Leaf Painting Quotes

I Am Vertical But I would rather be horizontal. I am not a tree with my root in the soil Sucking up minerals and motherly love So that each March I may gleam into leaf, Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted, Unknowing I must soon unpetal. Compared with me, a tree is immortal And a flower-head not tall, but more startling, And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring.

She’s kept her love for him as alive as the summer they first met. In order to do this, she’s turned life away. Sometimes she subsists for days on water and air. Being the only known complex life-form to do this, she should have a species named after her. Once Uncle Julian told me how the sculptor and painter Alberto Giacometti said that sometimes just to paint a head you have to give up the whole figure. To paint a leaf, you have to sacrifice the whole landscape. It might seem like you’re limiting yourself at first, but after a while you realize that having a quarter-of-an-inch of something you have a better chance of holding on to a certain feeling of the universe than if you pretended to be doing the whole sky. My mother did not choose a leaf or a head. She chose my father. And to hold on to a certain feeling, she sacrificed the world.

If you paint the leaf on a tree without using a model, your imagination will only supply you with a few leaves; but Nature offers you millions, all on the same tree. No two leaves are exactly the same. The artist who paints only what is in his mind must very soon repeat himself.

Autumn is a cunning muse who steals by degrees my warmth and light. So distracted by her glorious painting of colors, I scarcely realize my losses until the last fiery leaf has fallen to the ground and the final pumpkin shrinks. Autumn departs with a cold kiss, leaving me to suffer the frigid grasp of winter in prolonged nightfall.

Sometimes just to paint a head you have to give up the whole figure. To paint a leaf, you have to sacrifice the whole landscape. It might seem like you're limiting yourself at first, but after a while you realize that having a quarter of an inch of something you have a better chance of holding on to a certain feeling of the universe than if you pretended to be doing the whole sky.

Autumn in the Highlands would be brief—a glorious riot of color blazing red across the moors and gleaming every shade of gold in the forests of sheltered glens. Those achingly beautiful images would be painted again and again across the hills and in the shivering waters of the mountain tarns until the harsh winds of winter sent the last quaking leaf to its death on the frozen ground.

You know what I’ve learned? Most people are like a leaf, letting themselves drift and turn in the air. Eventually, they fall to the ground. But, others— very few others— are like stars. They have light within themselves to be their own guide. Sometimes, we look at the sky and don’t see the stars, because there is too much light bedimming them. To find the stars again, we have to go to a dark place.

Unlike my father, who blindly churned out one canvas after another, I had real ideas about the artistic life. Seated at my desk, my beret as tight as an acorn’s cap, I projected myself into the world represented in the art books I’d borrowed from the public library. Leafing past the paintings, I would admire the photographs of the artists seated in their garrets, dressed in tattered smocks and frowning in the direction of their beefy nude models. To spend your days in the company of naked men – that was the life for me. ‘Turn a bit to the left, Jean-Claude. I long to capture the playful quality of your buttocks.

Autumn" Again the wind flakes gold-leaf from the trees and the painting darkens— as if a thousand penitents kissed an icon till it thinned back to bare wood, without diminishment. The Paris ReviewIssue 109, Winter 1988

Been thinking of my grandfather, whose wayward brilliance skipped my father’s generation. Once, he showed me an aquatint of a certain Siamese temple. Don’t recall its name, but ever since a disciple of the Buddha preached on the spot centuries ago, every bandit king, tyrant, and monarch of that kingdom has enhanced it with marble towers, scented arboretums, gold-leafed domes, lavished murals on its vaulted ceilings, set emeralds into the eyes of its statuettes. When the temple finally equals its counterpart in the Pure Land, so the story goes, that day humanity shall have fulfilled its purpose, and Time itself shall come to an end. To men like Ayrs, it occurs to me, this temple is civilization. The masses, slaves, peasants, and foot soldiers exist in the cracks of its flagstones, ignorant even of their ignorance. Not so the great statesmen, scientists, artists, and most of all, the composers of the age, any age, who are civilization’s architects, masons, and priests. Ayrs sees our role is to make civilization ever more resplendent. My employer’s profoundest, or only, wish is to create a minaret that inheritors of Progress a thousand years from now will point to and say, “Look, there is Vyvyan Ayrs!” How vulgar, this hankering after immortality, how vain, how false. Composers are merely scribblers of cave paintings. One writes music because winter is eternal and because, if one didn’t, the wolves and blizzards would be at one’s throat all the sooner.

A bit of a blurred vision of a better world. Much of an organizer’s daily work is detail, repetitive and deadly in its monotony. In the totality of things he is engaged in one small bit. It is as though as an artist he is painting a tiny leaf. It is inevitable that sooner or later he will react with “What am I doing spending my whole life just painting one little leaf? The hell with it, I quit.” What keeps him going is a blurred vision of a great mural where other artists—organizers—are painting their bits, and each piece is essential to the total.

But drunkenly, or secretly, we swore, Disciples of that astigmatic saint, That we would never leave the island Until we had put down, in paint, in words, As palmists learn the network of a hand, All of its sunken, leaf-choked ravines, Every neglected, self-pitying inlet Muttering in brackish dialect, the ropes of mangroves From which old soldier crabs slipped Surrendering to slush, Each ochre track seeking some hilltop and Losing itself in an unfinished phrase, Under sand shipyards where the burnt-out palms Inverted the design of unrigged schooners, Entering forests, boiling with life, Goyave, corrosol, bois-canot, sapotille. Days! The sun drumming, drumming, Past the defeated pennons of the palms, Roads limp from sunstroke, Past green flutes of the grass The ocean cannonading, come! Wonder that opened like the fan Of the dividing fronds On some noon-struck sahara, Where my heart from its rib cage yelped like a pup After clouds of sanderlings rustily wheeling The world on its ancient, Invisible axis, The breakers slow-dolphining over more breakers, To swivel our easels down, as firm As conquerors who had discovered home.

Sofia was ice. She was ripples. She was the kind of person who'd sneak into the zoo after hours just to paint an extra spot on a giraffe's neck. She was stubborn. She was lovely. She was the autumn leaf that refused to fall.

To paint a leaf, you have to sacrifice the whole landscape. It might seem like you're limiting yourself at first, but after a while you realize that having a quarter-of-an-inch of something you have a better chance of holding on to a certain feeling of the universe than if you pretended to be doing the whole sky. My mother did not choose a leaf or a head. She chose my father, and to hold on to a certain feeling, she sacrificed the world.

I want a poem I can grow old in. I want a poem I can die in. -A WOMAN PAINTED ON LEAF (In a Time of Violence)

Nothing is clear now. Something must be the matter with my way of viewing things. I have no middle view. Either I fix on a detail and see it as thought it were magnified -- a leaf with all its veins perceived, the fine hairs on a man's hands -- or else the world recedes and becomes blurred, artificial, indefinite, an abstract painting of a world. The darkening sky is hugely blue, gashed with rose, blood, flame from the volcano or wound or flower of the lowering sun. The wavering green, the sea of grass, piercingly bright. Black tree trunks, contorted, arching over the river.

I BOUGHT THIS house for the door. The house itself was a ruin, but I had to have that door. Over the years, I’ve painted it many times, all different ways: abstract, representational, blue, black, brown. I’ve painted it in the hot green of summer, in the dead of winter, clouds rushing past it, a lone yellow leaf drifting down. I painted the door open only once. Just before he died. In every picture after, it was closed.

I had just returned to Woodstock from the Midwest - from my father's funeral. The previous week had left me drained. I had gone back to the town of my early years in a way I could never have imagined - to see my father laid to rest. Now there would be no way to say what I was never capable of saying before. Growing up, the cultural and generational differences had been insurmountable - nothing but the sound of voices, colorless unnatural speech. My father, who was plain speaking and straight talking had said, 'Isn't an artist a fellow who paints?' when told by one of my teachers that his son had the nature of an artist. It seemed I'd always been chasing after something that moved - a car, a bird, a blowing leaf - anything that might lead me into some more lit place, some unknown land downriver. I had not the vaguest notion of the broken world I was living in, what society could do with you.

In the specially Christian case we have to react against the heavy bias of fatigue. It is almost impossible to make the facts vivid, because the facts are familiar; and for fallen men it is often true that familiarity is fatigue. I am convinced that if we could tell the supernatural story of Christ word for word as of a Chinese hero, call him the Son of Heaven instead of the Son of God, and trace his rayed nimbus in the gold thread of Chinese embroideries or the gold lacquer of Chinese pottery, instead of in the gold leaf of our own old Catholic paintings, there would be a unanimous testimony to the spiritual purity of the story. We should hear nothing then of the injustice of substitution or the illogicality of atonement, of the superstitious exaggeration of the burden of sin or the impossible insolence of an invasion of the laws of nature. We should admire the chivalry of the Chinese conception of a god who fell from the sky to fight the dragons and save the wicked from being devoured by their own fault and folly. We should admire the subtlety of the Chinese view of life, which perceives that all human imperfection is in very truth a crying imperfection. We should admire the Chinese esoteric and superior wisdom, which said there are higher cosmic laws than the laws we know.

He was looking at Mr. Nancy, an old black man with a pencil moustache, in his check sports jacket and his lemon yellow gloves, riding a carousel lion as it rose and lowered, high in the air; and, at the same time, in the same place, he saw a jeweled spider as high as a horse, its eyes an emerald nebula, strutting, staring down at him; and simultaneously he was looking at an extraordinarily tall man with teak colored skin and three sets of arms, wearing a flowing ostrich-feather headdress, his face painted with red stripes, riding an irritated golden lion, two of his six hands holding on tightly to the beast’s mane; and he was also seeing a young black boy, dressed in rags, his left foot all swollen and crawling with black flies; and last of all, and behind all these things, Shadow was looking at a tiny brown spider, hiding under a withered ochre leaf. Shadow saw all these things, and he knew they were the same thing.

Just as it is certain that one leaf is never totally the same as another, so it is certain that the concept "leaf" is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects. This awakens the idea that, in addition to the leaves, there exists in nature the "leaf": the original model according to which all the leaves were perhaps woven, sketched, measured, colored, curled, and painted--but by incompetent hands, so that no specimen has turned out to be a correct, trustworthy, and faithful likeness of the original model.

Do not laugh! But once upon a time (my crest has long since fallen) I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of romantic fairy-story – the larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser drawing splendour from the vast backcloths – which I could dedicate simply to: to England; to my country. It should possess the tone and quality that I desired, somewhat cool and clear, be redolent of our ‘air’ (the clime and soil of the North West, meaning Britain and the hither parts of Europe: not Italy or the Aegean, still less the East), and, while possessing (if I could achieve it) the fair elusive beauty that some call Celtic (though it is rarely found in genuine ancient Celtic things), it should be ‘high’, purged of the gross, and fit for the more adult mind of a land long now steeped in poetry. I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama. Absurd. Of course, such an overweening purpose did not develop all at once. The mere stories were the thing. They arose in my mind as ‘given’ things, and as they came, separately, so too the links grew. An absorbing, though continually interrupted labour (especially since, even apart from the necessities of life, the mind would wing to the other pole and spend itself on the linguistics): yet always I had the sense of recording what was already ‘there’, somewhere: not of ‘inventing’. Of course, I made up and even wrote lots of other things (especially for my children). Some escaped from the grasp of this branching acquisitive theme, being ultimately and radically unrelated: Leaf by Niggle and Farmer Giles, for instance, the only two that have been printed. The Hobbit, which has much more essential life in it, was quite independently conceived: I did not know as I began it that it belonged. But it proved to be the discovery of the completion of the whole, its mode of descent to earth, and merging into ‘history’. As the high Legends of the beginning are supposed to look at things through Elvish minds, so the middle tale of the Hobbit takes a virtually human point of view – and the last tale blends them.

Sometimes, when there's been an accident and reality is too sudden and strange to comprehend, the surreal will take over. Action slows to a dreamlike glide, frame by frame; the motion of a hand, a sentence spoken, fills an eternity. Little things—a cricket on a stem, the veined branches on a leaf—are magnified, brought from the background in achingly clear focus. And that was what happened then, walking over the meadow to the house. It was like a painting too vivid to be real—every pebble, every blade of grass sharply defined, the sky so blue it hurt me to look at it.

He remembered that in the art books he had leafed through at Leader's, many paintings depicted death. A severed head on a platter. A battle, and the ground strewn with bodies. Swords and spears and fire; and nails being pounded into the tender flesh of a man's hands. Painters had preserved such pain through beauty.

kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don’t. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won’t. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again. That is their mystery and their magic. To the Kathakali Man these stories are his children and his childhood. He has grown up within them. They are the house he was raised in, the meadows he played in. They are his windows and his way of seeing. So when he tells a story, he handles it as he would a child of his own. He teases it. He punishes it. He sends it up like a bubble. He wrestles it to the ground and lets it go again. He laughs at it because he loves it. He can fly you across whole worlds in minutes, he can stop for hours to examine a wilting leaf. Or play with a sleeping monkey’s tail. He can turn effortlessly from the carnage of war into the felicity of a woman washing her hair in a mountain stream. From the crafty ebullience of a rakshasa with a new idea into a gossipy Malayali with a scandal to spread. From the sensuousness of a woman with a baby at her breast into the seductive mischief of Krishna’s smile. He can reveal the nugget of sorrow that happiness contains. The hidden fish of shame in a sea of glory. He tells stories of the gods, but his yarn is spun from the ungodly, human heart. The Kathakali Man is the most beautiful of men. Because his body is his soul. His only instrument. From the age of three it has been planed and polished, pared down, harnessed wholly to the task of story-telling. He has magic in him, this man within the painted mask and swirling skirts.

ON TIME RUTH HALEY BARTON There have to be times in your life when you move slow, times when you walk rather than run, settling into each step . . . There have to be times when you stop and gaze admiringly at loved ones, marveling that they have been given to you for this life . . . times when hugs linger and kisses are real, when food and drink are savored with gratitude and humility rather than gulped down on your way to something else. There have to be times when you read for the sheer pleasure of it, marveling at the beauty of words and the endless creativity in putting them together . . . times when you settle into the comforts of home and become human once again. There have to be times when you light a candle and find the tender place inside you that loves or sorrows or sings and you pray from that place, times when you let yourself feel, when you allow the tears to come rather than blinking them back because you don’t have time to cry. There have to be times to sink into the soft body of yourself and love what you love simply because love itself is a grace . . . times when you sit with gratitude for the good gifts of your life that get lost and forgotten in the rush of things . . . times to celebrate and play to roll down hills to splash in water or make leaf piles to spread paint on paper or walls or each other. There have to be times to sit and wait for the fullness of God that replenishes body, mind, and soul— if you can even stand to be so full. There has to be time for the fullness of time or time is meaningless.

Go on from here, Ada, please. (She). Billions of boys. Take one fairly decent decade. A billion of Bills, good, gifted, tender and passionate, not only spiritually but physically well-meaning Billions, have bared the jillions of their no less tender and brilliant Jills during that decade, at stations and under conditions that have to be controlled and specified by the worker, lest the entire report be choked up by the weeds of statistics and waist-high generalizations. No point would there be, if we left out, for example, the little matter of prodigious individual awareness and young genius, which makes, in some cases, of this or that particular gasp an unprecedented and unrepeatable event in the continuum of life or at least a thematic anthemia of such events in a work of art, or a denouncer’s article. The details that shine through or shade through: the local leaf through the hyaline skin, the green sun in the brown humid eye, tout ceci, vsyo eto, in tit and toto, must be taken into account, now prepare to take over (no, Ada, go on, ya zaslushalsya: I’m all enchantment and ears), if we wish to convey the fact, the fact, the fact—that among those billions of brilliant couples in one cross section of what you will allow me to call spacetime (for the convenience of reasoning), one couple is a unique super-imperial couple, sverhimperator-skaya cheta, in consequence of which (to be inquired into, to be painted, to be denounced, to be put to music, or to the question and death, if the decade has a scorpion tail after all), the particularities of their love-making influence in a special unique way two long lives and a few readers, those pensive reeds, and their pens and mental paintbrushes. Natural history indeed! Unnatural history—because that precision of senses and sense must seem unpleasantly peculiar to peasants, and because the detail is all: The song of a Tuscan Firecrest or a Sitka Kinglet in a cemetery cypress; a minty whiff of Summer Savory or Yerba Buena on a coastal slope; the dancing flitter of a Holly Blue or an Echo Azure—combined with other birds, flowers and butterflies: that has to be heard, smelled and seen through the transparency of death and ardent beauty. And the most difficult: beauty itself as perceived through the there and then. The males of the firefly (now it’s really your turn, Van).

Five Poems" 1 Well now, hold on maybe I won't go to sleep at all and it'll be a beautiful white night or else I'll collapse completely from nerves and be calm as a rug or a bottle of pills or suddenly I'll be off Montauk swimming and loving it and not caring where 2 an invitation to lunch HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT? when I only have 16 cents and 2 packages of yoghurt there's a lesson in that, isn't there like in Chinese poetry when a leaf falls? hold off on the yoghurt till the very last, when everything may improve 3 at the Rond-Point they were eating an oyster, but here we were dropping by sculptures and seeing some paintings and the smasheroo-grates of Cadoret and music by Varese, too well Adolph Gottlieb I guess you are the hero of this day along with venison and Bill I'll sleep on the yoghurt and dream of the Persian Gulf 4 which I did it was wonderful to be in bed again and the knock on my door for once signified "hi there" and on the deafening walk through the ghettos where bombs have gone off lately left by subway violators I knew why I love taxis, yes subways are only fun when you're feeling sexy and who feels sexy after The Blue Angel well maybe a little bit 5 I seem to be defying fate, or am I avoiding it?

The neighborhood had gotten really into pastel the last few years. It started when Alfred's wife painted their whole house a soft pink during menopause. Looks Like Linen it was called. People raved. A magazine came, made the family hold up a rotisserie chicken, and then photographed it. A few months later, Mrs. Trenton's house was Mint Leaf. Ours became Celery Powder. The Resnicks' house turned Yellow Feather.

Sometimes, when there’s been an accident and reality is too sudden and strange to comprehend, the surreal will take over. Action slows to a dreamlike glide, frame by frame; the motion of a hand, a sentence spoken, fills an eternity. Little things—a cricket on a stem, the veined branches on a leaf—are magnified, brought from the background in achingly clear focus. And that was what happened then, walking over the meadow to the house. It was like a painting too vivid to be real—every pebble, every blade of grass sharply defined, the sky so blue it hurt me to look at it.

The July sun blazed in the middle of the sky and the atmosphere was gay and carefree, while in the windless air not a leaf stirred in the poplars and willows lining the banks of the river. In the distance ahead, the conspicuous bulk of Mont-Valérien loomed, rearing the ramparts of its fortifications in the glare of the sun. On the right, the gentle slopes of Louveciennes, following the curve of the river, formed a semi-circle within which could be glimpsed, through the dense and shady greenery of their spacious lawns, the white-painted walls of weekend retreats. On the land adjoining La Grenouillère strollers were sauntering under the gigantic trees which help to make this part of the island one of the most delightful parks imaginable. Busty women with peroxided hair and nipped-in waists could be seen, made up to the nines with blood red lips and black-kohled eyes. Tightly laced into their garish dresses they trailed in all their vulgar glory over the fresh green grass. They were accompanied by men whose fashion-plate accessories, light gloves, patent-leather boots, canes as slender as threads and absurd monocles made them look like complete idiots.

The forest reveals what was in the seed. The hen reveals what was in the egg. The storm reveals what was in the clouds. The light reveals what was in the star. The perfume reveals what was in the flower. The honey reveals what was in the bee. The fruit reveals what was in the tree. The rose reveals what was in the thorn. The web reveals what was in the spider. The butterfly reveals what was in the caterpillar. The venom reveals what was in the serpent. The pearl reveals what was in the oyster. The diamond reveals what was in the rock. The flame reveals what was in the spark. The nest reveals what was in the bird. The roar reveals what was in the lion. The leaf reveals what was in the plant. The fire reveals what was in the wood. The droplet reveals what was in the ocean. The rainbow reveals what was in the storm. The ocean reveals what was in the shark. The desert reveals what was in the camel. The sky reveals what was in the eagle. The jungle reveals what was in the elephant. The team reveals what was in the coach. The flock reveals what was in the shepherd. The crew reveals what was in the captain. The army reveals what was in the general. The tower reveals what was in the architect. The sculpture reveals what was in the sculptor. The painting reveals what was in the painter. The symphony reveals what was in the composer. The sensation reveals what was in the body. The tongue reveals what was in the mind. The action reveals what was in the heart. The character reveals what was in the soul. Spring reveals what was in winter. Summer reveals what was in spring. Autumn reveals what was in summer. Summer reveals what was in spring. The past reveals what was in the beginning. The present reveals what was in the past. The future reveals what was in the present. The afterlife reveals what was in the future.

When Cherokee and Raphael got back to the canyon house, they set up the tepee on the grass and crept inside it. They lay on their backs, not touching, looking at the leaf shadows flickering on their canvas, and trying to identify the flowers they smelled in the warm air. "Honeysuckle." "Orange blossom." "Rose." "The Sea." "The Sea! That doesn't count!" "I smell it like it's growing in the yard." They giggled the way they used to when they were very young. Then they were quiet. Raphael sat up and took Cherokee's feet in her hands. "Do they still hurt?" he asked, stroking them tenderly. He moved his hands up over her whole body, as if he were painting her, bringing color into her white skin. As if he were playing her-his guitar. And all the hurt seemed to float out of her like music. They woke in the morning curled together. "Remember how when we were really little we used to have the same dreams?" Cherokee whispered. "It was like going on trips together." "It stopped when we started making love." "I know." "But last night..." "Orchards of hawks and apricots," Raphael said, remembering. "Sheer pink-and-gold cliffs." "The sky's wings." "The night beasts run beside us, not afraid. Dream horses carry us..." "To the sea," they said together...

When light shines on a leaf, or a daub of paint, or a lump of butter, it actually causes it to rearrange its electrons, in a process called "transition." There the electrons are, floating quietly in clouds within their atoms, and suddenly a ray of light shines on them. Imagine a soprano singing a high C and shattering a wineglass, because she catches its natural vibration. Something similar happens with the electrons, if a portion of the light happens to catch their natural vibration. It shoots them to another energy level and that relevant bit of light, that glass-shattering "note," is used up and absorbed. The rest is reflected out, and our brains read it as "color.".... The best way I've found of understanding this is to think not so much of something "being" a color but of it "doing" a color. The atoms in a ripe tomato are busy shivering - or dancing or singing, the metaphors can be as joyful as the colors they describe - in such a way that when white light falls on them they absorb most of the blue and yellow light and they reject the red - meaning paradoxically that the "red" tomato is actually one that contains every wavelength except red. A week before, those atoms would have been doing a slightly different dance - absorbing the red light and rejecting the rest, to give the appearance of a green tomato instead.

Finally, I have come to realise that an imperfect Life is actually the most perfect Life. I have come to see how Life is beautiful in all its colours, more so because the shades of grey bind them and paint them with even more radiance. A clear sky is always beautiful but what if we never have rain or storm? Sunshine is always wonderful but what if we never have the soothing dusk or the cold night to coil in our own misty self? Storms that come to jolt us often leave us with more courage as we sail along the gust to chase a silver lining. The scorching heat that chokes us often makes us wait more eagerly for that balm of rain. So is Life, in all those moments of sunset we have the hope of the following sunrise, and if we may wait and absorb all that crumbling ray of that sunset we would be able to paint our sunrise with even more crimson smile. Because just like a story, nothing in Life is really concrete without patience. We cannot skip pages of a book because each line contains just so much to seep in, and to have the story fully lived inside our heart and soul we have to keep reading until the very end to feel that sense of peaceful happiness, that always clutches us no matter how the ending is drafted. In the same manner, we have to keep walking through Life, as each and every step of ours leads us to the destination of our Life, the destination of peace, the destination of knowledge of self. The best part of this walk is that it is never a straight line, but is always filled with curves and turns, making us aware of our spirit, laughing loud at times while mourning deep at times. But that is what Life is all about, a bunch of imperfect moments to smile as perfect memories sailing through the potholes of Life, because a straight line even in the world of science means death, after all monotony of perfection is the most cold imperfection. So as we walk through difficult times, may we realise that this sunset is not forever's and that the winter often makes us more aware of the spring. As we drive through a dark night, may we halt for a moment and watch for the stars, the smile of the very stars of gratitude and love that is always there even in the darkest sky of the gloomiest night. As we sail along the ship of Life, may we remember that the winds often guide us to our destination and the storms only come to make our voyage even more adventurous, while the rain clears the cloud so that we may gaze at the full glory of the sky above, with a perfect smile through a voyage of imperfect moments of forever's shine. And so as we keep turning the pages of Life, may we remember to wear that Smile, through every leaf of Life, for Life is rooted in the blooming foliage of its imperfect perfection.

She imagines its walls white. She imagines everything in it painted white. Even the holes in the floor, through the white broken boards, are painted white inside. The house’s windows look out on to high privet hedge. Elisabeth goes outside to paint that high hedge white too. Inside, sitting on a white-painted old couch, the stuffing coming out of it also stiff with white emulsion, Daniel laughs at what she’s doing. He laughs silently but like a child with his feet in his hands as she paints one tiny green leaf white after another. He catches her eye. He winks. That does it. They’re both standing in pure clean white space. Yes, she says. Now we can sell this space for a fortune. Only the very rich can afford to be this minimalist these days.

Still, everything in their house was buffed to a high, flat shine, so much reflection to protect the fact that there was nothing underneath. They didn’t read; there were a few books, a set of encyclopedias (the wine-colored spines warmed up the den), but the only well-leafed volumes were instruction manuals, do-it-yourself how-to’s, cookbooks, and a haggard set of The Way Things Work, volumes one and two. They had no comprehension why anyone would seek out a film with an unhappy ending or buy a painting that wasn’t pretty. They owned a top-shelf stereo with speakers worth $1,000 apiece, but only a handful of easy-listening and best-of CDs: Opera Stoppers; Classical Greatest Hits. That sounds lazy, but I think it was more helpless: They didn’t know what music was for.

Niggle's Picture!" said Parish in astonishment. "Did you think of all this, Niggle? I never knew you were so clever. Why didn't you tell me?" "He tried to tell you long ago," said the man; "but you would not look. He had only got canvas and paint in those days, and you wanted to mend your roof with them. This is what you and your wife used to call Niggle's Nonsense, or That Daubing." "But it did not look like this then, not real," said Parish. "No, it was only a glimpse then," said the man; "but you might have caught the glimpse, if you had ever thought it worth while to try." "I did not give you much chance," said Niggle. "I never tried to explain. I used to call you Old Earthgrubber. But what does it matter? We have lived and worked together now. Things might have been different, but they could not have been better.

I am Vertical by Sylvia Plath But I would rather be horizontal. I am not a tree with my root in the soil Sucking up minerals and motherly love So that each March I may gleam into leaf, Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted, Unknowing I must soon unpetal. Compared with me, a tree is immortal And a flower-head not tall, but more startling, And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring. Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars, The trees and the flowers have been strewing their cool odors. I walk among them, but none of them are noticing. Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping I must most perfectly resemble them -- Thoughts gone dim. It is more natural to me, lying down. Then the sky and I are in open conversation, And I shall be useful when I lie down finally: Then the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me.

I’m not sure I see your point.” “Well—I have to say I personally have never drawn such a sharp line between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ as you. For me: that line is often false. The two are never disconnected. One can’t exist without the other. As long as I am acting out of love, I feel I am doing best I know how. But you—wrapped up in judgment, always regretting the past, cursing yourself, blaming yourself, asking ‘what if,’ ‘what if.’ ‘Life is cruel.’ ‘I wish I had died instead of.’ Well—think about this. What if all your actions and choices, good or bad, make no difference to God? What if the pattern is pre-set? No no—hang on—this is a question worth struggling with. What if our badness and mistakes are the very thing that set our fate and bring us round to good? What if, for some of us, we can’t get there any other way?” “Get where?” “Understand, by saying ‘God,’ I am merely using ‘God’ as reference to long-term pattern we can’t decipher. Huge, slow-moving weather system rolling in on us from afar, blowing us randomly like—” eloquently, he batted at the air as if at a blown leaf. “But—maybe not so random and impersonal as all that, if you get me.” “Sorry but I’m not really appreciating your point here.” “You don’t need a point. The point is maybe that the point is too big to see or work round to on our own. Because—” up went the batwing eyebrow—“well, if you didn’t take picture from museum, and Sascha didn’t steal it back, and I didn’t think of claiming reward—well, wouldn’t all those dozens of other paintings remain missing too? Forever maybe? Wrapped in brown paper? Still shut in that apartment? No one to look at them? Lonely and lost to the world? Maybe the one had to be lost for the others to be found?” “I think this goes more to the idea of ‘relentless irony’ than ‘divine providence.’ ” “Yes—but why give it a name? Can’t they both be the same thing?

Aryeh looked, and his head became light. How could he have not seen? The earth on which the Almighty created the plants and the animals—in each and every illumination, it was shown as an orb. That the earth was round, and not flat, was now the opinion of a majority of theologians. Interesting that this artist of a century earlier, when Christians were being sent to the stake for this belief, espoused it. But that, alone, would not condemn the book. The illuminator had ventured further into dangerous territory. In the top right corner of three of the paintings, above the earth, was a second gold-leafed orb, clearly meant to be the sun. Its placement was ambiguous. Aryeh looked up at Vistorini. “You believe this implies the heliocentric heresy?” “‘Implies’! Rabbi, don’t be disingenuous. This is clearly in support of the heresy of the Saracen astronomers, of Copernicus, whose book is on the Index, of that man in Padua, Galileo, who will soon enough be brought before the Inquisition to answer for his errors.

Let us suppose that this ounce of mud is left in perfect rest, and that its elements gather together, like to like, so that their atoms may get into the closest relations possible. Let the clay begin. Ridding itself of all foreign substance, it gradually becomes a white earth, already very beautiful; and fit, with help of congealing fire, to be made into finest porcelain, and painted on, and be kept in kings’ palaces. But such artificial consistence is not its best. Leave it still quiet to follow its own instinct of unity, and it becomes not only white, but clear; not only clear, but hard; not only clear and hard, but so set that it can deal with light in a wonderful way, and gather out of it the loveliest blue rays only, refusing the rest. We call it then a sapphire. Such being the consummation of the clay, we give similar permission of quiet to the sand. It also becomes, first, a white earth, then proceeds to grow clear and hard, and at last arranges itself in mysterious, infinitely fine, parallel lines, which have the power of reflecting not merely the blue rays, but the blue, green, purple, and red rays in the greatest beauty in which they can be seen through any hard material whatsoever. We call it then an opal. In next order the soot sets to work; it cannot make itself white at first, but instead of being discouraged, tries harder and harder, and comes out clear at last, and the hardest thing in the world; and for the blackness that it had, obtains in exchange the power of reflecting all the rays of the sun at once in the vividest blaze that any solid thing can shoot. We call it then a diamond. Last of all the water purifies or unites itself, contented enough if it only reach the form of a dew-drop; but if we insist on its proceeding to a more perfect consistence, it crystallizes into the shape of a star. And for the ounce of slime which we had by political economy of competition, we have by political economy of co-operation, a sapphire, an opal, and a diamond, set in the midst of a star of snow.

She finds herself, by some miraculous feat, no longer standing in the old nursery but returned to the clearing in the woods. It is the 'green cathedral', the place she first kissed Jack all those weeks ago. The place where they laid out the stunned sparrowhawk, then watched it spring miraculously back to life. All around, the smooth, grey trunks of ancient beech trees rise up from the walls of the room to tower over her, spreading their branches across the ceiling in a fan of tangled branches and leaves, paint and gold leaf cleverly combined to create the shimmering effect of a leafy canopy at its most dense and opulent. And yet it is not the clearing, not in any real or grounded sense, because instead of leaves, the trees taper up to a canopy of extraordinary feathers shimmering and spreading out like a peacock's tail across the ceiling, a hundred green, gold and sapphire eyes gazing down upon her. Jack's startling embellishments twist an otherwise literal interpretation of their woodland glade into a fantastical, dreamlike version of itself. Their green cathedral, more spectacular and beautiful than she could have ever imagined. She moves closer to one of the trees and stretches out a hand, feeling instead of rough bark the smooth, cool surface of a wall. She can't help but smile. The trompe-l'oeil effect is dazzling and disorienting in equal measure. Even the window shutters and cornicing have been painted to maintain the illusion of the trees, while high above her head the glass dome set into the roof spills light as if it were the sun itself, pouring through the canopy of eyes. The only other light falls from the glass windowpanes above the window seat, still flanked by the old green velvet curtains, which somehow appear to blend seamlessly with the painted scene. The whole effect is eerie and unsettling. Lillian feels unbalanced, no longer sure what is real and what is not. It is like that book she read to Albie once- the one where the boy walks through the wardrobe into another world. That's what it feels like, she realizes: as if she has stepped into another realm, a place both fantastical and otherworldly. It's not just the peacock-feather eyes that are staring at her. Her gaze finds other details: a shy muntjac deer peering out from the undergrowth, a squirrel, sitting high up in a tree holding a green nut between its paws, small birds flitting here and there. The tiniest details have been captured by Jack's brush: a silver spider's web, a creeping ladybird, a puffy white toadstool. The only thing missing is the sound of the leaf canopy rustling and the soft scuttle of insects moving across the forest floor.

It is easy for the student to feel that with all his labour he is collecting only a few leaves, many of them now torn or decayed, from the countless foliage of the Tree of Tales, with which the Forest of Days is carpeted. It seems vain to add to the litter. Who can design a new leaf? The patterns from bud to unfolding, and the colours from spring to autumn were all discovered by men long ago. But that is not true. The seed of the tree can be replanted in almost any soil, even in one so smoke-ridden (as Lang said) as that of England. Spring is, of course, not really less beautiful because we have seen or heard of other like events: like events, never from world's beginning to world's end the same event. Each leaf, of oak and ash and thorn, is a unique embodiment of the pattern, and for some this very year may be the embodiment, the first ever seen and recognized, though oaks have put forth leaves for countless generations of men. We do not, or need not, despair of drawing because all lines must be either curved or straight, nor of painting because there are only three 'primary' colours. We may indeed be older now, in so far as we are heirs in enjoyment or in practice of many generations of ancestors in the arts. In this inheritance of wealth there may be a danger of boredom or of anxiety to be original, and that may lead to a distaste for fine drawing, delicate pattern, and 'pretty' colours, or else to mere manipulation and over-elaboration of old material, clever and heartless. But the true road of escape from such weariness is not to be found in the willfully awkward, clumsy, or misshapen, not in making all things dark or unremittingly violent; nor in the mixing of colours on through subtlety to drabness, and the fantastical complication of shapes to the point of silliness and on towards delirium. Before we reach such states we need recovery. We should look at green again, and be startled anew (but not blinded) by blue and yellow and red. We should meet the centaur and the dragon, and then perhaps suddenly behold, like the ancient shepherds, sheep, and dogs, and horses – and wolves. This recovery fairy-stories help us to make. In that sense only a taste for them may make us, or keep us, childish.

After loud overtures from his daughters, Anthony finally left the house and went up the winding path to the “museum,” to the mobile home where he and his parents had lived from 1949 to 1958. It has been left untouched. The furniture, tables, the paint on the walls, the ’50s cabinets, the dressers, the closets, are all unchanged, remaining as they once were. And in her closet in the bedroom, past the nurse’s uniform, far away in the right-hand corner on the top shelf, lies the black backpack that contains Tatiana’s soul. Every once in a while when she can stand it—or when she can’t stand it—she looks through it. Alexander never looks through it. Tatiana knows what Anthony is about to see. Two cans of Spam in the pack. A bottle of vodka. The nurse’s uniform she escaped from the Soviet Union in that hangs in plastic in the museum closet, next to the PMH nurse’s uniform she nearly lost her marriage in. The Hero of the Soviet Union medal in the pack, in a hidden pocket. The letters she received from Alexander—including the last one from Kontum, which, when she heard about his injuries, she thought would be the last one. That plane ride to Saigon in December 1970 was the longest twelve hours of Tatiana’s life. Francesca and her daughter Emily took care of Tatiana’s kids. Vikki, her good and forgiven friend, came with her, to bring back the body of Tom Richter, to bring back Anthony. In the backpack lies an old yellowed book, The Bronze Horseman and Other Poems. The pages are so old, they splinter if you turn them. You cannot leaf, you can only lift. And between the fracturing pages, photographs are slotted like fragile parchment leaves. Anthony is supposed to find two of these photographs and bring them back. It should take him only a few minutes. Cracked leaves of Tania before she was Alexander’s. Here she is at a few months old, held by her mother, Tania in one arm, Pasha in the other. Here she is, a toddler in the River Luga, bobbing with Pasha. And here a few years older, lying in the hammock with Dasha. A beaming, pretty, dark-haired Dasha is about fourteen. Here is Tania, around ten, with two dangling little braids, doing a fantastic one-armed handstand on top of a tree stump. Here are Tania and Pasha in the boat together, Pasha threateningly raising the oar over her head. Here is the whole family. The parents, side by side, unsmiling, Deda holding Tania’s hand. Babushka holding Pasha’s, Dasha smiling merrily in front.

The picture of human life in the market-place, though its general tint was the sad gray, brown, or black of the English emigrants, was yet enlivened by some diversity of hue. A party of Indians—in their savage finery of curiously embroidered deerskin robes, wampum-belts, red and yellow ochre, and feathers, and armed with the bow and arrow and stone-headed spear—stood apart with countenances of inflexible gravity, beyond what even the Puritan aspect could attain. Nor, wild as were these painted barbarians, were they the wildest feature of the scene. This distinction could more justly be claimed by some mariners—a part of the crew of the vessel from the Spanish Main—who had come ashore to see the humours of Election Day. They were rough-looking desperadoes, with sun-blackened faces, and an immensity of beard; their wide short trousers were confined about the waist by belts, often clasped with a rough plate of gold, and sustaining always a long knife, and in some instances, a sword. From beneath their broad-brimmed hats of palm-leaf, gleamed eyes which, even in good-nature and merriment, had a kind of animal ferocity. They transgressed without fear or scruple, the rules of behaviour that were binding on all others: smoking tobacco under the beadle's very nose, although each whiff would have cost a townsman a shilling; and quaffing at their pleasure, draughts of wine or aqua-vitae from pocket flasks, which they freely tendered to the gaping crowd around them. It remarkably characterised the incomplete morality of the age, rigid as we call it, that a licence was allowed the seafaring class, not merely for their freaks on shore, but for far more desperate deeds on their proper element. The sailor of that day would go near to be arraigned as a pirate in our own. There could be little doubt, for instance, that this very ship's crew, though no unfavourable specimens of the nautical brotherhood, had been guilty, as we should phrase it, of depredations on the Spanish commerce, such as would have perilled all their necks in a modern court of justice. But the sea in those old times heaved, swelled, and foamed very much at its own will, or subject only to the tempestuous wind, with hardly any attempts at regulation by human law. The buccaneer on the wave might relinquish his calling and become at once if he chose, a man of probity and piety on land; nor, even in the full career of his reckless life, was he regarded as a personage with whom it was disreputable to traffic or casually associate. Thus the Puritan elders in their black cloaks, starched bands, and steeple-crowned hats, smiled not unbenignantly at the clamour and rude deportment of these jolly seafaring men; and it excited neither surprise nor animadversion when so reputable a citizen as old Roger Chillingworth, the physician, was seen to enter the market-place in close and familiar talk with the commander of the questionable vessel.

But…but that’s tragic! To go through life without color? Unable to appreciate art, or beauty?” He laughed. “Now, sweet-hold your brush before you paint me a martyr’s halo. It’s not as though I’m blind. I have a great appreciation for art, as I believe we’ve discussed. And as for beauty…I don’t need to know whether your eyes are blue or green or lavender to know that they’re uncommonly lovely.” “No one has lavender eyes.” “Don’t they?” His gaze caught hers and refused to let go. Leaning forward, he continued, “Did that tutor of yours ever tell you this? That your eyes are ringed with a perfect circle a few shades darker than the rest of the…don’t they call it the iris?” Sophia nodded. “The iris.” He propped his elbow on the table and leaned forward, his gaze searching hers intently. “An apt term it is, too. There are these lighter rays that fan out from the center, like petals. And when your pupils widen-like that, right there-your eyes are like two flowers just coming into bloom. Fresh. Innocent.” She bowed her head, mixing a touch of lead white into the sea-green paint on her palette. He leaned closer still, his voice a hypnotic whisper. “But when you take delight in teasing me, looking up through those thick lashes, so saucy and self-satisfied…” She gave him a sharp look. He snapped his fingers. “There! Just like that. Oh, sweet-then those eyes are like two opera dancers smiling from behind big, feathered fans. Coy. Beckoning.” Sophia felt a hot blush spreading from her bosom to her throat. He smiled and reclined in his chair. “I don’t need to know the color of your hair to see that it’s smooth and shiny as silk. I don’t need to know whether it’s yellow or orange or red to spend an inordinate amount of time wondering how it would feel brushing against my bare skin.” Opening his book to the marked page, he continued, “And don’t get me started on your lips, sweet. If I endeavored to discover the precise shade of red or pink or violet they are, I might never muster the concentration for anything else.” He turned a leaf of his book, then fell silent. Sophia stared at her canvas. Her pulse pounded in her ears. A bead of sweat trickled down the back of her neck, channeling down between her shoulder blades, and a hot, itchy longing pooled at the cleft of her legs. Drat him. He’d known she was taunting him with her stories. And now he sat there in an attitude of near-boredom, making love to her with his teasing, colorless words in a blatant attempt to fluster her. It was as though they were playing a game of cards, and he’d just raised the stakes. Sophia smiled. She always won at cards. “Balderdash,” she said calmly. He looked up at her, eyebrow raised. “No one has violet lips.” “Don’t they?” She laid aside her palette and crossed her arms on the table. “The slope of your nose is quite distinctive.” His lips quirked in a lopsided grin. “Really.” “Yes.” She leaned forward, allowing her bosom to spill against her stacked arms. His gaze dipped, but quickly returned to hers. “The way you have that little bump at the ridge…It’s proving quite a challenge.” “Is that so?” He bent his head and studied his book. Sophie stared at him, waiting one…two…three beats before he raised his hand to rub the bridge of his nose. Quite satisfactory progress, that. Definite beginnings of fluster.

I looked around the room. The fridge and dry-erase board were decorated with leaf collages and construction-paper turkeys. One side of the bar had an arrangement of pumpkins painted by Mom and Ainsley. It did look festive and that made me feel guilty.

Your Time Time is money and makes a respectable present. It can be offered in the form of an IOU (i.e., a coupon) or as an impromptu visit. Professional expertise: A plumber could offer to repair a leaky faucet, an electrician a faulty connection. I can offer decluttering and Zero Waste consultations. Manual labor: Planting a tree, painting a room for a new baby, fixing a deck, leaf raking, lawn mowing, babysitting. These are particularly great for kids to give. For example, one sibling could take another sibling’s chore for a period of time. Visit: When distance keeps us away from our parents or grandparents, a spontaneous visit is sure to make them happy. Why not offer the gift of your presence?

He had fallen in love with landscape painting because of that element of chance and grace. He would go out to a field, to a beach, to a hill, and set himself up. As he focused on the scene before him, around him, the scene he was part of and became rooted in, it came more and more intensely alive until every leaf and every fly glinting in the sun and every dust mote demanded his attention. He felt totally open then, connected, vulnerable, better than love and more honest. In order to paint well he had to abandon control. Everything constantly changed before him and everything moved and he stood in a swirl of chaos and humbly addressed it. Whatever he put on canvas was insufficient, as love is insufficient. If he was clear, if he was open, if he was vulnerable and strong enough in his seeing, then he would grasp some spirit present and it would animate what he painted, although his first reaction was always to hate what he had done, because it failed the vast changing thingness he had astonishingly and passionately witnessed. Studio painters could dream of control, but landscape painters knew how they stood before the gods of the place, tiny, hopeful, diddling away. All he could ever paint was a tiny flash of what truly showed itself to him, a seizure on one moment.

Poem (Internal Scene) To make beauty out of pain, it damns the eyes— No, dams the eyes. See how they overflow? No damns them, damns them, and so they cry. What shape can I swallow to make me whole? Baby’s bird-shaped block, blue-painted wood That fits in the bird-hole of the painted wood box? The skeleton leaf? The skeleton key? Loud Knock when the shape won’t unlock any locks. I hear it through the static in the baby’s room When the monitor clicks on and off, sound Of sea-ice cracking against the jagged sea-rocks, Laughing gull in the gale. What is it dives down Past sight, down there dark with the other blocks? It can’t be seen, only heard. A kind of curse, This kind curse. Forgive me. Blessing that hurts.

between the ink mage and the wizard, his mouth falling open at the sight. The hulk had nearly let her go after Talbun’s shock attack, but he recovered quickly and took her head in his meaty hands. Don’t. With appalling ease, the ink mage twisted. The snap was so loud, it made Brasley flinch even from across the chamber. His mouth fell open to scream. “No!” The brute’s mouth twisted into a contemptuous grin as he let the limp body fall from his hands. Brasley watched it happen in slow motion, almost like she was floating, eyes closed, face peaceful, hair floating up around her. It was as if life had been some tremendous weight, and now that it was gone, her shell drifted down to the floor like a dry leaf. Talbun’s body hit with a dull thud that brought Brasley back to reality.

i am me is the biggest lie i tell. my face is not even mine. it’s my mother’s painted over by my father’s. my soul is an image of God. my spirit - a drop. i am an expansion. home to fragments. a continuation of continuations. a leaf from a branch of a tree of the seed of eve. | pieces of me.

desert kingdom. Given a less fraught time, Dragon decided, he would have loved to bring his easel in here and set up for a long, satisfying session of painting. The fluted arches, delicate frescoes and screens, and gold-leaf decorated treasure chests certainly created a most royal space. As Azania spoke, he returned his attention to her. “Brother, I wish to congratulate you upon your ascension to the throne of T’nagru, despite the grief and difficulty our kingdom faces at this time.” He inclined his head, weighted down with the great crown – it looked terribly uncomfortable, Dragon decided. A statement regarding the weighty nature of leadership. Everyone knew that this Skartun siege had only been a precursor to a much greater invasion later in the season. One Jabiz out of thirty had tested their mettle, and breached the outer gates of the citadel with a monstrous Bloodworm which still lay on the sand outside the gates. Did flesh rot in such a waterless desert climate? Or would it simply shrivel? Unexpected thirst tickled his gravelly throat. He coughed aside, the sound echoing loudly despite the large crowd gathered for the King’s coronation event. The Princess said, “I am sorry that I cannot make the formal genuflections, but my

When you don't know what is happening in your Life, Trust God. The Being who created the Majestic Mountains would know how to shatter the rocks that come your way. The Being who created the Unfathomable Oceans would know how to sooth the wounds of your Soul. The Being who created all the Life forms and blessed consciousness in the Animate and Inanimate things all around you, would know how to mould your intellect and emotions in the aura of Stillness and Passion. The Being who breathes Life in everything would know how to bring you back to life each time this World tries to deaden your spirit. The Being who makes certain that the Sun shows up every morning to light up the world would know how to pull you out from the Darkest of hollows. The Being who ensures the walk of the Moon every single night would now how to carve the path that leads you Home. The Being who paints a bed of stars weaving a magic path of Stardust would know how to sprinkle the dust of the pixies in your Life just when you need it. The Being who thrives on Love, who breathes in Love, who is the very Source of Love would know how to find you the Love that's always the sacred thread to your Soul. The Being who Knows you Better than You do, would know what to do with Your Life even before you start to wonder about it. The Being who is the Greatest Artist and Author has already painted your Soul and written the Story of your Life, so trust in Him, all while doing your bit knowing He knows it all, especially when you don't know what's happening in your Life.

In the midst of this desolate landscape, I am reminded of the fragility of love. The echoes of our laughter may have faded, but the memories still linger, reminding me of the joy we once shared. I yearn for the warmth of your touch, the comfort of your embrace, but I understand that those moments are now distant memories. The colors that once painted our love story have dulled, reflecting the fading flame within us. Each passing day brings a subtle ache, a constant reminder of what could have been. The changing seasons serve as a cruel reminder of the missed opportunities, the moments we let slip away. It is a deep ache, a throbbing void in my heart, as I desperately try to hold onto the fragments of our once beautiful connection. But deep down, I know the truth. Our love has cooled, replaced by an insurmountable distance. The vibrant hues of summer have transformed into the earthy tones of autumn, mirroring the gradual demise of our relationship. As the leaves fall, so does our passion. And with each falling leaf, I am reminded of the inevitable end. Yet, amidst the ache and heartbreak, I find solace in the knowledge that this season too shall pass. The earthy hues of autumn will make way for the stark beauty of winter, and with it, the hope of new beginnings. In the meantime, I will cherish the memories we did create, however fleeting they may have been. As the seasons change, I will strive to heal the void within my heart, knowing that love, in all its forms, has the power to transform and bloom anew. I will embrace the fading love, the changing seasons, and the lessons learned. And as I watch the leaves dance their way to the ground, I will find strength in knowing that, just as nature finds a way to renew itself, so too shall I find the courage to let go and embrace the possibility of a brighter tomorrow.

The grass below the willow Of my daughter’s wash is curled With earthworms, and the world Is measured into row on row Of unspiced houses, painted to seem real. The drugged Long Island summer sun drains Pattern from those empty sleeves, beyond my grandson Squealing in his pen. I have survived my life. The yellow daylight lines the oak leaf And the wire vines melt with the unchanged changes Of the baby. My children have their husbands’ hands. My husband’s framed, propped bald as a baby on their pianos, My tremendous man. I close my eyes. And all the clothes I have thrown out come back to me, the hollows Of my daughters’ slips…they drift; I see the sheer Summer cottons drift, equivalent to air.

I told her how many things on earth have a fixed colour. Let us say, the green leaves. In our eyes, a red or a yellow leaf is beautiful. Even better if the leaf is shaded in several hues. So we paint the yellows and reds in our paintings oftener. And we forget the ordinary green, the best in nature.

I've been strongly influenced, in technique as well as subject matter, by some of the early 20th-century book illustrators — Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac in particular, Burne-Jones and other Pre-Raphaelites, and the Arts-&-Crafts movement they engendered. I'm continually inspired by Rembrandt, Breughel (I've wondered whether his brilliant "Tower of Babel" had inspired Tolkien's description of Minas Tyrith), Hieronymous Bosch, Albrecht Durer, and Turner; it's not necessarily that they influence my work in any particular direction, more that their example raises my spirits, re-affirms my belief in the power of images to move and delight us, and shows me how much further I have to go, how much is possible. Having visited Venice and Florence for the first time, I am besotted with the Italian Renaissance artists — Botticelli, Bellini, da Vinci and others. Their work is calm, controlled, and yet each face and landscape contains such passion. In Botticelli's paintings, every pebble and every leaf is rendered with a religious devotion; there is reverence inherent in paying such close attention to every stone, turning painting itself into a form of worship, an act of prayer.

Do books, after all, change anything? For all their proverbial liberalism, have they made the world more liberal? Or have they offered the fig leaf that allows us to go on as we were, liberal in our reading and conservative in our living. Perhaps art is more part of the problem than the solution; we may be going to hell, but look how well we write about it, look at our paintings and operas and tragedies.

Inness painted from memory, which is to say that he didn't paint what he saw, but what he remembered. There's a difference. He believed memory was a lens to the soul. It's not the details that matter - the veins on a leaf, say- so much as the implied detail, such as the changing light, the wind, the lone peasant in the distance the sense that something else is going on, some deeper possibilitly ....

At first she felt overwhelmed by the house, its airy symmetry its silence. Now she was accustomed to the place, but she caught herself wondering, Is this still Berkeley? George's neighborhood felt as far from Telegraph as the hanging gardens of Babylon. You could get a good kebab in Jess's neighborhood, and a Cal T-shirt, and a reproduction NO HIPPIES ALLOWED sign. Where George lived, you could not get anything unless you drove down from the hills. Then you could buy art glass, and temple bells, and burled-wood jewelry boxes, and dresses of hand-painted silk, and you could eat at Chez Panisse, or sip coffee at the authentically grubby French Hotel where your barista took a bent paper clip and drew cats or four-leaf clovers or nudes in your espresso foam. You returned home with organic, free-range groceries, and bouquets of ivory roses and pale green hydrangeas, and you held dinner parties where some guests got lost and arrived late, and others gave up searching for you in the fog. That was George's Berkeley, and even in these environs, his home stood apart, hidden, grand, and rambling; windows set like jewels in their carved frames, gables twined with wisteria of periwinkle and ghostly white.

She considers a tray of flaky 'jesuites,' their centers redolent of frangipani cream, decorated with violet buds preserved in clouds of black crystal sugar. Or 'dulce de leche' tarts- caramelized swirls on a 'pate sucree' crust, glowing with chocolate, tiny muted peaks, ruffles of white pastry like Edwardian collars. But nothing seems special enough and nothing seems right. Nothing seems like Stanley. Avis brings out the meticulous botanical illustrations she did in school, pins them all around the kitchen like a room from Audubon's house. She thinks of slim layers of chocolate interspersed with a vanilla caramel. On top she might paint a frosted forest with hints of white chocolate, dashes of rosemary subtle as deja vu. A glissando of light spilling in butter-drops from one sweet lime leaf to the next. On a drawing pad she uses for designing wedding cakes, she begins sketching ruby-throated hummingbirds in flecks of raspberry fondant, a sub-equatorial sun depicted in neoclassical butter cream. At the center of the cake top, she draws figures regal and languid as Gauguin's island dwellers, meant to be Stanley, Nieves, and child. Their skin would be cocoa and coffee and motes of cherry melded with a few drops of cream. Then an icing border of tiny mermaids, nixies, selkies, and seahorses below, Pegasus, Icarus, and phoenix above.

The carved spirals and flutes of the massive columns, and the incised chevrons that decorated the arches between them, had once been painted and gilded; but now all that remained were a few flakes of papery gold leaf and a patchwork of stains where the paint had been. The mortar between the stones was crumbling and falling out, and gathering in little heaps by the walls. Philip felt the familiar anger rise in him again. When people came here they were supposed to be awestruck by the majesty of Almighty God. But peasants were simple people who judged by appearances, and coming here they would think that God was a careless, indifferent deity unlikely to appreciate their worship or take note of their sins.

This sounds like a paradox, but a great painting has to be better than it has to be. For example, when Leonardo painted the portrait of Ginevra de Benci in the National Gallery, he put a juniper bush behind her head. In it he carefully painted each individual leaf. Many painters might have thought, this is just something to put in the background to frame her head. No one will look that closely at it. Not Leonardo. How hard he worked on part of a painting didn't depend at all on how closely he expected anyone to look at it. He was like Michael Jordan. Relentless. Relentlessness wins because, in the aggregate, unseen details become visible

Watching the old lady’s fingers, and hoping it wasn’t going to taste vile, May nodded. ‘Thank you.’ Having removed the stopper from the first jar, Primrose picked up a set of measuring spoons threaded onto a leather thong and searched for the one she wanted. Into a stone bowl, she then measured four quantities of what looked like dried leaves. From the second jar, she added a similar amount. To May’s eyes, the contents of both looked identical. Once stirred together, Granny Beer tipped them out on to a square of paper, folded the corners together and then twisted the top tightly closed. ‘Equal parts nettle and dandelion. Enough for a week. Nettles are rich in iron. Better than that, they contain all the vitamins needed to get it into your blood.’ May conveyed her understanding with a nod. ‘All right.’ ‘Nettle by itself is prone to being somewhat potent, which is why I’ve made it up with dandelion leaf, which will also help with getting it into your body.’ ‘I see.’ ‘Two teaspoons into a pot. You got a little teapot over yonder?’ ‘Um, actually…’ May pictured the contents of the dresser. There was really only the Brown Betty. ‘Here,’ Primrose went on, opening the door to another of her cupboards and bending to look inside. ‘Take this ’n.’ Into May’s hand, she pressed a small pot painted blue and white. ‘Two teaspoons in there, boiling water to fill it up, steep for five minutes with a stir halfway through. Strain it into a cup, let it cool a moment. No sense scalding your tongue. And then

Betty returns in a couple of minutes, setting down our pots of tea and two towers of treats. There are small tea cakes dressed as mini presents, tarts in the shape of flowers, chocolate-covered strawberries sprinkled with edible pearls, macarons decorated with pressed violets, and a tray of scones accompanied by tiny finger sandwiches. She explains each tea before leaving us to indulge. Aphrodite's Ambrosia--- a blend of caramel, rose hips, white chocolate, and raspberry. Midsummer Moondrop--- a confection of violets, butterfly pea flower, and sugar plums. I lift the porcelain cup to my lips, hand painted with tiny cornflowers and gold leaf. The sweet, dark blend relaxes my muscles like a dreamspell.

To paint a leaf, you have to sacrifice the whole landscape. It might seem like you’re limiting yourself at first, but after a while you realize that having a quarter-of-an-inch of something you have a better chance of holding on to a certain feeling of the universe than if you pretended to be doing the whole sky. My mother did not choose a leaf or a head. She chose my father, and to hold on to a certain feeling, she sacrificed the world.

You’re right. I don’t need them in front of me, Sis. But, as each tree is different, so is each branch and leaf and flower. What I’m painting this afternoon can’t be painted again. They’re all different. Once this flower dies there won’t be another quite the same.

Sorry. That was a very long answer to your question. So to answer, I would say that no, I'm not depressed." "But sad?" "Sure." "Why is that—how is that different?" "Depression is a serious illness. It's physically painful, debilitating. And you can't just decide to get over it in the same way you can't just decide to get over cancer. Sadness is a normal human condition, no different from happiness. You wouldn't think of happiness as an illness. Sadness and happiness need each other. To exist, each relies on the other, is what I mean." "It seems like more people, if not depressed, are unhappy these days. Would you agree?" "I'm not sure I'd say that. It does seem like there's more opportunity to reflect on sadness and feelings of inadequacy, and also a pressure to be happy all the time. Which is impossible." "That's what I mean. We live in a sad time, which doesn't make sense to me. Why is that? Are there more sad people around now than there used to be?" "There are many around the university, students and profs whose biggest concern each day—and I'm not exaggerating—is how to burn the proper number of calories for their specific body type based on diet and amount of strenuous exercise. Think about that in the context of human history. Talk about sad. "There's something about modernity and what we value now. Our shift in morality. Is there a general lack of compassion? Of interest in others? In connections? It's all related. How are we supposed to achieve a feeling of significance and purpose without feeling a link to something bigger than our own lives? The more I think about it, the more it seems happiness and fulfillment rely on the presence of others, even just one other. The same way sadness requires happiness, and vice versa. Alone is..." "I know what you mean," I say. "There's an old example that gets used in first-year philosophy. It's about context. It goes like this: Todd has a small plant in his room with red leaves. He decides he doesn't like the look of it and wants his plant to look like the other plants in his house. So he very carefully paints each leaf green. After the paint dries, you can't tell that the plant has been painted. It just looks green. Are you with me?" "Yeah." "The next day he gets a call from his friend. She's a plant biologist and asks if he has a green plant she can borrow to do some tests on. He says no. The next day, another friend, this time an artist, calls to ask if he has a green plant she can use as a model for a new painting. He says yes. He's asked the same question twice and gives opposite answers, and each time he's being honest." "I see what you mean." Another turn, this time at a four-way stop. "It seems to me that in the context of life and existing and people and relationships and work, being sad is one correct answer. It's truthful. Both are right answers. The more we tell ourselves that we should always be happy, that happiness is an end in itself, the worse it gets. And by the way, this isn't a very original thought or anything. You know I'm not trying to be brilliant right now, right? We're just talking." "We're communicating," I say. "We're thinking.

I could see now that my soul had left my body and that I was cupped in Azrael’s hand. My soul, the size of a bee, was bathed in light, and it shuddered as it left my body and continued to tremble like mercury in Azrael’s palm. My thoughts were not of this, however, but of the unfamiliar new world I’d just been born into. After so much suffering, a calm overcame me. Death did not cause me the pain I’d feared; on the contrary, I relaxed, quickly realizing that my present situation was a permanent one, whereas the constraints I’d felt in life were only temporary. This was how it would be from now on, for century upon century, until the end of the universe. This neither upset nor gladdened me. Events I’d once endured briskly and sequentially were now spread over infinite space and existed simultaneously. As in one of those large double-leaf paintings wherein a witty miniaturist has painted a number of unrelated things in each corner—many things were happening all at once.

cartolai offered far more extensive services than just selling paper and parchment: they produced and sold manuscripts. Customers could buy secondhand volumes from them or hire them to have a manuscript copied by a scribe, bound in leather or board, and, if they wished, illuminated—decorated with illustrations or designs in paint and gold leaf.

Beauty, she realised as her heart hammered, was not social or subjective. True beauty was catastrophic, irresistible as the rushing tides, crashing over and through all feeble attempts to say what was fair and what was not. Like the woodland vista that made the breath catch and the spirit soar, beauty was an irresistible force of nature, and to try to tell which particular branch – which particular leaf – was most appealing was to miss the forest for the trees. No single thing she saw in Lady Ceistyl was more beautiful than any other. Nor could the fey be reduced to separate features, complimented on any one part. And even were Elly to try, no words were rich enough, no paint held hues that could capture the colour Lady Ceistyl brought with her as she appeared beside the watching wolf atop the fallen log.

The clouds and the shafts of skyscrapers against them were turning brown, like an old painting in oil, the color of a fading masterpiece. Long streaks of grime ran from under the pinnacles down the slender, soot-eaten walls. High on the side of a tower there was a crack in the shape of a motionless lightning, the length of ten stories. A jagged object cut the sky above the roofs; it was half a spire, still holding the glow of the sunset; the gold leaf had long since peeled off the other half. The glow was red and still, like the reflection of a fire: not an active fire, but a dying one which it is too late to stop.

wondering why Nicholas Hilliard wasn’t more famous. That he painted most of his portraits the size of turkey eggs seemed to have disqualified him from the greatness we bestow on less gifted artists. This would have shocked Hilliard because during his prime, paintings “in little” were held to be among the most elevated of art forms. At the height of his powers, when he was the court painter to Elizabeth I—who famously told him to leave out the shadows—only nobles were deemed worthy of the liquefied silver leaf he anointed on the backs of playing cards with stoat-toothed tools and squirrel-hair brushes. He painted by turning a blind eye to blemish and transforming his sitters into ruffled gods and goddesses, all of which made Hilliard quite sought after at court.

When ego, unopposed, assumes its throne, The world, in fragments, reaps the seeds it’s sown. A kaleidoscope of discord and divide, Where separate streams in ceaseless turmoil bide. Through ego’s lens, reality transforms, A battleground where rampant desire storms. A sphere of strife, of victory and loss, Where fortunes shift as dice of fate are tossed. In ego’s solitary, narrow view, The world is painted in a hue so skewed. Confined by fears, by selfish dreams confined, Its canvas bears the limits of the mind. Thus, perception, in its manifold grace, Reflects the light of ego and soul’s face. In balance, may the truest sight be found, Where essence and ego in harmony abound. In the crucible where essence blends with sight, A wondrous transformation takes its flight. Where once division’s shadow coldly lay, Interconnection’s dawn breaks forth in day. What opposition’s harsh gaze once discerned, To harmonies of concord is now turned. The essence, with its ancient wisdom’s glow, Unveils the unity that lies below. Each leaf and stone, each soul that wanders free, A note within reality’s grand symphony. Essential, bound within the vast expanse, In life’s intricate, cosmic dance. This alchemical shift in vision’s sphere, Brings forth changes profound, both far and near. Challenges, once daunting, now unfold, As growth’s opportunities, bright and bold. Foes, once clad in enmity’s harsh guise, Transform to teachers, wise beneath the skies. Each joy, each pain, in life’s intricate weave, Threads of our evolution, we perceive. No longer a stage for vain rivalry’s play, But a landscape where learning’s blossoms sway. Growth and learning, in rich abundance, thrive, In this new world where our spirits come alive. Where once the ego’s voice, in solo strain, Ruled with iron will, in self’s domain, Now in harmony with the soul’s sweet song, It finds a place where it truly belongs. No longer master, but a partner kind, Guiding through life with a humble mind. It learns compassion’s tongue, intuition hears, Acts with mindfulness, as purpose nears. In perception’s alchemy, a journey grand, From fractured states to unity’s soft hand, From discord’s harsh cacophony to peace, A path that leads where true essences release. This sacred path, evolving as it weaves, Into our nature’s heart, where spirit cleaves. The veil of separation gently falls, As interconnectedness softly calls. Upon this path, with every step we tread, Our world transforms, new visions in its stead. The mundane now with sacredness imbues, The ordinary in extraordinary hues. Each day becomes a picture, rich and vast, For deepest truths, in vibrant colors cast. Through alchemy of sight, our roles transcend, Not mere observers, but creators bend. In world’s unfolding tale, we play our part, Co-architects, with collective heart. A reality, where highest potentials shine, In this, your design, our spirits intertwine.

Plastic Painting He smiled as he looked at the studio in the outer hall, each of these paintings she painted here, enjoying very much observing them immersed in the colors. Her spiritual intelligence is high, as every other plastic artist, he holds the paint brush, and does things, lines and colors, he does not know what he is doing, or what he wants, he only paints, his hand and mind are just a tool, and something else inside him moves it. At the end, their paintings are sold at the most expensive price. She once told him, the reason for the distinction of fine art is that the painter paints with his soul, not with his hands. And every time she grabbed her brush and started doing things on the canvas, he felt her telling the story of his life, he just always did things, he did not know why and what would result be, but he just wanted to do them. His motto when things come down is, go with the wind, let it take you where it wants to go. He stood before a mediocre painting, a bridge suspended in the sky, punctuated by chaotic colors, a bit of haphazard smoke, and what seemed to be flying leaves. When she painted this painting, she stood in front of it for a whole day, she almost went crazy, the painting was complete but something was missing in it. In the end, it was this deficiency that relieved her of finding it, a red dot in the lower-left corner of the painting! It fell right under what appeared to be a leaf. That is crazy, it was actually completed by it!

As you progress in your pursuit of antiques, you may encounter the name of Zuener.  Working at the end of the 18th century, he actually painted on glass -- and with a unique style.  Not only did he use gold and silver leaf lace on the back of the glass, but he then scratched through this and filled it in with black paint.   The skies in his outdoor scenes were painted naturally.  The effect is nothing if not stunning.

Letter to a Lost Friend by Barbara Hamby There must be a Russian word to describe what has happened between us, like ostyt, which can be used for a cup of tea that is too hot, but after you walk to the next room, and return, it is too cool; or perekhotet, which is to want something so much over months and even years that when you get it, you have lost the desire. Pushkin said, when he saw his portrait by Kiprensky, “It is like looking into a mirror, but one that flatters me.” What is the word for someone who looks into her friend’s face and sees once smooth skin gone like a train that has left the station in Petersburg with its wide avenues and nights at the Stray Dog Cafe, sex with the wrong men, who looked so right by candlelight, when everyone was young and smoked hand-rolled cigarettes, painted or wrote all night but nothing good, drank too much vodka, and woke in the painful daylight with skin like fresh cream, books everywhere, Lorca on Gogol, Tolstoy under Madame de Sévigné, so that now, on a train in the taiga of Siberia, I see what she sees — all my books alphabetized and on shelves, feet misshapen, hands ribbed with raised veins, neck crumpled like last week’s newspaper, while her friends are young, their skin pimply and eyes bright as puppies’, and who can blame her, for how lucky we are to be loved for even a moment, though I can’t help but feel like Pushkin, a rough ball of lead lodged in his gut, looking at his books and saying, “Goodbye, my dear friends,” as those volumes close and turn back into oblong blocks, dust clouding the gold leaf that once shimmered on their spines.

The white dust heated by sunshine, the green hedges, and the heavily masses trees, and the silence. Such solace and solitude cannot be painted; the trees cannot be placed far away enough in perspective. It is necessary to stand in it like the oaks to know it. And the silence is the silence of fields. If a breeze rustled the boughs, if a greenfinch called, if a mare in the meadow shook herself, these were not sounds, but the silence itself. So sensitive to it as I was, in its turn it held me firmly, like the fabled spells of old time. The mere touch of a leaf was a talisman to bring me under the enchantment, so that I seemd to feel and know all that was proceeding among the grass-blades and in the bushes.

I speared a sausage with my knife, bit off the end. Juice and fat exploded: the pork melted. I tasted chestnuts, moss, the bulbs of wild lilies, the roots and shoots of an Umbrian forest floor. There was pepper, of course, salt and garlic. Nothing else. I opened my eyes. The Proctor was staring at me, and quickly looked away. I thought I saw a smile cross his lips before he opened them to admit another wagon-load of lentils. I tried a spoonful myself. They were very small and brown- earthy-tasting, of course. That I had been expecting. But these were subtle: there was a hint of pine, which came partly from the rosemary that was obviously in the dish, but partly from the lentils themselves. I did feel as if I were eating soil, but a special kind: some sort of silky brown clay, perhaps; something that Maestro Donatello would have crossed oceans to sculpt with, or that my uncle Filippo would have used as a pigment to paint the eyes of a beautiful brown-eyed donna. Maybe this is what the earth under the finest hazelnut tree in Italy would taste like- but that, perhaps, was a question best put to a pig. "Make sure you chew properly," I mumbled, piling my plate high. The serving girl came back with a trencher of sliced pork meats: salami dotted with pink fat, ribbons of lardo, peppery bacon. The flavors were slippery, lush, like copper leaf or the robe of a cardinal. I coiled a strip of dark, translucent ham onto my tongue: it dissolved into a shockingly carnal mist, a swirl of truffles, cinnamon and bottarga.

To every soul, you are special. Once in a while, I like to speak to you, yes to you, that which peeps through a twinkle or a tear, that which hears the vision and sees the hymn of the stars, that which resides in the deepest niche of our heart, that which shines through our mind, that which is beyond consciousness yet shaping it with the fine chords of human life. I like to congratulate you, for being there, fuelling that body which often gets tired of walking a long path, through a forest of fire. I like to caress you, for binding that mind and heart that often finds itself in a pit of gusty turbulence, sometimes losing sometimes winning that camouflaged victory of this ocean of illusion. I like to look at you through that eye of prideful faith that which leads one to jump off a cliff only to open those wings of love and light. I like to hear you, from the numb screams marring the dungeons of reality to the polished words that cross your lips each time this world shows up on your doorstep. I like to feel you, with all your vulnerabilities for they are the reason you are here in this voyage of earthly life. I like to speak to you, to every soul, for each of you have a story, a special story that is written by Him, a painting, a special painting that is coloured by Him, for you dear soul, is a flicker of love and light, of Him. So to every soul, you are special.

Daniel Mas Masumoto: The blade slices into the soil. My muscles tense and push the shovel into the moist ground. Dark and damp, the sweet warm smell of wet earth…I can’t count the thousands of shovelfuls of earth I have moved in my life. But I like to think of the thousands that lie in my future, if I am fortunate. Spring irrigation brings life to the orchards and vineyards. Peaches ripen and the scent of bloom lingers in the air…I guide the water into my fields in an act of renewal, I think of Paul, a farmer and oil painter friend. He enjoys experimenting with green, capturing the subtle nuances of a fresh leaf or the thriving growth of mid-spring or the weak yellow green of a cover crop on bad soil… Paul knows his paintings work when the farmers gravitate toward a few, attracted by the colors, and begin talking about his greens. The true green of a field has depth, like the mysterious colors of a clear by deep lake. Each shade has meaning we interpret differently. Paul says farmers are his best art critics, we know more of greens than anyone else. I’ve lost raisin crops, peach harvests, whole trees and vines. I’ve lost money, my time, and my labor. I’ve lost my temper, my patience, and, at time, hope. Most of the time, it’s due to things beyond my control, like the weather, market prices, or insects or disease. Ironically, the moment I step off my farm I enter a world where it seems that everything, life and nature, is regulated and managed. Homes are built to insulate families from the outside weather. People work in climate controlled environments designed to minimize the impact of weather. In America, a lack of control means failure…I’ve abandoned my attempts to control and compete with nature, but letting go has been a challenge. I’m trying to listen to my farm. Before I had not reason to hear the sounds of nature. The sole strategy of conventional farming seems to be dominance. Now, with each passing week, I venture into fields full of life and change, clinging to a belief in my work and a hope that it’s working.

Ned’s bedroom was a museum. It was hard to look at any one thing. There were shelves and shelves of books; of stacked white cardboard boxes he’d labeled, in as many colored markers and fancy letters as there were boxes, COMIX; posters for things Dorry had never heard of, and didn’t know if they were comics or movies or what, but one—her head went light—she did: Sandman; and one wall, the entire wall, floor to ceiling around two windows, was a painting of the tops of the houses across the street, the edge of a tree in full summer leaf, birds, a cat watching from a high balcony, as though the wall itself were one huge window. “I do a new one every year,” Ned said. “This was my first tramp loyal,” and Dorry spent a good hour that night online, figuring out that he was saying trompe l’oeil.

I cannot write chronologically of Egypt. Ancient Egypt. So-called ancient Egypt. In my history of the world – this realistic kaleidoscopic history – Egypt will have its proper place as the complacent indestructible force that has perpetuated itself in the form of enough carved stone, painted plaster, papyri, granite, gold leaf, lapis lazulis, bits of pot and fragments of wood to fill the museums of thew world. Egypt is not then but now, conditioning the way we look at things.

The title on the front of the sketchbook was written in bold cursive: 'Libby's Book of Butterflies.' One of the edges was folded, and she smoothed it with her hand, reverently, to honor the sister she'd never known. Then she stepped back under the light and flipped through the first pages. There were beautiful paintings of butterflies, their wings bright from the watercolors. Did her sister create this book or did someone make it for her? Mum had loved her gardens, but Heather had never known her to do any kind of artwork. She'd always been busy planting her flowers and working as a hairdresser and caring well for their family. Intrigued, Heather slowly turned the pages. The butterflies were unique in their brilliance, each one with a magical name. Golden Shimmer. Moonlit Fairy. Lavender Lace. Under the butterflies were short descriptions. Like they all had different personalities. Her favorite was the Autumn Dancer, colored a vibrant orange and red with speckles of teal. It reminded her of a leaf, clinging to its branch before the autumn winds blew it away.

We are a family dominated by women over the generations. Granny Crackers, Mimi, Ava, (and yes, even Mo) and I are branches of the same tree, our roots twisted together under earth and soil. We are leaf and limbs connected by stem and twig, an oxymoron of strength and flowers, rough bark and luscious fruit.

For these galas, the Mohaves came together wearing bark masks and face paint or mud-slathered hair, marched upriver to the feasting area, built a fire, and danced until midnight. The next day they ate. The women arrived carrying soup, cakes, or boiled vegetables in dishes and baskets on their heads. Their cakes were made of ground wheat and boiled pumpkin rolled into a dough that was placed in the sand, covered with a leaf, and baked.