tee-shirt

Checkered butterfly,
Making love to white tee shirt,
The Palpitations!

kisses

Dainty butterfly,
Planting tiny kisses,
The erect lavender!

circus

Butterfly circus,
Were it possible for me 
To be free myself!

switch

The buzzing cigales!
Whose lucky hand flicks the switch?
First day of summer!

lawnmower

Move aside crickets!
Tell everyone else too!
Here comes the lawnmower!

phantom

If it behooves thee,
Phantom mosquito, please:
Have pity upon me!

anxious

Trapped by small window,
I'm anxious for honeybee!
"Come,.. this way is out!"

slumber

All night, jasmine dreams,
Tormented by your sweet scent,
Delicious slumber!

empty

Investigation!
The Lizard probes empty space
Between two small stones.

seeds

Selfish bachelor,
To where have your seeds been blown?
The empty mornings!

parade

Butterfly parade,
All day watching with great envy,
Feeling left out.

breakfast

Already,... sorrow!
Passing through my poor mind
just before breakfast.

kissed

Upon the petal,
An oleander is kissed
by a white butterfly.

cold

June's winter's breath

Still screaming through the empty sky,

The cold Mistral!

night

The way to the compost bin,
Guided by honeysuckle
In the black of night

heart

Haven't the heart
To clean kitchen sink,
The ants are using it.

hesitation

Oleander rose,
Pair of white butterflies,
A hesitation.

half-hidden

Between blackbird trees,
Hearing the hidden crickets!
Their summer debut.

petals

And you, crippled rose!

Your petals no longer touched

By the morning sun.

hairy

What's up honey bee?
Probing a thumb, meditating
My hairy finger?

fled

Swept clean this night,
Rose blossoms fled the terrace,
The spring thunderstorm.

blind faith

There is a wonderful anecdote which I recently came across. Matisse wanted to buy this small 'bathers' from Ambroise Vollard in the 1890's when he was almost destitute. He wanted it so badly but never imagined that he would have enough money to purchase it. He badgered Vollard for several years (who in the meantime had sold it to someone else but had since bought back from the same chap even cheaper than when he had sold originally.) (!) He finally relented and gave it to Matisse coupled with a contract to buy 12 paintings of his at a ridiculously low price. So Vollard, being a wily dealer, made out well but so did Matisse because he not only got his treasured Cezanne but also a deal to sell his paintings even if it wasn't at a great price. Through very lean times Matisse and his wife Amélie hung on to the Cezanne. They were extremely attached it and despite Cezanne's increasing worth over the years it never occurred to them to part with it. His wife Amélie had in fact pawned a family heirloom so that Matisse could buy it. Although she didn't know much about Art she understood what it meant to her husband. It seemed to be an act of blind faith for her, and for him. At his wife's suggestion he gave it to the city of Paris in 1937 and he said:

"In the thirty seven years since I have owned this painting I have come to know it fairly well though I hope not entirely. It has supported me morally at critical moments in my venture as an artist; I have drawn from it my faith and my perseverance."

I like this story because its not about money, but love of Art, which seems so rare these days.

compost

Oleander bliss,
Hidden by compost heap,
Waits for admiration.

honey

No pity for ant,

Locked in the honey jar, 

Overnight.

wedding

Raining acacias,
Sky full of flower blossoms,
Where's the wedding?

legs

Though dead for ages,
Resting on the coffee table,
My father's long legs.

breakfast

Despite fragrant rose,
Breathing in anxiety, 
Alas! my breakfast!

spring

Sweater of dead bugs!
After a bicycle ride,
An evening in spring.

jasmine

My jasmine lover,
Your scent beckons my old body,
Twilight garden!

Maupassant

From Maupassant's Pierre et Jean:

'What you have to do is look at what you wish to express long enough and with enough attention to discover an aspect of it that has never been seen or described by anyone before. There is something unexplored in everything, because we have grown used to letting our eyes be conditioned by the memory of what others have thought before us about whatever we are looking at.... To describe a blazing fire and a tree on a plain, we must stay put in front of that fire and that tree on a plain until for us they no longer resemble any other tree or any other fire. That is the way which you will become original.'

virgins

The pregnant lilacs,
Immaculate conception,
The purple virgins!

terrace

Fading acacias
Your confetti leaves decorate
The empty terrace

radio

For the cricket song,
Turning down the radio
Under the new moon.

cuckoo

Without the cuckoo,
This morning's opera,
Messy cacophony.

solace

Hidden behind the tree, 
My sadness seeking solace,
You, curious moon!

lanterns

Acacia flowers,
Pasted against deep blue sky,
The morning lanterns!

Niki de Saint Phalle and John Keats

Two paintings (relief collages really) from Niki de Saint Phalle which have obviously haunted me since I saw them last fall. Honestly, I had never liked nor been remotely interested in what I had seen of her large output as an artist. But curiously of course, one is always changed, pulled out of one's ideas and preconceptions through the course of a creative and changing life. This has happened to me on many occasions, I am thankful to admit. How is it that our restless minds and hearts are cut down in the flash of a moment? I can see in myself that I selfishly guard "my ideas" once I have embraced them. Why  embrace some ideas and not others? But that is another question which deserves to be looked at another time. What interests me today is how quickly I am immobilized by a piece of Art. Is it not the same to be immobilized by beauty? Ultimately by love itself? BY truth in fact? And this is a a personal love as well, one I cannot share with others. It is for me alone. I cannot impose it on others yet I know that I have certainly tried over the years to very, very patient friends. I am learning to hold this feeling close to my heart. I shall let John Keats speak for others.

In the meantime the world throws itself upon me, endless waves of random beauty as if, I, a sandy beach am a helpless victim. 

How grateful am I that its Beauty and Truth which alone seem to have the strength to overcome my prejudices. 

And as Keats said in the final refrain from Ode to a Grecian Urn:

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all ye need to know on earth and all ye need to know'

wisteria

Dying wisteria,
Nightingales indifferent,
The grinning May moon!

blackbird

                                                                                                Lartique


The blackbird,
Without a care in the world,
And the young moon mocks my heart!

Everything

Jacques-Henri Lartigue, photographer and painter, began taking photos when he was just about 7 or 8 years of age. The photograph (above) of his older brother  would have been one of his very first. His father, who must have been a very cool guy, gave his son a 13 x 18 box on a wooden tripod. Before that he had invented for himself an "eye trap" (piège d'oeil) which consisted in opening and shutting his eyes rapidly three times in succession. In this way he had the impression of catching all what was going on; the images, the sounds, the colors. All of it in a small sequence of eye movements. 

"And since that moment I was happy and soothed because I felt that I had captured and treasured up in my head the essential pictures of the best moments of my day.

But when after a few days I said to myself: 'Now, look lets look back at all the pictures only to discover that nothing was left of them, or very little."

"Papa is like God (as a matter of fact, he might even be God in disguise). He's just told me, Now I'm going to give you your own camera.' Now I will be able to make portraits of everything...... everything...."

Sounds like an artist already. I am just looking again at a lovely small book with his photographs which has followed me everywhere for the past 35 years. He amazes.

When asked whether he thought photography could be labeled art, he replied,

"That is ridiculous  and vain. Everything is art; nothing is art. A cook, a shoemaker, a hairdresser are all artists according to how talented they are."

lost

Over the keyboard,
Across the computer screen,
Lost like me, an ant.

hangover

For lunch, and dinner,

Drinking in the Nightingales,

Hangover in May!

sweet

Picnic for blackbirds,
Savory or sweet? Oh! poor worms!
The freshly cut lawn.

helas!

Brushcutting, helas...
Daisies and small buttercups,
Decapitated!

dreaming

Already dreaming,

Of the antipodal friends,

Whose language I speak.

hairy

The marooned red ant,
Exploring my hairy arm,
An itchy passage.

mute

But for the black birds,
An open sky, empty ear.
A mute black coffee.

pity

Honeysuckle dusk!

Pity for the distant moon!

Delicious jasmine,

hidden

Under the grey sky,

Hidden in the lilac bush,

The bashful iris.

sand

Well, from one magical place to another I have been swept from one Australia back to Europe. I miss already; the sea, the beach, the big sky and all the small creatures in the sand. After a long flight my body and mind begin to settle into the greenery of a rustic spring landscape. Lilacs, irises, small white roses, and the mighty chestnut trees (les maronniers) abound surrounding the house. Le Belvedere has suffered my absence without too much complaint. Only the balconies couldn't resist the long weeks of snow and thus they have dropped piles of plaster and old cement from underneath. Stoic it is, this house, but like everything else in life,  nothing resists the fury of Nature. These small crab designs (above) are washed away daily, a reminder that I too, need to live one day at a time.