one thousand days

I learned, from a native american elder, that when you make love with someone, they stay in your heart for a thousand days. That's a long time, and over the years I have come to believe it's true. Well, it has been a thousand days since my last great love, and in honor of that I've written a poem and done some journal pages to commemorate this poignant moment.
This is old news to me now, but it has followed my heart for many days, indeed years.

The "Creative Every Day" theme for this month is "Dreams" (last month's theme was "Words" and I've mixed them up together)... and so, I start with an old dream that is long gone.

Here is the poem, followed by the pages (which contain the poem as well, but it's hard to see/read. This is for two people (myself and my once other half-side) that have faded away into a memory.





One Thousand Days

It is one thousand days since I last held you inside
my heart is releasing you now
thousands of new tapestries are being sewn
just for this one moment

I have gathered you in bits and pieces
emails and envelopes tucked with boarding passes
ice cream sticks and Euros
our faces and
the hero dogs

I will glue colored pages with these images and words
and give them their small space in the book you gave me

write our story you said

A few pages of time will have to do
Tomorrow holds other stories

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(click pictues to see larger view)

words: old school

I have been keeping a journal since I can remember. Keeping implies a certain responsibility with "keeping up", and there have been times when a year could pass with the turn of a page. There were also fat pages filled with a scant number of months, so full of every day. I have filled my fair share, and then some. To me, a journal is words, and mainly words... sketches and doodles on the side, yes, and pressed flowers and movie tickets.

But today, journaling has taken on a whole new face. It is a mixed media event on every page. The movie tickets become a theatre, the sketches are the words. I know little about it, but I'm following another blogger's entry into the realm, and it has inspired me to try and create in this different way.

I don't know if I will share my new fangled pages.. So far they are as private as my more wholely worded journal entries. However creative, not always meant for revealing.
It's fun, but requires a whole slew of crafting material, so calling it "journaling" just seems crazy to me! I guess I'm just old school.

My art is not in all the things I make with my hands. These are simply diversions, sometimes even little meditations of made things. My art ultimately falls to the written word, however mundane. This is my truth, here, in the word, plain as day.

If it were in my hands to make paint lament, and make sculpture leap in dance, then so it would be. But my paint and sculpture are journies made on the way to here. They do not land of their own accord, but stay adrift, somewhat unfinished, waiting to land in the bed of my imagination, and come out on the page in a story or poem.

Ah, but even that is too much pressure for the creative psyche.. thinking in terms of one thing necessarily leading to another. Sometimes a thing is just what it is.... even if it's hanging adrift.

Photography doesn't fall into the catagory of "leading towards"... photography is a thing in itself, and encompasses that moment you click the shutter... ah, it can be so sweet. A capture in time. It makes my heart beat faster when I'm feeling it with the camera. I love it.

If art were my clothes, I'd probably be dressed in words and photographs. :)

hometown

The "Creative Every Day" theme for this month, is "Words"... and so I thought I'd begin with a bit of personal history.

********




I have lived in Brooklyn all my life. Except those times when I lived somewhere else. I was born in Maimonides Hospital, which no one pronouces correctly, with the probable exception of Jews. I know how to pronouce it, but I am not Jewish.

When I was in the first grade, at Public School 169, I made my father an ashtray out of clay. I carried it home, holding it in both hands, intent on keeping if safe. I walked the two long blocks from seventh to fifth avenue. The street to the left of the sidewalk, the rock wall of Sunset Park to my right.

As I stepped off the curb, I studied my hands holding the ashtray, and in that split moment it fell to the street, and broke in too many pieces to ever be put back together again. That's what happens when you study your hands.


My mother would pick me up for lunch every day. We would go to Meyer's or Holstein's. Real Ice Cream Parlours. I ate tuna on light white toast, and a bowl of cream of chicken soup. Every day. Sometimes mom would make the tuna sandwiches, and we'd sit in Sunset Park, across from the school.
The park went from 5th avenue to 7th ave, and from 44th street to 42nd street. Diagonally to the park, on the 5th avenue side, was Sunset Bakery. My mom and dad's bakery.
Mom was brilliant with her full red lips, and vibrant laughter. Sometimes she'd have a box with my Young People's Book Club selections... bringing it along because she knew how hard I'd wait for them. My mother is 81 now... ever brilliant, though her full lips are a more demure shade of frosted pink. Her laugh is still full of life... despite all odds.