Repose: Lady and Captain

I always feel a little more rested, a bit more at ease, when I watch my cats sleeping.  Or, as I should say, resting.  If you look closely, you can see that Lady's eyes are open and watching me take yet another picture, and Captain is resettling here atop my laptop, which I need to work . . . .

"The Other Worlds": Life's Largest Riddle

The Other Worlds is an excellent mythopoeic novel by a dear friend, Christoph Greger.  Christoph's own humble way of introducing the book to the world is worth quoting: "Hey all you cystic fibrosis lit fans, Ren fair geeks, and/or mythopoeic/modernist bildungsroman junkies -- here's something that might be of interest."

This fine novel deserves deep interest, presenting classic character-in-crisis; entertaining and evoking in the tradition of Yeats, Morris, Dunsany, de Lint, and Windling; and offering entry into multiple worlds, this one we share and those others 'beyond the fields we know'.  The setting and the style are distinctly contemporary; the themes and dilemmas, definitely timeless.  Life's largest riddle--mortality--met by mystery, measured by memory, and beset--or aided?--by magic waits at the heart of The Other Worlds.

Read this book.

Sea-Caves: Mendocino

Waiting For Macbeth

Seyton: sculpture mix; dark green, transparent brown, and celadon glazing.

Dreams and Shadows -- Robert Graves' "Theseus and Ariadne"

Amazon: sculpture mix; cobalt carbonate oxide.

THESEUS AND ARIADNE

High on his figured couch beyond the waves

He dreams, in dream recalling her set walk

Down paths of oyster-shell bordered with flowers,

Across the shadowy turf below the vines.

He sighs: "Deep sunk in my erroneous past

She haunts the ruins and the ravaged lawns."

Yet still unharmed it stands, the regal house

Crooked with age and overtopped by pines

Where first he wearied of her constancy.

And with a surer foot she goes than when

Dread of his hate was thunder in the air,

When the pines agonised with flaws of wind

And flowers glared up at her with frantic eyes.

Of him, now all is done, she never dreams

But calls a living blessing down upon

What he supposes rubble and rank grass;

Playing queen to nobler company.

--ROBERT GRAVES

Autumnal: Mask

The Sleeper:
sculpture mix; nutmeg and shino glazing, layered; leather cord.
Mask, 2005; photograph, 2012.

Sea-Caves: Mendocino

Pipe Dream