Parahawking in the Himalayas

"Preparing to Fly" photo by Siddharth Gupta

Such an adventure to write this photo essay...happy to have it up at the BBC: Soaring over Nepal with threatened vultures. Stunning images by Siddharth Gupta and GoPro shots by Scott Mason of The Parahawking Project.

Brick of History

This brick—this one,

right to my right

on the terrace

of a Himalayan café—

this brick reads like braille

gets tickled by bougainvillea

and loves its neighbors.

This brick looks

like sand gone solid.

It is the face of time,

sun-chapped, ruddy

wearing the pocked

skin of its youth

forever on its aging face.

This brick smells of cellar—

secret-scented. It hints

of rooms beneath streets

where roots break through

what man has made.

This brick sounds

like the wind, like centuries

of flux from every place

earth’s been dug down into

to pull up clay

(shape, fire, stack)

to build back up.

This brick would taste

like history if I licked it—

savor of fog and wind

blurring all desires

through time.

This brick feels

like solid chalk

like it’s flexing its muscles

like it’s about to speak.

I wait.

The bouganvilla

shivers across it

saying shhhhhhh.

This brick blows a kiss

to its cousin in Kansas

then whispers—

Keep holding up
the crumbling world.

Sketches & Stanzas 1

Windows wish to be wagon wheels.
Meanwhile, they move us closer to sky, sun,
and the promise of beauty above the ground we travel.

GoodBean
Jacksonville, OR
January 2015

I close my eyes to see the world

Prayer flags in Kathmandu, Nepal

I Close My Eyes to See the World 

I leave Kathmandu by bus

on a smog-sunny afternoon

after watching cremations

across Bagmati River. I lay 

a thin scarf along my west-facing

arm to shield from sun. 

 

Beneath the dark cotton, 

my skin looks the color of ash.

But I am alive. I close my eyes.

In the lull and lurch of rough road,

I doze. The city goes on for traffic hours.

I open my eyes to steep villages,

 

to rice terraces lipping down the hills.

I close my eyes. The scarf above my body

becomes a prayer flag kissing

my skin. Have I embodied prayer?

The bus steels to a stop. I open my eyes

in a sleepy blink and think 

 

I see a strand of prayer flags.

But no—a line of laundry

bright with the same five colors—

clothing for bodies belonging

to spirits I’ll never meet.

I close my eyes on this bus

 

full of people wrapped in prayers,

wondering at our highest arrival.

Behind my eyes, worlds form with new 

words for old fabrics and habits. 

I don’t know if I am praying 

them or they are praying me.

 

  

[This poem appears in the anthology, Deep Travel: Souvenirs From the Inner Journey]

Le fruit de l’Espirit

"l'amour" | 8" x 10" | Mixed Media on Canvas

Almost a decade ago, I was traveling with friends through the south of France, researching for my novel, The Honeylicker Angel. We stopped at a massive, open-air flea market near the Sea. I could have spent all day there, picking through boxes of photos, running my fingers through bowls of buttons, shrugging on vintage jackets. I still have two of the treasures I bought that day. Well, now just the necklace.

The other treasure was a bit inexplicable at the time: a window valance made of burlap. The bottom edge was scalloped in wine-colored stitching, and the images embroidered across it depicted women circa the 1920s, frolicking in bucolic farmland.

I never hung the valance in a window. Over the years, I kept rediscovering the piece in my basket of fabrics, unsure what to do with it—even whether to keep it.

And then. I bought a set of small canvases and envisioned them with sky-ish blue backgrounds as if they were windowpanes. Maybe with a dash of red the color of Mourvedre—and then I remembered the fabric. I pulled it out and stretched it across the floor. I got out my scissors, cut a knick, and ripped off the first figure. The burlap tore into marvelous, rough edges. All of a sudden, I could see the paintings: the women and animals adhered to the canvases as individual vignettes like windows to history, each with their individual story. Finally, the valance would have not just one window, but many.

I knew words were waiting, too. And they would be in French to honor the fabric’s origins. One day, walking by the almost-finished paintings, I thought of the words we often see during the holiday season: love, joy, peace—some of the “Fruit of the Spirit.”

Voilà. I looked up the translations in French. The paintings had their words, and the series had its title: “Le Fruit de l’Espirit.”

May these fruit and their power extend through all the seasons. May they be the windows through which we see our lives and those of others. 

l’amour, love
la joie, joy
la paix, peace
la patience, patience
la bonté, gentleness
la bénignité, goodness
la fidélité, faith
la douceur, meekness
la temperance, temperance

You can view the full set of paintings at Fine Art America, and they are on exhibit through the end of 2014 at Art Presence in Jacksonville, OR

We can read!

March 2015 update: This piece was published on Dare to be Fabulous, where you can read it in its gratitude-filled entirety!

31 Days of Poetry and Painting

This year, I participated in the annual Poetry Postcard Fest. The idea: you write a new, spontaneous poem on a postcard and mail it to a person on a given list. You do this for 31 days, working your way down the list. They do the same. You give. You receive. 'Twas fun.

I decided to sketch my own postcards, too: "draw-without-looking-at-the-page" kind of sketches. Like the poems, I created the images in minutes--no edits, no copying over. I enjoyed the rhythm and some of the results. Here are my top ten...or at least the 10 I uploaded! The front image is followed by the poem I composed on the back.

If you feel inspired, join up next year!