arte ruralia
arte agraria
arte bucolia
Christo [& Jeanne Claude]
in the microcosmic environment
— if you just fucking look —
art is everywhere
arte ruralia
arte agraria
arte bucolia
i woke to the voices of unseen crows at 3:03 ante meridiem
crying out, cawing out
i know the voices of my dear familiars,
and this is unnatural
unsettling an already-unsettled human woman
these crows see me unsettled on my feet
the gods see me unsettled in my dreams
crying out, calling out in my wilderness
i sit here in this dark room in my white chair by this open window looking south into the black night
Continue reading “unseen”During the summer of 2017 – a time of significant change in my life – including the rupture of my marriage, an upcoming milestone birthday, and a relocation to a quiet rural place with dark skies and an abundance of fauna and flora — I literally heard myself: I had unconsciously begun a meditative practice of singing or humming verses and melodies of sorrow, wonder, gratitude — or of the mundane. They were autonomic and presumably original, lamentations.
Serendipitously, I retroactively encountered a May 2017 piece published in Yes! magazine about the revival and history of “lament singing” in Finland. To find that I was actually participating in a Finnish tradition that I had never experienced or heard of — but that was somehow still in me — in some cellular, trans-generational or ancestral place — felt like a bridge to my lineage — to all my unknown women-kin.
The lyrics and tunes occurred spontaneously over several months, and I often automatically repeated the same one over and over while working, cleaning, cooking, gardening, walking or driving. I sung or hummed them mostly while alone, but sometimes they would emerge aloud in public places — I didn’t realize that I was in song or know how long I had been doing it.
People who laugh, cry, sing and talk to themselves aloud in the street are not “crazy” — we are comforting, raging, celebrating, mocking and mourning ourselves, our lives, our experiences and the world.
The lamentations seem similar to freestyle rap or improvised jazz — where if the flow is interrupted or one becomes too self-aware or self-conscious, the rhyme, run, beat, cadence or magic can be lost.
I’ve long wished that I had recorded myself singing or humming these songs when they were so reliable and prolific for me — I treasure those impromptu lyrics and melodies that buoyed me during that hard time — even though I can’t remember them.
My songs, which sung themselves out — over hours, days or weeks are now mostly gone — but occasionally one of them will revisit me — like a surprise visit from a long-lost, dear friend. Recently, I had the epiphany that maybe these lamentations intentionally – as in metaphysically – resist being recorded or remembered — that maybe they’re meant to be ephemeral and recalled epigenetically only as the authentic and urgent need to soothe, praise, thank, confess or cope arises.
“In Finland, the ancient musical tradition known as lament singing is seeing a revival. In the past, the custom was observed at funerals, weddings, and during times of war. But today, practitioners have a modern application for it: musical therapy. By providing an opportunity to process emotions through song, lament singing can confer mental health benefits to modern practitioners.” – Tristan Ahtone
“How an Ancient Singing Tradition Helps People Cope With Trauma in the Modern World”
Yes! Magazine
Song of Myself, excerpt from verse 6,
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
I perceive after all so many uttering tongues,
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing.
I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.
What do you think has become of the young men? and old
And what do you think has become of the women and children?
They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd
All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed
and luckier.
the birds’ choir
is a mockery outside my window, eight different species on the sill — eight — for gods’ sake!
these days when the
Sun’s arc is long
and the soil is warming for the season and permanently
i am in my bed with lead bones
annoyed that i woke up again, and guilty with ungratefulness about it
my steady lament is sung out loud — but still unheard
i counted my mistakes like sheep, to sleep again
they didn’t wander away though
they stay close to their shepherd, always
they say Death comes in threes and that’s true
but it still hasn’t chosen me
instead, conscripting two complacent men, known to me, thirty-six, fifty three, in one week’s time — why???
while i’m out here volunteering for the cause
it cruelly searches elsewhere to complete their trio
of course i’m still fucking here
the gods won’t give you what you pray for
courage, love, fidelity, life, death
they’re full of motherfuckery
they know exactly what i — and what you, want most — of all
so they sent these birds here to taunt me
so they keep me here to taunt you
a fotografic series of bucolia
sit with me, straddle me
don’t say a word
hear my heart with your heart
let mine hear yours
look at me, into me
like a Magic Eye
until the real me comes into your focus
our definitions no longer concealed
listen to me, read me
my words are my knowable mind
come, know what i know
and be known by me
lay on top of me
our mouths open
breathe me in slowly and deeply
let my pneuma impregnate you
i want to make you the father of my art
Continue reading “soul mate”Eleven years ago this week, ahead of the NATO Summit in Chicago in May 2012, I wrote messages with spray paint on the roof of my home in my Portage Park, Chicago neighborhood for world leaders to read as they traveled in military helicopters passing low and loud overhead en route to the Summit venue at McCormick Place.
On May 20, 2012, I also attended the mass protest and marched in opposition to NATO and its global hegemony and destruction.
Also on that day, in one of the most profoundly moving and humbling experiences of my life, while standing shoulder to shoulder with thousands of others, I listened to personal stories of war — of killing, death, rape, horror, pain, guilt and grief — from both U.S./NATO soldiers and the victims of those wars.
I witnessed from just yards away, as Jacob George, by then a warrior, no longer a soldier, along with warrior Scott Olsen (a former Marine, Iraq War veteran, Occupy veteran, and Oakland Police terror survivor) and 43 other war veterans-turned-warriors tossed their military service medals across the CPD police-enforced, Secret Service barricade toward the protected U.S./NATO generals, the policy-makers, and world “leaders” comfortably ensconced and insulated at McCormick Place at the NATO Summit in a gathering of war-makers.
“A warrior is someone who takes his orders from the heart, not some outside force."
- Jacob George
The U.S./NATO war generals, in cowardice, would not agree to meet in person with the men and women who served in their wars and conflicts to ceremoniously accept the return of those unwanted, inglorious war service medals. Those medals were publicly rebuked and surrendered to the asphalt at Michigan Avenue and Cermak Road nonetheless.
on September 17th, 2014
Jacob George
died by suicide.
After the act of disavowing the war medals, We, The People were told to disburse and vacate the area — when we didn’t — and attempted to march forward toward McCormick Place to encounter the World’s warmakers face to face — or at least be seen and heard by them, several hundreds were kettled by Chicago cops and Illinois State Police — resulting in resistance by We, The People and physical and verbal clashes, police violence and protester arrests.
We write to heighten our own awareness of life. We write to lure and enchant and console others. We write to serenade our lovers.
We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.
We write, like Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is eternal. We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it.
We write to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth.
We write to expand our world when we feel strangled, or constricted, or lonely… If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don’t write because our culture has no use for it.
When I don’t write, I feel my world shrinking. I feel I am in prison. I feel I lose my fire and my color. It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave, and I call it breathing.“
~ Anaïs Nin
Arte Digitora derived from the poems: “On Doing” & “Dream Gerund”
On Doing
I have a compulsion to do.
But sometimes/often just want recline.
And the softness [and] of being. Pulled tight into a cocoon & the doing hushed out of me and filled with prairie definitions.
My untold untyped Great/lake fantasies.
Fallen grass tufts and waterproof boot slosh and plant names and hours of dendrochronology with fantas/tical idealized notions of rubbing and human collision, of being.
July nothingness would be a dream come true I close my eyes to it and do and do and do.
~ juggernaut
On July 19, 2022, upon noting the correspondence between the words “doing”, “being” and “dream” in the above poem and the published poem “Dream Gerund” both written by the same poet — I created a digital derivative work – works which I now refer to by the neologism that I conceived:
I derived the new piece from digital media of the poem “On Doing” shared with me via Instagram direct messaging on July 10, 2022 — and photoshopped it with photos of printed text excerpted from the poems “Dream Gerund” (p. 23) and “Revere The Police, Disdain The Citizens” (p.35) published in the poetry collection book memotoallemployees (1995), which was gifted to me by the author-publisher.
motherhood: the unparalleled choice, work, joy and privilege of my life
on the day they plow
the fields clear of last year’s stover
i stay quiet and invisible, indoors
there is a seen and unseen frantic attempt at evacuation, an exodus of
snakes, turtles, frogs, toads, rabbits, moles, voles, possums, weasels, marmots, skunks, raccoons, squirrels, mice, rats,
evicted without notice, again
geese and sandhill crane nests destroyed
winter graves defiled
and newly-born deer crushed, plowed over and under
/this, for corn to fatten confined
pigs, cows, chickens, turkeys, salmon, catfish, tilapia
for human gluttony/
if i just stay quiet,
quieter than the snake and mole i saw yesterday,
if i just stay inside, unseen, all day ‘til Sun’s set, like the possum i saw last night,
then kin will seek refuge, find sanctuary here
to catch their breath
some of us have forgotten that they too breathe
and fear, and wail,
run!!! come, here!!!
stay, please, because the road beyond also brings death!
i put all my faith into telepathy today
the gulls arrive
chasing and taunting the tractor driver,
he’s no farmer
his hands never touch soil or seed
a machine operating a machine guided by satellite
if only the gulls would pluck out his eyes when he dismounts
if only, i would.
Continue reading “the May plow”spring, lyrically
and one way to manage
to preserve Their urbane marriage
was to vow to make me vanish
from Him – my face, my voice, my poems, banished
“fo-cus!!!
We’re off to Berlin — and Paris!”
but here i Am—- still
full of wild
&
full of warning:
that no matter how far They may travel
She knows He dreamt me in Her stead
so, i live inside Her head,
beyond Her dark and vacant eyes
inside Their stale and fresh, new lies
shadowing Their past and future skies
Continue reading “vow”in the rearview mirror
i see it was a gift
an impromptu roadside picnic
a rendezvous along a fast-flowing river
we slip into a raft, built for two, gently floating,
taking turns describing what we see, feel/who we are/
entering rapids, our hearts racing, ceaseless throbbing/
then paddling furiously, having to steer/
and suddenly, the fear
nearsighted, you caught a life ring, rescuing yourself on a familiar and safe shore/
i stayed aboard and roared toward the falls
alone,
extending the ride, the adventure, the hope of it, all/
forcefully plummeting and suddenly submerged into dark and powerful waters
because
i know that true alchemy is in the almost-drowning, in the delirium of breathing in only love and pain and rage, in the near-death/ i’d done it before, feeling it, all/
i know that nothing feels like those first breaths
after struggling to the surface, those gasps of air, birth-like/
i know that nothing smells like the first scent of raw earth, facedown, crawling onto shore/
i know that nothing soothes like the heat from warm, round beach stones on my my body with every slow inch back into sunlight/
this is a different kind of racing of the heart
a new foothold on land/
treasures in my matted and tangled crown that can’t be extricated or explained by anyone but me/ gold nuggets from my solo, deep-dive still clenched in my hand/
the liquidity of lust, love and loss coughed up from my lungs into my favorite cup for me to draw from again and again
— or spit down the drain
“Do you realize – we’re floating in space?”
Our ancestors were born on a spaceship that never needed refueling, repair, redesign or course correction.
Earthlings have all uniquely adapted to their respective natural, geographical habitats and migration routes — except for the warring and dominant human regimes and cultures — that decided for all Earthlings that they should geo-engineer artificial environments and extract the blood and bodies of the ancient ones — for one species’ sole benefit — until Earth no longer feels or looks like Earth – and has become unrecognizable, unsafe or uninhabitable to most other species.
There are PCBs in the Atacama Trench and microplastics in fetal tissue of mammals – of humans.
Despite all the wonderful river and beach clean-up and tree planting projects on Earth Day, for me, it’s always a contemplative and sobering day.
We all have a stake—equally. Because if we do not save the environment and save the Earth, then whatever we do in civil rights or in a war against poverty will be of no meaning, because then we will have the equality of extinction and the brotherhood of the grave.
James L. Farmer,
at the very first Earth Day,
April 22, 1970
“one thing about Forsythia / she comes around and I get lost / against her yellow, I’m no longer me”
“Forsythia” ~ Veruca Salt
proof of life,
because sometimes I forget and hold my own true Self hostage
Ageing is no accident. It is necessary to the human condition, intended by the soul. We become more characteristic of who we are simply by lasting into later years; the older we become, the more our true natures emerge. Thus the final years have a very important purpose:
the fulfilment and confirmation of one’s character.
- James Hillman
“Life is a farce if a person does not serve truth.”
- Hilma af Klint
“A crone is a woman who has found her voice. She knows that silence is consent. This is a quality that makes older women feared. It is not the innocent voice of a child who says, “the emperor has no clothes,” but the fierce truthfulness of the crone that is the voice of reality. Both the innocent child and the crone are seeing through the illusions, denials, or “spin” to the truth. But the crone knows about the deception and its consequences, and it angers her. Her fierceness springs from the heart, gives her courage, makes her a force to be reckoned with."
— Jean Shinoda Bolen
"Women's most feared power over men is the power to say no. To refuse to take care of men. To refuse to service them sexually. To refuse to buy their products. To refuse to worship their God. To refuse to love them. Every therapist knows that sex can be forced, but no power in the world can force love from any woman who wishes to withhold it."
- Barbara Walker
“The Crone has been missing from our culture for so long that many women, particularly young girls, know nothing of her tutelage. Young girls in our society are not initiated by older women into womanhood with its accompanying dignity and power.
Without the Crone, the task of belonging to oneself, of being a whole person, is virtually impossible.”
- Marion Woodman
"[S]he said that a [hu]man had to escape to the country to see the world whole and that [s]he wished [s]he lived in a desolate place like this where [s]he could see the [S]un go down every evening like [the] [g]od[head] made it to do."
~ Flannery O’Connor
am i seeded
or buried
forest or headstones around me
the daffodils
at the edges
offer no answer
germination and decomposition
indistinguishable, at start
in Spring’s cold soil
shaded by canopy or cloud
a defiant trickster/ an anarchist – exposing and destroying The System and its systems/ a beautiful, laughing Christos