Atlas Sits Down (on her sofa)

This week I feel like I'm living in my new home. After months of being Atlas carrying every little bit of my stuff on my back, I can say we have a functioning kitchen, a nice room to wake up in and I know where my shoes are. The move was monumental. Like having a baby or throwing a wedding. I can now make more art.
I'm so grateful I was able to take every object I own from it's place on a shelf, hold it, consider it's value and decide if it's a keeper or something I send back out into the universe. It was lonely but also celebratory. I had so many friends help with the process and remind me of my Alyn-ness. 
Because the unpacked boxes in the house (I can't yet think about the toolshed) are really countable on two hands, I hung out here with one year old Wallace yesterday. Introducing tiny ones to things that are bumpy or  fluffy or  smooth or  shiny or  smell good and watching the reaction has always been one of the joys in my life. I've been reminded what it is that I love about things, especially beautiful ones. Someone made them. They thought about a need and used their imagination to dream up and produce an object for me to fall in love with. 
Thank you makers of beautiful things. Pretty nice I don't have to own to love.

“I love
all things,
not because they are passionate or sweet-smelling
but because,
I don’t know,
because
this ocean is yours,
and mine:
these buttons
and wheels
and little
forgotten
treasures,
fans upon
whose feathers
love has scattered
its blossoms,
glasses, knives and
scissors –
all bear
the trace
of someone’s fingers
on their handle or surface,
the trace of a distant hand
lost
in the depths of forgetfulness.”

From Neruda's "Ode to Common Things"

My favorite tiny vase. 
Card from Chrissy seems to  be the colors 
I want around me right now.

Rough Linen bed set crumples beautifully.

Almost parted with the manicurist
vanity and chair. So happy I didn't.

Fresh paint from Sunday.
 Finally back to painting. 

Poem for Monday

White
-Pablo Neruda
Poetry is white:
it comes from the water covered with drops,
it wrinkles and piles up,
the skin of this planet must be stretched,
the sea of its whiteness must be ironed,
and the hands move and move,
the holy surfaces are smoothed out,
and that is how things are made:
hands make the world each day,
fire becomes one with steel,
linen, canvas, and cotton arrive
from the combat of the laundries,
and out of light a dove is born:
chastity returns from the foam.
-translation by Stephen Mitchell
The images can be found on the incredibly talented Ann Wood's flickr page. Her work and studio are a wonderful indication of how she navigates the laundry Neruda speaks of. Her blog and store are here.

8.16.10 Poem for Monday

New landscape for show opening September 16 at Crowel's Fine Art
 A Lemon
-Pablo Neruda
Out of lemon flowers
loosed
on the moonlight, love's
lashed and insatiable
essences,
sodden with fragrance,
the lemon tree's yellow
emerges,
the lemons
move down
from the tree's planetarium

Delicate merchandise!
The harbors are big with it-
bazaars
for the light and the
barbarous gold.
We open
the halves
of a miracle,
and a clotting of acids
brims
into the starry
divisions:
creation's
original juices,
irreducible, changeless,
alive:
so the freshness lives on
in a lemon,
in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,
the proportions, arcane and acerb.

Cutting the lemon
the knife
leaves a little cathedral:
alcoves unguessed by the eye
that open acidulous glass
to the light; topazes
riding the droplets,
altars,
aromatic facades.

So, while the hand
holds the cut of the lemon,
half a world
on a trencher,
the gold of the universe
wells
to your touch:
a cup yellow
with miracles,
a breast and a nipple
perfuming the earth;
a flashing made fruitage,
the diminutive fire of a planet.

Poem for Monday

An Excerpt from 

Strangers on the Shore

by Pablo Neruda

And so I have to learn

to swim inside my dreams

in case the sea should come

and visit me in my sleep.

And if that happens, all will be well,

and when tomorrow stirs

on the wet stones, the sand

and the greatest resounding sway of sea 

will know who I am and why I return,

will accept me into their school.

And I can be content again

in the solitude of the sand,

graduated by the wind

and respected by the sea-world.

I've never been to Chile but 

love it dearly just by reading

Pablo Neruda's poems.

Here are some links for relief

donations for Chile-

Un Techo Para Chile

Hogar de Cristo

Red Cross