a game of mirrors upon mirrors where art reflects the vulnerable beauty of life and life in turn, becomes a form of existential, realistic and abstract art all on a single canvas or a page or a lifetime—expelling a single silent breath
Tag Archives: art
Language: a short version and/or a long version
the short version:
the language of my ancestors melts into the canvas of my life, drips onto the pavement of the past and splashes, sticky and viscous into the shortened walkway of the future
the long version:
When I was a child, I knew and understood one language. This language was not on television and it was not overheard on the streets of my small 1970’s Ohio city. It was not spoken at school and as a consequence I struggled both academically and socially. Placed into a remedial class for “slow learners”, my learning curve, steeped and rocky and barbed.
This language that I spoke at home became a home in and of itself, a home filled with pungent smells and passionate voices.
The significance of my first language is heavy and dense. It has the weight of pride and beauty, of romance and memory, it has the aura of history and time and place. Like a dark, impending wave from a tumultuous sea, this language also crests menacingly, sulfurous and suffocating.
Several things can be true at the same time. A revelation.
I chose a path away from my culture, away from my language. For the most part, I have no regrets. Still, as time moves forward, the language of my ancestors melts into the canvas of my life, drips onto the pavement of the past and splashes, sticky and viscous into the shortened walkway of the future.
There will come a time when I have no one in which to share this language. The final shedding of a skin that exposes the raw sorrow of having run so far and so long and having advanced such a tiny distance.
What then?
Excerpt
Once she’s locked the attic door behind her she feels a sense of release, a crack of light in the darkness. What is the name for what she’s feeling?
She wishes it were liberation.
from The Age of Light, by Whitney Scharer, 2019
Love is
love is all at once very complicated,
and very simple
at 5:30 am
at 5:30 am: the blue light of dawn, strong coffee and vanessa’s gaze
Excerpt
…a dying star can light the sky for centuries after her fall.
from Vanessa and her Sister by Priya Parman, 2014
Broken
He was broken
and he was beautiful
One Look
it was one look, but it was everything
Excerpt
She was like a woman of Leonardo da Vinci’s, whom we love not so much for herself as for the things that she will not tell us.
from A Room with a View by E.M. Forster, 1908
Art
nature is art