Zoe~

I am in love with her music! My favorite song is "Frozen Angels" on myspace~

Links to her world~
Video http://www.zoekeating.com/movie-tetrishead.html
My space http://www.myspace.com/zoecello
Website http://www.zoekeating.com/index.html

Letters to an artist~

January 12, 2007

Dear Izabella,

In 1903, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke responded by letter to a young man seeking his advice. Rilke eventually wrote ten letters now collectively known and much published as "Letters to a Young Poet." They are heartfelt advice from a successful (but still struggling) artist to another who was deeply mired in self-doubt. The classic language of these letters soars in beauty as well as lofty good sense. His idealism is applicable today to all who might pursue any sort of creative activity. Yesterday, on a pathside bench deep in a blustery, storm-destroyed forest, I reread the letters. Here, partly in direct quotation and partly in condensed summation, are some of Rilke's ideas:

Your work needs to be independent of others' work.

You must not compare yourself to others.

No one can help you.

You have to help yourself.

Criticism leads to misunderstandings and defeatism.

Work from necessity and your compulsion to do it.

Work on what you know and what you are sure you love.

Don't observe yourself too closely, just let it happen.

Don't let yourself be controlled by too much irony.

Live in and love the activity of your work.

Be free of thoughts of sin, guilt and misgiving.

Be touched by the beautiful anxiety of life.

Be patient with the unresolved in your heart.

Try to be in love with the questions themselves.

Love your solitude and try to sing with its pain.

Be gentle to all of those who stay behind.

Your inner self is worth your entire concentration.

Allow your art to make extraordinary demands on you.

Bear your sadness with greater trust than your joy.

Do not persecute yourself with how things are going.

It's good to be solitary, because solitude is difficult.

It's good to love, because love is difficult.

You are not a prisoner of anything or anyone.

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) was born in Czechoslovakia and died in Switzerland. Dogged by fragile health and the constant search for inexpensive and healthful accommodation, he anxiously moved from one climate to another. Considered the greatest modern poet in the German language, Rilke counselled the young poet, known only as Mr. Kappus, over a five-year period. No evidence exists that they ever met.

Best regards, Robert

PS: "Being an artist means not numbering or counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn't force its sap, standing confidently in storms, not afraid that summer may not come." (Rainer Maria Rilke)Esoterica: Two main themes--trust and patience--pervade Rilke's letters. "Always trust yourself and your own feelings, as opposed to arguments and discussions," he says. "If it turns out that you are wrong, then the natural growth of your inner life will eventually guide you to other insights. Allow your judgments a silent, undisturbed development, which, like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be forced or hastened. Everything is gestation and then birthing. To let each impression and each embryo of a feeling come to completion, entirely in itself, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one's own understanding, and with deep humility and patience to wait for the hour when a new clarity is born: this is what it means to live as an artist."

See more writings of the Painters Keys.... http://www.painterskeys.com

My night at the museum~ doesn't my art look lovely on the wall!!

maybe someday ;)

you can upload your own flickr photos http://www.dumpr.net/

these are the tiniest, koolest cards~pictures from my flickr account
~create your own cards 100 for $19.99 http://www.moo.com/

Love~ it's all in her head

It's the little things in life~ Can you see it!?!?

I was washing the dishes this morning & noticed the scrubby conformed itself to a heart shape! ;) coincides with the art piece I created this morning~

70 degrees today, I do not believe I will ever get used to this desert~ it's a love hate thing. Friday the high will be 34

I really despise those railings, I think I will change them to ornate iron...yes?

and yes I know.... I need to clean the pool, we had a windstorm a few nights ago ;)

Two~
Their imagination was innocent, they silently indulged in their dreams. It took them to a place.... they would never return home~

Through sunlit day and starry night

A soft breeze lifts a leaf to flight

In midst of wildflowers a maiden sleeps

Her beauty doth make man to weep

A handsome knight with golden eyes

Holds vigil under cloudless skies

To keep the damsel from harms way

While in sweet repose she lay

Unknown to him he fills her dreams

Of walking hand in hand by silver streams

And as day's lamp shines from above

He sings to her his songs of love

~T. Beaman

Ophelia by Arthur Rimbaud

On the calm black water where the stars are sleeping
White Ophelia floats like a great lily;
Floats very slowly, lying in her long veils...
In the far-off woods you can hear them sound the mort.

For more than a thousand years sad Ophelia
Has passed, a white phantom, down the long black river.
For more than a thousand years her sweet madness
Has murmured its ballad to the evening breeze.

The wind kisses her breasts and unfolds in a wreath
Her great veils rising and falling with the waters;
The shivering willows weep on her shoulder,
The rushes lean over her wide, dreaming brow.

The ruffled water-lilies are sighing around her;
At times she rouses, in a slumbering alder,
Some nest from which escapes a small rustle of wings;
A mysterious anthem falls from the golden stars.

O pale Ophelia! beautiful as snow!
Yes child, you died, carried off by a river!
It was the winds descending from the great mountains of Norway
That spoke to you in low voices of better freedom.

It was a breath of wind, that, twisting your great hair,
Brought strange rumors to your dreaming mind;
It was your heart listening to the song of Nature
In the groans of the tree and the sighs of the nights;

It was the voice of mad seas, the great roar,
That shattered your child's heart, too human and too soft;
It was a handsome pale knight, a poor madman
Who one April morning sate mute at your knees!

Heaven! Love! Freedom! What a dream, oh poor crazed Girl!
You melted to him as snow does to a fire;
Your great visions strangled your words
And fearful Infinity terrified your blue eye!

And the poet says that by starlight
You come seeking, in the night, the flowers that you picked
And that he has seen on the water, lying in her long veils
White Ophelia floating, like a great lily.

~forwarded to me, by my friend Pilar
http://www.pipnotes.typepad.com/

Going under~

Ophelia~

There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them:
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.

Queen Gertrude
Hamlet Prince of Denmark
Act IV Scene VII

Minstrel Sleep~

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals all up in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
William Shakespeare

photo by Darren Holmes www.darrenholmes.com/

Dear Sombra,
Thank you for your inspirations, thank you for your encouraging words, thank you for sharing bits of your life, you will be missed by many. I hope someday you will come back to share again~
"Blessed is the man who fears the Lord"....continued in Psalms: 112
http://sombraknight.blogspot.com/