Musings and nostalgia

 

"So you speak to me of sadness

And the coming of the winter

Fear that is within you now

It seems to never end

And the dreams that have escaped you

And the hope that you've forgotten

You tell me that you need me now

You want to be my friend

And you wonder where we're going

Where's the rhyme and where's the reason

And it's you cannot accept

It is here we must begin

To seek the wisdom of the children

And the graceful way of flowers in the wind"

Rhymes and Reasons 

John Denver

Ivan Kenneth Eyre (15 April 1935 – 5 November 2022)

  I finished school and moved to Calgary to join Helen in the summer of 1988. We were both at the U of C that summer just in time to see Personal Mythologies/Images of the Milieu a solo show by the Canadian artist Ivan Eyre at The Nickle Gallery. One day a week admission was free (we had little money) and I was there every lunch hour. Later the library I worked in in Calgary  held Eyre's large painting Floodwood, a strange merger of still life and landscape typical of the artist. Another library and I shared my office with a print of his landscape Red Hill. Since my first viewing of his work Eyre has not just shared my personal space through his works but also my imaginative space through his oft repeated images of wheeled horse, giants shapes in the sky and hornblowers. I have collected show catalogues, books and a few works. He has influenced how I view the cityscapes and the landscapes of the prairies in which I have spent most of my life. As Helen once said after seeing his cityscapes one learns to look up at the tops of the tall buildings to catch a glimpse of the Eyre hornblowers silhouetted against the prairie sky.

Obituary

https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/winnipeg-mb/ivan-eyre-11003438

Wikipedia entry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Eyre

A lovely youtube clip of Eyre in his studio.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4URm0196QjM

When I look at a painting it isn't only the painting I see but the thing that I am. If there is more in the painting that I am, then I won't see it.

Ivan Eyre

Thank you Ivan.

Spring back/Winter Wonderland

 

  "Today we woke up to a revolution of snow, 

     its white flag waving over everything,

      the landscape vanished,

      not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness,   

      and beyond these windows"

      from Snow Day

       by Billy Collins  

And let's remember.

Singer-Songwriter Nanci Griffith (1953–2021)

 

A good interview with Nanci

https://acousticguitar.com/remembering-singer-songwriter-nanci-griffith-1953-2021/

Florence Sept 2020

I am wondering what became of all those tall abstractions

that used to pose, robed and statuesque, in paintings

and parade about on the pages of the Renaissance

displaying their capital letters like license plates.

Truth cantering on a powerful horse,

Chastity, eyes downcast, fluttering with veils.

Each one was marble come to life, a thought in a coat,

Courtesy bowing with one hand always extended,

from The Death of Allegory by Billy Collins

Shawna Lemay has quoted some lovely poems here, 
The photos are stunning as well. 

http://transactionswithbeauty.com/home/questforquiet

To keep everyone safe it does not look like we will visit the farm or cabin anytime soon

“The leaves fall, the wind blows, and the farm country slowly changes from the summer cottons into its winter wools.”
― Henry Beston (Northern Farm)

If your looking for a book to read I recommend Beston's
The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod

And stay safe.

Shaun 2002 - Feb. 28, 2020

"I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief." Wendell Berry

Shaun and Wendolene came into our lives in May of 2006 from the Calgary Humane Society. Wendolene would have been around 7 and Shaun 4. They had to be taken as a pair which is something we wanted anyway. We lost Wendolene in Oct of 2012.

https://thatsjustthewildwood.blogspot.com/2012/10/in-may-2006-we-wanted-to-adopt-couple.html

https://sunisaxeman.blogspot.com/2012/11/blog-post.html

Today we had to say goodbye to Shaun. He had been coughing for 3 weeks but was good enough to go for a walk around the nearby cresent Sunday. But time caught up with him this week and this morning we had to make a difficult decision.

 

He was very old for a Shih Tzu but in very good shape and able to keep up with the younger dogs on walks. Last night at the vets may have been the first night he spent without either Wendolene or Whateley by his side. He was a black hole for blankets pulling them all into his orbit and then shuttling either Helen or I uncovered to the edge of the bed. Most days on the couch he would come for a chest rub, first licking (once or twice) nipping my nose and then sneezing in my face before growling ferociously the entire time. As we both grew older and greyer I used to joke that if we wore hats you could not tell us apart.  He loved pasta appearing in the kitchen whenever he suspected it was on the menu often eating spaghetti like an unnamed movie icon. 

He normally accepted the changes in his life stoically whether it was his new friend Max...,

or the younger more energetic playmate Whateley who would keep Shaun's face clean for the rest of  his life. And they could both rock the sweaters Rigmor made them.

Although he generally was not one for outfits

.


This walk did inspire a poem.
https://sunisaxeman.blogspot.com/2011/04/ice-once-you-folded-entire-continents.html

Shaun's reaction to the cabin was funny. The first year we stayed two weeks. We had a couple lawn chairs and some cheap lanterns. He was quite put out. When the somewhat tacky Brick sofa showed up he was somewhat mollified. He also hated that nettles grew on the newly plowed lane. Even in Calgary a fairly soft spruce needle was cause to be carried some distance. But eventually he became quite the explorer although the couch was best. In the last few years I have begun to suffer from insomnia and so get up at night to read or putz around. But eventually Shaun would appear, if the bedroom door was closed he would demand that it be opened so he could find me and bring me back to bed to unite the family. Because family was everything to him. You will always be loved, always be missed little man.

Shaun feels I have gone on long enough so let's end with something short.

https://sunisaxeman.blogspot.com/2011/08/summers-hot-breath-small-dog-pants.html

One day we will fly free again. (But sadly, it's not today)

"Old pirates yes they rob I
Sold I to the merchant ships
Minutes after they took I
From the bottomless pit
But my hand was made strong
By the hand of the almighty
We forward in this generation
Triumphantly


All I ever had, is songs of freedom
Won't you help to sing, these songs of freedom
Cause all I ever had, redemption songs
Redemption songs

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds
Have no fear for atomic energy
Cause none of them can stop the time
How long shall they kill our prophets
While we stand aside and look
Some say it's just a part of it
We've got to fullfill the book

from Redemption Song/Bob Marley 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55s3T7VRQSc

Sad news.

"I'm never a reliable narrator, unbiased or objective. "

Anthony Bourdain 

"Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die."

Carrie Fisher

" He sighed, more exhaustedly than regretfully, I thought. That morning was the last time I saw Moreland. It was also the last time I had, with anyone, the sort of talk we used to have together. Things drawing to a close, even quite suddenly, was hardly a surprise. The look Moreland had was the one people take on when a stage has been reached quite different from just being ill.

from Temporary Kings ( A Dance to the Music of Time )

by Anthony Powell

This morning we said goodbye to our cat Max. For many years, he sat with me in the morning before the rest of the house was up. And in the evening the two of us would sit in my study to read or watch hockey while the rest of the family was in the living room. This summer he spent 3 months at the cabin with us, mostly sleeping on the screened in porch in a state of feline bliss. It was only a few months ago when his health started to fail that I came to appreciate the tremendous gap he would leave.

Max and I collaborated on this poem in April of 2012

it was a happier time. Rest in love little man.

The Cat Wishes to Use the Pen

by Max

To write doubtless, 

about the space under the rug where he keeps things and 

the spot under the coffee table where he also keeps things

including himself, dreaming of jungle, he would like to

immortalize lurking unseen.

Unless he wants a drink in which case he will write 

of the white porcelain tub where he sits demanding 

a drink from the faucet. Or yowling through the house 

until someone follows him to his dish to witness 

the wonder of a feeding cat.

He would include a triumphant inventory of the 

clawed furniture, the red leather chair, the sofa, the 

good Lazy Boy. The declawed cat broke lamps but he

is all about fabric, sweaters, wedding dresses, 

comforters and of course the good Lazy Boy.

He would surely write about laying across a warm chest 

with one paw extended purring happily. But there will be

no mention of the small white dog who sniffs his butt,

let him write his own poem.

"The thudding sound from the quarry had declined now to no more than a gentle reverberation, infinitely remote. It ceased altogether at the long drawn wail of a hooter - the distant pounding of centaurs' hoofs dying away, as the last note of their conch trumpeted out over hyperborean seas. Even the formal measure of the seasons seemed suspended in the wintry silence."

from Hearing Secret Harmonies ( A Dance to the Music of Time )

by Anthony Powell