Tea With The Poet (dialogue With @soulreserve) Murmurs Over A Cup Of Tea, A Heart Half-hid, Not All Can

Yellow rose, Wytheville, VA, 8/19/2017

“Why I Wake Early,” by Jane Hirshfield

I wake early, make two cups of coffee, drink one, think, go back to sleep, wake again, think, drink the other.

To start a day over is a card game played for no money, a ripe tomato, a swimming cat.

Time here: lukewarm, with milk and sugar, big and unset as a table.

I wake twice.

Twice the window unbroken, transparent.

​Twice the cat’s nose and ears above water.

Twice the war (my war) is distant, its children’s children are distant.

First Sighting of the constellation Orion at the end of summer 2017, Maplewood, NJ, USA (40.7739d N, 74.2739dW), 5:20 AM EDT (10:20 hr UTC), 9/9/2017. Notebook sketch with Pigma graphic pen on paper, approx. 18.7 x 26.7 cm. Original sketch is black ink on white paper. The digital image here is color-inverted white on black.

I admit to being slightly obsessed with taking photos that have crooked horizons and squaring them to horizontal. I know there’s a notion that a cock-eyed frame makes a more dramatic photo, but it often seems to me that the result just looks lazy or sloppy, like a snapshot, of which there are plenty with crooked horizons. Here’s one where I question whether inattention to the horizon is an improvement—a fashion photo with a world champion skydiver (link below). Left, as published (in Tumblr): what’s going on?; right, with horizon horizontal: the model is now clearly arrowing toward the ground.

The Makeup Brush

The Makeup Brush

World champion sky diver Domitille Kiger for Iris van Herpen Fall 2021 Couture

Tidal flat in evening sun, Advocate Harbor, NS, Canada, 7/13/2018.

Read to Me, My Darling. Handmade collage. Torn magazine and catalog illustrations (NY Times T Magazine 3/5/2017 and Anthropologie lookbook 4/2017), tissue paper, acrylic paint, and gold paint pen on a white sketchbook page, with artist and studio seals. ~7.5x10 inches (~19x25 cm), 4/16/2017.

rosa.

–

god bless the late bloomers.

The Queen Very Rarely Fought Something Uncertain

Image source: Anthropologie lookbook; “The Queen”, etc. texts: New York Times Sunday magazine. Ink pens, tissue paper, rubber stamps, U.S. postage stamp, artist and studio stamps. Approximately 5 x 7 in. (13 x 18 cm.). 11/4/2017.