tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-202746242024-10-04T21:15:42.247-07:00Images and divinations to incite insightAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11992036037800772075noreply@blogger.comBlogger18125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274624.post-89987454842366682752015-07-16T12:13:00.002-07:002015-07-16T12:13:38.386-07:00

This has been a big month for international diplomacy. The Greek bailout and the Iranian nuclear deal were front page news and everyone has an opinion, especially Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Yet international negotiations are rarely simple, and it is deceptively easy to look through the mass media's refracting prism and believe we know what actually went on. And of course we could have gotten a

Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11992036037800772075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274624.post-70597947153896188212013-03-20T06:40:00.001-07:002013-03-20T07:13:59.528-07:00

Vatican City, March 19, 2013 - Newly elected Pope Francis drinks yerba, a preference that has roiled commodity markets worldwide and may lead to renewed conflict in the South Atlantic. Argentina's President Christina Kirschner gave the Pope a traditional yerba gourd and straw when they met earlier this week as a peace-offering for her compatriot and frequent adversary. According to

Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11992036037800772075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274624.post-71884789369736159082013-02-26T11:39:00.001-08:002013-02-26T11:39:59.252-08:00

Now that December 21, 2012 has come and gone along with Y2K and the assorted prophecies of Nostradamus, I was starting to wonder if the millennarian fever had broken and the age of apocalypse was safely behind us.But then the Pope Benedict XVI had to go and resign, bringing out the Malachi-watchers from the woodwork, gleefully reminding us that the next Pope will be “Petrus Romanus”, the last in

Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11992036037800772075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274624.post-31419317893282708142012-03-09T15:31:00.000-08:002012-03-09T15:31:57.852-08:00

Watching a video of a news conference held by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and President Obama last December, I was struck by Harper's body language. It is always dangerous to generalize about a country from the behaviour of its leader and Harper is not a particularly cuddly politician at the best of times. Especially in contrast to Obama, philosopher-king, speaking gravely of the great global

Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11992036037800772075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274624.post-5704359203569325502011-08-03T20:37:00.000-07:002011-08-03T20:37:13.261-07:00

I came across this interesting quote from Barack Obama: “I’ve never believed there are a bunch of people out there who are pulling all the strings and pressing all the buttons. And the reason is that the older I get, the more time I spend meeting people in government or in the corporate arena, the more human everybody becomes. What I do believe is that those with money, those with influence,

Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11992036037800772075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274624.post-7059574492949787682011-07-08T09:30:00.000-07:002011-07-08T09:30:13.705-07:00

As I re-publish Genghiz in Love this summer, I am flooded with gratitude for the writers who influenced me at the fertile time when I wrote that novel. The other day, I wrote a recommendation for Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, which was so strong an influence that I originally named my own novel Anastasia's Slave in allusive tribute to the earlier masterpiece. (Oddly, I first

Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11992036037800772075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274624.post-69336259336954162352011-06-27T16:03:00.000-07:002011-06-27T16:03:46.956-07:00

I try to see the obvious. Things that are so present in our reality that we can't even see them anymore... which is close to the best definition I've ever seen of the 'unconscious'. This is not an esoteric insight, necessarily. Here's an example. At lunch today my therapist friend Erin mentioned that almost all of her clients are women. I asked why. She seemed puzzled. The conventional wisdom

Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11992036037800772075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274624.post-2544749276125415682011-02-03T15:33:00.000-08:002011-02-03T15:33:37.568-08:00

Guernica / Memoir Manifesto

Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11992036037800772075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274624.post-81018710749574150702010-12-26T17:45:00.000-08:002010-12-26T17:45:28.571-08:00

"There is a common, albeit dimwitted, platitude held dear by activists of a socialist persuasion that globalization has increased rheumatism and other ailments due to the decline of bee populations worldwide. In contrast to this perfidious belief (which perversely refuses to celebrate Divine intervention in still further elevating Man in the Great Chain of Being, not to mention preventing pesky

Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11992036037800772075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274624.post-74342742893422021172010-12-26T17:35:00.000-08:002010-12-26T17:35:37.837-08:00

"Legend has it that, tired of hiding within the cavernous folds of the interior of the ceramic statuette, Babalou La Pouce began his epic journey towards its gaping jaws, armed only with his trusty toothpick and a rusty fourchette. Alas, almost four months later, ill and starving, he realized the fullness of his deception and cursed himself for being such a ninny as to think the mouth might

Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11992036037800772075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274624.post-42587520585943062172010-12-26T17:27:00.000-08:002010-12-26T17:27:59.288-08:00

"Any stranger, be it man, woman or child of average mind, who is foolish enough to venture out by himself looking for a cafetiere or other Western kitchen appliance or contraption in this dark and dismal quartier of a godforsaken border town is likely to meet a sordid ending at the hand of some sullen bloodthirsty villain of Turkish descent out for his pound of flesh. Be warned: the authorities

Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11992036037800772075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274624.post-72145430952999151092010-12-08T11:40:00.000-08:002010-12-08T11:40:07.196-08:00

I watched the latest Harry Potter film (Deathly Hallows, part one) last night after reading the last four books earlier this week. It will take some time to digest this mammoth tale.I found particularly evocative and beautiful the animation rendering of the tale of Death and the three brothers who respectively receive from Death the gift of the elder wand which can defeat any other, the

Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11992036037800772075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274624.post-31583678344524288042010-11-30T10:26:00.000-08:002010-11-30T10:26:20.299-08:00

I worked last night on cleaning up the soundtrack for a video project. Those sliding adjustments helped me conceptualize a three dimensional 'reward graph' for a coaching client this morning. One form of creativity feeds another, and that (hopefully) feeds another person's creativity as well. O mysterious muse - thank you.

Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11992036037800772075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274624.post-33048994304031892042008-06-19T21:21:00.000-07:002008-11-12T19:50:54.384-08:00

Tonight I finished the painting that has been blocking my easel for the last eight months.Eight months of despairing confusion. I knew in some inchoate way what the painting was about - trees shuddering in the wild winds of a winter night, evoking the night sea journey - yet there was no energy there for me, not even the pallid pull to completion, the bourgeois artist's petit mort. It felt like

Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11992036037800772075noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274624.post-14532953742206527212007-10-01T21:12:00.000-07:002008-11-12T19:50:54.691-08:00

Pablo Picasso observed it would be interesting to take photographs of a painting while in process, to capture its complex organic emergence. Here are two moments for viewing - one obliterated forever yet preserved in digital form; the other as 'final' as any work can ever be, yet subject to physical decay.My anima wanders - sometimes leaving me deserted for months at a time. This week she has

Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11992036037800772075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274624.post-43850830835491078652007-09-17T21:16:00.000-07:002008-11-12T19:50:54.977-08:00

Seven years separate these two self-portraits. I finished the one on the left (Cubist Self Portrait) earlier this week in a flurry of intersecting vertical and horizontal brush strokes. Twenty minutes of rapid wrist work to complete a painting that sat glumly on my easel for six months, blocking all efforts to move beyond. In those six months I traveled to Barcelona, read both published volumes

Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11992036037800772075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274624.post-87183441726488834502007-03-04T23:31:00.000-08:002008-11-12T19:50:55.130-08:00

This painting is one in a series of six inspired by Chinese calligraphy. The underlying ideogram (executed in sumi ink) poses a basic concept. Ink spatters and successive overlays of red tones in acquarelle pencil and water colour problematize the strength and durability of the central motif, without ever succeeding in totally obscuring it.The great Tao flows everywhere.All things are born from

Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11992036037800772075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20274624.post-1135797398791419382005-12-28T10:34:00.000-08:002005-12-28T11:16:38.810-08:00

Earlier this year, I dreamed that I was having an interesting conversation with a female painter. I was looking at the paintings on the white walls of her loft and realized that all the paintings were white, creating space for attention to texture, the material substance of paint and the act of painting itself.Over the next few months, I paid homage to the dream and the lineage of white

Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11992036037800772075noreply@blogger.com0