2012-03-16T11:55:21-04:00 lifetype-1.2.10_r6971 http://www.loreeharrell.com/blog/rss.php?blogId=10531&profile=atom Copyright (c) tag:blogs.artspan.com,2012-03-16:32577 2012-03-16T11:55:21-04:00

    Rendered Inexplicably Happy     Somewhere in the morning of Thursdays, I am done with punching a clock for a few days.  I come home and am greeted by ...

Thoughts On Art (And Life)     Rendered Inexplicably Happy     Somewhere in the morning of Thursdays, I am done with punching a clock for a few days.  I come home and am greeted by four versions of ecstasy that I exist and have come home.  I mix up the dogs' breakfast and let it sit while I do a few dishes, take out the recycling, clean the cat box.  The morning chores. An attempt to retain the ground reclaimed.    I feed the big dogs (a misnomer as the small dogs are so close to the same now as to make the distinction laughable) in the kitchen, take the pups' bowls out for our ritual on the deck, Ebb spinning and dancing in front of me, Max bumping my knees behind, through the narrow hall from the kitchen.  They sit pretty, we hold each others' eyes a moment until I smile and tell them they're good and put the bowls down.   Four dogs eating and I put a bag in the black bucket, find the repurposed kitchen ladle, and walk the wet grass of the yard, still in my work shoes and clothes, picking up the shit of the past day.  Something of a complete circle, that is, don't you think?  Or a lost cause, maybe.  Picking up shit while the shitters refill.    The sun is shining this morning.  If you've been paying attention, you know that's New.  We have had the wettest, grayest, chilliest May and June I can remember, with so few breaks.    As I add one more pile to the bucket and look for the next, and the temperature is perfect and the sun is sparkling on the grass and the dogs are eating their breakfast and we're all glad we have each other, I feel happy.  Even picking up shit.   I think maybe happy is moments.  Tiny slices.  That we can only be happy by focusing on a detail rather than the whole.   There was more to it than that, but, for just now, that's enough.     Good morning.   06.24.10 tag:blogs.artspan.com,2012-03-03:32269 2012-03-03T13:45:57-05:00

    There are seams between then and now, now and next, where a choice is stiched onto a past, and the next moment changes everything that follows.  Life is no whole cloth, ...

Thoughts On Art (And Life) Poems     There are seams between then and now, now and next, where a choice is stiched onto a past, and the next moment changes everything that follows.  Life is no whole cloth, formed of a piece, but more a cobbling of action and heart and thought, greater or lesser, onto the patchworked form  already existing. Nothing once placed can be ever removed,  no thing can be  redone or painted over, although its effect  can be affected with the addition of a piece which alters the  chemistry of the whole and shifts a balance.  Our task is not  to change anything already done, but to choose that next act, love, thought, in such a way that our last fleeting glimpse  of a cloth finally whole, pleases us. LLH; 08.01.10 tag:blogs.artspan.com,2012-03-02:32257 2012-03-02T15:22:55-05:00

    Journey Through  There was a time I knew naught,      when all turned about me     and the world curled apace in my ...

Thoughts On Art (And Life) Poems     Journey Through  There was a time I knew naught,      when all turned about me     and the world curled apace in my absence.  When secrets were hidden and depths revealed and knots were ne'er broken.       There was a time.  When lives were being lived, and deaths were served, and the puzzlings were a bit and a touch more lineal.       When beauty abounded and fear held no terror and what was heard in the evening of reckoning was bells and delivery.        Where new thoughts could form and old ones be left with no notice but love                     and where gods                   could sit quiet at ether's                             ease.   LLH 08.25.02  tag:blogs.artspan.com,2012-03-02:32239 2012-03-02T03:17:48-05:00

        There are some few of us ...

Thoughts On Art (And Life) Poems         There are some few of us                                                        [I must include myself                                                        in the sweet name                                                        of journalistic integrity] who want life huge and bright, beautiful in the extreme. Who are willing to set aside comfort and safety, to the point where eating, sleeping, working, are simply details of little importance which can be set aside at times to live in that place.   This is not just about sex.                                                    [although the strong impetus                                                    in that general direction                                                    is a valid indicator.]   I think we misunderstand that sometimes. often. think we're talking about a conjoining of bodies when really that is simply a choice of direction of energies towards desire of life huge and bright, beautiful in the extreme                                                   [yes, we do know there are drugs for that.                                                 we are, however, declining to participate                                                 in favor of living.]   Removed from that grace we shutter we close we turn in we die with the same focus and intensity. Or is it the other way around.                                                     {death                                                   huge and bright                                                   beautiful in the extreme]   We recognize each other take a deep breath exhale cross our fingers and pray we read the lay correctly and it's not just. about. to happen. again.                                                      [I was here to dance                                                    and no one                                                    would dance with me.]   In self-preservation we have learned to not show the depth and breadth in the walking-around world, we have learned to try the waters and pull back in when a tested word crosses a critical line                                                     [this incredible dance                                                   of rain and heat                                                   and dust and love.]   We are not usually criminal occasionally dangerous often idiots always fun to watch or a royal pain in the ass. one or the other.                                                  [we strongly recommend                                                if you don't want this                                                life huge and bright,                                                beautiful in the extreme,                                                you stay away from us                                                altogether.]   as for me I'm off to learn the secret handshake. Mail me if you need it.                                                  [jump on in                                                the water's fine.]   ~~~~~~~~~~ LLH; 2008 tag:blogs.artspan.com,2012-02-27:32156 2012-02-27T10:05:11-05:00

True Things     "Is love a true thing, Grandpa?" "Yes, my son, it is one of them." "How many true things are there?" "That is a wise question. Let us count." ...

Thoughts On Art (And Life) Stories True Things     "Is love a true thing, Grandpa?" "Yes, my son, it is one of them." "How many true things are there?" "That is a wise question. Let us count." "Is beauty one of them?" "No, it is not, because beauty is known differently to each of us. "Is wisdom then?" "No, because wisdom must change as the world turns and changes." "Then perhaps movement is a true thing?" "It is the sixth true thing, because once an action is taken it cannot be untaken." "So is that how I am to know a true thing?" "One of the three ways, yes. It is the third way. A true thing must hold the power to change to the better a person or the world; it must be not dependent on anything else, but able to work in partnership with anything else; and it must not be able to be destroyed in the truth of itself." "And how many true things are there?" "There are six." "May you tell me the other four, Grandfather, or am I to discover them myself?" "As you have asked, dear one, I am allowed to answer. And then you may discover them for yourself. The first is work; The second is word; The third is love; The fourth is thought; The fifth is song: The sixth is movement."   LLH; 2009 tag:blogs.artspan.com,2012-02-27:32154 2012-02-27T10:00:56-05:00

Pen On Paper 1   There is a good chance the murder of me may be the death of us all.   It's just words.   Old words written maybe in the depth of a despair or ...

Thoughts On Art (And Life) Pen On Paper 1   There is a good chance the murder of me may be the death of us all.   It's just words.   Old words written maybe in the depth of a despair or the first sweet soft light of hope.  I don't know.   It may have been the remains of a dream or the seeds of a story or the wish for an end.  It's lost now.   The things we leave forgotten behind become their own.  When, somewhere along a stony path, we trip over their bones, we find what they have become.           Something else,            something less,        Something more,          their own.   Their own.  No longer something of us, but, rather, Something brought to us, given to us, separate from us, whole.   We make of it what we will.     LLH; 11.05.10     First sentence found in a notebook dated September 12th, 2006, titled ...being the start of me becoming Me.   There were only two sentences in the notebook until I wrote this last night.  The other was:   In the center of my deep wishings, the form of you calls out the willing of me. tag:blogs.artspan.com,2011-12-01:29801 2011-12-01T21:51:36-05:00

[posted here with permission]   I woke up to this message this morning...   Dianne Amico April 12 at 11:12pm Report ...

The Mirror Project Thoughts On Art (And Life) [posted here with permission]   I woke up to this message this morning...   Dianne Amico April 12 at 11:12pm Report   Hi, Loree - I'd never noticed before [perhaps I wasn't paying attention], but what I"m seeing here is that people see faces/animate objects when the line of symmetry is vertical; it seems to bring that out. When the axis is horizontal, not so much. Think about it; if you only saw half a face [left or right side], would you think of it as a face? Or if you only saw the top or bottom half of the image of an animate being, would you identify/empathize with it as much as you would if you saw the whole being? Like magic - put a mirror on an image from nature and it becomes human/oid. Do it with geometric shapes and it doesn't work so well. Is it because you add order/balance to a random image? Or maybe, because your eye has to stop and see the pattern again in reverse, and it reminds us of that which is most familiar to us? In any case, your images are a delight; so much going on, and so much to discover. Thanks for posting and discussing. - Dianne   It's funny how someone saying something just slightly differently from how I've been looking at it - the same thing, but approaching from a different direction - can set me off on a whole 'nother run of thought.    Let's try this.  Back to the Bear In Buckskins referenced yesterday, but not illustrated.   This is the source image.   Source image for the Bear In Buckskins; Mirror 069   This is the Bear.  Source image stitched on the vertical.   Mirror 069   This is the source image stitched on the horizontal.   Source image stitched horizontally   It's interesting enough, I suppose. But not in a human way.  It holds no magic, no story. It's just geometry and tricks.   Symmetry to us is right and left, not up and down.  And, more than that, what we think is symmetry is kind of irrelevant.  Some things work for me and some don't.  I want the hidden things - crave them even.  Want the secrets and the mysteries and the things just out of sight to come more clear.  Maybe, some day, to understand them.  I want to believe there are some sort of beings behind the surfaces of things.   I want to feel like I'm a part of something big.   The Bear In Buckskins does that.  And delights me.  Feeds me.  Still, after more than a year.  Every day when I walk by that spot on the trail, now changed by weather and growth and death, I know that the Bear was there once. And that I got to find him.    That seems like a good thing.   And, yes, order and balance.  We don't have much of that.  So there is something about being able to bring a kernel of order out of the chaos - complete chaos - that nature (the world) is, that is immensely gratifying.  I'm not sure the eye stops and sees the pattern in reverse.   I think it's just a new whole.   Thank you, Dianne.   LLH;  04.13.11