone able to distill the guiding principles by which they lived into a few minutes. (For inspiration, you can listen to essays on broadcasts from the 1950s at This I Believe.)

What are the principles by which you live? Are they different than they were two, three, or four years ago? Do you hang around friends who share your beliefs? Or push to expose yourself to other ways of thinking. The goal of the contemporary version of This I Believe (revived on NPR in 2004) was not to persuade Americans to agree on the same beliefs, but to encourage people to develop respect for beliefs different from their own.

Get out your fast writing pens and write the Topic I believe… at the top of your spiral notebook (or start tapping away on your computer or Smartphone).

You can write a haiku, tanka, or gogyohka  practice and post it in the comments.

Or you may be surprised at what you discover when you follow the rules of Writing Practice —- I believe…, 10 minutes, Go!

-posted on red Ravine, Monday, January 2nd, 2012

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Healing Heart Mandala & The Secret Of The Golden Flower

Healing Heart Mandala, created on gray, rainy day while listening to Mandala Healing: Using Sacred Symbols for Spiritual & Emotional Healing by Judith Cornell, Golden Valley, Minnesota, September 2011, photo © 2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER

Once you turn the light around,
everything in the world is turned around.
The light rays are concentrated upward into the eyes;
this is the great key of the human body.
You should reflect on this.
If you do not sit quietly each day,
this light flows and whirls,
stopping who knows where.
If you can sit quietly for a while,
all time-ten thousand ages,
a thousand lifetimes---is penetrated from this.
All phenomena revert to stillness.
Truly inconceivable is this sublime truth.

—from The Secret of the Golden Flower: The Classic Chinese Book of Life, translated by Thomas Cleary, HarperSanFrancisco, 1991, p.19

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HEALING INTENTIONS

   acceptance                   appreciation                   authenticity
   awakening                   balance                            beauty
   beginner's mind          creative play                  clarity 
   compassion                  connectedness               devotion 
   egolessness                  emotional healing          faith
   fearlessness                 forgiveness                     freedom to be 
   grace                             gratitude                         harmony
   healing laughter          honoring diversity         illumination 
   inspired creativity      integrity                          joy 
   kindness                       life as a celebration       listening with the heart
   living in the present   mental healing               miracles
   non-judgment             oneness                           opening the heart to love 
   patience                       peace                               perseverance
   practice of truth         radiating love                 soul illumination 
   spiritual healing          surrender                       transformation
   trusting intuition        unity                                wholeness 
   wisdom                        wonder

-posted on red Ravine, Tuesday, September 20th, 2011

-related to posts: Labyrinth Mandala At The Aquarius Full Moon, Ears Still To The Lonely Wind — Mandala For Rabbit, Flying Solo — Dragonfly In Yellow Rain, Shadow Of A Dragonfly, Dragonfly Wings — It Is Written In The Wind, Dragon Fight — June Mandalas, EarthHealer — Mandala For The Tortoise, ode to a crab (haiku & mandala), Eye Of The Dragon Tattoo

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