catch a scent of salt

1812

.亡母や海見る度に見る度に
naki haha ya umi miru tabi ni miru tabi ni

my dead mother--
every time I see the ocean
every time...

Issa's mother died when he was a small child. In his diary, this haiku is followed immediately by another ocean poem:

murasaki no kumo ni itsu noru nishi no umi

on purple clouds
when will I set sail?
western sea

In mythic terms, the western sea separates this world from the Pure Land. The ocean, then, is a barrier between this world and the next, keeping Issa separate from his beloved mother.

Issa, translated by David G. Lanoue

OUR VALLEY

We don't see the ocean, not ever, but in July and August
when the worst heat seems to rise from the hard clay
of this valley, you could be walking through a fig orchard
when suddenly the wind cools and for a moment
you get a whiff of salt, and in that moment you can almost
believe something is waiting beyond the Pacheco Pass,
something massive, irrational, and so powerful even
the mountains that rise east of here have no word for it.

You probably think I'm nuts
saying the mountains
have no word for ocean,
but if you live here
you begin to believe
they know everything.
They maintain that huge silence we think of as divine,
a silence that grows in autumn when snow falls
slowly between the pines and the wind dies
to less than a whisper and you can barely catch
your breath because you're thrilled and terrified.

You have to remember this isn't your land.
It belongs to no one,
like the sea you once lived beside
and thought was yours.
Remember the small boats
that bobbed out as the waves rode in,
and the men
who carved a living from it
only to find themselves
carved down to nothing.
Now you say this is home,
so go ahead, worship the mountains as they dissolve in dust,
wait on the wind, catch a scent of salt, call it our life.

Philip Levine

(c) copyright 2011 Philip Levine

MOTORCYCLE CRASH

DYING MAN (inner voice): Don't look at me so stupidly! Haven't you seen anyone croak before? Shit, is it this easy? I'm lying in a puddle, stinking like an oil tanker. I can't really end up here like a cow shit! Everything so clear! How they stand there gawking at me. The oil puddle...

DYING MAN (Inner voice): Karin, I should have told you yes-terday... This thing got out of control. ...I'm so sorry. Karin! Now I'm lying here. I can't simply... I have to... Karin, there are so many things I still have to do! Karin, Baby, things look bad for me.

DAMIEL
(speaking for the DYING MAN):
As I emerged from the valley out of the fog into the sunshine...
The fire
at the edge of the prairie...
The potatoes in the ashes...
The boat-house
far off at the lake...

DAMIEL and the DYING MAN:
The Southern Cross,
The Far East,
The Great North,
The Wild West,
The Great Bear Lake!

DYING MAN:
The Isles of Tristan de Cunha.
The Mississippi Delta.
Stromboli.
The old houses of Charlottenburg.
Albert Camus.

DYING MAN :
The morning light.
The child's eyes.
Swimming in the waterfall...

(click to see the scene)

VOICE OF THE DYING MAN (off screen):

The flecks of the first raindrops.
The sun.
Bread and wine.
Skipping.
Easter.
The veins of leaves.
The fluttering grass.
The colors of the stones.
The pebbles on the river bed.
The table cloth in the open air.
The dream of the house...

...in the house.
The neighbor asleep in the next room.
Sunday's peacefulness.

The horizon.
The light from the room...

In the garden.
The night flight.

Biking with no hands.

The beautiful stranger.

My father

My mother.
My wife.
My child.


from Wings of Desire

Wim Wenders and Peter Handke 1

the bath, part 3

PLACES TO SWIM

Summer's ambitious project — the beach and its
dark striped rocks,
stone-lined pool at the swim club,

passage where the tide flowed out behind dunes,
left fingers and lips blue,
tea-colored pond of black sticks where kids

jumped off branches of an over-hanging tree,
aqua
 of indoor pool lanes,

the white lines' circling, breaking pattern
interrupted by arms, churns and kicks.

*****

Yellow leaves drift down —
 fish-shaped ovals, flecking slick streets,
light October rain,

almost like swimming, the walk
through wet, late afternoon air.
In town this week, two people found goldfish

balanced in paper cups
in their mailboxes.
Teal blue wool, ten rows

to no- tice the wave reappear

in the cable I'm knitting,
dusk pattern,

 



you bent
over the piano in the kitchen
picking out the lost bars of Satie
(what could sound better?).

Music book left
somewhere — an attic
or with cousins by the lake.

Talvikki Ansel

(how strongly a part of all this was erik satie. how similarly our artists paint the bathers.)

beach

luminosity

a few posts back, we learned that dow moved to paris to study at the academie julian under boulanger and lefebvre. what we learn today was that he was far from the only american painter to do exactly that exactly then. "The Académie Julian which was the largest and most important art school in Paris. Julian's fees were relatively modest and there were no preconditions or entrance requirements, consequently it attracted large numbers of foreigners from many nations -- Russians, Japanese, Brazilians, Britishers, and many Americans. 1

following their studies, many americans travelled to the french village of giverny, forty miles northwest of paris, during these years, often meeting at Monet's home to paint, critique, and socialize. american impressionist Frederick Carl Frieseke settled in giverny along with painters Richard E. Miller, Metcalf Willard Leroy, John Twachtman, Childe Hassam, Robert William Vonnoh, Philip Leslie Hale, Thomas Wilmer Dewing, Guy Rose, Karl Albert Buehr, Louis Ritman, Lawton Silas Parker, and Edmund Greacen, Alson Skinner Clark, John Leslie Breck, Theodore Robinson, William Blair Bruce, Theodore Wende, Karl Anderson, and more.

they were dubbed "the giverny luminists" or "giverny group," often exhibiting together, both in france and back in the US. they obviously painted together. sometimes at the same moment, and sometimes maybe at the same moment. the questions are endless -- are these (below) the same pool? both are surrounded by nasturtium.... are they at monet's house? looks like his house but i don't see that little circular pond anywhere....

a group of painters, seeing with the same eyes, painting with the same brushes. sometimes many painting the one, say, boat, sometimes one painting the many... frieseke painted her endlessly, and there's no need to ask why, how lovely the scene is, repeating and repeating and repeating.

studying about all of this, i began to wonder about something. dow was at the same school, at the same time, and followed the other artists (many of whom were infatuated with japanese prints) to giverny, and as they gravitated towards something of the same style, he came home dejected, and it wasn't until several years later that he "discovered" hokusai's prints in a book at the library. Why?
(to be continued)

the woman's boat

- Toni Childs Lyrics

She Who continues.

She Who has a being

named She Who is a being

named She Who carries her own name.

She Who turns things over.

She Who marks her own way, gathering.

She Who makes her own difference.

She Who differs, gathering her own events.





She Who gathers, gaining

She Who carries her own ways,

gathering She Who waits,

bearing She Who cares for her


own name, carrying She Who

bears, gathering She Who cares

for She Who gathers her own ways

carrying

the names of She Who gather and gain,

singing: I am the woman, the woman




the woman -- I am the first person.

and the first person is She Who is the first person to

She Who is the first person to no other. There is no

other first person.

She Who floods like a river and

like a river continues

She Who continues


Judy Grahn

by any other name

william merritt chase called them 'japanese umbrellas'; his tenth-street studio was known to always have some around.

kent seavey, of the heritage society of pacific grove, calls them that too. 1

in fact, pretty much everyone called them that, and most of them painted them too.

(the grandma of them all may be friseke's garden umbrella.)

everyone, that is, but the japanese.

in japan, the umbrellas were only minimally decorated. if at all. (except maybe in versions by westerners.)

they might be colored, but they were otherwise plain.

friseke painted them several more times, often, like this one, painted in giverny.

"Careful examination of the choices the artist Frederick Frieseke made when depicting women as subjects reveals information about the artist, these women and attitudes toward women during the early 20th century. Consider the women in Frieseke's painting as both subjects and symbols.

Why do you think Frederick Frieseke chose this setting for his painting? The work depicts his wife, Sarah O'Bryan, and a companion enjoying a bit of leisure time in the Frieseke's garden. Frieseke often painted his wife set within the confines of her lush garden or intimate bedroom. In these feminine spaces, Frieseke was able to concentrate on the decorative qualities of nature, as well as the human figure.

How did the artist convey a feminine feeling, beyond setting his female figures in a garden? Frieseke's repetition of rounded forms, such as the chair backs and umbrella, echoes the soft forms of the female figures. Additionally, the repeated use of patterns in the Asian designs on the umbrella and the background flowers, the female subject and the natural setting suggest Frieseke was aware of 19th-century Japanese prints, which bear many of the same characteristics and were very popular among French and American art collectors at the time." 2

and he clearly wasn't the only one. consider this beauty from jean's blog. i loved this piece so went off on research, and found a very interesting thing.

miller's was first, and is much better. i think jean found his best.

there are others, but i think i'll leave it at that. for now. in recreating a bit of this wondrous new east they instead created an illusion.

they may have been created in the east, but they were make for the west alone.