arranged as a ship should be: 2012

Thursday, November 22, 2012

giving thanks

"Amen, amen, amen" means "yes, yes, yes."

Those are the words on my lips these days,

"yes" to a Father who doesn't take a long winter sleep,

who never crawls into a den, taking a break from me or this life.

We all know summer days.

We say hello to our neighbors and look upwards to heavenly patches of clouds.

We visit farmer's market and buy homemade soaps for our hot baths.

We eat apple crisp and mend sweaters and we remember the good things.

But not every day is a summer day and sometimes I'm the one who needs mending.

Sometimes I'm the one unraveling like an old sweater.

Cold winds, gray skies and long nights are my world

and then I remember "amen."

I "amen" to our Father because the days that I want to crawl underground are the very days that make me glad He doesn't.

When I'm disenchanted by winter realities, I remember that He doesn't lie dormant and that his promises are for all seasons.

-KD

Monday, September 24, 2012

Friday, August 31, 2012

Fall Manifesto 2012

I will replace small with big
fear with freedom
and alienation with asking.

My Fall will be kite-flying, frisbee-throwing and epsom-salt-soaking.

I wilI throw my windows wide and breathe belly deep.

I will be wind-whipped and happy.

There will be oatmeal on the porch

and coffee in mugs.

There will be baskets of hedge apples

and stacks of preserved leaves.

I will be unabashed in this life of mine.

I will be quick to laugh, quick to praise and quick to make merry.

I will be wild-haired and wild-hearted

because I know that cricket symphony is for me.

-KD

Thursday, August 09, 2012

a week of loves: belated day 5, words of artist Robert Henri

All things change according to the state we are in. Nothing is fixed. I lived once in the top of a house, in a little room, in Paris. I was a student. My place was a romance. It was a mansard room and it had a small square window that looked out over housetops, pink chimney pots. I could see l'Institut, the Pantheon and the Tour Saint Jacques. The tiles of the floor were red and some of them were broken and got out of place. There was a little stove, a wash basin, a pitcher, piles of my studies. Some hung on the wall, others accumulated dust on their backs. My bed was a cot. It was a wonderful place. I cooked two meals and ate dinner outside. I used to keep the camembert out of the window on the mansard roof between meals, and I made fine coffee, and made much of eggs and macaroni. I studied and thought, made compositions, wrote letters home full of hope of some day being an artist.

It was wonderful. But days came when hopes looked black and my art student's paradise turned into a dirty little room with broken tiles, ashes fell from the stove, it was all hopelessly poor, I was tired of camembert and eggs and macaroni, and there wasn't a shade of significance in those delicate little chimney pots, or the Pantheon, the Institut, or even the Tour Saint Jacques.

Sunday, July 29, 2012

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

my thoughts on drawing

Looseness is fun. Color is fun. Quickly responding is fun.

But sometimes I get lazy. I get so loose, so colorful and so impulsive that I become sloppy.

I forget my labor of love involves labor.

The labor of being present.

The labor of being engaged.

The unceasing LABOR of being fearless.

I'm reminded of Don, my figure model throughout college. I knew his face well. So well, in fact, I could render him without even looking at him. Sort of. The drawings were never quite right because I didn't look at my source.

Great things, including great drawings, involve paying attention. So when my false sense of ease sneaks in, I return to the basics. Pencil. Paper. Observed values, proportions and contours. I engage. I resolve. I decide.

And then somehow, I get better.

-KD