Blog Friends Meet in Person

Last week, I had the great pleasure of meeting and playing with two friends I met through flickr and blogging. One, the beautiful Wayward Tulip, yoga student and instructor, editor, poet, writer (check out this amazing post of hers), artist, and general-all-round-amazing-woman, Liz ... this pic I shot while in the midst of a four hour conversation, hopefully the first of many over the years. Liz, I am so glad to have met you.

And, Kim, who has lots of interesting things to say, as well as cool things to show me, and even more delicious things to eat at her house, graciously agreed to let me take her picture in her studio. Her crammed studio that is.

What a stimulating, cool, fun place to hang out and do art. You guys would love all the weird and wonderful gadgets, bits and pieces of stuff, art supplies ... just about anything you can imagine. Kim probably has it stashed somewhere in her studio.

She is currently in the process of making some interesting and beautiful assemblage-boxes. I love this one.

I got the grand tour, can you tell?

Besides being entertained by all of Kim's exuberant creativity, I was invited to dinner (!!!) by Kim's very cute mom, Diane. Delicious! Diane has her own cooking blog and I am waiting for her to post that incredible peach and gorgonzola cheese recipe she made for our dessert. OMG! it was incredible.

Kim, I meant it when I said anytime you're in Montana .... or anywhere close to my home.

To both Liz and Kim ... there will always be an extra (comfy) bed for you and open arms at my house. It's your turn to play in my space! :-)

Silky Skin on Quadra Island

This driftwood looked so much like skin. I coudn't resist ...

Hi I'm back and glad to be home! I have been on a long road trip for the last two weeks or so - first time in a long time I've driven by myself on a long distance trek. I had such a great time stopping whenever I felt like it -- to pee, to shoot photos, drink espresso, nap in the sun somewhere along the roadside .... I drove from my hometown of Helena to Kelowna ... then with my mom to Vancouver, then on the Horseshoe BayFferry to Nanaimo with my sisters, up island to Campbell River, over another ferry to Quadra Island and the Quadra Island Harbour House, which was our destination and home/retreat for the next three days. All of my sisters, my sisters-in-law and our mom spent those days just relaxing, exploring, playing, eating, hanging out together, making beadwork, shooting tons of photos and of course, talking.

After spending a few more days with my youngest sister, Marybeth, and her family, at their North Vancouver home, I drove down to Seattle where I stayed with my dear friend (formerly of Missoula, Montana and now attending UW Medical School) and her family. I met up with Kim and Liz, and had huge amounts of fun getting to know them in person.

Kim entertained me by giving me a grand tour of her house, garden and .... her incredible studio. She has her hands in so many creative projects! Her mom cooked us a delicious dinner topped with an amazing and really different dessert - peaches with gorgonzola cheese and nuts. Oh, scrumptious.

I met up with Liz at Pike Place Market over coffee at Local Color. We spent four hours -- talking -- in a space of time that truly felt like just one hour. What an amazing person she is -- even more loveable in person than on her blog. I am so glad I got to meet both of these wonderful women.

Continuing with the grassy theme ...

Sam's View of the Marsh


I got down on Sam's level in the marsh with my camera -- so, about 12 inches off the ground. This is what he sees when he charges into the grasses, nose-first, full of enthusiasm for finding the source of those deliciously ripe and pungent odors.

Me: What is in there? In the shadows in the tangles in those damp dark hollows and burrows?

Sam replies: Why? Need you ask at all? Just smell! Just suck in that pungent air with each breath, let it roll around inside your cheeks and jowls ... taste the smells, smell the tastes. Close your eyes and don't even think of the darkness. Think of all the delicious messages and stories and tales of those who have come this way before us!

Variations on a Grass Theme

Digital paintings based on two photos of grasses that I shot in the marsh near our house:

Beautiful Bathing Place

A reflection of a slice of sky and the horizontal fence boards along the back of the garden. These are marbles in the water of aone of our garden birdbaths. It's made of a large old concrete culvert, shaped like a curved piece of macaroni. The culvert is sitting on top of a clay pipe as the pedestal. I keep my favorite marbles in the water, just to give the birds something beautiful -- and different -- to look at while they splash in the water. The little songbirds love this birdbath because it's "enclosed" and feels safe and sheltered to them.

For Understanding

Our Metaphorical Brains

Synesthesia (also spelled synaesthesia) occurs much more frequently in artists, poets and novelists than it does in the general population.

Yesterday I wrote about Jason Moran and his approach to jazz composition. I started writing about the idea of synesthaesia -- I admit it's a bit of a stretch to jump from Moran's jazz style and artistic influences to the peculiar ability some people have to see colored numbers or colored days of the week ... but hang with me here a minute and hopefully I'll stimulate your modalities to start thinking in synesthetic-like ways.

Synesthesia: A condition in which a person quite literally tastes a shape or sees a color in a sound. This is not just a way of describing experiences as a poet might use metaphors. Synesthetes actually experience the sensations.

From the Wikipedia article on synesthesia:
While cross-sensory metaphors are sometimes described as 'synesthetic,' true neurological synesthesia is involuntary...

and

Many people with synesthesia use their experiences to aid in their creative process, and many non-synesthetes have attempted to create works of art that may capture what it is like to experience synesthesia.

My point is not whether non-synesthetes are successful or not, in capturing the essence of synesthesia. For me, trying to simulate synesthesia might open a crack in the door to a deeper level of metaphorical thinking ... a richer way to see and experience the world around me, or just another way to intentionally stimulate parts of my brain to cross wire or cross-pollinate.

Just for fun, listen to/watch this software-generated simulation of a quasi-synesthetic song-round. Click on the center arrow:



When I watch all four voices in the animation above, slightly squinting my eyes at it, I can see dancers moving around in the space, interacting with each other, interweaving the melodies in a very physical way. It occurs to me music animation such as this, might be an effective way to teach music.

More links:
Museum of the Mind, a web portal for synesthesia. There is almost too much to take in, at that website, but for starters, if you are an artist or poet, you might be interested in Dr. Hugo Heyrman's fascinating lecture on Art and Synesthesia.

One last reference on synesthesia as it relates to artistic endeavors is this, from the Contemporary Aesthetics, a paper titled, Kinetic Synaesthesia: Experiencing Dance in Multimedia Scenographies

Artists Ought to be Writing
On July 31, National Public Radio had an absolutely fascinating musical piece featured as their Song of the Day ... by Jason Moran, from his cd, Artist in Residence.

I love the way
NPR's songs of the day
introduce me
to musicians I might not have encountered otherwise.
I had never heard of Jason Moran,
but I just cruised around
on his web page and his
mySpace page and
now I know I dig his music.



But even more I like the way he puts things together: like in the Artists Ought to Be Writing piece - working with the sound of the human voice, the inflections and inherent musicality of speech, he transcends both the spoken word and the music. Or he pulls from dance, other kinds of movement; paintings, other visual arts. Wow! it's like synaesthesia: tasting sounds or smelling colors!

Moran's way of composing jazz reminded me of the way some people mix their senses, so I got to digging into the fascinating ability known as synesthesia. I'll write more on that later. For now, I am just going to quote the NPR introduction to this piece and hope you go listen to this awesome collaboration.

... there's an edifying tenor to "Artists Ought to Be Writing," as sampled orator (and performance artist) Adrian Piper uncorks a manifesto urging artists to demystify the esoteric by letting people in on the inspirations, intentions and machinations of their works in hopes of building a more informed audience.

The composition, nevertheless, rewards the listener with emotional magnetism via Moran's elegiac piano work. At first, Moran underscores Piper's androgynous voice with lovely chords; then, he slowly unveils melodic phrases that shadow-dance alongside her rhythmic cadence. Soon, it's easy to discover the inherent musicality of Piper's speech patterns -- and, conversely, the soulfulness in Moran's analytical experimentation. As the sampled voice disappears, Moran continues to build upon Piper's recitation, unraveling a surging and sanguine improvisation.

Smoky Morning After

Smoky Morning After, originally uploaded by MontanaRaven.

Wildfires are burning up the land here in the Rocky Mountain West. The places we love, so dry from eight years of drought, are like tinders and kindling laid carefully -- ready for a match. Lightning, an engine spark, an ember flying up from a holiday barbecue, a carelessly tossed cigarette butt ... these are enough to set off a 100,000 acre blaze. Our August and September breezes can pick up and breathe power into even the tiniest smoldering coals. Then as the forest and prairies burn ... the air swirls with acrid layers of smoke. The smoke settles down into valleys and coulees: blankets of yellow-gold haze. Dawn, the sun glows a red ball hanging sluggish in the thick sky. It hurts to breathe. It hurts to be outdoors with your eyes open.

The morning news blared that the Derby Creek Fire, burning 180,000+ acres east of us near Big Timber, was the top priority wildfire in the nation. I am staying inside today ...

Rooted Cuttings

Rooted Cuttings, originally uploaded by MontanaRaven.

Rocky Mountain Maple Ceiling

Rocky Mountain Maple Ceiling, originally uploaded by MontanaRaven.

Poetry Thursday: Cat Mind

Zoo-tanica, originally uploaded by MontanaRaven.

CAT MIND

a cat contemplates
the clematis blossom
which reminds her of
whiskers - the way they warn
her not to try to squeeze
through a space
too small for
the rest of
her lithe
body
to
go

copyright 2006 by Maureen Shaughnessy

This week's Poetry Thursday prompt was to carry around a poem in our pockets and read it over and over or whatever ... then post it here. I took some liberties with the prompt -- instead of carrying around someone else's poem, I wrote out in longhand, one of my own from a long time ago. Having it to read whenever I was at a long stoplight, in the bathtub, over my english muffin and coffee breakfast ... helped me see that all I needed to "do" to the poem to make it better was change the physical shape of the words and lines. I wanted to create a shape like what the cat was thinking as it contemplated the clematis .. and it's own whiskers and round shape.

The other result of carrying this around all week was that I had it on my mind when I was wandering around one of my customer's gardens and I shot a couple of photos (one of their cat, the other of a clematis so I could put together a different kind of visual to go with this visual poem. I titled it "Zootanica."
To read more of the Poetry Thursday participant's take on poem-in-a-pocket, click this button and read the comments:

In case anyone is curious, here are the two photos I used for the image above:

Poetry Thursday: a poem in your pocket

Reflection Contemplation

Reflection Contemplation, originally uploaded by MontanaRaven.

Delicate lace-like intricacy of ripples.

Little Creek

Little Creek, originally uploaded by MontanaRaven.

Every rill is a channel for the juices of the meadow. Last year's grasses and flower-stalks have been steeped in rain and snow, and now the brooks flow with meadow tea.
-- Henry David Thoreau, from his journal entry for March 8, 1840

Depths of Blue

Depths of Blue, originally uploaded by MontanaRaven.

Poetry Thursday ... when the time comes to let go ...

This week's totally optional idea on Poetry Thursday is to write about or share a poem about time, however we interpret that concept. I am being lazy this week (actually, I am being overwhelmed with work projects this week) so I am posting someone else's poem instead of writing my own.

I was first introduced to Mary Oliver's poetry during a massage session. My massage therapist read me the poem, Wild Geese ... and I found myself weeping -- tears of both sadness and acceptance for my own life's journey -- on her massage table.

That was over 20 years ago. The next year, I was asked to read something at a friend's memorial service and I chose Oliver's poem, In Blackwater Woods. Since then I have grown to admire and respect Mary Oliver -- to love her poetry and to wish that she would be honored as the Poet Laureate of the U.S. someday. I can think of no one I would rather see honored that way.

So, today I want to share one of those first two poems of Oliver's -- the one that I felt ) and still feel) most connected to, In Blackwater Woods.

I have made several mixed media collages specifically to illustrate this poem. I hope you enjoy reading this poem in this context, even if you have read it hundreds of times before ... or if you have never come across Oliver's poems, I am honored to introduce you to her work:


Dusk at Blackwater Wood, originally uploaded by MontanaRaven.

In Blackwater Woods

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails are bursting
and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

Poem by Mary Oliver

for more about Mary Oliver and a few of her poems, check out the page about her at the Academy of American Poets.

Check out other Poetry Thursday posts about TIME, by clicking this button:

This is a small part of what we stand to lose ....

V, originally uploaded by MontanaRaven.

Earth, so precious, so fragile, so complex and awesome.

Sultry Late Afternoon at the Lake

Sultry Late Afternoon at the Lake, originally uploaded by MontanaRaven.

taken at Cox Lake, near Helena

Beautiful Sunday

., originally uploaded by MontanaRaven.

made for

Abstract Distraction

., originally uploaded by MontanaRaven.

Sun setting in grass

Sun setting in grass, originally uploaded by MontanaRaven.

The wildfires in Idaho are thickening our normally clear air. It's a summer soup of color out there. The smoky air makes for some outrageously beautiful sunsets.

I shot this almost-abstract photo lying across our sleeping bags. Tim had spread them out in the upper meadow. We slept under the stars. There was a gentle persistent breeze out here in the open but that didn't discourage the mosquitos. I stayed awake for a long time, mostly because I couldn't resist waving those micro-monsters away from my ears (their buzzing is one of my least favorite sounds in the whole world!) Sometime in the wee hours, the mosquitos gave up foraging for blood and I finally drifted off into a dream.

Gravitational Pull

Gravitational Pull, originally uploaded by MontanaRaven.

"She did it" .... "Did not" .... "Did so!"

"She did it" .... "Did not" .... "Did so!", originally uploaded by MontanaRaven.

Today and Yesterday ... the Land of Lotsa Rain

., originally uploaded by MontanaRaven.

looking up at the rain running down in rivulets on my umbrella

Moon Rising in Grasses

Moon Rising in Grasses
Originally uploaded by MontanaRaven.

... as in a dream, the moon is tiny,
about the size of my hand, and
as it rises it seems to be
inside the grasses, not far beyond
near a horizon -- well,
there are no horizons --
no limitations like a horizon.

In a dream, one is
in the air, or lying on the ground,
or sitting
at a table with one's beloved ....
or flying or leaping without gravity or
maybe dancing on a stage
that is not really a stage ....
with someone who also knows how
to dance effortlessly, perfectly
stepping
not on one's toes

And nightime objects --
like this moon, this orb
of icy light --
are not "out there" in space
somewhere, but are very much
in here, in one's heart,
in one's dreaming mind

And they -- those objects
one finds
in lost corners of a dream --
they have personality, energy,
numinous life

And so, even in the darkness
if one yearns purely enough, and
searches with earnest
desire,
one can find light
in the heart of a dream

--Maureen Shaughnessy
copyright 2006

Poetry Thursday: Are you listening?

Poem, originally uploaded by MontanaRaven.

Poem

There are no words in
this poem
only small shifts in stance
like quick hand signals against
the light

there are no words
in this poem
only what these seeds
whisper when wind,
like breathing, sighs against
their softness

I usually post a Poetry Thursday poem on my other blog, Raven's Nest, but for some strange reason this week I feel like posting it here. This poem began with the Poetry Thursday challenge to write a poem using words I overheard somewhere.

Check out other Poetry Thursday posts by clicking this button:

Poetry Thursday: another (completely and totally optional) idea — are you listening?

The Watcher ... he enjoys these quiet times in the country

The Watcher ... he enjoys these quiet times in the country, originally uploaded by MontanaRaven.

To me, this photo conveys an important aspect of Sam's life right now ... he loves to just watch ... and although he's deaf, I believe he's listening with his eyes and with his memory, to the stillness, the beauty (this was taken right before sunset last weekend, when Tim, Sam and I camped out on some friends' land) ... he was watching the dying rays of sun, the far distance, and feeling totally comfortable with his "pack" -- his humans -- lying by his side. That's the best of life for a guy who is technically older than 100!

Light is Alive

Sultry Late Afternoon at the Lake, originally uploaded by MontanaRaven.

Have you any doubt that each and every part of the world is alive? That everything has a spirit, an energy that connects it to every other thing?

Even the elements, even objects we consider "inanimate" have a spirit and have life.

Whether you think of the above statement as a metaphor, or you imagine it poetically .... or you know it to be true in a very real sense ... or you think it's a bunch of hogwash ... please view this slideshow with an open mind and allow yourself to be inspired.

Everything is Alive

Everything is Alive, originally uploaded by MontanaRaven.


and tells a story if you listen:





watch the slideshow if you'd like ....

Valley Dusk

Valley Dusk: Goodbye for now, originally uploaded by MontanaRaven.

Photo taken near our house on my way home from one of my client's houses out in the Helena Valley. Hay farming and horse/cattle ranching are still ongoing in the valley. This view will be a housing development within the next two or three years. I will be sorry to lose these idyllic, peaceful views when the housing boom reaches it's fingers into all the beautiful and little-appreciated places where we live. It's happening all over the West. sigh.

Passing Storm on Saskatchewan Prairie

Passing Storm on Saskatchewan Prairie, originally uploaded by MontanaRaven.

This is a digitally re-arranged/tweaked/manipulated (take your pick) version of the original shot here.

Although I like the original a little better, I thought I would post this for comment. This version also appeals to me for it's somber tones, the feeling of time passing with the storm, the way it seems more like a memory or dream than the other, more vibrant and clear photo. I also like this one for its' quality of encroaching darkness (or receding darkness, depending on how you see it ...)

Day of Grace

Day of Grace, originally uploaded by MontanaRaven.

I would like to include with this digital painting, the words of John Gillespie McGee, which have been used time and time again .... still I love the feeling evoked in this short poem. I hope I haven't misquoted him. Here it is:

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun split clouds - and done
a hundred things you have not dreamed of
Wheeled and soared and swung
high in the sunlit silence
Hovering there I've chased the shouting wind along
and flung my eager craft
through footless halls of air
Up, up the long delirious burning blue
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
where never lark nor even eagle flew
And while, with silent lifting mind I've trod
the high, untrespassed sanctity of space
put out my hand and touched the face of God

-- Fl. Officer John Gillespie McGee 1922-1941

Wild West Highway Memory Tree

Wild West Highway Memory Tree, originally uploaded by MontanaRaven.

We Remember

We Remember, originally uploaded by MontanaRaven.

Confirmation of the Blessed Ones

Confirmation of the Blessed Ones, originally uploaded by MontanaRaven.

Soft Landing

Soft Landing, originally uploaded by MontanaRaven.

Left and Right Brain come together in the creative mind, in the lucid dreamtime.

Cloudbreak Congregation

Cloudbreak Congregation, originally uploaded by MontanaRaven.

An abandoned church near Laura, Saskatchewan still home to a congregation .... of birds and discarded furnishings ...

Passing Storm

Passing Storm, originally uploaded by MontanaRaven.