light and shadow | albert

Light floats through atmosphere, arriving softly, washing over objects.
Revealing. Reflecting. Refracting.

The objects' surfaces drink, the dark ones drinking deeply. Leftover light bounces and scatters. Different surfaces—different reflections.

POLISHED surfaces? DIRECT reflection. Light crashes hard and bounces. Direct. Clean, cold, sharp-edged.

ROUGH surfaces? SCATTERED reflection. Infinitesimal fragments of light tossed off in a myriad of directions, giving the impression of softness, smoothness, matte finish. But the violence of it never occurred to me until now.


Today I sent a harsh email to someone I have never met.
Arretez. Cease and desist. Quit.

Words had coursed through satellites and cables, from his laptop to mine. Words in trickles, gushes and spurts. Cascading rivers of words. Revealing—what? Reflecting little. Refracting much. Mostly deflecting.

From his fingers to my screen. From mine to his. Compliments, accepted. Questions, ignored. [Why?] Play. Urgency. Hints and invitations, ignored. And then, a phrase, only a phrase, yes? A blunt phrase, a phrase that arrived like shrapnel. Humor? Violence?

[What is he? Who is he?]

Different people—different reactions.

Who was the polished one? Who was rough?
Was *I* the direct one, literal? Was *I* clean and hard, cold and sharp-edged? His words seemed to me so rough when I read them, again and again and again. I couldn't bear them. But perhaps I could not see closely enough—were they soft and playful? Was he tossing off infinitesimal bits of thought, a thousand thousand thousand ways, with only one bit lodging in my third eye?

Just a few words, really.
They slipped onscreen silent, like scalpels doing quiet murder.
But only a few words, really.
Every cell in my body screaming.
Shuddering.

Different surfaces—different reflections.

Light softly flows around objects, falling onto and caressing other surfaces. Objects block the light.
Objects touching objects—the shadow careens, slamming against object, knife-edged, dark and hard. But the shadow is nothing. An absence.

Knives can cut. Shadows?

Why am I afraid of words?
Syllables don't murder. Is he a criminal?
How can I trust when my body sends fear into my blood?
There is no wound. But nonetheless I fear. And I regret.

The light cascades past the object. The shadow is cast.
But the edge of the shadow grows dull. It blurs. As it moves along, farther and farther from its source, it softens. It feathers back into warm light. The shadow is a temporary blackness. An absence of the cascade of energy and revelation. A deep thing, sharp and then soft, and then no more.

gourdathon | Orlan

so much to say
so little time

Purple-haired gourd and glass girl Leigh Adams is an Altadena [California] based everywoman of art and craft. Art as a way to teach science. Art as a way to open up lives. Craft as a community endeavor. This weekend was the Gourd Fair L.A. [the California Gourd Arts Festival at the L.A. Arboretum (the county botanical gardens) in Arcadia, organized by Leigh, a gathering of all things and all people gourd...... Gourd painting for kids. Gourd craft for all. Iron Gourd competitions for professional gourders. (!! gourders !!) And more.

Leigh Adams came to The Longest Potholder and wove. I returned the favor and spent a morning gawking at gourds. Variety! Spectacle!

I bought a fabulous new (to me anyway) glue. I flirted with peacocks and babies. I marvelled at the organic gourd shapes—outrageous, bulbous, phallic, both..... Which was quite the contrast from the night before, when I heard Orlan.

Orlan, famed conceptual and performance artist, gave a talk at Otis Art Institute [now out in Westchester]. She is brilliant, outrageous and outraged, and very very French. It took two translators(and then some) to even begin to give the audience a sense of what she was talking about.

Plus, Orlan speaks in paragraphs.

Most people speak in phrases. Some of us speak in sentences.
Orlan? Que non!

Orlan spoke in complete paragraphs, in exquisite, complicated, art-lingo-inflected French, the two translators gasping to keep up. Et bien, au meme temps, Orlan's computer CD ROM would lock up or crash, over and over and over. [*I* finally popped up and got her monitor on a DIFFERENT computer to work with the projector.] Nonetheless, a great talk. It must have been really tough for people who don't speak French, though.

Orlan's art conversation is staggering. Gutsy. In your face. An early feminist performance artist, Orlan's concerns relate to liberating the hidden, inappropriate, colonized woman's body. Her more recent self portraits merge Precolumbian and African masks to her own face, generating a startling mutation and bringing to light the shifting cultural methods of molding the body.

Leigh Adams, on the other hand, is interested in beauty, texture, depth, and empowerment through art. The gourd has the look of the woman's pregnant belly, of breast, etc. Suggestive, natural, and primal forms, crafted in collaboration with nature.


Vive la difference!

taschlich

Swans and ducks love Rosh Hashanah.
Fish too, if they can tolerate breadcrumbs.
Bees, not so much.

The Jewish New Year is nothing like the American New Year. Midnight on December 31 in the USA is PARTY TIME!!! Bring in the New Year with a BANG!!! Fireworks, alcohol, music and dancing. Giddy, outrageous, extreme, and a little bit deliberately dangerous.

The Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah) is not a blowout celebration. We ask forgiveness and forgive. We see where we have fallen short and recommit to being our best selves. We cast away the sins of the past and pray for a New Year, individually and as a community, of purpose, goodness, peace and (of course) joy. We literally go to the people in our lives whom we have wronged, and ask them to forgive us for our transgressions.

After "cleaning up our act" with our fellow human beings, ten days later on Yom Kippur we fast and pray, asking God to forgive us as well.

This little movie is very much in the spirit of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. QUITE different from the usual American festivities. [And thanks to Barry Simon for sending the link my way.]

After Rosh Hashanah (New Year) services, Jews often go to bodies of water to perform Taschlich (translated from Hebrew as "you will cast off"). Jews toss crumbs of bread into the water, symbolically casting off our sins from the previous year. This year's Taschlich was at Echo Park Lake. After services, the warm day and crystalline blue sky saw a group of too-well-dressed yehudim of all ages standing next to the lake, while the park regulars and ducks watched, confused. After passing around stale challah and bagel chips [from the famous L.A. treasure, Brooklyn Bagel, we sang and prayed and tossed our bagel-chip-laden sins into the water. The ducks swarmed, the children giggled, and we said goodbye to our imperfections, at least for a little while.

If you want to toss your sins away too, my buddy Marion Katz sent me a link for virtual online taschlich. You can do taschlich right in front of your computer screen. At the end you can click on the falling breadcrumbs to see sins that others have typed in. (A bit tricky, since they are in motion.....)

At this time of the year, the ducks and swans and fish get happy, and the Jews free themselves from the past and create themselves anew. We look inside and root out our sins. We pray and mean it. We dip apple slices into honey to usher in a sweet new year.

Sorry, bees. And thanks.

STILL with the numbers!

Still pulling numbers together for Gary.
OY.

Back to it.

Happy New [year] Potholder

Finally the Potholder is up. Looks amazing.
Finally the Jewish New Year has been celebrated. Was amazing.

And yet, why oh why am I still carrying the detritus from the previous year around like an albatross?

What detritus?
I haven't done my 2004 taxes.

My poor, long-suffering tax accountant and brother-in-law, who year after year has lovingly (never grumbling) done my taxes. While I was standing at K'nesset Israel, completing the old year and readying myself for the new, I sent several blessings over the airwaves for Gary. Thanks be to Adonai [the Hebrew term for "Our Lord"] for Gary.

Anyway, short post tonight.
I have to pull my numbers together for Gary.

Happy New Year.
Sweet Year.
Filled with love, joy, art, peace, and fulfillment.
And completion.