But then you lit the lamp and that was it.
It was no sudden and miraculous glow
But the warm comfort of one window lit

Against the greyness I had come to be,
And I stood weary and I saw it so,
And I called then and you answered me.

-- Peyton Houston, lines from '49' sonnet variations

the hardness and softness of things

The dialectic of hard and soft governs every image with which we picture to ourselves the inner nature of things . . . From hard and soft we learn of the multiple paths of progress, acquiring quite different measures of temporal efficiency. The hardness and softness of things engage us in an entirely other kind of dynamic life. The resistant world lifts us out of our static reality, beyond ourselves, initiating us into the mysteries of energy. Henceforth we are awakened beings. Hammer or trowel in hand, we no longer stand alone–we have an adversary, something to accomplish. However insignificant it may be, we have, as a result of this, a cosmic destiny.

-- Gaston Bachelard, from Earth and Reveries of Will
Tr. Kenneth Haltman

more

when it does

To accept whatever comes, regardless of the consequences, is to be unafraid or to be full of that love which comes from a sense of at-oneness with whatever . . . In other words there is no split between spirit and matter. And to realize this, we have only suddenly to awake to the fact. I have noticed it happens and when it does it partakes of the miraculous.

-- John Cage "Juilliard Lecture" in A Year from Monday (1952)

more

Promise

Remember, the time of year
when the future appears
like a blank sheet of paper
a clean calendar, a new chance.
On thick white snow

you vow fresh footprints
then watch them go
with the wind's hearty gust.
So fill your glass. Here's tae us. Promises
made to be broken, made to last.

-- Jackie Kay

Jackie Kay interviewed

chestnuts_4774

For every word has its marrow in the English tongue for order and for delight.

-- Christopher Smart, from Jubilate Agno

Jubilate Agno

more

listen

MoMA Courses Online Registration Open for Winter/Spring 2012

PMNYS Fast-Forward Preview (Part 1) by Mab MacMoragh

Registration for Winter/Spring 2012 MoMA Courses Online is now open! Information and registration here.

PMNYS is an independent student project by the Post Millennium New York School painters, a group of artists who met virtually in the Spring 2011 MoMA Online Course, 'Materials and Techniques of Postwar Abstract Painting' taught by Corey D'Augustine.

This is Part 1 of the project, which will eventually include a video of the paintings along with a narrative in a virtual setting.

PMNYS Painters are:

Betsy Ritz (Rhode Island USA)
Bobbie Friedman (Rhode Island USA)
Chris Jeffrey (Vermont USA)
Deborah Rhee (Melbourne, Australia; Dallas, Texas USA)
Doug Brannon (North Carolina USA)
Hilary (USA; Berlin, Germany)
Jackie Mintz (Maryland USA)
Kim Charlton (New York USA)
Mab MacMoragh (Georgia USA)
Mania Row (Essex and London, UK)
Maria Rosa Benso (Turin, Italy)
Marie Louise Eriksen (Denmark)
Maryse Wicker (France, Connecticut USA)
Monica Ridruejo (Spain)
Myriam Kassin (Bogota, Colombia)
Pauline Ginnety (Ireland, France)
Rose Golledge (Brazil, UK, Portugal)
Starr Davis (California USA)
toon den heijer (Amsterdam, Netherlands)

Thank you to MoMA Courses Online!

Crossposted

daylily_2807

Everything that is touched by light
loves the light.

-- Linda Gregg, lines from 'Surrounded by Sheep and Low Ground'

Read 'Surrounded by Sheep and Low Ground'

ginkgo_7342

What I thought I had left I kept finding again

      but when I went looking for what I thought I remembered

as anyone could have foretold it was not there

      when I went away looking for what I had to do

I found that I was living where I was a stranger

      but when I retraced my steps the familiar vision

turned opaque and all surface and in the wrong places

      and the places where I had been a stranger appeared to me

to be where I had been at home called by name and answering

      getting ready to go away and going away 

...

There are the yellow beads of the stonecrops and the twisted flags

      of dried irises knuckled into the hollows

of moss and rubbly limestone on the waves of the low wall

      the ivy has climbed along them where the weasel ran

the light has kindled to gold the late leaves of the cherry tree

      over the lane by the house chimney there is the roof

and the window looking out over the garden

      summer and winter there is the field below the house

there is the broad valley far below them all with the curves

      of the river a strand of sky threaded through it

and the notes of bells rising out of it faint as smoke

      and there beyond the valley above the rim of the wall

the line of mountains I recognize like a line of writing

      that has come back when I had thought it was forgotten

-- W.S. Merwin, lines from 'Fox Sleep'

Read 'Fox Sleep'