Oh for a Pair of Ruby Slippers.

    As you may know, I’ve been in Colorado, far from my New England home, due to the death of my mother, artist Lou Rogers. I am profoundly glad and grateful to have been here with her as she went. It has been as it had to be.

    But after wresting with the flood of repercussions for some five months, roosting in other people’s houses, I grow desperate to be home again: my own work languishes, my identity evaporates, my bird molts, and I am convinced my mother herself would want me back at my own drawing table. Yet extracting myself brings to mind the great La Brea Tar Pits: ‘I shall soon be safe home again,’ said the Woolly Mammoth to the Smilodon.
    Looming: a great overstuffed rental vehicle, oceans of gasoline, dubious motels constituting the journey home... and even the Bates Motel costs money. Thus, I am tempted to transform my blog into a ruthless marketing machine. But... what have I to ruthlessly market at this moment?? Postcards. These postcards:

Clockwise: Daughter of Lir (Swan Maiden), Mushroom Faery, Celtic Mermaid, and Flidais and the White Deer. They look like real live postcards on the back -- you  know, space to write, but not too much.

    For anyone overcome with desire, each packet of 8 postcards (4 images, 2 of each) is $6.25. + $1.70 shipping/handling, eBay item number  110190174140 at eBay link:: Fantasy Postcards on eBay   Welcome to my shameless Get the Pitiful Artist and Handicapped Bird Home Again Campaign... 

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Friday, October 26, 2007 at 07:46 PM

Many and many thanks for your Comments here, bright Visitors: you buoy the spirit and bring tidbits as intriguing as anything I post...

These days my mind acts like a skipping stone, plashing skittish over things, or sinking murky to the bottom. But I treasure the great trove of kind words come to me by comment and by e-mail, and ultimately, unless I keel over first, they will be answered with care.

Thank you for coming!

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Edith Wharton's Dream

A dream (with which I suspect many of us could identify at one time or another) reported by novelist Edith Wharton, 1913:

“A pale demon with black hair came in, followed by four gnome-like creatures carrying a great black trunk. They set it down and opened it, and the Demon, crying out: ‘Here’s your year - here are all the horrors that have happened to you and that are still going to happen’ dragged out a succession of limp black squirming things and threw them on the floor before me. They were not rags or creatures, not living or dead - they were Black Horrors, shapeless, and that seemed to writhe about as they fell at my feet, and yet were as inanimate as bits of stuff. But none of these comparisons occurred to me, for I knew what they were: the hideous, the incredible things that had happened to me in this dreadful year, or were to happen to me before its close; and I stared, horror-struck, as the Demon dragged them out, one by one, more and more, till finally, flinging down a blacker, hatefuller one, he said laughing: ‘There - that’s the last of them!’
     The gnomes laughed too; but I, as I stared at the great black pile and the empty trunk, said to the Demon:  ‘Are you sure it hasn’t a false bottom?’ “

    ~ Edith Wharton, October 1913, from Edith Wharton, by R.W.B. Lewis, 1975

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Monday, July 23, 2007 at 10:58 PM

    O western wind, when wilt thou blow,
    That the small rain down can rain?
    Christ, that my love were in my arms,
    And I in my bed again!

                                                  ~ Anonymous


Kind friends,
I'm still here in Colorado, far from home, attempting to get my mother's paintings gathered, her house laid straight and clean, and her business settled.  Thank you so very much for your kind many words, both here and via e-mail.  I hoard them, and will -- yes, really, really will -- be responding!
Forest

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Friday, June 8, 2007 at 11:36 AM

Kind Friends:

I must go to Colorado, likely to see my mother, Lou, out of this world within a few weeks. One thing I plan to do is post a lot more of her work. It would be a great thing to have your comments on it when I do, that I might share them with her.  So, please  check back here before too long -- perhaps a week or so!
My thanks for the kind and buoyant words so many have already sent and left -- it makes a great difference in the artist’s world.

My best,
Forest

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A Personal Note:

Friends: one of those human crises that rise up and shatter the round of one's daily world has reared its head here, and I may be MIA a while longer. 

Meantime, many, many thanks for the bounty of kind words that you, gentle viewers, have left for me.  I am no good at all with Time, at least not in its finite, measured guise, as you who've written me and not yet heard a peep will have gathered. But rest assured I hoard all  you comments and questions, and you will eventually get an answer, antique though it may be...
Yours,
Forest

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