A blessed peace enfolds me,
my thoughts roam
forests of possibilities
and forking paths,
moonbeams guide
my steps through
chance and necessity
to the cave where
I await midnight peels
of the church bell.

A blue cat appears,
taps my nose
with a velvet pad,
looks deep into my eyes
and smiles.

We watch the clouds
cross the face of the moon
together.

The bell rings
twelve times.

Puddled sepia mirrors
on a muddy track
by my feet
saturation.

I watch
seconds slide
on rolling hills
shadows creep
from lonely trees.

A thin red line
marks the edge
of a new day
over there,
here stars break
through
time runs still.

Anyway, after averaging a frankly ridiculous amount of work – after working until 3am I did 18 hours of it yesterday – we put this together as our final presentation piece. The model shape and reflections were undertaken by the irritatingly talented Catherine Barton (who did the basic model in half an evening, yeesh!) and Ash Kwil, and the rendering over the top of it is in my own hand.

For the record, this is probably the best-looking thing I’ve ever been a part of making.

Possibly the best tube station… in the World.

We have a part of this; interactive flooring that encourages the crowds to move in certain directions, meaning less confrontation and fewer crushes, platform seating to provide a waiting space and make the place more comfortable, interactive station displays in the shape of the Underground logo, daylight-mimic lighting and a touchscreen map which also allows the display of weather, news and such.

Right, that’s over. Time for the next project!

Similar to the way in which we experience sound, our passage through liminal space is often ephemeral and intangible.

Following are three recordings taken within Sydney’s transport system. Here the idea of travel performs the 3 stages of liminality: separation, marginalization, and reaggregation.

Sydney Airport

Central Station

Sydney Harbour Water Taxi Platform

She soars above the geese
migrating, smiling down
at human habitations,
starry constellations below
then senses a girl child
sketching a rose glitter dragon.

Rosamunda gathers
the beads of the signal
as she swoops through
silver marshmallow clouds,
catching the little girl’s feelings
holding them close,
moonwalks and leaping
from star to star;
magic carpet rides together
to enchanting places like Venice.

The rose dragon frowns in dismay,
tears gently roll down
the little girl’s cheeks
splashing the colours she draws.

Rosamunda makes haste,
hones in on the tears, sees
a scene in the playground,
and unkind words
on a smart phone screen;
she will give the bullies
something to fear,
with flames from her nostrils
that can turn bullies to ashes.

This poem has been entered into the Annual M.R. Mathias Dragon Poetry Competition

Green water dragons dance with river prawns
flickering neon in magnetic seams,
Northern lights inspire blushing Southern dawns,
polar nets fishing in the solar streams.

From the heart of sun plasma rises, stares
into the emptiness, electrons dance
with protons, swirling wantonly on flares,
humans watch on, in a mystical trance.

Glowing cosmic beads slip along a string,
magnetic leelines, mythic angel wings.

Our senses transformed,
we ride sandalwood
incense trails,
trees sacrificed whole;
endangered
almost to extinction’s brink
for the sake of illusions,
fed by desire for gain
to fuel shows of power,
we step backwards to leave.

Outside a bird trills
in a mango tree, hunting
motley scarabs that feast
on insignificant flowers…
…

OpenLinkNight ~ Week 27

Quicksilver slides around my tongue,
I try hissing the quick with
a sonorous octave lower for silver,
and still no sign;
nothing to catch,
no small stone skips
across a pond, a river,
a hook with no worm
to squirm, should I  go digging
to disturb the surface,
watch soil mites,
earthworms  and slaters fleeing
sunbeams to find
a pretty allegory,
or at least a metaphor…

I decide to
erase all desire
for inspiration
to watch for the next
hop of the thought flea,
which might just be
worth pursuing,
and nothing comes…

I return
to the tree of life
on the floor.

Perhaps
a vista of a woman dressed in
a rose silk gown pouring
water into a bubbling stream,
with stars twinkling brightly
in a ring around her head,
her hair streams down her shoulders…

A white maned lion strolls smiling at the moon
and lays down at her feet…

Or shall I show you a motley fool
stepping boldly along a precipice
leading a caravan of squabbling players
wearing dollar bills and Armani suits
carrying guns and calculators
searching for a deux ex machina?

MY CHURCHWARDENS and I had an astonishingly creative encounter with artist Stephen Raw today – and I’m still buzzing from it. It’s a real delight that the new Arts and Faith Network in the Diocese of Chester exists to foster the (to me so very obvious) links between theology and art, between theology and the arts.

Four people encountered each other today in a literally “sparking” sort of a way. Ideas and colours, and prose and poetry, and heart speaking to heart, and light and dark, and liminal space (what pyschologists call ”a place where boundaries dissolve a little and we stand there, on the threshold, getting ourselves ready to move across the limits of what we were into what we are to be”) – made for a scintillating, life-enhancing, praise-full morning. This, for me, is giving God “worth”; proper, Christ-like, celebration of “life in all its fullness”. Worship. Richness. The beauty of holiness … in “the ordinary” that wouldn’t necessarily recognise itself as holy. Such encounters (and you can make any encounter such) afford us Breathing Space, which is to say: they are Life. And I do worship.

]]> http://marousia.wordpress.com/2011/12/10/unquiet-spirits/ Sat, 10 Dec 2011 07:01:55 +0000 marousia http://marousia.wordpress.com/2011/12/10/unquiet-spirits/ The ghosts of monks
abroad each time
earth eclipses moon.

With book in hand
he recites a dead language,
spectres lurk close by.

An impossible howl
a silently swooping owl,
wolves long extinct
in this part of the woods.

Flash lights
bounce in night’s mist
a tree creaks balefully,

ghostly whinnies
clash of metal on the wind,
a nightjar screams…

Leaves rustle
whisper bloodshed …
Unquiet spirits roam…

Mind broken
he jibbers…

Sunlight hides reason
a prayer wheel spins…

He spends his days
plastering broken wings
with transient words
and paper cups
of medications
that seem to dull the pain
of those trapped
in dreary loops
but not the cause,
their jaundiced drugged eyes
infect his gaze,
drawing him deep within
to seek solace
in their fractured worlds;
he slips between
cracks of angst.

And then he spies
a well turned butt,
unmarked thighs
that promise
pneumatic bliss…
her breasts are pert,
he imagines
rose bud nipples,
never cracked
by a squalling infant’s mouth.

He follows…

Haunted by
proper thoughts
of his wife at home,
he wryly recollects
how he told her
before friends and family
on their silver anniversary
“I love every wrinkle,
every scar I celebrate,
such wondrous depths
are etched upon your body
a cartography of our marriage
I love the silver in the gold
of your hair,”
then renewed
his marriage vows,
fingers crossed,
avoiding his own reflection
in the mirror.

He stops…

The centre mast
lightly in hand,
satin smooth ridges
evoke green seas
rippling between
shores of  bamboo forests,
she sighs in time
with the summer breeze.

Beside her path,
fungi bloom
beneath veined
canopies of green fans
bowing in unison
to golden shafts
spilling through blue.

She slips off the path
into the dapples,
frees ripe spores
with beats of her heels.

At this harvest time of year when we gather to give thanks for all that we are and all that we have, let us consider our thoughts, words,and deeds in light of the Hebrews’ desert experience and in gratitude for the fulfillment of God’s best hope in us. 

Written on November 16, 2008 and posted today as Favorite . . .

The Israelites were faithful to Yahweh in constructing a residence for their one true God, and this one God Yahweh – who tolerated no other gods before him – was faithful in accompanying his people to guide and protect them.  Today’s reading describes the detail the Israelites followed in order to provide the appropriate altars, veil, table, ark and lampstand.  The chapters preceding these describe the collection of materials and artisans.  The chapters following these describe the vestments, and dwelling . . . and how Yahweh settles into his home on earth among the human race. 

El Greco: Christ Cleansing the Temple

In Acts we read about the coming of the Holy Spirit settling upon the original apostles in flames of fire.  The Spirit still settles upon and in those who join with Christ in his mystical body to become living stones in the new living temple of Yahweh. 

The Hermitage of San Girolamo, Italy

What does our God require of us?  This is no mystery.  He does not require holocausts or sacrifice.  He does not require incense morning, noon and night.  But this is what he requires: that we do what is right, love goodness, and walk humbly with our God.  (Micah 6:8) 

Let us offer our sacrifices of fear, anxiety, pain and anger on the altar of our lives.  Let us do what is right; let us love goodness; and let us walk humbly as we work at the building of God’s temple with the surrender of our lives.

John Pettie (1884):Fixing the Site of an Early Christian Altar

In the opening of this chapter, Job’s frustration is evident with the lack of answers from God for the fundamental question concerning his guilt or innocence. He is in the darkest yet brightest of places . . . he is in that luminal space between day and night, heaven and earth, joy and sorrow, well-being and pain.  He stands at the moment of a new creation . . . In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty wind swept over the waters.  Then God said, “Let there be light”, and there was light.  God saw how good the light was.  God then separated the dark from the darkness. (Genesis 1:1-4)  Job yearns for God to separate him from the darkness that has descended upon him; Job wants to know if he is innocent or guilty.  Job wants to know why he is suffering so deeply.    

Job sees a darkness yawning before him and does not know why he stands on this threshold.  “Discouraged, worn down by pain and by the assaults of friends and deity alike, [Job] closes his part of this cycle of speeches (v. 18) by returning to the theme of his beginning: ‘Why did you bring me out of the womb?’ In chap. 3 he thought it would be better to be dead, and in 7:16, 19 he proposed to be left alone.  He ends with a figure of the darkness to which we will go, ‘deep shadow, all disordered, which shines like dusk’ (10:22).  It is the mirror image of his beginning in 3:4: ‘That day, let there be darkness.’  But Job has come to a different point.  Then being alive was too terrible; now he wants to be dead because his structure of assumption has fallen apart.  Divine power is not correlated with divine justice, and, though he deserves the latter, he is subjected to the assaults of the former”.  (Mays 375)

We watch Job struggle and we are fascinated because we see our own flailing against pain in this story.  We see that he stands on the verge of complete exhaustion and decomposition.  We hear that he looks for an end to his existence. Job demands answers of God as night threatens, and as he sinks into deep despair he runs the risk of missing the luminosity of this moment between worlds. As the shadowy dusk approaches we suddenly see the smallest glint of light in the gathering darkness and we sense something here . . . Job stands not on the edge of destruction but rather on the brink of an incredible new beginning.  There is a shinning in the dusk that harbingers a new and indecipherable rebirth rather than a horrible and ignoble end.

Job’s suffering will end and he will experience God’s goodness in a way he had not imagined; but today we see him on a precipice of cataclysm, stunned by a belief that God’s power does not appear to be accompanied by mercy.  Job will struggle with the misguided advice from his companions; he will persist in searching for answers to his questions.  A new dawn will burst upon him instead of the nighttime he fears.  We know that Job will come to find that the bottomless well of nothing over which he is poised to fall is in fact a bottomless well of safety . . . surety . . . and limitless love.  This is the liminal space in which Job finds himself today.  It is a space that we too may sometime occupy.

With God, even the night sky holds a starry luminosity that guides us back to the light of day.  In God, all harm turns toward good, all disaster becomes rescue. Through God there is a shinning in the impending dusk because God separates the darkness from the light . . . and sees that it is good. 

So let us remember and pray . . .

When we stand on the brink of disaster, let us close our eyes, fold our arms across our lungs that gasp for air, and allow ourselves to sink into the shining darkness of God’s arms.  And let us allow God to bring us out of the abyss into the eternal light of God’s love.  Amen.

Also see the “Falling Down the Well” page on this blog.

Mays, James L., ed.  HARPERCOLLINS BIBLE COMMENTARY. New York, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1988. 375. Print.

The Real Thing (2008) – In flight, in use

What is it?

A 2008 installation by Sydney artist, Jordana Maisie, that combines the traditional tube construction and fractal forms of the kaleidoscope with interactive digital technology. A large, polished tube is erected in a gallery space, with a viewing point at one end. A camera mounted to the lip of the tube captures a small segment of the viewing area, replicates and fragments the image and projects it onto the reflective inner surface of the tube. The “large-scale kaleidoscope has been created with digital technology… yet without the tangible, physical realm inhabited by the viewer’s body, it simply cannot function.”

The work is a continuation of Maisie’s “exploration of the ways in which technology is constantly shifting the relationships between physical and digital space.”

What do we think?

This is a fascinating work, both cerebral and beautiful. It exists at the intersections of craft and high technology, digital space and real place, algorithmic modelling and the physical body. From all of these contradictory, or at least mutually exclusive, pairs, The Real Thing establishes a synergetic experience that smoothly integrates them all. Starting with a viewer’s body, the artwork digitally samples its details and re-interprets it as a shifting, real-time kaleidoscopic pattern, returning the viewer to an awareness of his position and movement. By bending, twisting and flapping his arms, the viewer is “encouraged by the very nature of the work to experience a heightened awareness of his own physicality”.

The work sits comfortably within Maisie’s larger oeuvre. More recent works include the aptly named Liminal Space (2010), a low-key installation that utilises the natural friction between positively and negatively charged particles in soil to generate light, and Close Encounters (2011), an interactive UFO that encourages passers-by to engage via text-message with provocative comments displayed around its circumference.

Liminal Space, 2010

Close Encounters (2011) – Want to talk?

Each of Maisie’s works combine high technology and natural materials in engaging and thought-provoking ways. Not only do they reach out to their audiences and encourage thoughtful exploration, they do so in a way that highlights the dependence on technology that is ever-encroaching upon our previously biological lives.

We look forward to future contributions from this smart and talented artist.

“Edward Hopper found stillness in motion and geometry in light. His simultaneously strong and subtle images of houses, streets and intimate rooms invite us to quiet our minds and open our eyes to the beauty of the commonplace as revealed by shadow, sun and the warmth or artificial lights.” – Charley Parker

Walk through an exhibit of Edward Hopper paintings and you’ll immediately see he was drawn to windows from both sides and in every  magnitude of light. He is best known for his painting of a brighly lit diner as viewed from the dark street outside called “Nighthawks.” Painted in 1942, the original can be found at the Art Institute of Chicago. If I were an art collector, most of the rooms in my house would be filled with the work of Jamie Wyeth and Andrew Wyeth, but hidden away in my den in the company of paintings of mountains and mountain trails would be Nighthawks.

Nighthawks by Edward Hopper

I am a nighthawk. I like lonely diners where nighthawks can stop for coffee or a piece of pie. I wrote somewhere that in the days before gasoline was expensive, my best ideas came from driving at night, and there was a time when I knew every waitress and fry cook in a one hundred mile radius around Tallahassee, Florida, where I grew up.

Doorways and Supersitions

While windows draw me to look in or out, figuratively or literally, I cannot resist the allure of doorways. Of the many sounds our four cats hear throughout the week, the doorbell causes the greatest disruption. Their response is a mixture of excitement and foreboding until they see who is there and what they want. There are so many doorway-related symbols and superstitions, I won’t even begin to list examples, but most of them come down to the fact that a threshold is a portal between worlds or areas of activity.

The front door to my house separates, in terms of custom and use, inside from outside. Doors separate rooms from each other and often define the activities on one side or the other. The doorway itself is where the danger lies because, as anthropologist Victor Turner observed, the space within the entryway is “betwixt and between.” It reflects both inside and out, but is—in fact—neither.

Doorway superstitions revolve around the spirits and tricksters that are said to lurk, live and cause mischief or bad luck at the undertain spaces between rooms, zones, worlds, and realms. Doorways themselves can make us feel welcome or unwelcome, hopeful, fearful or inspired. They can symbolize the steps in a project, rites of passage, personal development and transcendent expirences.

Shamanistic journeying often begins with a portal, door, or cave entrance. The children in The Chronicles of Narnia fantasy novels by C. S. Lewis enter another world through a doorway in an old wardrobe. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll uses a rabbit hole to link our world with a world of magic. In my contemporary fantasies The Sun Singer and Sarabande, I use arches, a waterfall cave and a special door in a cabin to connect the world of Glacier National Park with a look-alike universe.

Liminal Space

In myth and psychology, thresholds such as those between worlds and those encountered during rites of passage ceremonies and meditation, are referred to as liminal space. The term comes from “limin,” Latin for threshold. It’s considered an intermediate state, rather like the twilight zone, dusk and dawn, a sleeper’s focus as they begin to awake, and transitional in nature.

Personally, I am drawn to doorways because my point of view about the world is very much shaped by what happens or what can happen in liminal space. As an author, I find that doorways and the boundaries between worlds, either hinted at or utilized, literal or figurative, with or without a guardian entitity or ritual of passage, are among the important tools of the art and craft of fantasy.

Doorways not only open up worlds for my protagonists Robert Adams (The Sun Singer) and Sarabande (Sarabande) to find and step into, but a vast amount of symbolism relating to stages of life or development. In Sarabande, for example, a plunge into a cold mountain lake can be seen as just what it is (a wet and cold experience) as well as a figurative dive into the unconscious and/or a realm of dream and magic:

Her laugh had the rare quality of a wolf’s howl. She flung the dryas flower at Sarabande, then swam or somehow moved closer and playfully pushed her sister’s head under water like she did when they were children playing in Turquoise Lake. Then the light or the clouds changed and Dryad vanished.

Sarabande rubbed the water out of her eyes. The mare’s tail clouds were gone along with the sun and—from growing shadows within the spruce and fir forest in lower valleys—most of the day. She waded ashore, cold. There was no time to change.   She ran down the valley’s long steps, wishing she could fly. Gem—what must she think?

The surface of the lake is the perfect place for fantasy authors and other tricksters to move a character in and our of dream or magic. The liminal space where rooms meet, where night and day come together at the blue hour, and where sleep and dream snuggle up next to each other is the place where things happen. Sometimes those things are obvious and filled with wonderment or terror and sometimes they are more intuited than visual.

Give a fantasy author a doorway (or even an everyday window) and he or she will build you a world, a place where the imagination is unfettered and where change itself is the order of the day.

–Malcolm

Sitting next to my mom after my sister had been brought in.

I became worried and rushed to her side, taking in the view of the baby bed. After she explained to me that she was fine, that it was just the anesthesia making her weak, I asked about my sister. She was in the room where they keep all the babies, but she was brought in just seconds after, right on cue.

Clínica la Asunción, the hospital where my sister was born.

Months passed, the book had become my choice for assigned readings in school and I was done with it, yet anxiety would make me pick it up and read specific passages in the months prior to my sister’s birth. She was born in late October. I was with my grandparents, while my parents were in the hospital. She was born in the morning. I remember nagging my grandma about going to see her and begging to call them on the phone. We ended up going to the hospital around 4 pm. My mom was on the second floor according to the view I remember from the window. My first memory of the hospital is the wooden door to her room being opened. The walls were covered in a wood-like material, and the long window was straight ahead. The room stretched to the right, as the door opened onto the right wall which had a weird type of locked, glass shelf. In front of it enough space to walk to the window and the chairs underneath it, where my dad’s aunt was sitting. In the center of the room, with the head to the left wall was the bed. But I couldn’t see my mom.