“Buildings, too, are children of Earth and Sun.” — Frank Lloyd Wright
Photography
To See Beyond Its Walls
Firelei Báez
“To See Beyond Its Walls combines a large-scale painting of a female figure with a reimagined interior of Sans-Souci Palace (1813) in northern Haiti, tracing conflicted histories and current political contexts of Hispaniola (the shared island of the Dominican Republic and Haiti) and America.
The silhouette of a woman washed in vibrant teal and magenta hues appears in three-quarter profile looking directly at the viewer. Her elaborate headdress, or tignon mandated by sumptuary law in Spanish colonial Louisiana to oppress women of African descent, is filled with historical and contemporary symbols. Black panthers, emblems of the American black power movement of the 1960s, and azabache, stones carved into fists and worn in Latin American cultures to protect from evil spirits, are embedded in the painted cloth. The indigo color recalls the deep blue-violet dye originated in India and traced throughout the African slave trade. Symbols in the painted wall surface include the royal seal of the early-nineteenth-century Haitian kingdom, delicate floral patterns, hair picks, and black power fists. Báez packs the painting and wall with symbols of Latin America, the Caribbean, and America that acknowledge the complex lineage of colonial construct, resistance, and protection. They activate a space beyond the walls (of both the gallery and the palace) to imagine renewed historical and social narratives.”
“The downfall of the attempts of governments and leaders to unite mankind is found in this — in the wrong message that we should see everyone as the same. This is the root of the failure of harmony. Because the truth is, we should not all see everyone as the same! We are not the same! We are made of different colours and we have different cultures. We are all different! But the key to this door is to look at these differences, respect these differences, learn from and about these differences, and grow in and with these differences. We are all different. We are not the same. But that’s beautiful. And that’s okay. In the quest for unity and peace, we cannot blind ourselves and expect to be all the same. Because in this, we all have an underlying belief that everyone should be the same as us at some point. We are not on a journey to become the same or to be the same. But we are on a journey to see that in all of our differences, that is what makes us beautiful as a human race, and if we are ever to grow, we ought to learn and always learn some more.” ― C. JoyBell C.
THE AWAKENING
Jalaluddin Mevlana Rumi
In the early dawn of happiness
you gave me three kisses
so that I would wake up
to this moment of love
I tried to remember in my heart
what I’d dreamt about
during the night
before I became aware
of this moving
of life
I found my dreams
but the moon took me away
It lifted me up to the firmament
and suspended me there
I saw how my heart had fallen
on your path
singing a song
Between my love and my heart
things were happening which
slowly slowly
made me recall everything
You amuse me with your touch
although I can’t see your hands.
You have kissed me with tenderness
although I haven’t seen your lips
You are hidden from me.
But it is you who keeps me alive
Perhaps the time will come
when you will tire of kisses
I shall be happy
even for insults from you
I only ask that you
keep some attention on me.
My Studio
Raphael Soyer
"In this lithograph, Raphael Soyer represented himself at work on a portrait of a model, while his subject dresses in the foreground. The artist’s face is turned, and his portrait is characterized not by his features but by the vigor with which he works. The print captures the isolation that pervades the urban scenes Soyer painted in the 1940s. Even as the artist delights in the form of his model’s body on his canvas, he is entirely separated from her physical presence in his studio."
The Mountain And The Squirrel
By Ralph Waldo Emerson
The mountain and the squirrel
Had a quarrel,
And the former called the latter
“Little prig.”
Bun replied,
“You are doubtless very big;
But all sorts of things and weather
Must be taken in together
To make up a year
And a sphere.
And I think it no disgrace
To occupy my place.
If I’m not so large as you,
You are not so small as I,
And not half so spry:
I’ll not deny you make
A very pretty squirrel track.
Talents differ; all is well and wisely put;
If I cannot carry forests on my back,
Neither can you crack a nut.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson was a licensed minister who resigned from the clergy when his first wife passed away a couple years into their marriage. In this poem, a squirrel and a mountain have a quarrel because the mountain feels as though it is more important. Each person has his or her own individual talents, and everyone/everything has its purpose in this world, none greater or less than another. [Source]
“In your light I learn how to love.
In your beauty, how to make poems.
You dance inside my chest,
where no one sees you,
but sometimes I do,
and that sight becomes this art.
Drum sound rises on the air,
its throb, my heart.
A voice inside the beat says,
“I know you’re tired,
but come. This is the way.”
Are you jealous of the ocean’s generosity?
Why would you refuse to give this joy to anyone?
Fish don’t hold the sacred liquid in cups!
They swim the huge fluid freedom.”
—
Jalaluddin Mevlana Rumi
The fertility cycle is a cycle entirely of living creatures passing again and again through birth, growth, maturity, death, and decay. Wendell Berry
“Love is the bridge between you and everything.” ― Jalal al-Din Rumi
I selected the photo above from the Weekly Photo Challenge: Bridges, posted in July.
Perhaps I’m missing summer now that it’s winter because it has become much much colder.
Goodbye 2017, see you in 2018.
I’ve been making a post on here every day for over the past 4 years. So now I thought might be a good time to go on hiatus and take a break during the holiday season in order to re-energize. I leave you a festival of lights along with some selected Rumi quotes. Have a happy and safe holiday season!
“Love is the bridge between you and everything.” ― Jalaluddin Mevlana Rumi
“Love calls – everywhere and always. We’re sky bound. Are you coming?” ― Jalaluddin Mevlana Rumi
“Only from the heart can you touch the sky.” ― Jalaluddin Mevlana Rumi
“The moon stays bright when it doesn’t avoid the night.” ― Jalaluddin Mevlana Rumi
“A thousand half-loves must be forsaken to take one whole heart home.” ― Jalaluddin Mevlana Rumi
“Love is the whole thing. We are only pieces.” ― Jalaluddin Mevlana Rumi
“I, you, he, she, we In the garden of mystic lovers, these are not true distinctions.” ― Jalaluddin Mevlana Rumi
“I am yours. Don’t give myself back to me.” ― Jalaluddin Mevlana Rumi
“We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust.” ― Jalaluddin Mevlana Rumi
“Speak a new language so that the world will be a new world.” ― Jalaluddin Mevlana Rumi
“Sit, be still, and listen, because you’re drunk and we’re at the edge of the roof.” ― Jalaluddin Mevlana Rumi
“The ground’s generosity takes in our compost and grows beauty! Try to be more like the ground.” ― Jalaluddin Mevlana Rumi
“In your light I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems. You dance inside my chest where no-one sees you, but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art.” ― Jalaluddin Mevlana Rumi
“When the light returns to its source, it takes nothing of what it has illuminated.” ― Jalaluddin Mevlana Rumi
“Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation.” ❤️ ― Jalaluddin Mevlana Rumi
Maverick Mist 