Improvisation 1 (by A.F.)
Printed Without Permission Productions
All rights reserved.
MyArlaZINE
The Hallowe’en Edition
October 2022
New! Exciting! Blog Format!
Exclusive for our class!
Vol 1. October 31, 2022
Do you see where they areis pointing to,
what they areis pointing at?
St. John’s College
Repetition
Puno, PE.
My neighborhood.
I could not frame this better owing to lighting at the time.
Subordination
Opposition
(I know it is subordination because that is what the book says.)
Basic Cat Picture
Mi casa, SF NM
I just thought this one was cool.
Now for something completely different ….
Jack in the Pulpit
102 cm (40 in.) x 76 cm. (30 in.)
My cat: approx. 16 inches from manx tail to nose (~15 inch sitting here)
For your entertainment!
Note repetition in composition.
Somewhere in an old growth grasslands …
An unusual rock outcropping there was, nestled in indiscriminately within the tall grasses, indiscernible from a distance but a visual point of interest on the ground. There could be found in springtime standing water or a still-frozen patch of white beneath its north side, the mound of which cast a shadow much less of a sphere than an irregular face otherwise unseen in the monotony of sameness of the plains – again, when one views such things from a distance, removed from the detail of the biome’s natural diversity. Peaceful when undisturbed, the grasses scream in the wind, sending blood-curdling silent shrieks as they themselves howl when the predators become successful. One can often see the suggestion of a face in that shadow – should ever a human breach the untrodden fields of slicing blades and thorns. Such is not often the case.
A burrowing owl mans the entry to this shadow.
At least one – it’s hard to count. The same owl has lived in this place for centuries. Again, at least one, whoever that may be at any given time.
In the lovely days of early summer, when the bluestem, penstemon and gayfeather dot the green carpet with blues, and the perennial owl is busy with the family, the shadow grows weirdly longer with the slower sunset. A figure seems to appear, transforming at night with the moonlight. Reflected silver dancing on bits of quartz still exposed somehow on the ground, the shadow in fact animates as thin clouds cover and unveil the gibbous moon.
A pair of black footed ferrets rassle in their ways. A commotion ensues. What do they care? The shadow shudders. A life emerges. Across the horizon where the earth begins to curve, lightning strikes the earth. A wave felt by the communal roots, a shimmer of the cloud above, a nighthawk, the master. A creature takes hold upon a human.
Siberia, 2013: A meteor strikes a zinc factory. The shockwaves are detected in Albuquerque, New Mexico as they propagated through the earth’s very core. In the deep recesses of a pink salt vein two thousand feet below the surface of the earth, a set of radiant orbs blinked. A hollow tree fell in the rainforest. A woman cast tobacco into the Indian Ocean. A block of ice floated off the Aleutians. A child dreams.
There was no shadow on the prairie that day.
“What do you think is time, I mean, dimensionally?” she asked.
The boy unlocked from her gaze (how annoying!) to cast his steely-colored eyes not so much to the ground, but at a place nowhere in between. Foolish goats would mistake him as blank. He shifted uncomfortably.
“I, I dunno, it’s not that easy.”
She could never take a hint. “I mean, it’s like, if you can think something, you know? And then it, it just happens, then when, I mean, at what point in time did it actually begin? I mean, when something happens on the calendar, or when you actually thinkit?”
He handed her the mostly-now-smoldering joint. It tends to make certain things stop, or at least take a pause.
“Ye-ah,” he began, slowly, in order to make words out of abstraction.
She held the smoke a split second too long and began to cough. “Ugh! You got any water?”
He produced an aluminum container from his backpack. “Um, yeah we ought to cross here.”
He had to hold her back to wait for the walk light. They stepped into the crosswalk as clouds uncovered the moon, again, and somewhere north an owl called to their mate.
She lingered on the water bottle, clutching it as they crossed with the light, continuing:
Having safely traversed the street, he replaced the bottle and pretended to look for something he could not find in his backpack. It was as if …
“I have an idea about a puppet,” he finally declared.
“Yeah what up.”
But it was as though this, this idea that hid in his dreams, not just a visual but a veritable being that spoke to him like a six-foot rabbit, it was, it was coming from the shadow. It was not so much of a sphere than an irregular face otherwise unseen in the monotony of sameness of the crowd.
Back to homework….. Jack in the Pulpit
Class Assignment: Think first! then Post About Jack in the Pulpit IV (1930)
I can only do this in allegory, and it is hard enough to sit down on a straight wood chair that belongs with this set that has lived here for at least a decade, comfortably and singularly one night less than half of a solid year. It’s difficult enough; but the Season we find ourselves in today indicates that the tendency towards death and remorse are strongest with us this time of year. To follow the path the seasons predict, we must first commit ourselves in focus, and herein lies the challenge that predates human nature. This is to say, we push through resistances either as a battle or relationship with the deeply felt dark edifice of Nature.
This dance between shadow and light becomes in materiality an Opposition of forces that can be seen, perhaps most readily as one is reading, by thinking of gravity as the small magnitude force such as she is.
In Georgia O’Keefe’s 1930 series, Jack in the Pulpit IV shows the consistency of the rendition that retains the life energy of the painter at the moment of creation (a most remarkable and infinitesimally tiny slice in the crystalline fabric of time, indeed!). Forgive me evoking the Queen of the Scarf Dance, Stevie Nicks, but forces of any kind imaginable by us at this time bears an indication of movement when we view, let’s say, a visual portrayal such is a truly good painting, where the play of both hard and soft interplay of light versus dark. In Jack in the Pulpit IV, we find that the artist virtuistically (I think that’s a word) displays the aspect of darkness and light while only using dark colors.
This is remarkable enough, but when we explore the virtues of the subject itself, that is, the botanical plant, we find a veritable treasure trove of facts given by Nature – so many, in fact, that I can find deep traces back Western Esoteric thought, a parallel system that was merged with European occult philosophy well before C. Agrippa (mid-1400’s). But I digress.
Now, needless to say, I was struck by the sense of necromancythat shoot into my head like one of those lightning bolt, but more like a pleasant sense, not a migraine thing, no burnt toast, no worries. It am hopeful that you may find a flash fiction piece related to this matter in the November issue of The Moon (recommended, love the new format!).
The question you’all would be within your rights to ask, why that? But to answer questions of this nature, we need to not go directly to the point, which is really quite high, we need to find the right path. And the only way to ensure the source of the water you collect along a beautiful pristine river, you have to find its source. You need to first find the headwaters, Then you know that if you follow along the river, and you can always see its direction, and therefore ipso facto, the correct path. Again, needless to say, a seemingly impassable maze can be quite dark at times, and that is where the system of practice comes in: Georgia O’Keefe could apply paint to canvas so artfully and practiced that she could bring images by thought onto a visual memory of the lifeforce of the subject.
And thought, she described in a passage I saw in the reading, was her memory as a child (in Wisconsin) of this flower. An odd flower indeed, it is both androgenous and morphing, which is to say, “fluid” in our modern terms. While I was incorrect in class to say it was carnivorous, as I related to my personal memory of pitcher plants in the rocky marshes of Newfoundland, I was not to far off. The pitcher plant has some pheromonal excretion that attracts small insects for fertilization processing. I thought I might try to demonstrate some kind of scent profile, and that lead me to find out about the salt crystals that make you itch awfully, not a pleasant itch, but a stinging nettle kind of feeling, and that is what you call a skin irritant. That’s why it is listed as poisonous, not because you can’t eat it like or toxic plants. In fact, it was used in traditional medicine, but I don’t know any more than that. I bring these points up to show you the following duality in harmony (think: deepest of deep dark blue foreground and emerald green “cloak):
Elements within plant species of Saturnian correspondence in occult philosophy are often associated with dark colorations and especially in our case, shady, damp places, as we do not find this plant west of the Mississippi. That in itself is enough to categorize under Saturn (deep thoughts, etc.) but the poisonous aspect express special distinction among Saturn’s deepest, darkest secret places, such as death, a passing, yearning and answers to deep questions. This should explain without further troubling the reader how I came straight to the journey through the art of necromancy, a forbidden subject that is often misunderstood (if not harshly censored).
The next element is the very ultimate expression of Mercury’s fluidity. Often depicted as a comely male, Mercury is not so much an androgen in the classic sense, but fluid-non-binary. Consider the shift between sexual parts and their function within the structure of the jack in the pulpit plant, and you will see show they shift form moment to moment, but these moments are micro, almost the speed of light, certainly of sound!
How then can this opposition of rainbow to dark harmonize? Can we just all get along? And the answer comes up as a YES. Look at the balance, look at the dance of form and color as the image stands not as a barrier between the two forces, but as instructions into the door.
OK, I’m outa here, got an auditor in my email inbox, with reluctance I need to get something else done. It’s been fun, it’s been real … no, seriously, super fun, hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed the opportunity to have written it!
Arl
PS: I don’t have time to edit this, thanks for understanding.
I think you're right about the Saturnine dimension of this painting, its dark mythic undertones of Underworld. It is either a black flame, or a great cave in the hills opening to the Underworld, with the river Styx flowing in the bottom blue tongue. An opposite to the fertility-river we described in other paintings? Persephone, daughter of Ceres.
ReplyDelete