So, today, at the close of the year, Winter Solstice, we mark the moment with this poignant photo of a buck next to one of the exhibits in our burgeoning Art Mind Park project where we have continued to be productive on our “Covid Vacation.” The Park where we can and do, continue to do, what artists do, finding a way to express the ineffable quality of a pair of minds long dedicated to saying, “This is what it was like while we were here.
The buck is settled in, enjoying Río Azul, made from fish-net-floats all collected from Kehoe Beach—many by the two of us and many donated by friends who appreciate our avidity for collecting the same thing in a category. It’s called Río Azul after the river in Guatemala that flows into a park, a bio-reserve nearby the ancient Mayan citadel of Tikal.
This Solitude of Cataracts by Wallace Stevens
He never felt twice the same about the flecked river,
Which kept flowing and never the same way twice, flowing
Through many places, as if it stood still in one,
Fixed like a lake on which the wild ducks fluttered,
Ruffling its common reflections, thought-like Monadnocks.
There seemed to be an apostrophe that was not spoken.
There was so much that was real that was not real at all.
He wanted to feel the same way over and over.
He wanted the river to go on flowing the same way,
To keep on flowing. He wanted to walk beside it,
Under the buttonwoods, beneath a moon nailed fast.
He wanted his heart to stop beating and his mind to rest
In a permanent realization, without any wild ducks
Or mountains that were not mountains, just to know how it would be,
Just to know how it would feel, released from destruction,
To be a bronze man breathing under archaic lapis,
Without the oscillations of planetary pass-pass,
Breathing his bronzen breath at the azury center of time.
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What great words to evoke a forever feeling.
Steven's poem brings to mind this painting called The Thatched Hut of Dreaming of an Immortal by Tang Yin (1470-1524) and the seriousness of art and the seriousness of the creatures that inhabit our environs like this buck, long ago having given up the juking and pronging of his fawn self. We've had the satisfaction of watching him, knowing him before his voice changed and he grew antlers.
Mortality/Immortality — we think about it now more than ever before, with both of us having graduated into the seventh decade, our Biblically allotted three score and ten. This past year we’ve grieved the loss of personal friends in the arts: Jackie Kirk, Hung Liu, and William T. Wiley, inspired and inspiring artists who we’ve had the great pleasure of working with.
Plus, we mark this moment post Richard’s brain surgery where four years of increasing disability were palliated by a shunt to drain away the clouding and crippling effects of excess fluid. Like the guy with crutches in the movie Greaser’s Palace who was healed by a skydiving Jesus, Richard shouts, “I can crawl! I can crawl again!”Yes, Judith and Richard both receiving the blessing of a complaint-free moment.
We are grateful for you, our friends and family, and for the rain that has set into motion the tumult of blue buoys in our once dry creek bed. We offer an invocation, a prayer for more rain, for more water.
On this Winter Solstice, we are thinking about the continuum of change, the returning of the light and yep, we've got 'em, the “oscillations of planetary pass-pass.”
With love and good wishes,
Richard and Judith
For an unforgettable art outing at the iconic Cliff House:
