Roped in

"...it is too easy to get lost in abstraction,
as if smoke, and dream, and quantum ersatz-states
are our proper environment..."

From "Stomackes" by Albert Goldbarth


***

Back to making more fruitcakes today (how could I have run out of butter?) and the regular chores and stuff.

No more wandering for pixels until next weekend -- I need to keep an edge on that appetite.

Master lock

"A lock of hair from a famous seventeenth-century poet.
The disintegrating bible wishing it was another book."

From "Adult" by Ray Gonzalez

Hill Country enso

"... It’s not that the angle
of reflection equals the angle of incidence,
but there’s exultation, pleasure, distress, death, love. ..."

From "Streamers" by Arthur Sze

***

And how to translate a few hours spent wandering here, picking up some goodness to take home after sitting elbow-to-elbow with happy, red-cheeked strangers at a shrine to smoked and honored meat?

No real way to do so, except to share a little of what I saw: above, and to come.

Thanksgiving

"...Leon Battista Alberti says,
Some lights are from stars, some from the sun
And moon, and other lights are from fires.
The light from the stars makes the shadow equal to the body. ..."

From "A Short History of the Shadow" by Charles Wright

***

Hey, all y'all! I'm back, sort of!
Happy Thanksgiving for those who are celebrating.
I have a lot to be thankful for, including you.

Here's what I've been doing:
* Too much work-work -- multiple conferences with significant time commitments and more work after.
* In all my spare time, school-work -- I'm now saturated with Nicholas Hilliard and the circle of poets around Sir Philip Sidney; I am in the finishing/polishing stages on the big paper, and made what I think is a pretty interesting case. However, others will be the judge of that.
* Lining up the next independent study -- am hopeful it will be on art historiography (try to say that three times fast!)

Had to give up Italian lessons for now. Just not enough time to study as much as I'd need amid plumbing mishaps, a random virus or two, and the Press of Commerce.

And so, finally, happily, I got out with my camera today. Snagged eight images and then the !@#$%! battery ran down, and my spare was devoid of juice. I took it as metaphor: Nature's way of telling me to go home, nap some more, and get teased by the hubbie for not checking my gear before I went.

More to come...

Was here

"...fold
and turn the paper,
guiding the scissors with care..."

From "Four and a Half Dancing Men" by Anne Stevenson

Slow posting again

The Excuses for No New Pix:

1. The Business Trip -- Two and one-half full days in San Mateo; productive, but not of art.
2. The Plumbing Excitement -- Just before The Business Trip, my bare feet told me our carpeting was wet. Fortunately, the good new plumbers we found helped quickly, but still.
3. The Press of Commerce -- Work work work work work.
4. The Academic Path -- Writing, researching and getting prepped for presentations at TEMA and Kalamazoo (woo-hoo!!!)
5. The Italian lessons -- troppo studio.
6. And so, no time out for wandering.

Ajar

"...The late afternoon tugs
At a gold thread you can hear fraying
When you close your eyes..."

From "Angels Grieving over the Dead Christ" by Gjertrud Schnackenberg


***

Random bits: First, still getting energy back post-surgery, but recovery has been fine and on track, as are my Italian lessons. Last, thanks for stopping by.