Avant-Garde Djuna Barnes

We still need to know more about Djuna Barnes to grasp her unique style, her radical fusion, her ideology.  Djuna was born in New York State in 1892 to an artistic, eccentric, strong-willed family.  Barnes became a stylish, self-created, self-supporting New Woman.  She lived in New York from 1913 to 1919, creating a bohemian bi-sexual life-style.  Red-haired, she was a vital presence and a vivid wit, sometimes using the psuedonym, “Lydia Steptoe”.  And she stepped on toes earning her own living and helping to support her family as a journalist and illustrator.  She also wrote stories and plays. 

 Au Cafe, Photo by Maurice Brange of Solita Solano and Djuna Barnes in Paris, 1922.

During the 20s and 30s Djuna moved to Europe, finding a home in Paris, Berlin, and England.  Once again, her free-lance writing and her avant-garde lifestyle brought her into the artists groups and the lesbian circles.  She became friends with the celebrated lesbian leader of Paris Natalie Barney.  Her best known novel, Nightwood (1936) is a profound study of women relationships and encompasses her long affair with Thelma Wood, a sculptor. 

Others she associated with respected her work and her vision.  Some of these names included: James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Mina Loy, Samuel Beckett. 

Later, after WWII, returned to the United States, moving to Greenwich Village.  Here, she had such friends and admirers as Marianne Moore and Dag Hammarskjold {just love that name!} who was the Secretary General of the United Nations at the time.  She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.  Once a heavy drinker, she eventually gave up alcohol, but her famous red hair whitened with age and her brave wit seemed to turn vicious  and prejudiced nearing the end of her life.  She wrote, but rarely published, and died in 1982, sick of being old and alone.  (which is what this Wit sometimes worries about for some people that she knows.) 

Source:  The Heath Anthology of American Literature

Yogic Warrior of Love, Life and Destiny

Working out some new yoga this week via the incredible Duncan Wong and his Yogic Arts practice.  He combines yoga with martial arts moves that tone muscles, open joints, and totally liberate your range of motion.  I found myself in positions I only dreamed within the first practice.  I love the insight on breathing technique, and the abdominal and gluteal sections have me a bit sore (all in a good way).  Duncan is incredibly agile, effortless in his moves, and perfectly sculpted, which gives this yogi some eye-candy inspiration.  Here’s a piece of an interview:

            “I was born to a Chinese beatnik father and a Scottish hippiee mother in San Francisco in 1968, a product of the famous “Summer of Love”.  Born into a street life of budo and punk rock communities, I vacillated between urban motorcycle youth culture and remote mountain native nature survival training lifestyles.

              I was a street fighter turned proffesional kick-boxer, in the Korean styles, and came upon yoga as a teen.  It was like a healing balm for my body and soul.”

What’s your yoga philosophy? 

                “Live, love, give.”

Link:  Chris Betras via Japan Today

Michael’s Off The Wall

In memory of Michael Jackson – One of my favorite albums, my dear offspring.  Even after (and I can’t believe this) 30 years.

Memories of roller skating every Friday night…waiting for one of these songs!!

Hey Michael,  Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough!  Where ever you are…

Femme de Lettres

 

She was the original femme de lettres qui a mal tourne–the woman of letters who turned out badly. 

In The Vagabond she describes missing writing so much when she had to earn her living on the stage:

      To write!  To be able to write!  It means the rapt hypnotized gaze, caught by the reflected window of the silver inkstand.  It means the burning of the divine fever on cheek and brow while a delightful death chills the hand that traces words upon the paper.   It means also oblivion of time, the idle nestling in a corner of the couch while yielding free rein to a very riot of invention.  It means emerging from the debauch tired and stupefied but already richly rewarded and the bearer of great wealth to be poured out upon the virgin page in the circlet of light sheltering under the lamp…

     Oh, to write!  That joy and torment of the idle!  To write!  Time and again I feel the need come upon me, urgent as thrist in summertime, to take notes, to depict.  And I seize my pen again and begin the dangerous, deceptive game anew, seeking to capture with my flexible, double-pointed nib the sparkling, fugitive, passionate words!   It is merely a brief crisis,  the itching of a scar.

Ah, Colette!  One of my favorite cat worshipers.  What a great description of the urge to write.  The Wit here is finally “itching her scar” with regularity this week, and finding some time to blog as well.  Here’s to hoping for the ever-lasting “oblivion of time” to get it down on all my virgin white paper, and to emerge tired and stupefied.  Feeling very “femme de lettres.”

Peace…

Edie and Andy

Just love this one.  Thought about how they set this one up.

U2 on the Horizon

My favorite dudes of rock for, dare I say, over 25 years still do not fail to amaze me and transport me with their lyrical music.  Like fine wine (oh, what the hell, I know it’s a cliche) they have aged to perfection, and the music has evolved into it’s own classic standard.  Each album they put out has that one song that will live on and on.  For this album, the “Beautiful Day” and “Vertigo” is a song called “Magnificent” and it’s number one on my current play list.  Drive on a long winding road listening to this one, with the windows down and the sun flashing through the treetops onto the road splattering with color…you get the picture.  I can’t really pan anything on this album, except for Get On Your Boots, which is still a bit of a rocker, but lacks luster for me.  The opening three tracks (Magnificent is 2nd) leave me breathless. 

The best band in the world continues to feed this soul’s continuum…

Saturday

Below is my last Kate post for this week.  Loved these black leather driving gloves with her skivvies.  The shot I think is amazing and the staircase…yea,  the staircase.   Anyway, hope you sort of enjoyed my scheduled ahead pre-posted Kate week because I was in a slump with all this fucking rain and gloom and doom along with a birthday I should have ignored (after 30 we should all stop counting).   Not to mention all the writing I didn’t do this week. 

Better days ahead.

Peace to all…

Kate on the Staircase

Iconic Kate

 

I’d put her right up there with Edie in iconic value here.  I would love that bag for my birthday…which is today by the way.  Peace to all…enjoying my day…

Black Dress IX

Kate Moss - Black Dress IX

Contorted Moss

British artist Marc Quinn’s yoga contorted sculptures of Kate Moss fascinate me.  Less yogic, and more like a Cirque de Soleil inversion.  What made him think of doing this, we wonder?

Kate Moss Continuum

Hope my Continuum offspring don’t think me too lame or get bored–well if you do then just visit Just Under the Surface or Sarcastic Bastard – but I’m on a Kate Moss kick it seems.  Couldn’t resist posting this one, Kate wearing only  David Yurman.  I’d never seen this ad.

More later…

Pro Femina

I will speak about women of letters, for I’m in the racket.

Our biggest successes to date?  Old maids to a woman.

And our saddest conspicuous failures?  The married spinsters

On loan to the husbands they treated like surrogate fathers…

Or the sad sonneteers, toast-and teasdales we loved at thirteen;

Middle-ages virgins seducing the puerile anthologists

Through lust-of-the-mind; barbiturate-drenched Camilles

With continuous periods, murmuring softly on sofas

When peotry wasn’t a craft but a sickly effuvium,

The air thick with incense, musk, and emotional blackmail. 

                                               – Pro Femina, by Carolyn Kizer

Private Lives

“…we are the custodians of the world’s best-kept secret:

Merely the private lives of one-half of humanity.”

                                           -Carolyn Kiser

{Thought I’d post my favorite pic of Kate Moss.   If you can’t make it out, the title of the book she’s reading is  Help Your Husband Get Ahead. }

New Girl On the Block

Yes, we love Freida Pinto…whose Slumdog Millionaire debut as an actress has made her the most googled girl of the year….

One of the Finest Films: Slumdog Millionaire

Finally…yes, finally, I watched Slumdog Millionaire.  I know I am profoundly late on the band-wagon of best picture watchers, and I had heard that it was simply fantastic, without much description of it otherwise.  So I was taken aback and quite petrified by the parts with the lead characters as children and the events which happened to them.  Why it was publicized as the “feel-good movie of the year”, I cannot figure out…basically I cried through most of it.

That aside, I’m glad, so incredibly glad, that I saw this film.  Heart-wrenching aside, I loved it.  An incredible unknown cast, an incredible environment, and the screenwriter should be applauded.  I see why it won for best picture.  I tend to think the Academy get political in its selections of who the winner will be, but I can’t see how that happened here. 

I was happy at the end, which I suppose is why this film is supposed to make you feel good.  The good guy get the money, and he gets the girl, the bad guys lose or die.  As it all should be.  (oh,  and a Bollywood dance routine at the end makes everyone smile!)

Peace…        (and See This Movie if You haven’t)

Changing the World, One Country at a Time

My friend and fellow blogger Sarcastic Bastard wrote on June 4, The Reason I Voted for Him, a blog with excerpts of Barack Obama’s beautiful speech at an Egypt university, which myself and Mr. Continuum had listened to with much pride and faith.  SB states poignantly exactly my feelings since the election:  “I am indebted to him for what he is trying to accomplish.  It’s been a long time since I’ve had any pride in the person who leads our country.  I am genuinely hopeful.”

My favorite part of the speech:

“I do so recognizing that change cannot happen overnight.  No single speech can eradicate years of mistrust, nor can I answer in the time that I have all the complex questions that brought us to this point.  But I am convinced that in order to move forward, we must say openly the things we hold in our hearts, and that too often said only behind closed doors.  There must be a sustained effort to listen to each other; to learn from each other; to respect one another; and to seek common ground.  As the Holy Koran tells us, “Be conscious of God and speak always the truth.”  That is what I will try to do – to speak the truth as best I can, humbled by the task before us, and firm in my belief that the interests we share as human beings are far more powerful than the forces that drive us apart.”

Peace…

Those Ripe Visions…

This is my Gemini Free Will Astrology for this week:

“Seventeen-year-old Jay Greenberg is a music prodidy who has written numerous sonatas and symphonies.  His first CD, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and Julliard String Quartet, came out in 2006.   It’s not exactly a struggle for him to create his compositions.  He often completes them in less than a day.

“The music comes fully written,” he says, “playing like an orchestra in my head.”

I believe you now have something in common with him, Gemini.  According to my reading of the omens, there will soon be ripe visions of future accomplishments floating around in your imagination.  You should write them down or describe them in detail to an ally or do whatever else it takes to launch the process of getting them born. “

I had a feeling something was in my head…getting my writing routine back on track is a start.

Source:  Free Will Astrology

On Gambling by Rumi

 

ON GAMBLING

To a frog that’s never left his pond the ocean seems like a gamble.    Look what he’s giving up:  security, mastery of his world, recognition!    The ocean frog just shakes his head.   “I can’t really explain what it’s like where I live, but someday I’ll take you there.”

##

If you want what visible reality

can give, you’re an employee.

If you want the unseen world,

you’re not living your truth.

Both wishes are foolish,

but you’ll be forgiven for forgetting

that what you really want is

love’s confusing joy.

##

Gamble everything for love,

if you’re a true human being.

If not, leave

this gathering.

Half-heartedness doesn’t reach

into majesty.   You set out

to find God, but then you keep

stopping for long periods

at mean-spirited roadhouses.

##

In a boat down a fast-running creek,

it feels like trees on the bank

are rushing by.  What seems

to be changing around us

is rather the speed of our craft

leaving this world.

 

From: The Three Fish        by Rumi

The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa

When Saint Teresa was a young woman of the age of 20 she secretly ran off, without telling her family, to become a nun at the convent of the Incarnation of the Carmelites outside Avila, Spain. 

So powerful was her faith, the bond to God, and her rapturous need to truly know her God, that she claims to have risen from the lowest stage, “recollection”, to the “devotions of ecstasy,” which was one of perfect union with God. 

On reading St. Teresa’s angelic vision,  called the  “Transverberation” , one is left with a feeling of sensual wonder.  Or an erotic one, which ever suits you.  She recalls of her vision of being pierced through the heart by the love of God.  She is direct in her description of the angel who visited her;  in describing him she says that he was not tall, but short and very beautiful, his face fiery like one of the highest types of angels who seem all burning.   He holds a long golden spear  and at the iron tip a point of fire.   With it, he seemed to pierce her heart several times,  penetrating to her innards.  When he drew out he left her burning with the great love of God.  So sharp was her pain that she released moans several times.  It was an intense pain, she recalls, that one would never want to lose, not a bodily pain, but a spiritual one.

              “It is a caressing of love so sweet which now takes place between the sould and God, that I pray God of His goodness to make him experience it who may think that I am lying.”

St. Teresa had been quite ill when she first went into the convent, which could make someone wonder at the legitamacy of her claims.  Perhaps whe was feverish and had hallucinated.  Or perhaps she was delusional, or pschotic in some way.  Could she have had sex and not known it, was actually seeing something else entirely?  It is just a question,  one I’m not too quick to believe.

One can learn from Teresa’s faith and visions however.  There was a grace surrounding this lovely woman, a woman who truly had a calling.  And there are witnesses to her faith.  A few have claimed that during some of the masses, on occassion St. Teresa levitated while she prayed.   She was canonized a saint in 1622, forty years after her death.