Love's Philosophy and Boucher

Shepherd and Shepherdess Reposing, 1761, Francois Boucher

The fountains mingle with the river

   And the rivers with the ocean,

The winds of heaven mix for ever

   With a sweet emotion;

Nothing in the world is single;

   All things by a law divine

In one spirit meet and mingle.

   Why not I with thine?—

Charms of Life Champetre, Boucher

See the mountains kiss high heaven

   And the waves clasp one another;

No sister-flower would be forgiven

   If it disdained its brother;

And the sunlight clasps the earth

   And the moonbeams kiss the sea:

What is all this sweet work worth

   If thou kiss not me?

BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

The Good-Morrow

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?
’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.

BY JOHN DONNE

Meeting at Night

The grey sea and the long black land; 
And the yellow half-moon large and low; 
And the startled little waves that leap In fiery ringlets from their sleep, 
As I gain the cove with pushing prow, 
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand. 

Nightingale, Christy Lee Rogers

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach; 
Three fields to cross till a farm appears; 
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch And blue spurt of a lighted match, 
And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears, 
Than the two hearts beating each to each.

~ Robert Browning

The great affair, the love affair with life,
is to live as variously as possible,
to groom one's curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred,
climb aboard, and gallop over the thick, sun-struck hills every day.

Where there is no risk, the emotional terrain is flat and unyielding,
and, despite all its dimensions, valleys, pinnacles, and detours,
life will seem to have none of its magnificent geography, only a length.

It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery,
but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.

Diane Ackerman

Horse Photos from http://www.mi9.com/wallpapers/wide-horse-desktop-wallpapers_4833/

Art Class

Arabesque Bright, graphite, Ann Radley

Let us begin with a simple line,

Drawn as a child would draw it,

To indicate the horizon,

More real than the real horizon,

Which is less than line,

Which is a visible abstraction, a ratio.

The line ravishes the page with implications

Of white earth, white sky!

The horizon moves as we move,

Making us feel central.

But the horizon is an empty shell —

Strange radius whose center is peripheral.

As the horizon draws us on, withdrawing,

The line draws us in,

"Scatterbrained"  c 2013, Brian Rollason aka Pixel Chemist

Requiring further lines,

Engendering curves, verticals, diagonals,

Urging shades, shapes, figures...

What should we place, in all good faith,

On the horizon? A stone?

An empty chair? A submarine?

"Twisted Feelings" c 2012, Brian Rollason aka Pixel Chemist

Take your time.  Take it easy.

The horizon will not stop abstracting us.

~ By James Galvin


Whether the line we begin becomes a simple gestural drawing, an intricate design, or words forming poems, prose, or literature each line has the potential for greatness... 

     much like each living being begins with the most simple of actions and has the potential achieve great things. 

Pixel Chemist on DeviantArt
http://pixelchemist.deviantart.com/

Pride of the Motherland (Poetry) and Dan Eldon (Video/Art/Biography after Poetry)

Pride of the Motherland

Dan Eldon, Original Art

Riding an Elephant

Down the narrow trail looking triumphant

Scanning the golden landscape

Like Hannibal with enemies in flight

Sight from a lofty height

King of the jungle moving

With lioness by his side

Dan Eldon Collection

Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro

Guides by my side with packs on their backs

Some paths steep with rocks

Boots slipping below our tired feet

Beautiful birds in unison flight

Moving with terrestrial light

Stunning sunlight summit on the peak

Dan Eldon

Praying in an Ethiopian Church

Preserved in rocks built by humans’ hands 

Never touched by conquest plans

Protected from the invaders’ footsteps

Queen of Sheba and Solomon’s nest

Touched by Arch of the Covenant

Mary, Joseph, and Jesus once slept

Eating yam, sipping palm wine, and tasting milk

Freshly squeezed by experienced hands

Taste of life in the mosaic grassland

Sustaining and soul refreshing

Cradle of humankind adorning

Invaded for its gold, riches, and human capacity

Birth of life on earth with tenacity

Dan Eldon, Adventurer

Respecting its living and arduous journey

Essence of life once was and is again to come

Riding a camel across the hot Sahara sand

Once wet now dried, exported gold from Mali…

Treasures from the hearts of once African empires

That which was, is, and shall forever be

Africa the birthing Motherland

We still love and respect thee!

Safari As A Way of Life, Dan Eldon

As a teenager, Dan combined his passion for art, adventure and activism into a personal philosophy that he called, “Safari as a Way of Life.” Dan had explored more than 40 countries. While Dan’s photos are works of journalism, his journals are works of art. Seventeen black-bound journals filled with drawings, writings and photographs…vivid collages that chronicle a child’s journey into manhood and a lifelong struggle with the forces of good and evil. a celebration of adventure and a testament of desire to live life to its fullest. - See more at: http://www.daneldon.org/adventurer/#sthash.T5JgoHBc.dpuf

During the summer of 1992, the famine in Somalia was raging. Dan flew from Kenya to the southern Somali town of Baidoa, where he shot some of the first pictures to touch the conscience of millions. The international news agency, Reuters, spotted his work, and by Christmas, Dan was working for the company, shooting the increasingly desperate situation. He followed the story closely and was present at the U.S. Marine landing, where a barrage of international photographers and journalists were waiting for the American soldiers as they crept, faces blackened, off their landing craft in Mogadishu.

Throughout the spring of 1993, Dan stayed in Mogadishu, both horrified and fascinated by the violence and tragedy he recorded. The situation worsened, and the death of Pakistani peacekeepers turned the conflict into an international incident. During this time, Dan’s pictures were featured in newspapers and magazines around the world. On June 12, 1993 his photo made a double-page spread in Newsweek magazine, as well as the covers on papers everywhere.

The violence and horror of the situation was extremely hard on Dan. Although he had “had enough” by late June of 1993, he agreed to stay on to cover the unfolding events. On July 12, 1993, Dan and three of his colleagues raced across Mogadishu to cover the bombing of what was thought to be General Aideed’s headquarters. In the ensuing confusion, all four young men were beaten, clubbed and stoned to death by an angry mob furious about the death of over 50 of their friends, fathers, and brothers at the hands of U.S. and U.N. soldiers.

The journalists who died that day were Hos Maina, Anthony Macharia, Hansi Krauss, and Dan Eldon.

- See more at:Dan Eldon, Biography

Musee des Beaux Arts and Landscape With the Fall Of Icarus

The Fall of Icarus, Pieter Brueghel, Museum of Fine Arts, Brussels

Musee des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse 
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

W. H. Auden

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring

a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry

of the year was
awake tingling
with itself

sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings' wax

unsignificantly
off the coast
there was

a splash quite unnoticed
this was

Icarus drowning

~William Carlos Williams