I wander around my community appreciating all the personal touches my neighbors have done to their houses. Forsythia and crocuses are in bloom in pots outside the row houses. Tulips are making their large-leaf appearances. Daffodils abound.
This afternoon I talked with an environmental activist involved in a community garden, neighborhood events in Fort McHenry, a national park up the street. It is wonderful to find good people making the world a better place. I feel blessed.
During this time of chaos and turmoil, I find peace in the rough bark of trees, the dancing scurry of squirrels, the opera of birds, the sun on my face, the canvas of dark night and sparkling stars.
This site is supposed to be about writing, art, and creativity. But I’m so disturbed by current events my creativity is seeping through the cracks of my distress to scream alarms at the people of my nation.
It’s nearly midnight and I’ve already called all the relatives I have in the West a day or two ago because I couldn’t go to sleep on previous nights. I can’t sleep because my country’s politics seem so extreme, so crazy, so like Hitler’s Germany which my Jewish mother fled from in 1938. Now I know what an existential threat is – it feels like the nuclear war will explode any second now, I’m going to step on an ordnance planted on my native soil, someone will suddenly lift a gun to their shoulder and shoot me.
But it is necessary to be optimistic even now. The seeds of destruction of the United States were planted before our independence, with genocide of Native Americans, with slavery of Africans transplanted to this ground, with the oppression of working class and poor people, squashed by the Calvinist ethic that if you are poor, you deserve your fate. At 66 years of age, I am closer to the end of my life than my beginning, and yet I’ve never seen anything like this in my country. Okay, I have. Racism, class discrimination, oppression of women, and approximately 1/4 of our children living below the poverty line, not knowing where they will sleep or if they will eat today.
I am not Charles Dickens, nor John Steinbeck, not even Studs Terkel. The people of the United States either have to resist the rise of an autocratic dictator or we will be crushed.
Hope lies in our independent spirit, our distaste for authority. Getting Americans to rise up may be like herding cats but if we join hands we can maybe find our way to a true fair and equal democracy. If we dream it, it can happen!
#Resist
Today I drew Cybele, the ancient Anatolian goddess of fecundity, of motherhood, of protection. In my mind she is linked with Kali, the Indian goddess of destruction. I seek to channel them, to worship them, to lead to the warmth of the woods and a sunny tomorrow.
I’m an urban naturalist. That means that I love my city (Baltimore) and enjoy wandering around looking at its denizens-pigeons, squirrels, sparrows, starlings, seagulls, and the occasional cardinal and junco ( a sparrow size bird with white belly and black head). There is a pigeon roost near me-an abandoned building with concrete bricks that the pigeons adore. Here’s some pictures!
I don’t usually paint from photographs – preferring studio still lifes or plein air painting. But someone posted a picture of their beautiful child and I was inspired.
I’ve been drawing my cat Nekko at least once daily for a month now. Why? She’s cute (of course! She’s a cat!) and I enjoy drawing people and things that I love. She is definitely people I love and of course, she’s cute. (Did I mention Nekko is my cat?) Here’s the latest of her sleeping on the Bmore Art magazine I was trying to read.
Made a flag by sewing the legs of old martial arts uniforms. Here’s both sides.
Holding babies,
Making art,
Singing loudly
In the rain.
dream
salt sea foam
clams scurry
dig themselves
into sand
as the waves recede
we are young
i wrap
burgundy and cobalt
gauze scarf
about my torso
my nipples show
i reach out
to touch
your silken sandy curls
as cigarette smoke
sinuously rises
your voice rumbles
weakens my knees
Horizon eats sun,
bursting tangerine.
Bold azure,
golden sky,
I pick up the laundry.
Night steals in,
blueberry cloud patches
brushes cornflower dome sky.
Laundry bag slung over shoulder
I gaze
above the knoll of weapons.
Pale rotund moon
strangled gently
by
silver
spider
strands.
gaia mouse 