Consider the Apple

Pippin, 2015

I prefer an imperfect apple. But if to me the imperfections make it perfect, then what am I saying? Nothing. Maybe I should just eat the apple, not look at the apple, not think about the apple. Well, it's too late for all that. This is a handsome apple. How could I not notice? I pity those who cannot see it. It is simply not my nature to not consider the apple. But it's the taste that matters most. Yes, the taste. Somehow I know this one is going to taste good. Okay, I'm ready now. I'm going to eat the apple.

Collected

These Two, 2015

While dusting, the light moved onto these two. They are very small, each one close to the size of a Kalamata olive. I'm sure I kept them for the same reason I keep all such things. I want to later recall the day I found them. But the specific memories often dissolve, I only know they were collected in a moment of happiness. I stopped, lost in these thoughts, Joseph O'Neil reading Muriel Spark in the background. When my mind returned, he'd finished reading. I missed most of the story, and I won't finish dusting, but I think stopping was a better idea.

Duende

Inspiration, 2015

I was waiting for a smoothie and reading an article in The Surfer's Journal (No, I'm not a surfer, but I did actually get up on a board and "surf" in Hawaii a few years back...Yes, I did.) and saw mention of a lecture Federico García Lorca, the poet, gave in Buenos Aires in 1933. Actually, I was waiting for a smoothie, drawn in by this photograph and overlaid text, then began reading the article.

The article first quoted García Lorca as saying duende is, 

"...that mysterious power that everyone feels but no philosopher can explain."

I later perused Wikipedia's Duende (art) entry and found:

"El duende is the spirit of evocation. It comes from inside as a physical/emotional response to art. It is what gives you chills, makes you smile or cry as a bodily reaction to an artistic performance that is particularly expressive."

And García Lorca had written:

"The duende, then, is a power, not a work. It is a struggle, not a thought. I have heard an old maestro of the guitar say, 'The duende is not in the throat; the duende climbs up inside you, from the soles of the feet.' Meaning this: it is not a question of ability, but of true, living style, of blood, of the most ancient culture, of spontaneous creation."

Climbs up inside you, from the soles of the feet... Fantastic.

García Lorca's 1933 lecture ended with:

"The duende….Where is the duende? Through the empty archway a wind of the spirit enters, blowing insistently over the heads of the dead, in search of new landscapes and unknown accents: a wind with the odour of a child’s saliva, crushed grass, and Medusa’s veil, announcing the endless baptism of freshly created things."

Think about that for a while.

Thanks to The Surfer's Journal 24.2, the Duende (art) Wikipedia entry, and Poetry in Translation's translated text from the 1933 lecture, Theory and Play of the Duende.

All Before 11am

Five Petals, 2015

Sunshine, a man wearing a cloud t-shirt, an abrupt discussion about celery, loud territorial crows, peppers picked for pickling, waving goodbye, a fat yellow rose that smelled so good, a quiet phoebe, bees on lavender, always bees on lavender (snipping some of those stems and wrapping them in a wet napkin), a hawk landing closer to me than any hawk has before, monarch and little white butterflies, a translucent pink rose with five petals, the few summer squash and tomatoes still hanging on to their vines—unwilling to let summer go, and the tiny wilted purple flower that hitched a ride on the toe of my shoe.