Farewell to Blue Heron Pond

Though on the surface I'm going away for only a two week period to Italy and Greece, there is a part of me that feels like I will never return. The poignancy of love, even new love where the departure is painful, and leaving BHP in the middle of summer is a mixed blessing. I have reached the point in life where I don't want to travel anywhere else, I don't want to voyage further, the only place I want to be is here at the pond. Though I will always wander in my soul and imagination, my spirit ever restless, it is by being rooted here that I find my greater clarity and purpose. I don't need to be the vagabond, wandering minstrel, I am satisfied with my voice and spirit as one part of the conversation of life on the pond. There are far more eloquent singers and poets here, the dozens of birds by the pond, with their chorale of life and birth. Conversations across the airwaves -- "Good morning, lovely day here at the pond." "Good eats down by the rock." "My hormones are ready today, let's mate" "Here my sexy song!" The voices of all of god's glorious creatures by the waters. Each song is enchantment and the crow's boisterous bellowing interruptions are quiet today, blue jay's screech gone, and the sweetness of the early morning birds are glorious. Even though I was awakened by them at about 5 this morning. I can still appreciate them.

Talking with Joe these past few days about life in Hati and the tremendous loss of nature and life, the depredation, and poverty. Yet, I am here by these waters, enjoying and savoring paradise.

I write to hold this prayer of Blue Heron Pond. To hold the songs in my spirits, to cherish each moment of this paradise. I send this blessing out across the airways, a private reverie and blessing from the birds and creatures by this pond. Is their song -- savor this paradise? Enjoy this corner of heaven?

Wherever you are today, in whatever part of the globe, find your small corner of paradise. A flower growing in a city sidewalk crack, let it be your garden, let the dreaming roots speak to your soul and the flowers inspire your imagination. Hug a tree, no matter how slender or modest, and feel its presence. Smell the air and find the sweetness of breath. Appreciate and savor for even an instant the miracle of life.

At Blue Heron Pond, this insistent quiet presence of the miracle of life is spoken in each tree, blade of grass, flower, bird song, and held in the wind - here in this sacred crucible.

I will miss this corner of heaven,as I travel, but as always to these that are dearest to our being, we keep them close in our soul. I cherish Blue Heron Pond this morning.

Creative Journey

CREATIVE JOURNEY: Peace Art Work and Installation Projects:

Yesterday I spent about 5 hours working on new drawings and designs for installation and gallery projects. Though I do not have a "formal" background in arts and drawing, I have always drawn and designed, though very little I've shared with the broader public. I feel like the drag queen who's been in the closet too long and has been taking the tiniest steps forward to bring her true nature out to the world. Is that almost a mixed metaphor?
I was at Yorba Center for the Arts and SF Modern over the past week, and was very inspired by the space and a few artists. I liked Shepherd Fairy’s work famous for his Obama poster, his work on peace and graphics of a Muslim woman was excellent. Nevertheless, I am equally inspired by the vast space of the museum. At the MOMA in NY I saw a show that I didn’t care for, but was amazed at the football field size space devoted to this installation. I started to draw on the spot and created an installation project inspired by the space. Last year, I also saw a terrific museum of contemporary art in San Juan Puerto Rico and the show with the focus on street life and art of the ordinary life was so inspirational. These shows give me confidence that my talent as a conceptualizer with an excellent sense of composition is sufficient for what I want to present. Interestingly, I have not been drawing much by hand, and now find that as I am sketching more of that memory is coming back.

I've seen museum exhibitions around the world: Barcelona Modern where there was an iron bed on the wall with barbed wire, St.Francis with splotches of red and black, or the Venice Biennale where I felt like such a hillbilly. At the Venice show, which I've been to twice, through sheer accident, I saw the work and said, "Fuck sake! I can do better than that." JFC, a stack of fluorescent tubes on the floor? Did I miss something? I said to the curator, "You should really clean up the rest of the floor for the show?" Pointing to the stack of bulbs. He informed me with an air of certainty that "This installation is one of our finalists!" JFC! No, shit? My plebian sensibilities never felt more exposed.

On a positive note, I am drawn to creating works for public spaces. Public spaces are rooms for arguments, discussion, ideas, exchange of ideas, vigorous debates, confrontations of aesthetic, challenging our perceptions, challenging our sensibilities. In addition, yes, it is permissible and encouraged, when art appears as bullshit to call it that. You may not be right, but too much of modern art or conceptual work sets off my crap detector. The Venice Biennale with the first prize of two chairs on a track, I thought, JFC, “I am in the wrong profession.”

However, I’ve seen the museum of Dali in Northern Spain, and that should humble any one of us. I’m more than astonished when some don’t include him in the top ranks of artists. I’ve seen his work in Europe and the US, the boldness and the humor of his work is refreshing. In addition, I’ve been very inspired by artists like Michael Singer who is able to combine his sculpture and design and integrate it into public space projects. Bob Rauschenberg’s atelier and his design work have often inspired me and though I was with some of his friends, I never had the chance to meet with him or visit his studio on upper Captiva. Perhaps, on the next visit I can again meet with Darryl, his partner and creative partner, whom I had met once before.

These past 35 years of wandering around the world, seeing art from the Ladak Museum in the Tibetan plateau to the “great” museums of Europe, to the private museums of Prague in the old Jewish Quarter, and all the points in between…I feel like I’ve had an amazing on-going education. I don’t view art as a casual observer, I absorb and digest it, and the works that have been meaningful are ingrained in my memory.

I have gone through such a long journey of exploration in arts and in this period reflecting how much I’ve absorbed over the years from the hundreds of shows and exhibitions both of modern and traditional painting and design.

This past week in San Francisco with my friend and wonderful!! performance artist and musician Idriss Ackmoor. He is writing and developing this amazing new work called "Breach." What an inspiration and I so savored the opportunity to catch up with this artist. His theater group is Cultural Odyssey.

The Art of Peace: PEACE ART:

I am attracted to the art of peace as an artist and as a Quaker. How is the theme of Peace an art form? In the last few months I’ve been sketching and designing a peace garden. I remember Mai Lin’s work when I first saw it. I was struck by its elegant power and beauty. Her design was drawn from the heart, it was a simple primal expression, as painful as the cry of a mother holding a dead child. As a nurse, I’ve heard that cry, and nothing is more painful than the loss of a child.

I wish to capture that savage brutal scream. I recall Yoko Ono’s wails that people found unfathomable, I think it was some of that pain of grieving. I like her work now with the imagine peace campaign. Also, the Peace of Wild Things with Jay Clayton is superb.

Peace is not simply the absence of conflict, it is a state of synthesis, drawing together the disparate parts. It is a time where the overt and active violence may cease, but it is a caesura, the time of reflecting and synthesis. Eros and Thanatos are the twin forces of nature. Human nature is conflict. Life is conflict. Conflict and the dynamic of change is imperative to growth. Otherwise, there is stasis.

It is unmanaged conflict that is the problem, the inability to engage constructively in conflict, and work with conflicting viewpoints there is a problem and ultimately war. I do not have a great deal of faith in humanity, the concept is wonderful, but the practicality and the embodiment of it leaves much to be desire. As Gandhi so archly said when he was asked what he thought of Christianity he said, “It would be a good idea.”

As a feisty Irish Quaker, I am always interested in the issues of peace and conflict. At one time I, though I was going to get my PhD in Peace and Conflict studies. After all, wouldn’t you have a person who intimately knows conflict to teach it? Well, maybe…

I am also witnessing the destruction of the USA from the ravenous desire to feed the military. I use a figure widely quoted of 22 to 25% of our GNP on military and related expenditures. Though I’m not sure I can help to mitigate it, I am called to respond to it through my art.

One of the large projects that has the most power for me is:

BE ALL THAT YOU CAN BE: A PRAYER

Organizing 4,440 people, men, women, & children in ponchos, helmets, boots, painted in grey face, marching in front of the White House and to the Vietnam Memorial spot. Each cloth poncho has the name of a soldier US killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. The soldiers are joined together by a thick rope they’re carrying. A “sergeant” at the front of the parade is calling out cadence. I also envision a Buddhist Monk at the front or the beginning with a wooden block keeping the rhythm of cadence. The procession goes through the streets of Washington to Vietnam Memorial. In a circle the names of the soldiers are called out. Each poncho is removed and placed in front of the participants. The name of each soldier in a piece of paper is placed in a cauldron at the center of the circle. Then it is lit.

A simple prayer. Recorded. Held and cherished.

If I do this project it will take up to six months to a year. I do not know if it can happen quicker with all the twitter and blog work. I would do it as a movie versus a protest march. It is a prayer.

On the Island of Binga Bonga: The War that never was.

This children’s story is www.vermontpoet.com in the gallery

If there were no more wars what would the children do?

This is a long simmering project that I wrote years ago as a play and now it is a movie installation and performance piece. It is about twenty minutes in length. It opens with a soldier’s boots, the martial music is thumping, and gradually when you look into the faceit is that of an eight year old boy. Then you see a group of children on the side of the stage playing. A drill sergeant calls out for the soldier to assume “Ready! Aim! Fire!” as he raises his gun at the children. And next?

Ironically, as I am writing this, a gun range about 2 kilometers from my house and someone is firing a shot gun.

COST OF MILITARY:

Community project where people in the community put a price ticket on the cost of war around town. A simple price tag on paper.

One M-16 = $

One bullet=

The lifetime care of a wounded soldier

The cost of a dream lost:

The cost of a burial:

Hunting: A Vermont Tradition?

A photo exhibition inspired by a 12 year old girl smiling after she killed a deer. I was stunned. How could anyone smile after they killed something? How could you see an animal close enough to kill it and feel its spirit, and view it as a sport. There is a profound disconnect for me to see this.

The photography project is to shoot, every pun intended, a child on the hunt, the moment of her killing an animal, gutting it, and sitting down with the family to eat it.

Let the viewers decide.

Tommy Got His GUN:

A video that I've been sketching on a boy inspired by his video game and Columbine goes on a killing spree.

Summary

I’ve been having this incredible productive period where my attention is drawn inward and less and less inclined towards performance. Though I LOVE performing, and as I am given to say, if I was any more of ham the pigs would go on strike!, I am stepping back from it ever so slightly. The delight in performance is to the stage, but now there is a greater hunger for writing and designing, and also for getting out some of the business ideas up and running. When I am be bopping around the globe it is difficult for me to sit down and write! But the world of travel inspires me immensely.

Now to the business of making some do re mi!

Deeply inspired by "Found art"

My Creative Journey: Vermont Our Home & othe work

The best part of my creative process can be seen in my daily journals. This year I am weighing in at 680 pages so far. I wake up each day by Blue Heron Pond and write for at least an hour to two hours, and lately, this has stretched out to as much as six hours.

As the philosopher Krishanamurti said, the flame of attention. This is my on-going daily meditation, my invitation to look at the world, to be awed by it with all of its flaws and beauty, and to pay attention to my own creative process.

I included a sample of this in the jAz mU entry below, I left it raw with its certain savage beauty intact. Though I like to make sure my writings are clean and flawless, unfortunately, I struggled with getting precise clean copy.

I feel always at the point between birth and dying. There is such clarity and beauty in the world around me. I will miss this amazing life and world, I will miss the friendships and family, I will miss the joy of waking up at Blue Heron Pond, the loves of my life, and as this moment draws closer – valuing each moment as my senses drink in the memory of this paradise called life.

I leave these words, stories, and journeys of the imagination. I hope they inspire you.

Creativity is freedom.

New works: Vermont Our Home: A Celebration - A show of music, poetry, tall tales, and a bit of history of Vermont. This is based on my last book Vermont My Home on Blue Heron Pond. Vt Our Home is the story of the incredible 5 season magic of Vermont. From all walks of life Vermonters are proud of the land and the heritage of stewardship is omnipresent.
The show opens with GAIA the beginning of the day and the creation of the land. As the "day" begins the trees, the wind, the spirits, and animals roar to life. It is a celebration of this moment of creativity, when god/gods created this jewel of a paradise, blessed it with rivers filled with life, sunrises so glorious it inspired the birds to sing, mountains that converse with the clouds and the sky, flowers ecstatically vibrant with colors, and each part of this land a sensuous and joyful creation.
I love the story not only of the land but the people of Vermont -- the dairy farmers, the farmers, the craftsmen, poets, tennis players and sports people, the hip hop kids, rappers, artists, factory workers, stay at home moms and dads, all of these folks that make up our state. Our state motto is Freedom and Unity, and it has often given me pause to think what this means. It represents the values and traditions of tolerance and respect.
Vermont is a state of first: The first state to abolish slavery, the first state for Civil Unions, and I like to think it is first among states for its care of the environment.
I have travelled to between 75 and 100 countries around the world and to most parts of the US, and time and time again I have found communities are most vibrant when people have a connection to the land and have a strong sense of belonging. In our largely rural state that is about 80% covered with forests and rivers, we all have this powerful connection to the land and its beauty. There is this sense of stewardship and pride in being a Vermonter, even for the many of us who were born outside the state we’re defined by our common love for this Green Mountain paradise.

We are having a ton of fun sketching out the ideas for Vermont Our Home and inviting other folks into the dialogue and discussion. A large project of kites and sails for the Welcome Center and public spaces "Blue Skies over the Green Mountains" is in the design stage.

Blue Skies over the Green Mountains

This is a LONG! term interest of mine and that I had created in the project called "Laundry list of wishes" at www.vermontpoet.com/gallery.` A poem or story speaks when Ï see it, when I taste it, and smell it. Even "classical" poems from the Cavalier period like to "Althea from Prison" or "To My Coy Mistress" you can feel and experience these on a visceral level. In my word/ art creations on banners and cloth/ glass/ other materials I try to add some of these dimensions of texture, motion, and light as they converse with the piece. The interaction and interplay between the pieces' environment shapes the piece. Truly, a phenomenological experience, the discourse between object and viewer.

GARBAGE:
Another project, which I designed, and haven't executed is "GARBAGE." Originally, this was designed based on the garbage dump in Shokan, NY as an interactive, multimedia performance project in the garbage dumb. Now we call these places a recycling center. Our garbage, refuse, trash, detritus, carbon dioxide, green-house gases, sewage, and chemical effluence more defines our era than our creativity. An eco-system is constantly engage in this conversation of Eros & Thanatos, creation and destruction

Opus One:
Not Opus Dei, but at Opus 40 in Saugerties New York. In l988 I had this vision of a performance at Opus 40. It was on the full moon on the summer equinox. The performance illuminated by candlelight and torches. It was a pagan/ Celtic offering and service to pay homage to the god of the moon. The vision was clear, almost hallucinatory, and saw the offering and performance in front of my eyes. I never translated the show to text or created it. Strange, I didn’t have the skills, vocabulary or experience to bring it to fruition. Now, as I’ve been creating and producing shows, the confidence increases

Sweet Pond Eco Community
I've been inspired by architecture and design for years, but have done little to bring this perspective forward in a larger way until www.sweetpondecocommunity.com. This is our 9 unit eco-development in Guilford Vermont. I had visited Michael Singer, the sculptor and designer, and was very impressed by his atelier, and how he translated his aesthetic into public projects... www.michaelsinger.com. At around that time we had seen this beautiful 100 acre property and wanted to preserve as much of the natural beauty. So the story of that journey is at the website.
This creative work with the Sweet Pond is an extension of my deeper vision as an artist, not confined by one medium or another, one convention, or style. The artists/creators who always inspired me with this boldness are Dali, Picasso, Da Vinci, Edison, Singer, and others who were/ are amazingly bold and refuse to be hemmed in by an ideology or convention. The world was their palette and the freshest colors drawn from the well of their imagination. Artists/ poets need to be actively involved in creating the world. Though Plato banned poets from the Republic they serve a vital role. I was distressed recently as I saw a project locally designed by a Civil Engineer, it had all the vivacity of a block of concrete. The fusion of form and function is the ideal design.

In this age of fragmentation we desperately need artists, poets, & creators. We rely on politicians, multinationals, military corporations, and oil companies to define our future. Though I am not sure that poet’s are the unacknowledged legislators, but poet’s need to take up the mantle, not only for their own personal aesthetic, but an aesthetic that embraces the social context they live in.

I am growing into a broader definition of who I am as a creative person and this is sometimes disorienting. We all like the certainty of our craft, but art is breaking down the certainty and expectation.

jAz Mu:

Installation Projects and Multimedia:

The jazz Mu installation project is called: jAz in a minor key of love. This is a 3 x 4 meter jagged board, fragments of glass, torn fabric with the jAz in a minor key of love.

On one side is the narrative and on the other are fragments on paper and parchment of the story. I was probably inspired by Dali’s work at the Montmarte Museum with his shot gun explosions of paintings.

It poses the question? What is story? What is narrative? How much depends on the reader? How does sound and texture influence our perception of story? What is a poem? Does it always need to be linear to “make sense”?

jAz Mu Journey:

This is a wonderful exploration and journey. This can be viewed at www.thejazzpoet.com and the www.thejazzpoet.blogspot.com. I had performed this in NYC not too long ago and in various venues. It is the direction of word, sound, art fusion.

It is jazz improvisation in the key of Ku, afflatus in the minor rifting of mU ology, the dance of Eros, the 4 car collision of Kali on cosmic cocaine, bits of stellar dander from a dying super nova, and ordinary madness that poses as revelation. William Blake with a hookah smoking opium with Tennyson, the Emperor Kublai Khan, and the Mad Hatter himself. Blake as the minor cool kat of kwa, Tennyson posing as a photon in charge of the light brigade, and the Mad Hatter needing no disguise – came in his usual drag of self-revelation. Blake was lying low and thumping on the bass, fingers deftly discerning the G minor of the key of ku.

The sweets fumes of the opium pipe sauntered in like a frail wearing a rhinestone evening dress and seduced by her own voracious charms. The reflective nature of love, the pool that narcissus drowned in, the oceans of desire, the infinity of sound, and the realization that the notes Charlie Parker played in l947 at Carnegie Hall are now reaching the periphery of the galaxy.

How could love be so cold and strange?

How could desire offer so much promise and never find its way to redemption?

I didn’t mean to rift, wander or leap through the window – suddenly appearing and dancing in the world of ku. The parting of the foam and sea, waiting for Venus to appear on the crest, dance beneath the harvest moon on a June bright night, morning howls in the rapacious excitation of a new day in Kauai, and the minor keys of love itself decided to repose in a hammock made of gossamer wishes.

Inka Dinka do said the sailor by the Winken.

Binken and Nod slipped away into the evanescent stream of reverie. Too much of the madness in the world would compel any of us to tumble into that space of dream.

We are of clay and music, ash and start dust, and we dream and dream in the dream time world that defies order and sequence. The key of ku opens the immutable transformation of mU to unlock our souls. Released from our bondage what would we create? Would we create the paradise of madness? Could we bear the exquisite beauty of looking at the beloved face of god? A scarlet purple azalea as exquisite as the face of a new born child.

The world of jAz mu as tangible and tantalizing as the first spring tangerines that come to the markets of Rabat. The souq is filled with the smell of tangerines and flowers. I sit at the edge of the old city, by the graveyards and mausoleums, with a half a kilo and peel a tangerine, a morsel tart and mouth watering, the high tides come in, the ocean is less than a 100 meters from where I’m sitting, and a skiff with three cats comes up the estuary. One with a penny whistle, the other a hand drum, and the last singing an aria

of farewell from Madam Butterfly.

Jaz mU:

It is altogether too easy to slip into the stream and river of mU.

Transition:
Poetry is la lingua de mi madre, my first language, it is how I process and see the world. Poetry is my lens of clarity, reflection, meditation, and articulation. For a number of years I meditated and sat in Zazen, but I realized my language was poetry, and when I sit by the window at Blue Heron Pond my mind is clear, attention is riveted, and my senses are alive as I engaged.
But my creative energies are expanding. My confidence is growing. My experience always a ragged vestment of a good long and well lived life

This is a bit of my ragged story, unedited, as I am on the way to the airport, but I wanted to leave you a bit of my journey. Please download the music, the poems, stories, pass them on.

A blissful day to you.