Bête noire
Bête noire means “black beast” in French. The term is often used in reference to something or someone representing a source of torment. Years ago, the bête noire was a leitmotif in my drawings and paintings that gradually disappeared.
The beast is still there but he’s now in disguise.
yucca and aloe at Los Ojos
Respecting the 2015 Resolutions List means making the rounds for health check ups. Which means hanging out in waiting rooms. Eduardo Galeano’s “Espejos” (“Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone”) makes for great waiting room literature as it is a mosaic of easy reading vignettes. “Mirrors” takes a look at history by storytelling the lives of gods, artists, writers and anyone else who gets in the way. Galeano, like a pointillist painter, blots in information to create a historical panorama. It’s up to the reader to connect the dots.
One of the dots to connect is entitled “Origin of Social Class”. Apparently the Sun and the god Pachacamac were very competitive. One day the Sun impregnated a woman working in the fields The birth of this baby so angered Pachacamac that he took the child and ripped him into shreds scattering the remains. But this destructive rage backfired as from these remains plants began to grow—corn from the teeth, yams from the flesh and yucca from the bones.
In one of my studio windows, I have a tall yucca that’s produced several “off-springs” which need to be pruned. But, since construction is going on across the street, they’re going to stay as they give solace to the eyes by hiding some of the chaos.
The yucca grows well in Rome. Too well in that its roots eventually outgrow the pot. Maybe next year I’ll have to replant my yucca which will give me the chance to use its tuberous roots. Apparently, these roots have several medicinal properties that have anti-arthritic and anti-inflammatory effects.
So it’s yucca tea for me!
Related links: yucca sandals + Yucca Fiber Skirt + ORANGE ZEST YUCCA FRIES + edible plant project
photo by Chiara Pilar
pot and poster, studio los ojos
Like a bowerbird*, I use junk to decorate my home. But junk that’s been joyfully transformed with some abracadabras.
The hands are like magic wands that can transform ugly ducklings into swans.
Making things makes me happy. Because it makes my world bigger.
Since man began walking upright, he’s been making things. It’s a natural impulse. Because hands permit you to manipulate the world around you. And to give form to the imagination.
*Bowerbirds…to attract a mate, the male bowerbird builds a nest then searches for brightly covered object to use as decoration
photo by Chiara Pilar
Paros
Once they’re written, New Year’s Resolutions seem to vanish like dew. Fortunately, still fresh on my list is that of trying to meditate. Everything you read about increasing your vibration level insists that meditation is a must. But my thoughts are so loud and difficult to silence that I’ve been reluctant to try. So I got the book “8 Minute Meditation: Quiet Your Mind. Change Your Life” thinking I could give 8 minutes a try. The book seems a bit padded with unnecessary text just to say that meditation is basically focusing on your breathing in a dark and quiet room while trying not to think about anything else.
To keep my mind focused on not focusing, I made a mental mandala—that of the promontory on Paros. I love standing there looking at the horizon. But is it the sea I like or the possibility of seeing so much sky?
“The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through…
And he whose soul is flat—the sky
Will cave in on him by and by.”
from Renascence by Edna St. Vincent Millay
related links: So Young, So Good, So Popular + Renascence , complete poem + Renascence, critical essay + Change Your Thoughts With Meditation
Much has been said about the benefits of keeping a diary. For one, it helps articulate feelings and thus sharpens the blurs. Also, when we get that feeling ”it’s not easy for me to be me”, a diary can act as a confidant eager for our psychological striptease.
I use to keep diaries until an ex-boyfriend stole one of them. The whole experience was a real telenovela. If you keep a diary, there is always that risk that someone, without your permission, will read it. So how can you really write spontaneously?
My bedtime book this week was Erika Robuck’s “Call Me Zelda” about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife, the original flapper. I was amazed to learn that Fitzgerald stole Zelda’s diaries and blatantly copied passages from them for his novels. He also had a habit of copying down anything she said he thought he could use for future reference.
Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald with daughter Scottie. Photo: REX FEATURES via
For “Tender is the Night”, Fitzgerald used letters Zelda had sent him while recovering in an asylum. “Tender” is the story of Dick, a psychoanalyst, and Nicole, one of his ex-patients, who marry and unravel. Glamorous and rich, Dick and Nicole have everything yet it’s not enough. Like Zelda and Scott, they are examples of how excess leads to decadence. And of how wanting more leads to having less.
Fitzgerald died an alcoholic at the age of 44 and Zelda was burned alive at the age of 48.
“Excerpts” from Diary Pages is a highly edited and illustrated diary that was presented at an exhibition I had at the Canonica Arte Incontro Gallery in Milan (1997). Now I keep notebooks and not diaries!
related links: read TENDER IS THE NIGHT free online + Zelda Wasn’t ‘Crazy’: How What You Don’t Know About Fitzgerald Tells Us Something About ‘Crazy’ Women, Then and Now+ The Legend of Zelda (Sayre Fitzgerald) + Zelda Fitzgerald’s Little-Known Art
The Narrative Within 