direct link: danser la lune

This little clip was, oh, enticing. It was among other footage I shot of the August full moon, and I couldn't resist a little video.

The story is mine, from a novella I wrote in 2008 (my only hot novella -everyone should write one). The characters in this scene are Moedello and Orsola.

Music by Arnold Wohler, 'Larghetto espressivo' from his album, "Quintett für Flöte, Geige, Gitarre, Klavier und Cello in 5 Sätzen."

The Rumi lines shown at the beginning are from his poem, The Privileged Lovers (source? whose translation? unable to find, you know the NET).

I recorded this quite a few times over an evening and the next morning, and edited the passage a little in that process. I ended up going with the very first reading, wouldn't you know, how it is sometimes, so I don't have the exact version I read.

from my novella, Moedello:

She seemed not to particularly notice him. She smiled brightly when he passed by and said, "How're you today, my good man?" The pleasantries she offered were the same she offered to everyone she encountered on her jaunts through the city where she stopped at many houses to help with chores, or simply visit.

That she did not appear to hold him in a special place in her heart tore at him in his secret hours.

He felt awkward near her youthful beauty. She was like Graeco-Roman statuary, her proportions perfect, her beauty gracious and uplifting.

She shone.

She has charisma, he thought. I'm simply one of the smitten.

When she walked through the city, her hips swayed from side to side like a temptress. Her movement had rhythm, a natural grace. She was intoxicating to watch. When she spoke her voice was like sunbeams, or wind chimes dancing, the tenor and tone rich and seductive.

He could not get her off his mind. He was obsessed with her, and thought of her every spare moment. At night he imagined lying with her whispering intimacies to each other and making love until dawn. Every night he fell asleep dreaming of being entwined in union. In these visions he was the happiest man on the earth with the sexy saint, Orsola.

...
As he grew increasingly lovesick, an illness crept over him. A high fever developed; he became delirious. When his dinner was delivered to him, the woman who brought it saw Mœdello, who lay silently in his bed, was ill. Teas of various steeped herbs were prepared for him and brought to his bedside. Cloths dipped in cool water were laid over his heated brow.

Those caring for him in rotation through the day and evening were tired and Orsola was asked to watch over him for the rest of the night.

While he lay in a stupor dreaming of her, Orsola sat beside him in the dark room.

In the small room, the chair on which she sat jutted against the bed so her knees touched him as he dipped in and out of feverish delirium.

He called, 'Orsola...' in his fever not knowing he spoke her name out loud. And as in his dreams, she answered, 'I'm here, it's alright, I'll look after you through the night. Your fever will break soon, I know it will.'

He thought he was dreaming, truly. He reached out to where the voice, her voice, was and finding her knees, startled, he opened his eyes and tried to see in the dark.

She put her hand lightly on his on her knees, and said, 'Mœdello, rest, I'm watching over you...'

Mœdello lay still for what seemed forever and then he slowly began to move his hand between her legs, his heart beating with his boldness. He groaned slightly and she moved to lay a cool cloth on his brow and he kept slowly sliding his hand under her skirt, up her soft inner thighs.

Orsola did not stop him. Nor did she acknowledge that his fingers were slowly moving towards her most intimate grotto.

_

‎danser la lune, yes, oh it's fun... a wee bit o' Rumi, a story that you'll enjoy, a crazy moon. Laughing! Uploading video now. Late walking the dog.

Some stills - the August moon, the yellow flower moon (Osage), shot with my Canon Vixia S100.

Altered Lifedrawing3, 28cm x 35.5cm, 11"x14", India ink, conté crayon, 100lb archival paper.

Words written in the drawing:

age comes whizzing in on us

caterpillar woman

_
If this image becomes an opportunity to dialogue with yourself about various issues, perhaps age-related, perhaps grandmother or elderly mother, or who knows, the crone, or perhaps death itself, reaching the edge of the lifespan and finding your body becoming larval and the wings that will take you out, enable you to flee a collapsing body, then ... yes...

(With thanks to Bent Lorentzen for eliciting this response from me to some of his comments on the drawing.)

Finally, went to a life drawing session at TSA (Toronto School of Art) last night, and only because my niece (who's 20) said she'd go with me. She found the short poses difficult and erased all her drawings but three! Oy! She is very talented and wants to do an art degree.

The model was older, I estimate about 70. I don't aim for a likeness, rather looking intently at the form and letting my hand draw. Anyway, thought I'd share. First session since 2006!

The room was packed, nearly every table taken. While I hadn't planned to create backgrounds for my sketches, I found myself hurriedly sweeping coloured conte crayon over the next page in between poses. Then quickly rubbing with a paper towel to blend and wipe the excess pigmented dust onto the floor behind me with paper towels!

The conte crayons are similar to chalk pastels, brightly coloured, though a little less dusty.

These are the sketches as is, untouched, simply photographed in late afternoon sunlight, and slightly colour-corrected to more closely match the originals . There are more, some I don't like, some awaiting colour.

All Life Drawings, 28cm x 35.5cm, 11"x14", India ink, conte crayon, 100lb archival paper.

I have a wooden print block such as you might find in Bali for hand-printing fabrics in a random pattern, solid wood, carved, round, an article of artisanal beauty. It's been on a shelf 20 years. I've never used it before. Last night I swept iridescent acrylic paint over its carved surface and pressed.



My intention is to draw a figure or figures in ink over this background with some paint, perhaps daubed on with a sponge since the water-based pastel background will lift off the triple-glazed canvas sheet with water because it likely needs weeks to dry to a permanent finish.


background2, 18" x 24" canvas sheet, water-soluble oil pastels. (This photo was taken in full sunlight -the iridescent pewter and silver grey print markings are darker with less light.)

Background1 is here (with no Balinese block imprints).

A neat iPhone app, 360 Panorama, that takes, and stitches together, 360° photos. From one taken last night, and another today, you can see I work in a very small space  - my studio, study, meditation space, recording studio, sewing nook, sleeping space (for both person & doggy).

360 View: http://360.io/zaFDum


Nighttime shot.


*Note, to better see the whole photo below: Click the minus or smaller ' - button' to decrease the size of it in the panorama view. (Just don't do it on drugs.)


360 View: http://360.io/Myhzfh


Daytime shot, no it's not that disorganized! It's positively hallucinated in this surround photo! I love it! My room never looked so good!

The room is very organized - two huge baskets of sea-grass hold many journals, smaller baskets tucked in the shelf hold paints, finishes, varnishes, jars hold brushes and pens; always some lidded filled small water jars nearby for quickly working; various easels, boards and larger papers stored between desk and wall; and a large tray with A4 Moleskine notebooks, water-based oil pastels, watercolour pencils and a dozen jars of ink sits on the desk, and so on. My desk is my studio, but it can turn quickly into a study or a sewing nook. ::smiles::

Wishing so desperately to work on larger paintings I finally hit on a potential solution. Room is too small for comfortable easel painting. Ended up here when my kids moved back with me. It's ok, no complaints. I love them dearly.

Anyway, I purchased a 24" x 18" canvas pad of triple-gessoed canvas. To buy a strip of gessoed canvas from a roll would have been cheaper, but that's only single-gessoed, and not stretched. Couldn't deal with stretching - it's a humidex of 40° in this apartment! The pad has 10 sheets, which will last years at the rate I work, and if faster, hey that's great.

So I taped it to a light board, and you can see the blank canvas sheet in the 360° photo. I was inspired by Robin Mead's experimentation with water-soluble pastels that she posted recently. She was wetting them and spreading them as background (I think). I've had mine for some years and never thought of doing this.

Anyway, it was much harder than I thought it would be. The water-based pastel does not adhere that well to triple-glazed gesso. Any drops of water took the colour out leaving a white splotch. It all took far longer than I had anticipated. I had to work over it a few times. I gave up on doing the fairly even patina I had originally planned and went for more of a flow approaching a marbling perhaps - though this morning it looks more like a Monet water lily (!). But it is so delicate, I'm not sure how it will hold water-soluble oil paints (all I use) or inks. I've sprayed it with a matte fixative. No idea if that will work to hold it or if there'll be problems with inks and paints adhering.

Anyway, here's a photo taken in the sunlight just now of the background I prepared last night. I want to draw on it, etc., in a free, imaginative way and not worry about where it's going. Learning my way in to this.


background, 18" x 24" canvas sheet, water-soluble oil pastels.

This is going to be hard. He won't divorce me, though we separated 14 years ago and he has been living Common Law with another woman for 13 years. I've been browsing my old journals that I brought out of storage recently. Yesterday I posted a 'found' poem from lines and images found in some journals from 1980. The ones I have been dipping into tonight are harder. A thesis I didn't finish. The death of my beloved father. Marriage, perhaps out of desperation, perhaps out of a strange love, who knows anymore. It's not as if none of this happened before we were married.

Friday, August 30, 1985.

10:55am

For the first time I watched one of B's violent episodes manifest.

Last weekend, when he was changing the kitty litter in the basement washroom, he accidentally knocked one of the 'arms' on the toilet roll holder. With sharp anger he suddenly kicked the whole thing, tearing it off the wall. I said, "You idiot," and got out of the way fast. At dinner on Monday, he told me about telling the bear story [from a camping trip] to a man at work,  and how he thumped his desk suddenly with his hands --womp!-- at the moment of his telling about hearing the bear and how that man jumped. I did, too, as he mimetically smashed the table we were sitting at, making it jump. Visiting C and S, they were relating C's problems with S's grandfather visiting from England in that he excluded C from family photos because he wasn't of the "D's [family's] line." B said, "I would tell him to FUCK OFF," as he suddenly punched the air with  a force that would have knocked anyone cold had they been the recipient of it. C and S were noticeably, but momentarily, alarmed at B's violent motion. Last night B and I were haggling over household bills as we entered the last 10 months' collection on SuperCalc. At one point, he flung a binder of mine with a calculator in it on the floor, causing all the contents, even those in small pockets to fly out. I grabbed it and lightly tapped him for doing that so needlessly. Oh boy. He stood up on the couch and began punching me, my chest, my arm. I started shouting, "You have no control! Stop it!!" while fending off his blows. He shouted that he hated me. I continued, "Just because you feel weak and powerless sometimes do you think that beating up your wife is going to make you feel stronger?!"

"You bitch," he frothed, still punching me.

"How can you do this to the woman you love?" I shouted as I tried to defend myself. "Alright!" I stopped, "If you want to beat me up, go ahead and do it!!" Without an opponent, he subsided. He doesn't like the image of himself as a wife-beater. Ever since I began using this tactic it has invariably diffused his violence. I don't get nearly so bruised or bloodied, which is a relief, because if I don't somehow diffuse his attacks they are terrible. He has no in-built mechanism for controlling himself.

Afterward I just cried and cried. He refused to talk about what had just happened, but did 'make up.' I sent him off to buy cigarettes and continued crying, feeling sorry for myself, wondering how I had ever gotten into such a relationship.

There's more, of course... many paragraphs. Then, at 3:00pm that day I wrote:

How I dislike writing about these fights. Who wants to commit this sort of thing to paper? I hate myself for doing it -- what if someone were to inadvertently read what I write here.... I do it because I'm confused by these extremes, these violent episodes, and... try to understand. I can't talk about what goes on to anyone.
_

Why did I feel I had to hide what was going on from everyone? Why was I ashamed? He blamed me for his anger. Perhaps I was trying to heal him; perhaps I didn't believe in my own worth. It is now 26 years later, and still I struggle to speak.

A poem I composed from lines found in three of my tightly written, packed journals from 1980. I may or may not use it as the voiceover poem in the video of the crazy moon I'm playing with presently.

La Luna

razors of lightning press my eyelids
your white love, the pearl shell seas
the sky peels back like a scroll
you are mine, unsplitted, fleshless

cornucopias, hot-bed undersea growths of things
joined to other things in sections, in shell lines

mad shadows. my blood is full of alcohol

memory is internally roused, without evasion

I open the door to your shadowed face, dark hair, beard-
those fluid sea-algae, jade-green eyes
do they absorb or reflect light?

light is a tumbling ball
the moon is a lunatic
there is a lady on the telegraph pole

each man or woman who enters has to leave
their personality behind like tossed clothes

pastel lightning crosses the sky
the moon is a fetish
a fat, marshmallow moon
the moon contemplates itself
a blood moon

words are a wash of waves;
waves of a ceaseless alphabet

my throat is a silent, howling hyena
the illness of passion

I've been caught

where is the land; where is the vessel?

lapped wind and frothed cloud
mutant moon
- a glowing field of electrical fabric -

vision is dangerous

this fragile moon letter of white light

the white imagination that you have to travel
through the prism to get to

when I'm in love I'm outside of what
I'm inside of the rest of the time



I follow the moon
am nothing but motion
...............following
streets marked by lights
as round as moons

am nothing
but shadows of light

as the moonlight
careens drunkenly in the sky

shrouds hide me
while the moon dances

a hallucinated ball

of white wind

shorn of darkness
dance naked night
my eyes flutter
in the tops of trees

spirits gather and flee

you have gone



direct link: La Luna

Music by Arnold Wohler, 'Larghetto espressivo' from his album, "Quintett für Flöte, Geige, Gitarre, Klavier und Cello in 5 Sätzen."