Excerpt: 2

February 28, 2019 spanishwoods 6 Comments

“Inspiration is the unforeseen quantity, the muse that assails at the hidden hour.”

Excerpt from Devotion by Patti Smith, 2017

Excerpt: 1

February 25, 2019 spanishwoods 4 Comments

“I awoke and it was still dark. I lay there for a time reliving the dream, feeling other dreams stacked behind it.”

Excerpt from M Train by Patti Smith, 2015

Technology and Philosophy

February 20, 2019 spanishwoods 38 Comments

All of my computer files are gone.

This is not a poem, or my usual thoughts to 70’s music on an afternoon drive. My computer died and the files are gone.

The main lesson here is that my usual way of dealing with technology, which is not dealing with technology, is not a good idea (apparently I needed a catastrophic incident to actually understand this). After running through the sequence of disbelief, anger, remorse, and sorrow upon learning that all of my work of the past 6 years is gone, I am left with an existential lesson of impermanence.

I am left wondering, so what?

My work for my clients can (mostly) be recreated. My writing, for the blog and otherwise, can also be recreated if not exactly as it was, in a new and maybe even a better way. The writing is not for posterity after all, it is for the experience, for the visual pairing of photos with words; the release of creativity set free into the world.

Photos that my son took in Cambodia, in Nova Scotia, Canada, Pennsylvania, Arizona, California, are all gone. Those photos can’t be recreated exactly, but again, the lesson of all that is fluidly impermanent rattles our reality.

So I am forced to look at this dilemma through philosophical eyes:
Everyone makes mistakes and all is temporary after all.

Thoughts at the window

February 4, 2019 spanishwoods 29 Comments

I stand at the kitchen window on a winter afternoon when the sun is fading and the pink light reflects on the snow; soft, cottony pink and mauve with a blue tinge at the edges. I want to paint it, memorize it, eat it, inhale it, this tranquil light. As it grows darker, my reflection begins to materialize on the glass. Eventually, I’m left standing at the window facing an inky blue background behind the mirror image of my face, which looks old and tired; time has not been kind. But on this evening, it doesn’t matter–I am fortified by the light and the glow and the soft and graceful exit of the sacred winter sun.