I found a book Giorgione’s artwork in a charity shop here – a book filled with transparent slides. This “Venus” slide is hanging in my Restorative Cures medicine cabinet to symbolize bed rest (next to eyelashes for making wishes, and bee pollen granules to make me believe in flowers). The light shines through her beautifully….
Month: May 2014
Fairy Dress Pressed Between the Pages
\ Sean made this beautiful fairy dress with silk scraps left over from the exact same dress he designed and created. I have a photograph of a model wearing it on the catwalk – I should try to find it. I was looking through one of Sean’s books and the dress slid out; a gossamer…
clothed in light
(Me, age 19, swapping modelling for darkroom training. I ended up being one of the Teachers’ Assistants at UMASS and had the keys to the University darkroom. I may as well have held the keys to a magical laboratory. I was thrilled….this was where I learned to love the darkness. These days I sometimes catch myself…
your breasts sigh
Sean and I found this picture on a wall at a farmer’s market. This is what I look like in the Oxford rain, my umbrella turned inside-out like a black tulip above my head. As I walk the tulip fills with water. Beneath the umbrella is a love note that looks like a huge gust…
a love – note ring
I’ve been given a snail-shell ring, a gum wrapper ring, a a tattoo ring, a diamond ring, a birch bark ring, a braided grass ring, a reflection-from-a-stained-glass-halo ring, and now a love-note ring. My jewelry box has so many stories to tell. And…a ring I gave Sean that once corseted a young birch branch….
my writing sanctuary
I’ve loved this Mary picture since I found it in Germany years ago in an old shop. I’m not religious but her face is so benevolent. Her presence calms me. I’m also compelled by the idea of a sword through the heart, crowned with flowers like a grave stone. I like to think we can…
Chagall, again, just because
My sketch of the Chagall stained glass windows (in St. Stephens Church, Mainz, Germany) has become strange currency in Sean’s wallet. I love that every time he rifles through his money, he thumbs my hastily scribbled angels, Eve’s apple, commandments, and a crown of thorns (thorns only implied, for safety). To learn why I sketched…
twinned poem nightgowns
I created a poem from one of Sean’s letters and divided the lines between two nightgowns, so the poem can only be read when sleeping people are side by side. I sewed ribbons on, just to make sure half of my poem doesn’t roll over in the night.
scraps, fragments, anecdotes
ephemera – I live for this stuff
between sun and stone
“This is ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy is something else, which is hard to explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love. A sense of oneness with sun and stone. A thrill of gratitude to whom it may concern — to the contrapuntal genius of human fate or to…
j a l i n a m h y a n a 