Thunder sky in endless bliss-
Now in Texas, then in Carolina’s twisting hills-
While here down below, my wrist are tired
And this time not from writing for the choir.
When will we kiss again, My Love.
I miss your touch.
Let’s do it here, now, beneath the storm.
Let’s do it wet, in darkness like this.
Or in grandfather’s old shotgun shack
Before he blew his head off., back then
I’m ok, mine were other wounds
But I blood-lined them back into mine.
A hand slipped down my pants too soon
And she, the sitter, got away. I’m fine now
But each storm reminds me
Of his face I never saw buried in fall leaves
As another storm passed by.
And when will we kiss again my love
And our bones stand up and begin
To dance beneath clear skies.
And his body, crippled by self inflicted blow
Start to glow and rise up again my friend.
Thunder skies in endless bliss
I only pray for a kiss of sun like this.
My wrist are tired
She found the gun
And I am still the only living son
Who remembers all this
On nights like this
On a night like this.

I’m a good fisher
I can catch a bass (big or small mouthed) in any pond or lake.
I can catch brim and perch as well.
I know poetry and people, was all I was saying.

My heart fluttered twice today
Seriously..
Not like the bright yellow warbler, that comes to my window daily,
whom I have come to love
By name…
But more like the blue jay squawking and stealing cat food at dawn
It was a deep smokey feeling more like a wet chiminea
After it has sat too long for a season and you try to light
It back up. I hope it is just my usual restlessness stirring.
But I suspect it is more like my dog’s slipped disc,
Something you have to learn to live with that is.
A fluttering heart, which still soars like a hawk’s would
Want to, but sputters and coughs out a few jokes
when overwhelmed by life’s cacophonous rhythms.

On my walk in the neighborhood today, encountered….

The little old lady who is thankful for each day of sunlight in winter and says so as I walk by daily. Didn’t lose any plants yet, today she added.
Our old dentist next door retired, then died a year later-boredom I suppose, he was a people person, and helped people smile in more ways than one.
Now a gay couple lives there, they’ve already started fixing it up, but their flag is as big as the house.
Also saw my photographer friend who talked to me at length
About the necessary silence of seeing well! We get along.
On the warblers and albino squirrels are back
And the winter evergreen stand out today. Park is empty
But for the nervous girl who got a new puppy and is trying to figure the universe out in a new way.
She feels very potentially judged by everyone who walks past, so I make a wide berth so she’s not self conscious.
Next my musician friends who were on the road
And returned to busted pipes, yikes. Something is always
Going wrong with musicians.
Those musician’s houses always have creatures living in them (raccoons and possums most often round here)
You can hear it on their records.
Got to help the bass player fix his mainline pipe!
Then the old folks garden across the street
With the man from Chicago who yells out encouragements to all
Passing by, but in a tone which scares people…
He always tells me I’m smart, and that it is good I like so many people!
Glad he is still yelling out encouragements, at his age
And that Chi-town accent, I like too!
Then at the end, saw two hawks circling—those clever circling seers!
At the very end, my elderly neighbor who used to be a librarian
And still goes daily, and brings home another stack of books,
told me the sun will come out tomorrow son, don’t worry…..

In winter

the few trees

With leaves left

Get to hold the whole sound

Of wind for us all.

How privileged

They are

And burdened

To chime well.

All told
The bridge in Paris
The adverted suicide
The voice which said
Check you out
The art house of the old mystic Jew
The steeples and women
The cars, particular roads, the church pews
And poetry of rest stops
Nights with the circus on the road wherever
The books which kept gathering around
The collections of maps, and bird books
And sighs, defined him

stacked in the trunks of old cars.
His life was a timely text of encouragement
Written by an unseen hand
That got it written, despite him
His life was mowed in the grass of global parks
He was street art
But written with a holy quill peacock feather.
He obviously heard birds and angels as a kid
And the rest is history.
In his dreams he wore a
Suit of chimes
And a jacket made of
Disco ball.
He reflected
More than projected.
All told,
He was ok
With that
By the end.
And an eagle
Landed nearby
When he died
No-one knew why.

And a rainbow trout jumped out the water just then.

A few short thoughts on finding the right spaces for the right weight of activity

//
On finding the place from which we write:

Writing is a denser weightier space than most, and requires some entry and exit time, strategy and space around it. It’s a deep dive into the self and back again. To fairy land we go when we write, and the way there and back each have their own unique challenges.
So one must make room around both ends—the ascension which is often slow, and the descent which is often more rapid both require their own types of wisdom.
If one ascends too quickly, dizziness may occur.
If one descends to fast, as in scuba diving, pressure occurs as you re-enter the daily normal taking out the trash world.
Over the years, my ascents have typically been better than my descents into that “other” space which is always with us, but which we still must intentionally visit.
At night, in dream we enter and exit more weightlessly. But during the day, we must hike with intention. Sing those old ascension songs as they were going up to Jerusalem.
You notice there aren’t many descencion songs in the book. Wonder why they weren’t singing as they left?
Well it’s hard to leave once you’re there. And I’m not sure we ever do leave Jerusalem really, nor that place from which we write.

//
Thoughts on making room to pray or write.
Writing like prayer requires enough space to step slightly outside of time. And both require room to enter the imagination, so we can see what we are praying or writing about. If you are just writing down thoughts or ideas, you can do so in a grocery store parking lot.
But if you are really praying or writing, it’s a bit dangerous to pray or write and drive.
In my father’s church, they used to actually have prayer rooms. And in life, these are also needed. Writing is similar.
You need uninterrupted spaces to find what you are really thinking in that deeper strata of self.
The inner life takes room to cultivate. And some of the things I see when praying or writing, I wouldn’t want to see in a parking lot. Some of those wild dragons might cause an accident.

//
I try to arrange my activities based on their weight. Counseling a friend weighs more than, watching tv. Calling my mom, weighs more than writing a text to my landlord. Etcetera.
Each activity in life has a certain density. Wisdom gives each the space each needs.

//

Rooms where our metaphors grow:

I never quite trust the permanence of my art studios, as I have had so many throughout the years all over the place.
They are more like portable tabernacles to me, with important metaphors in them. Rooms made of symbol! Old watches, half finished paintings, antique lamps, poster art from the 40’s, speakers which glow, old parts of pianos, and way too many cameras, old type writers, radios, and every type of recording device ever made (which I’ve collected since childhood)….
But, every season of my life, I always had to have an art room! A place to just let things be in process. A place to collect my metaphors and let them just be.
Perhaps there is an intrinsic ellipses in all art studios. A, to be continued, implied in them.
Regardless, it’s nice to have a studio to dream out loud in, and to allow room for them to inform your next metaphors in life.
I seem to need rooms which float like a Chagall painting, or may suddenly disappear and reappear elsewhere. It’s one of my own metaphors I suppose.
We create, therefore we are…but we need rooms where things are just sitting and waiting to see what they are….
I have all shapes and sizes over the years. Huge warehouse spaces, and small ones like now. Ones in old abandoned schools, and ones in church balconies. I wish I could collage them all together, but many have sense disappeared. Or moved on…..still the metaphor of art studio or gallery house has been permanent in my life. A space for things to just be, wait, be formed and become….like me.

Rooms where our metaphors grow:

I never quite trust the permanence of my art studios, as I have had so many throughout the years all over the place.
They are more like portable tabernacles to me, with important metaphors in them. Rooms made of symbol! Old watches, half finished paintings, antique lamps, poster art from the 40’s, speakers which glow, old parts of pianos, and way too many cameras, old type writers, radios, and every type of recording device ever made (which I’ve collected since childhood)….
But, every season of my life, I always had to have an art room! A place to just let things be in process. A place to collect my metaphors and let them just be.
Perhaps there is an intrinsic ellipses in all art studios. A, to be continued, implied in them.
Regardless, it’s nice to have a studio to dream out loud in, and to allow room for them to inform your next metaphors in life.
I seem to need rooms which float like a Chagall painting, or may suddenly disappear and reappear elsewhere. It’s one of my own metaphors I suppose.
We create, therefore we are…but we need rooms where things are just sitting and waiting to see what they are….
I have all shapes and sizes over the years. Huge warehouse spaces, and small ones like now. Ones in old abandoned schools, and ones in church balconies. I wish I could collage them all together, but many have sense disappeared. Or moved on…..still the metaphor of art studio or gallery house has been permanent in my life. A space for things to just be, wait, be formed and become….like me.

Unlike Plato, I’m a big fan of artist being welcomed into the ideal city! He thought that art imparts ideas, and so unless the artists had a noble or good ethical idea, it would corrupt people with a distortion. He was right that symbolic language imparts things directly into the imagination and heart.

Art doesn’t just teach ethics, it also beautifies otherwise only functional spaces. It facilitates a conversation between design and function, which feels truer to life, at least to me.
Art is not meant to be propaganda or an advertisement for an idea, it’s meant to be an invitation to something closer to how life should be and already is, if we see well. To behold well is to heal, as the best have said. Art teaches us to behold more truly, or closer to what things look like through a lens of Love.

When art serves commerce it’s purpose dies or is corrupted. When art serves politics it becomes a bumper sticker. But when a person expresses symbolically…

Beauty helps dignify neighborhoods and my neighbors. Glad that our airport here spends money having monthly installations by local and international artist. People also need art in transit. It helps us be and treat one another more as “thou” than “it”, as Martin Buber put it. The most recent installation at Austin airport, which mimics a gate, and invites the waiter to go anywhere imaginable including outer space, is a nice metaphor to add to a place of exits and entrances. Makes you aware of the airport as metaphor. Glad this city is still creative, even though it has grown so fast that we pray it can still remember its roots, and that it has always been a creative haven for those who needed a safe studio to make the art of their lives in!

Historically the church also used art as propaganda. What a gross misuse of creativity, to slur the image of God.

Reading a great book on the death of certain narratives in art history, so that art itself has to be re-contextualized. I would suggest it be re-contextualized inside of identity—what it means to be human. We create, therefore we are. Or, we are, therefore we create.
Why do we look at art? Why even more so, do we make it?

I disagree with Plato that artist are not also philosophers. That they don’t have a higher intelligence because they only mimic based on inspiration. Although I do make my best art when inspired, I also consider what is “channeling” through me. I’m not possessed, I believe in Jesus as God, and allow Him to teach and direct my art through His Holy Spirit.

That is not an ecstatic knowing, but rather it includes reason, without idolizing it.
Plato divided us into reason, spirit (emotions) and appetites (desires). And suggested that reason is meant to rule the three. But there is always Another Ruler. The One Jesus who rules over the whole soul of phyche. And I would add imagination to the human makeup.

We think, we feel, we express. And all three are ruled by Christ, once we are aware of His Presence.