Day 25 of Year 2
Today I had another really lovely studio visit. It's always such a pleasure to have people over and get to know them better. During the visit we looked through some monotypes from a particularly difficult time with my health. It was wonderful to see how far I've come and I'm grateful I have moved past that time. But seeing those images again felt like a weight. It's not good to carry that energy around, so I decided to let loose in the studio and play to dispel it. I started experimenting with overlaying images last night and pushed it a little farther tonight. There is a certain excitement that comes when you have absolutely no idea how something will come out and no expectation of creating a "finished" piece. It's strange that something so benign can feel so risky, but it does. Really all of life can be found in the studio, love, grief, joy, pain, adventure, risk, courage, it's all there for the taking.
Hawks
By Lynn Ungar
Surely, you too have longed for this --
to pour yourself out
on the rising circles of the air
to ride, unthinking,
on the flesh of emptiness.
Can you claim, in your civilized life,
that you have never leaned toward
the headlong dive, the snap of bones,
the chance to be so terrible,
so free from evil, beyond choice?
The air that they are riding
is the same breath as your own.
How could you not remember?
That same swift stillness binds
your cells in balance, rushes
through the pulsing circles of your blood.
Each breath proclaims it --
the flash of feathers, the chance to rest
on such a muscled quietness,
to be in that fierce presence,
wholly wind, wholly wild.