Faces

The Gardening Angel (one of four)
repainted with a head added by my gardener.

in the face of it all

The four garden angels.

This one is sweet and hard of hearing.

Rizzi has decided to put a head of putty on the body of the metal angel that had only wires wrapped in a bundle to form a head.  He painted the rose red and the new coat of silver paint replaces the original white.

We live by the sea and the painted angels, four of, had begun to rust. It was time for a new coat.

This one angel has his head inclined a little.

Here's the crew.

Our security system.  

This one likes having a word.

This one is the overseer.

The one who gives the orders, obviously.

When he paints the faces I will be back to show you.

Jesus save you and bless you.  

Distractions

Notice the emotion in this eye compared to the same eye below.

There are too many distractions to notice that eye.
Curious, no?

Three Trees

Trees.  Again.

I have been watching the news.

Nato has been cutting down on its weapon shopping for, I don't know how many, years.

Everyone was happy.

Now they are being accused of cutting down their consumerism.  ?


And, and, and - President Obama is going to look terrific in retrospect.

I'm rambling.

Jesus save you and Bless you.

The Lines of a White Lion

Drawing white lions on white paper with pastels hasn't a lot to do with white.

It's brown and black and red and dark green.

""The path to anywhere never goes as you think it will."  Me

I don't know.

I think I have to get over myself and start writing about proper stuff again.

I have been trying really hard to write about nothing.  Nothing is really popular. As you know. You are the only one reading this.

I don't know if you are a young graduate potential hacker of the future or just a machine - and how can I say just a machine when my entire world centers round some machine.

The machine is my people.

Jesus Save you and Bless you.

Crocodiles; floods and ...

I am not only drawing blind; now I am writing blind.  The middle of the night has my eyes seeing everything a little more blurry than in the day.

I drew this picture a long while back from a newspaper... there was a township fire.  Accidental.  The gathering of men and women in the wake of the fire ~ the wake ... we say things, don't we, without thinking about the meanings of the words.

I am up. A crone doesn't need that much replenishing. Frequent dozing is good enough - mid sentence in the book, mid pencil stroke underling the passage and it goes without saying, mid television program.  However, every stories seem, feel, are ... a kind of sci-fi horror. I am too old for these tales.

As I draw closer to the Creator, seeking His Light, my soul grows more sensitive,: it is restored or reset (as they say in the cell phone manual) to the original setting and I become afraid of the future.

I am often reminded that men have said this about the state of things for centuries, but it certainly feels like we are facing the season of calamities head on.  The age of lawlessness...

Some years back I was caught in a flood in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere, in Africa, and it can be scary to be all that at the same time.  I thought I was going to die a few seconds before a good man directed me onto a bit of road that was not covered in rushing waters.  I was the first car.  He was a lone man taking the time to keep the oncoming drivers safe, regardless of who they were.  I wondered where he has going in the pouring rain that night without a rain coat.  Perhaps he was an angel sent to save us all.

The next vehicle was loaded with black youths and as the door opened and they all pealed out with wide smiles, one of the young men said, with a fair amount of glee and a good deal of certainty,

"God is coming soon!"

Within no time the taxi was playing music.  The rain kept coming down in sheets of wetness.  I was trading cigarettes for beer with a German couple who were teachers and had a boot full of books they intended marking that weekend away.

We all got out of our cars.  No one but me thought about crocodiles.   We were near the crocodile farm and just a few weeks before this I had attended a lectures on the beautiful beasts.  The guide said," when it floods they can go for miles..."  They end up in swimming pools, mostly all get found and brought back, but what if they were lurking in the waters swirling around our little island?

The weather which woke me at some silly hour beginning with a three reminds me of that night.  The wind reminds me of the judgments of the Lord and the book I am reading reminds me that God is coming soon.

My picture reminds me that my country is a praying nation and that more souls emerge and gather together in parks, under trees, sensing the time we are in.

Shall I make a big sign that reads, THE END IS NIGH?

I think not.  Even the atheist senses it.   It comes.  On a horse.  And it is time to make right the things of the soul and the connection with the Light of the Creator must be restored.

"I have decided to follow Jesus.... No turning back, No turning back...."  A song from nursery school.


Jesus save you and bless you.

Mothers, poetry, pictures and ...

My Mom.

I draw her at least once a year.  I improve. My eye sight doesn't.

All her pictures are smiling ones.
Can't get the glasses the same on both sides - but I think I finally found that smile enough for this year.  The picture is unfinished.  I need to work on the glasses - they are not that white and I need to finish the background.

The less I see more I realise who my mother was.

She was a softy.  She laughed easily.  She told lovely remember when stories. We loved watching movies together. If we didn't cry, it wasn't that much of a movie.  Love stories were big in my youth. On some level we didn't get on very well. At least that is what I thought.

I only realized this week how my dramatic life affected her.

Here is a letter I found today ...

Dear Mrs ...Your sketch of .... nearly out poems your poetry in its intensity - in its focused effect.

Your paintings have enchantment of colour and love.

I felt your poems on Violence (tears my threaded tapestry of words ~~~~ Silence)and "Dead Roses" more clearly than your anguished poems that I'm too guilty to want to read too much.

Retrospectively, "The Clown after the circus has closed" is perhaps too you, and the irony of "Warrior Wonderful" is quite crushing.  "What happened to the dreams we had?" is a poignant lament - I felt shivers there along my own rememberings.

Your poems are inciteful and often captivating and yours is a mind not content with a quiet sea. You are for turbulence - troughs and crests - perhaps a few more crests!

Perhaps your introductory piece reflects best your talent.
It is personalized and abstract together.
It is tantalizingly diffuse.
I disagree about you not counting. 
You tangibly touched somewhere me.

If you're in "The Shadow-lands" come out into "The Sunshine" (if you can, if you dare).It's dangerously bright and you might get burnt.  But you'll live unjamed up ~ densely focused, deeply imaged, sparkling (although it is true that shade and shadow need expression too.)

Ends

My children had an "elderly" English teacher. A real British gentleman. A famous enough one at that and so I won't give his name.  I met him at a child's concert practice.

""What do you do Mrs ...?" He asked.

Not wanting to appear a total fool, being as I was unemployed at the time, and for the sake of the children, I said, without a moment's thought, not entirely a lie really, but still ...

"Oh, I draw and write a bit of poetry..."

Trusted that would suffice, looked away and smiled at the children

"May I read some of your work?  And, I'd like to see some of your drawings..." he said.

My innards went haywire.

"Um... well ... alright.  I'm not really all that good... I don't think my stuff counts for much," I said.

"Still, if you will..." he said.

"Okay ..."

I went home and wrote about twenty poems in a few days, drew a few pictures, collected from my stash a couple of the better ones and presented them at our next encounter.

He liked my children, being as they are delightful girls and then, pure pretty with innocence. He made them fall in love with words; English was their most favourite class and I suppose he wanted to know who their mother was.

I still have the poems and the picture he remarked on.   I haven't looked at them in ages.  I will have to do that now.  

But, as you can see from the titles, my life was full of the stuff that affects the soul, makes it uncomfortable, causes a raucousness in the mind and, and, and  ...  

If I were my child I would have been frightened for me.  I was fine, of course, strong and able, took most of it on the chin at the time.  It is only now that my soul has traveled through those valleys and up those mountains that I feel tender and bruised ~ soul wise.

Mommy Dearest ~ if you can hear me ... I am sorry.  

And, to the gentleman in question - you may be with Mom now or just charming somewhere in England.  When I found your notes on my work and a few other letters today I was so cheered.

To quote from something you wrote about our friendship ...

"Perhaps we will swim in fields of flowers, on waves of breeze tossed grasses, in deep symphonic rememberings and recall low-hummed landscaped murmurings pulsed in visions, dream-lived, and feel warm candle-lighted languid ecstasies echoing beneath time's slender embrace, ...  "

Perhaps ...

We were both in love with words.  I think that letter was composed thinking mostly of the next life or the after-life because I had long left town and he had left the country.  The other children complained about his teaching methods and missed out on the most gratifying class, but he did demand a love for the language, I suppose.  He longed for a world in which he could swim in fields of flowers and listen to the beat of earth's heart in forests and next to lakes where he often walked alone in search of time's slender embrace.

Jesus save you and bless you.