Forest Rogers

Excellent Advice from a Cookie

 

"Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time."
                                           ~Thomas Merton

“Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you  must embrace joy as a moral obligation.”      ~ André Gide

With thanks to Fran, who sent it!

8 Good Words

"I shut my eyes in order to see."
                  ~ Paul Gauguin, 1848 - 1903

“Birds with Human Souls”

    A delightful book called Birds with Human Souls, A Guide to Bird Symbolism (Beryl Rowland, 1978) was given me by a dear friend (Cindy! You!). Amongst many a wonder, it tells of ancient Athenian coins on which “a chubby, smiling goddess with a plain helmet appeared with a well-groomed, self-confident owl.”
    It mentions the great flock of owl coins produced from the Laureotic silver mines, and quotes the most charming depiction of financial prosperity I’ve ever read:

Little Laureotic owlets
Shall be always flocking in:
You shall find them all about you,
As the dainty brood increases,
Building nests within your purses;
Hatching little silver pieces.

              ~ Aristophanes, The Birds, c. 414 BC

May many dear little owlets roost with us all during the coming year...

(Click on image to visit Okhla Bird Park preservation petition)

'What are humans without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, men would die from great loneliness of spirit, for whatever happens to the beast also happens to man. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons and daughters of the earth.'

                     ~ Chief Seattle, letter to President Franklin Pierce, 1855

Forget-Me-Nots for the Dodo Bird

"The beauty and genius of a work of art may be reconceived, though its first material expression be destroyed; a vanished harmony may yet again inspire the composer; but when the last individual of a race of living beings breathes no more, another heaven and another earth must pass before such a one can be again."
                                                                        ~  William Beebe

(With thanks to Bob Bills for the quote above.)

Martha Graham said...

I've posted this quote before, but it seems a good one for the new year:

"There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium, and (it) will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly-- to keep the channel open."
                                               ~ Martha Graham

The great dancer and choreographer also said:
"The body says what words cannot."
and
"Dance is the hidden language of the soul."

I believe these thoughts are keys to figurative sculpture, as well.

Election Day 2008...

    It is my hope that Tuesday’s extraordinary events will make manifest a victory of hope over fear and, ultimately, unity over division. May it be a new era for us all. This I dare and venture to believe.
    Mindful of the entangled problems that await President Elect Obama, his administration and us all, let us, please let us now set aside differences. I believe we have elected a man of superb intellect and heartfelt compassion, and the road lies before us.
    One thing I consider beyond doubt: the election of our first African-American president is a profound step toward healing those most bitter, most shameful and still aching wounds that have torn the history of our nation.
    I cried to see it.

"Therefore let not thy heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Believe in Me and put thy trust in My mercy. When thou thinkest thyself far removed from Me, I am often the nearer. When thou reckonest that almost all is lost, then often is greater opportunity of gain at hand.”

                                 ~ Thomas à Kempis,   The Imitation of Christ

Friends, Kind  and Patient:
I am  embroiled in the horrid process of moving... back from Rhode Island to Colorado, again. A strange year indeed, going on two strange years.  More when my brain does surface. I trust it will... it has gone into  hiding. Meantime, a thought from one of my favorite writers of strange stories:

"I care about the literary art, and I know exactly what the Ancients meant by 'the promptings of the Muse'. The stories which I consider to be my most successful came to me as if dictated...  The true ghost story is akin to poetry:  only in part is it a conscious construction, and when the Muse does not speak, you cannot write it."
                              ~  "An Essay" by Robert Aickman  1914 - 1981

To my mind, Robert Aickman was one of the very few writers to capture the genuine strangeness of dream;  insinuating, inevitable and obscure.

To do the deed at hand.

“To cast aside regret and fear. To do the deed at hand.”
                            ~ J. R. R. Tolkien, The Two Towers, Gandalf 

    Regret and fear: these two I have wrestled with throughout this last year. One’s world being shaken sufficiently, basilisks rise from the crevasse of memory to fix the mind in a glare of paralyzing hindsight. Up rear blunders of omission, blind unkindnesses, losses through ignorance. A terrible falling short. It is one’s own errors that are hardest to forgive, in the end, and hindsight produces the most weary breed of sorrow, surely.
    What then of doing the deed at hand? I think that therein lies one of the uses of humility, if I understand that virtue at all: to relinquish the desire, or the torment of the failed desire, to have done and been right, in the interest of doing right now and in future. Or as much ‘right’ as one is capable of perceiving. Releasing the tendrils of regret to follow, as best one may, the thread of fresh insight.

"Let the soul be assured that somewhere in the universe it should rejoin its friend, and it would be content and cheerful alone for a thousand years."

                                         ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1841, Essays, VI. Friendship

P.S.   As per Comment no. 1 (below), I should probably mention that yes, I agree, this quote does sound rather looney. One thousand years of solitude... well. Yet it struck a chord with me just now. I find, with a central loss fresh, such longing over chances cut short, deeds not done and words not said, possibilities truncated -- all those omissions crying out --  that an impossible thousand year sacrifice resonates for me.  What might one not endure, in imagination...

"The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places;
but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now
mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater."

                                    ~ J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

    O western wind, when wilt thou blow,
    That the small rain down can rain?
    Christ, that my love were in my arms,
    And I in my bed again!

                                                  ~ Anonymous

Kind friends,
I'm still here in Colorado, far from home, attempting to get my mother's paintings gathered, her house laid straight and clean, and her business settled.  Thank you so very much for your kind many words, both here and via e-mail.  I hoard them, and will -- yes, really, really will -- be responding!
Forest

A fruitful New Year to us all...

Frightfully popular in its time, but often remembered only in bits:

The Road Not Taken
 
TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,   
And sorry I could not travel both   
And be one traveler, long I stood   
And looked down one as far as I could   
To where it bent in the undergrowth;            

Then took the other, as just as fair,   
And having perhaps the better claim,   
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;   
Though as for that the passing there   
Had worn them really about the same,            

And both that morning equally lay   
In leaves no step had trodden black.   
Oh, I kept the first for another day!   
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,   
I doubted if I should ever come back.            

I shall be telling this with a sigh   
Somewhere ages and ages hence:   
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—   
I took the one less traveled by,   
And that has made all the difference.            

                  ~Robert Frost (1874–1963). 
                   Mountain Interval.  1920.

Good Advice from an Elf

"We put the thought of all that we love into all that we make."
                                                           ~ J.R.R. Tolkein
                                                              The Fellowship of the Ring

Solace for the Fretful Artist

Words to lift sagging spirits (no foundation garment can accomplish so much)  and remind us why we do what we do:

‘There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through  you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you  block it, it will never exist through any other medium, and (it) will be lost. The world will  not have it. It is not your business to determine  how good it is, nor how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it  yours clearly and directly-- to keep the channel open.”
                                                                           ~Martha Graham