The Deadliest Family Come to Life

The Nightshades are a botanic family that brings us both sustenance and death. The Deadly Nightshade is easily recognized along roadsides and ditches by its restrained, near-black blossom and lanceolate foliage.  A product of its dark leaves and black fruit is bella donna.  A pharmaceutical compound derived from this has been very useful to optometrists who employ its properties to dilate the pupils of patients during eye exams, but the same poisonous compound was used by the gentle lady of the nineteenth century to dilate her pupils believing that this would present a fairer, far-off  look that communicates seductive mystery to her suitors, an anachronism to our present enlightenment–or is it? I become mindful of those big-eyed anime characters, those manga from the Japanese cartoon genre, who are meant to be suggestive of sexually aware children.  What question about perception presents itself here?  What am I saying? I am thinking, exploring, through writing about what makes up our desires by judging evidence as seen through media, olden as well as new.  It is quizzical at least, troubling to many, that just clicks away from this post, at millions(?) of other sites, which can be thought of as posts in themselves, children and woman are exploited for the purposes of sex and drugs for money. Solace in a world warped by desire seems elusive, but comfort and consolation can be found in foods sometimes. This is where the edible Solanaceae, the vegetable Nightshades, come in: Tomatoes, Potatoes and Eggplants.  My beautiful last eggplant is such a specimen. This is how I’d like to leave it: pick the last swollen eggplant and make a parmesan for one one last summer meal from the garden.

Window.

A window said to a man, “What are you looking at?”

Brushing an unruly lock to the side, the man replied, “Me.”

A wind rattled a pane, and the window shook. “Look beyond, O man” it moaned, which is to say, there is more to living then a post

Pictured here: Video Happening at a New Thingy Space hatching on Main Street in Northampton, Massachusetts. Video is of a Hand Painting WINDOW with a brush dipped in water. Video cycles for about 4-5 minutes. Something more needs to happen.

Some Things With Yellow In It

Here is a problem: to say something with yellow in it or to say some things with yellow in them? My compromise: Some Things With Yellow In It. These things, so many–do any one of them say coward? Do they say chicken together? Do they say caution? What has yellow in it? Now, at the end of summer as things lose green, there remains yellow. Sunny?  Does anything yellow say, “Sunny!”  Some yellow things say, “See Me!”  Yellow , having a shorter wavelength than blue, sits up front in the pictorial plane. Yellow seems to rise to the foreground in any flat composition. Painter Milton Avery knew this.

Great Event

Come check this show out. I have known this artist for near twenty years. She is a very brave woman and her painting is top notch.

Potentially Afternoon

 

 

 

Over the mountain on the north side, I came across this scene: a haying cart in wait of hot work. This is the season of potential come to fruition, reaping, and preparing for the deeper thoughts in cold nights ahead. Bucolic images, all my choices here on this blog, but I want to point out how little is needed to express being. Perhaps the meaning of this blog is that it is a quieter corner in my otherwise totally public life. Ironically, you have all been invited, world. We will see how long I can keep it peaceful in here.

September Morning Glory

The sky and the earth meet in so many ways. For instance, where the sea disappears or where the sun slips behind the pines on the hill. Another place I find the sky and the earth come together is in the mediation of the morning glory. It has ventured tendrils from its small start last spring and now holds furled celebrations, which it releases for each day in September. Held in timelapse consciousness, each bloom’s emergence and all of them together have the amusing appearance of tops unwinding, flaring, slowing, falling, in on itself, failing, wilting, waiting, drying, fall off…