Landscape

It is sometimes as if I have never been away, so brief was my going and so far the location. And then I get a flash of something. A thought. Deep in my psyche, like a smouldering pike, there is movement. Small bubbles on the surface denote its place. Though today traditionally is a day of rest, I am already looking into the plans required in order to raise my game. More importantly, however, I have been slipping into life again with the artist. We are family. Our daughter returned tired from her sleepover and our son enjoyed single status last night. The artist is rested, I was thinking as I sewed more grass seeds into the bright green but occasionally threadbare raked and poked lawn in the back garden this afternoon. The restfulness is obvious not only in her face, I was thinking as I stamped the seeds down again in order to help them germinate, but in the way she moves like some kind of lucky spectre from one room to another - slowly, easily, calmly, and smart. It is as if the pores of her skin have been cleansed with a kind of organic joy by the air in the foothills. It is strange how I think in terms only of beauty when thinking about the foothills and the mountains thereof. The mountains in the war zone are just as epic, in fact more so, and yet something far graver parks in the mind when considering its warrior skyline. Like butterfly mines, deliberately shaped to look like toys, human beings made small by the landscape move in lines of hatred towards their prey. Giant green ants land on rocks. Plants poison and addict. Rustles, in bushes, in sand, in caves, in war, predict death. But now that the toys on the floor by the bright red sofa are being gathered up and taken into the children's bedroom by the artist, I marvel at the grandeur of the landscape at home - its civility, romance, and charm. What is so easy for us is a deathly leap for others.

Tramplers beware

Blogs are nothing new; I realise that. I even have a young poet in my book pretending not to know what a blog is, so convinced is he of their omnipresent triteness. But, let's be honest, life's blood can run through them just about forever. It's not like the factory lights get killed and the printers all go home. Words still spin from the ethereal presses, continents still chatter, 24-10, as somebody said. A friend across the ocean for example responded today by wanting to mention this articulated search for a show for my wife to a gallerist. Even though far-fetched, could, I wondered, through some kind of keyed-in fate, a show after time be offered? Is this what you call a garden? Are seeds at this moment - as I write, as you read - being planted? Or just by saying it am I doing the planting? Or, as sometimes I fear, are we all as a people just tramplers, the world's best tramplers, as we flatten our way through a field of bulbs and continue our march to nowhere? My eyes flash right now from the intregrity of the artist's work to the mangled debris in Iraq and the two somehow understand each other. One may be peaceful, the other in deepest despair, but humanity and devotion in great art will never do injustice to suffering. And this, I believe, is one of this particular artist's great strengths. It is not politics. It is not religion. It is not bristling muscle. It is simply one person's response to that unexplained world within, that undiscovered realm, whose very lack of dogma says it all.