A Pause For Beauty:
An artist’s journal.
Below, the Art Journal posts for the month of July, 2023.
June posts can be found here.
Joy and woe are woven fine, A clothing for the soul divine; Under every grief and pine Runs a joy with silken twine. It is right it should be so; We are made for joy and woe; And when this we rightly know, Through the world we safely go. - William Blake, Auguries of Innocence Also a poem by Wendell Berry on how he deals with despair, and John Hay asks how birds think about thunderstorms. Read the rest of this Pause For Beauty: www.herondance.org/joy-and-woe Visit here for June Pause For Beauty posts.
People often asked him which of all the creatures encountered in his many years as a hunter and dweller, in far-away places of Africa, he found most impressive. Always he answered that it would have to be a bird of some kind. This never failed to surprise them, because people are apt to be dazzled by physical power, size, frightfulness, and they expected him to say an elephant, lion, buffalo or some other imposing animal. But he stuck to his answer; there was nothing more wonderful in Africa than its birds. I asked why precisely. He paused and drew a circle with his finger in the red sand in front of him before saying that it was for many reasons, but in the first place because birds flew. He said it in such a way that I felt I had never before experienced fully the wonder of birds flying. - Laurens Van Der Post, The Heart of the Hunter The excerpt above is the first paragraph of five in today's Pause For Beauty on African birds. Also Thoreau on nature's subtle magnetism. Read the rest of this Pause For Beauty: www.herondance.org/kalahari-birds Visit here for June Pause For Beauty posts.
What did you find in the fields today, you who have wandered so far away? I found a wind-flower, small and frail, and a crocus cup like a holy grail; I found a hill that was clad in gorse, a new-built nest, and a streamlet’s source; I saw a star and a moonlit tree; I listened. . . I think God spoke to me. - Hilda Rostron And Alfred North Whitehead, mathematician, on time and the limitations of human intelligence. Read the rest of this Pause For Beauty: www.herondance.org/fields-today Visit here for June Pause For Beauty posts.
One ought every day at least to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words. - Goethe And Bo Lozoff, The Human Kindness Foundation and "Emergers For the Fuel," a poem about Wyoming's Green River by Marcyn Clements. Read the rest of this Pause For Beauty: www.herondance.org/little-song Visit here for June Pause For Beauty posts.
Tom's Rock Camp Then here's a hail to each flaming dawn And here's a cheer to the night that's gone. And may I go a-roaming on Until the day I die. - plague on Eagle Island in Lower Saranac Lake, Adirondacks. And Galen Rowell (photographer) on a climber who didn't allow photographs, and Charlie Porter on style in climbing and life.
Read the rest of this Pause For Beauty: www.herondance.org/truth-mountains
Visit here for June Pause For Beauty posts.
The presence of wild landscapes awakens a silence in us, refreshes our courage with the purity of their detachment. . . We are saved in the end by the things that ignore us. - Belden C. Lane, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality And Martha Reben on recovering from tuberculosis living in a tent in the Adirondack woods in the 1930s. Read the rest of this Pause For Beauty: www.herondance.org/simple-life-woods Visit here for June Pause For Beauty posts.
Yes, we must visualize at all times how precious life will seem at the moment of death. Then only will we be ready to give up our pretensions, foolishness, and possessions for a measure of additional life. "All my wealth, all my power for one more year of life." - Robert Muller, Most Of All, They Taught Me Happiness Also an excerpt from a book on the Hubble Space telescope, and more from Robert Muller's book. Read the rest of this Pause For Beauty here: www.herondance.org/love-is-the-only-way-out Visit here for June Pause For Beauty posts.
What is the pattern which connects the crab to the lobster and the orchid to the primrose, and all of them to me and me to you? - Gregory Bateson Also Soetsu Yanagi on the Japanese tea ceremony, beauty, imperfection and mystery. Read the rest of this Pause For Beauty here: https://www.herondance.org/imperfection Visit here for June Pause For Beauty posts.
Hunter, brother, companion of our days: that blessing which you hunted, hunted too, what you were seeking, this is what found you. - from Edward Abbey's A Sonnet for Everett Ruess. Also Everett Ruess about his love of wilderness and Charles Dickens on the gentle changes of nature. You can read the rest of this post here: www.herondance.org/seeking Visit here for June Pause For Beauty posts.
No person who has not spent a period of his life in those ‘stark and sullen solitudes that sentinel the Pole’ will understand fully what trees and flowers, sun-flecked turf and running streams mean to the soul of a man. - Ernest Shackleton Also perspectives on beauty from interviews of three adventurers from back issues of Heron Dance. Read the rest of this Pause For Beauty here: https://www.herondance.org/adventurers Visit here for June Pause For Beauty posts.
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. - Eleanor Roosevelt Everyone searches desperately for happiness but the price we pay for it is generosity. - Frédéric Back, Heron Dance interview. We dance round in a ring and suppose, But the Secret sits in the middle and knows. - Robert Frost, The Secret Sits Also Dorothy Day on coincidences, Carlo Carretto on love, and The Talmud on the whisper of angels. Read the rest of this Pause For Beauty here: https://www.herondance.org/believe-dreams Visit here for June Pause For Beauty posts.
Black Marsh Eclogue Although it is midsummer, the great blue heron holds darkest winter in its hunched shoulders, those blue-burning-grey clouds rising over him like a storm from the Pacific. He stands in the black marsh, more monument than bird, a wizened prophet returned from a vanished mythology He watches the hearts of things and does not move or speak. But when at last he flies, his great wings cover the darkening sky, and slowly, as though praying, he lifts, almost motionless, as he pushes the world away. - Sam Hamill, from the book "Destination Zero: Poems 1970-1985". Also Zen master Ikkyu on getting lost. Read the rest of this Pause For Beauty here: https://www.herondance.org/vanished-mythology Visit here for June Pause For Beauty posts.
At the center. Pottery as metaphysics. Centering. How all these thoughts and experiences create a sense of an enormous cosmic unity, a sense of a quiet inner unity, a unity within me, child of that vast single god-sea, that unity, wherein we swim. The creative spirit creates with whatever materials are present. With food, with children, with building blocks, with speech, with thoughts, with pigment, with an umbrella, or a wine glass or a torch. We are not craftsmen only during studio hours. Any more than a man is wise only in his library. Or devout only in a church. The material is not the sign of the creative feeling for life: of the warmth and sympathy and reverence which foster being; techniques are not a sign; art is not the sign. The sign is the light that dwells within the act, whatever its nature or its medium. A kind of radiance, an emanation, a freedom, something that fills our hearts with joy and gratitude no matter how it may strike our judgment! There is something within man that seeks this joy. That knows this joy. Joy is different than happiness. I am not talking about happiness. I am talking about joy. How, when the mind stops its circling, we say Yes. Yes to what we behold. - from Centering In Pottery, Poetry and the Person by M.C. Richards. M.C. Richards was a deep thinker on the intersection between spirituality and creativity. Also James W. Hall on creativity and happiness, and a traditional Irish blessing on nurturing the light within. Read the rest of this Pause For Beauty here: https://www.herondance.org/richards Visit here for June Pause For Beauty posts.
I was sitting out back on my 33,000-acre terrace, shoeless and shirtless, scratching my toes in the sand and sipping on a tall iced drink, watching the flow of evening over the desert. Prime time: the sun very low in the west, the birds coming back to life, the shadows rolling for miles over rock and sand to the very base of the brilliant mountains. I had a small fire going near the table — not for heat or light but for the fragrance of the juniper and the ritual appeal of the clear flames. For symbolic reasons. For ceremony. When I heard a faint sound over my shoulder I looked and saw a file of deer watching from fifty yards away, three does and a velvet-horned buck, all dark against the sundown sky. They began to move. I whistled and they stopped again, staring at me. “Come on over,” I said, “have a drink.” They declined, moving off with casual, unhurried grace, quiet as phantoms, and disappeared beyond the rise. Smiling, thoroughly at peace, I turned back to my drink, the little fire, the subtle transformations of the immense landscape before me. On the program: rise of the full moon. - Edward Abbey, from Desert Solitaire. Also My Heart Soars, a poem by Chief Dan George. Read the rest of this Pause For Beauty here: https://www.herondance.org/desert-solitaire Visit here for June Pause For Beauty posts.
The river has a life itself. One of the reasons I like to paddle is that when the paddle comes out of the water, the water drips back off, and it constantly reminds me that the river is made up of zillions of these little drops, living together, working together. It is not just this big thing immune to my minor abuses, but these little individual drops. I often feel that the boundary between me and the river is pretty slight. I have little individual drops in me, whether it’s the tear out of my eye, my saliva, urine, semen –- we all have these little drippings. We are all microcosms. I am a water maker. My tears mingle with the waters of the river, and then, to replenish myself, I drink of the river. So I can make more tears and saliva. The cycles of connection between life and the river go on and on. – Leaf Myczack, A Voice For A River, (Issue 16, Heron Dance interview) Also perspectives by Chuang-tzu, a fourth-century B.C. Taoist sage and Tu Fu (713-770) Taoist poet. Read the rest of this Pause For Beauty here: https://www.herondance.org/water-maker
Visit here for June Pause For Beauty posts.
To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter; to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird's nest or a wildflower in spring - these are some of the rewards of the simple life. - John Burroughs, Leaf and Tendril Read the rest of this Pause For Beauty here: https://www.herondance.org/simple-life
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Make yourselves nests of pleasant thoughts. None of us knows what fairy palaces we might build of beautiful thought -- proof against all adversity. . . - John Ruskin Read the rest of this Pause For Beauty here: https://www.herondance.org/einsteins-yacht
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I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming that I am a man. - Zhuangzi (c.369-286 BC) Read the rest of this Pause For Beauty here: https://www.herondance.org/riddle
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To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone with everything is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralizes his work for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of his own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.
- Thomas Merton, The Violence Of Modern Life And Abraham Heschel on the Sabbath, and Gandhi's meditation before the Salt Marsh.
Read the rest of this Pause For Beauty here:
https://www.herondance.org/fruitful
Visit here for June Pause For Beauty posts.
Walking down Bourbon Street I noticed a huge sign: Chickenman’s House of Voodoo. I walked inside. A young woman asked me if she could help me. I told her, “I’m looking for voodoo.” She replied, “You came to the right place. This is the Chickenman’s House of Voodooo.” I asked, “Who is the Chickenman?” She answered, “My God, man, you don’t know who the Chickenman is? He’s only the oldest and the greatest of the Voodoo Kings.” I asked if I could meet the Chickenman. She said “of course” and went to the backroom to get the voodoo king. Chickenman emerged in all his splendor: wearing a big hat of chicken feathers that was covered in magical charms. He looked at me with blazing black eyes and exclaimed, “I’m Chickenman. Prince Keeyama. The Voodoo King of New Orleans. The people of the city gave me that name.” I replied, “Hello, Chickenman. I’m Tony Moffeit. Blues Poet of Pueblo, Colorado. The people of the city gave me that name.” And bang! There was an immediate meeting of minds. Because there’s not much difference between a voodoo king and a blues poet. Both are looking for those secret energies in the universe. Externally, the poet is no different from anyone else. Internally, he is a revolutionary. Internally, he is a creator of new laws, his own laws. Internally, he is an outlaw. . . - Tony Moffeit interviewed in The Lummox Journal Read the rest of this Pause For Beauty here: https://www.herondance.org/view
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Walking down Bourbon Street I noticed a huge sign: Chickenman’s House of Voodoo. I walked inside. A young woman asked me if she could help me. I told her, “I’m looking for voodoo.” She replied, “You came to the right place. This is the Chickenman’s House of Voodooo.” I asked, “Who is the Chickenman?” She answered, “My God, man, you don’t know who the Chickenman is? He’s only the oldest and the greatest of the Voodoo Kings.” I asked if I could meet the Chickenman. She said “of course” and went to the backroom to get the voodoo king. Chickenman emerged in all his splendor: wearing a big hat of chicken feathers that was covered in magical charms. He looked at me with blazing black eyes and exclaimed, “I’m Chickenman. Prince Keeyama. The Voodoo King of New Orleans. The people of the city gave me that name.” I replied, “Hello, Chickenman. I’m Tony Moffeit. Blues Poet of Pueblo, Colorado. The people of the city gave me that name.” And bang! There was an immediate meeting of minds. Because there’s not much difference between a voodoo king and a blues poet. Both are looking for those secret energies in the universe. Externally, the poet is no different from anyone else. Internally, he is a revolutionary. Internally, he is a creator of new laws, his own laws. Internally, he is an outlaw. . .
- Tony Moffeit interviewed in The Lummox Journal
Read the rest of this Pause For Beauty here: https://www.herondance.org/voodooVisit here for June Pause For Beauty posts.
With our vast knowledge we are hounded by doubt. Just the fact that the smallest structures of matter with their neutrons and protons move with the same precision and order as the galaxies, that solar systems are dying and being born again, makes us wonder and question the purpose of all we have learned. We also know there are certain things that cannot be measured scientifically, secrets that defy rational deduction, with no answer to the concepts of love, imagination, or the flowering of man's mind.
- Sigurd F. Olson, Reflections From The North Country
Read the rest of this Pause For Beauty here: https://www.herondance.org/measured-scientificallyVisit here for June Pause For Beauty posts.
I feel that the dormant goodwill in people needs to be stirred. People need to hear that it makes sense to behave decently or to help others, to place common interests above their own, to respect the elementary rules of human coexistence. They want to be told about this publicly. . . Goodwill longs to be recognized and cultivated. For it to develop and have an impact it must hear that the world does not ridicule it. . . I never try to give people practical advice about how to deal with the evil around them, nor could I even if I wanted to -- and yet people want to hear that decency and courage make sense, that something must be risked in the struggle against dirty tricks. They want to know that they are not alone, forgotten, written off.
- Vaclav Havel, former President of Czechoslovakia, from the book Summer Meditations
Read the rest of this Pause For Beauty here: https://www.herondance.org/goodwillVisit here for June Pause For Beauty posts.
Life is a coherent whole: rocks, clouds, trees, shells, torsos, smokestacks, peppers, are interrelated, interdependent parts of the whole. Rhythm from one becomes symbol of all.
- Edward Weston, photographer.
If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.
- William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790)
And the relationship of the above to E=MC2, and Minor White on the relationship of Spirit to photography.
Read the rest of this Pause For Beauty here: https://www.herondance.org/perceptionVisit here for June Pause For Beauty posts.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
- Mary Oliver, from her collection House Of Light
Read the rest of this Pause For Beauty here: https://www.herondance.org/delightVisit here for June Pause For Beauty posts.
Great stone walls shut out stars
to the east and west, loom and close
as night deepens. A breeze
stirs the willows. River.
Dark sandstone seems to breathe.
A thin new moon struggles
over the brooding cliffs
and glitters, askew
in the brimming water. Shadows lurk
in the cottonwoods. A night creature
slides into the clearing,
moves toward the river, seems to bend,
drink. It blends into sighing night,
the haunted canyon,
its warm wind,
crescent moon, shadows,
deep-throated song of water.
- David Lee “Zion Narrows,”
from his collection "So Quietly the Earth"
Read the rest of this Pause For Beauty here: https://www.herondance.org/song-of-waterVisit here for June Pause For Beauty posts.