Labyrinthine (Thursday Doors)
“Our steps trace a map,
fictions, in place of answers.”
–Sun Hesper Jansen, Danse Macabre
I am dancing with myself, or perhaps just an invisible partner–a mirror image—the opposite of me. None of us has a recognizable form. I have learned not to look too closely at what isn’t there.
Yet each day I rearrange the unseen patterns, constructing a new facade. I pretend that I am who I don’t appear to be, folding everything that doesn’t fit anywhere into a cabinet of hidden curiosities. Boxes and boxes of me that will never be revealed. A riddle that repeats itself, over and over, inside the shadows.
unlike birds, my bones
are dense, unfeathered—gardens
in a secret vase
Frank at Dverse asked for a haibun that considers the Japanese idea of Mono no Aware–transience, pathos, the ephemerality of life. I thought the endless mirror photo from the Thursday Doors Writing Challenge, above, by S. W. Berg via Oddments, fit that idea well. I’ve also included the kigo word of gardens for Colleen’s Tanka Tuesday challenge.
And some art from past Kick-About prompts.
You can find more doors, as always, and lots of responses to the Writing Challenge photos, at Thursday Doors, hosted by Dan Antion.
Weekend Work 5/20/25
Painting inspired by one of the doctor’s sons: “How do you access the third eye?(parent). “open it (kid). He inspired this and so I gave it to him.
Another mask-like image. Face cut out from Kerfe’s black and silver paper and glued onto black paper.
Another one with the tree paper underlying the painting. Not a good photo.
There’s been a bear spotting in my town-apparently a pretty big one. Daughter is going to forgoe her hike in the woods. Have a good week!
Nina
Graffiti (Thursday Doors)
Stand in the middle they said. Look for an opening. Feel the wind. Discard your armor. Push the complications away. Become.
a globe
instead of a box–
a portal not a hard wall
Can I fly, sing, unconfined,
riding currents like a chord?
Can me become we?
I’ve written a liwuli poem to go with Bushboy’s photo contribution to the Thursday Doors Writing Challenge. I do like a poetic form that includes questions. It is also an answer to Sadje’s W3 prompt on the theme of hope. Whoever decorated that door is asking similar questions to the ones my poem asks I think, looking for that portal. You can’t locate a portal without hope.
The photo above of the portal of birds is from the Es Devlin exhibit at the Cooper Hewitt, which I featured in a previous Thursday Doors post.
And here’s a collage portal I did for a Kick-About prompt.
Here’s a translation of Bruce’s introduction to his performance in 1988, a year before the Berlin Wall fell: It’s nice to be in East Berlin. I want to tell you that I’m not here for or against any government, I have come to play rock’n’roll for the East-Berliners, in the hope that one day all barriers will be torn down.
Music is a portal of hope that connects us all.
And find more doors, as always, at Thursday Doors, hosted by Dan Antion.
out of context (faces)
I can’t place
the face or have I
lost the name?–
it’s all the
same–no frame of reference
exists to answer
the question
of how or even
if I’ve met
these faces–
or in what place we seem to have
crisscrossed our lives
Nina and I began this blog as a way to show each other the art we were doing without having to use email–and although she is still doing that, I’ve kind of lost that thread. So I’m going to try a few times a month to show more art, both old and new (there may or may not be poems attached). One of my problems is I now have all these photos of art, and since I rarely date things, and my memory is so bad, sometimes it’s hard to tell exactly when I did it.
I’ve always liked to draw and paint people–I save photos from newspapers and magazines to use as references–and I know I did the above painting sometime in the last year. But the one above it, with the orange background? I think it’s a few years old, but I can’t say for sure.
The ones at the top are from a few months ago, as is the one above, where I was using leftover paint from a mandala painting. My style of drawing and painting people has not changed that much over the years.
De at dVerse suggested the word place for this week’s quadrille, and it conveniently rhymes with face. I managed to make a shadorma out of it too.
Untraveling (Thursday Doors)
I had forgotten what I did there–
the entire structure of my former
life stood flattened into a permanent
ambiguity, like a film I had only seen
as a trailer, an intersection
of absence and speculation.
I found a door but there was no room inside.
I encountered each new year
with a stubborn diminishment–
not perishing but languishing
in a refusal to become
completely dead. I became
one of the landscape’s invisible
occupants, singing ghostly laments
on the wings of a hollow chord.
I found a door but there was no room inside.
My fate rests now
on the vestiges of a cross
roads where nothing
ever arrives or departs,
where even time
can no longer be borrowed.
I found a door but there was no room inside.
I chose Deborah’s door photo, above top, from the Thursday Doors Writing Challenge, because it fit so well with two dVerse prompts I wanted to do: to compose a bop poem (from Laura) and to write about wandering (from Jade Li). Instead of finding a box, as the bop poem prompt suggested, I found a door.
The collage doors are from a series I did in the 1970s. Even then, I was interested in doors.
And find more doors, as always, at Thursday Doors, hosted by Dan Antion.
Kiwi (Draw a Bird Day)
under the full moon
you emerge from your burrow
fur-feathered noctilucent clouds
of scent listening and touch
seeking insects and worms
The kiwi is a flightless bird native to New Zealand. Before the arrival of humans bringing invasive mammals, kiwis had few predators and no need for flight. I was surprised to learn that stoats and dogs kill the most kiwis, although cats, ferrets, and even pigs also threaten the population. In addition, habitat destruction has necessitated the construction of sanctuaries throughout New Zealand. It is rare to see kiwis in the wild; even with sanctuaries, only 5-10% of kiwi chicks survive to adulthood.
Kiwis are nocturnal. They have poor eyesight and rely on their other senses when foraging for food and making sure there are no predators about. They have an especially good sense of smell, with nostrils located at the end of their long beaks. They feed mainly on insects and worms, but also eat fruit, seeds, snails, and even fish and frogs.
Kiwis prefer forests with dense undergrowth, but have adapted to other habitats as deforestation has occurred. They dig burrows with chambers large enough for two of them to sleep standing up. Most mate for life. The female lays a very large egg which the male tends to while the female regains her body weight.
As you can see I did a few variations of the same images with my kiwi drawings. And I was pleased to be able to use the kigo word noctilucent from Colleen’s Tanka Tuesday prompt this week in my gogyohka. Kiwi feathers are very fur-like, and are not hollow like those of most birds, instead containing marrow like mammal bones. I can imagine them glowing in the moonlit darkness as the birds forage in the undergrowth.
The kiwi bird has been adopted as a national symbol by New Zealand. The kiwi fruit, introduced to New Zealand in the early 1900s, is actually a Chinese gooseberry. It was renamed kiwi in the 1960s to make it more marketable.
There is lots and lots more to learn about the kiwi here, on the Save the Kiwi website.
Weekend Work 5/5/24
I’ve been experimenting with the papers Kerfe gave me last month. This one is from a large sheet with trees. I did some cutting out and then painting over the image, almost trying to obliterate it.
Another one with the trees cut out and painted over. Not sure about this one.
A small one with the tree pattern from one of the papers. The background was the black and silver paper.
I’m having fun with these. I trust myself when painting as far as what to do. No bad mistakes. Have a good week!
Nina
World War II Memorial (Thursday Doors)
My father belonged
to the Greatest Generation–
he answered when called,
asked for no special accolades,
kept the horrors he had seen
to himself. And when the time
came, he accepted the fact
that he was dying without
complaint. During the last visit
I had with him, he said to me:
“I’ve had a good life.”
I recognized Dan’s photo in the Thursday Doors Writing Challenge right away. My younger daughter and I made a trip to Washington DC when she was a senior in high school, and the World War II Memorial was one of the things I remembered vividly.
Like Dan, I photographed it–the Ohio state arch is above. My father did not talk much about his service, but I knew he had landed at Normandy and ended up on occupation duty in Germany afterwards. My mother’s favorite cousin Paul, whom she spoke of frequently, was a pilot who died in the war. My grandfather also re-enlisted (he had served in WW I), but remained in the States.
I was also surprised by impact of the Korean War Memorial. My uncle served in Korea.
Ghosts. They continue to haunt us. All our war dead, and many who return, forever changed, as well.
I wrote earlier this year about this photo of my father and his mother that I’ve drawn, above, which must have been taken right before he left for Europe.
One of the main things I wanted to see in DC was the Vietnam War Memorial–where I cried, along with many of the other visitors present. I did not take any photos of it though. That was my generation’s war.
My poem is for the W3 prompt from Destiny to write on the theme of belonging. The Greatest Generation is generally defined as people born from 1901 to 1927, many of whom fought in WW II.
I, sadly, belong to the Baby Boomers.
And find more doors, as always, at Thursday Doors, hosted by Dan Antion.
method two madness 
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