In the Iliad, she is described as the loveliest of the daughters of Priam (King of Troy), and gifted with prophecy. The god Apollo loved her, but she spurned him. As a punishment, he decreed that no one would ever believe her. So when she told her fellow Trojans that the Greeks were hiding inside the wooden horse...well, you know what happened.
Today I put some color on a drawing that I did when visiting our family near Philadelphia. I started on a left-hand page, drawing this brass coffee pot and the cross-stitch tapestry hanging on the wall. When I moved over to the right-hand page and the continuation of the shelf under another window, the scale of things got distorted. It was pretty funny. I kept going, but the drawing/painting doesn't work as a whole; the composition is bad when the tapestry is right in the middle, and the coffee pot looks as large as the lamp! It's OK as two halves though.
One of my teachers told me never to be afraid to cut things up or to look at drawings and paintings using cropping tools. He was right; it often helps, and it's so much easier now, in digital image editing programs!
That's an Inuit sculpture between the lamp and plate; it's a mother leaning over with a baby in her arms, perhaps to pick it up. The mother has on a thick parka and mittens and the baby is all swaddled too; it's carved in soapstone. My brother-in-law, now retired, was a doctor in ob/gyn, and he has collected Inuit prints and sculptures, especially those depicting childbirth and mothers and children, since his medical school days in Canada when the annual Cape Dorset print editions were being offered by just a few galleries. However, the little figure on the windowsill is an Asian dancer, and I think it probably dates back to my sister-in-law's days in India. Their home has a very calm feeling, with white walls, lots of books, and very little clutter. If we'd had more time there, I'm sure I would have drawn a lot more.
My mother's birthday was yesterday, June 9th; she would have been 89. I was singing all day, which would have made her happy -- she knew how important music is to me, and during the period of my life where I wasn't doing much of it and was rather unhappy, she finally suggested, gently, that I might consider getting back to it. I did; she had been right.
She wasn't a fan of the Church, nor was she a believer, though she faithfully attended services every Sunday during the long years when my dad and I were singing in the choir; she did it for us, not for any other reason. For her, Nature was holiness -- that and loving those closest to her. But through a keen intelligence, a great deal of reading, observation of human life, and personal challenges that included the Depression, World War II, and chronic asthma, she developed a personal philosophy that was far more robust than that of many "religious" people; it stood her in good stead her entire life, including her last years. She was tremendously patient, generous, and kind; industrious about whatever needed to be done; and almost never complained about personal problems. My admiration for her grows as I too get older; I miss her actual presence but am happy to continually notice that her love and wisdom stay with me.
She'd be quite amused to know that my father, at 88, played table tennis and came in second in his age bracket in the New York State Senior Games on Saturday.
That day, while he was competing, I spent some time listening to Ian Bostridge singing English songs by Benjamin Britten and Ralph Vaughn Williams. Somehow Bostridge hadn't been on my radar until I visited Teju last weekend, when he played an episode of the BBCs "Desert Island Discs" for us featuring the selections of Vikram Seth, author of A Suitable Boy. When I heard Bostridge's voice, I knew I had to listen to a lot more. Some people prefer Peter Pears for Britten, and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and others for German lieder; be that as it may, I think Bostridge's voice is perfectly suited to these very English works by Vaughn Williams, and I like his interpretations of Britten, too.
I wasn't consciously thinking of my mother as I was listening, nor is this her kind of music, but for me it created a reflective and elegiac mood that reminded me of the countryside, and only afterward connected with my mother. Later, on Sunday evening, I sat down at the keyboard and played through a bunch of jazz standards that she really did like. There was a bouquet of yellow roses from my garden in her Wedgewood pot, too, adding their spicy fragrance to the night air as I played and thought of her sitting in her favorite chair, listening while she read or knitted, the screen door open so that the sounds of insects, birds and frogs filled the silences. When I finished there would be tea and a little something sweet, and before going to bed, we'd step out on the deck and look up at the stars.
JOHN DONNE - HOLY SONNET 17
Since she whom I lov'd hath paid her last debt
To nature, and to hers, and my good is dead,
And her soul early into heaven ravished,
Wholly in heavenly things my mind is set.
Here the admiring her my mind did whet
To seek thee, God; so streams do show the head;
But though I have found thee, and thou my thirst hast fed,
Still life with lilies-of-the-valley, a Wedgewood pot, and a Palestinian purse. Fountain pen on paper, 6"x8".
My mother died on May 23, seven years ago. Yesterday morning I called my father, and after speaking with him I went to my garden. The
lilies-of-the-valley were in bloom, as they were when she died, and I
picked some to bring back home, but before that I picked up and held the stone I had brought from her garden to mine. Last night I did this drawing, which is about her and me...my mother would be very happy to know I am drawing and
painting again. I'm not sad, thinking about her -- tremendously grateful.
In case some of you haven't already discovered Jonathan's blog (and bookmarked it in your feed readers!), he's just written and illustrated a new post about a great teacher from his past. Since I know many of you are also great teachers, or are eternally grateful to those you had, you might enjoy it.
Taking off from the portrait of my mother-in-law, I was wondering where could be done with the basic facial structure. I did a bunch of these; they're sort of calligraphic. These were the two I liked best:
This second one is less of a likeness, but a rather satisfying drawing. It makes a difference in the feeling of the portrait to include the eyes, doesn't it?
Drawing, slowly, I caress her faceas I never did in life, feeling the bonesunder her fine thin skin. Her birth, 100 years ago, give or take a few; Armenia, Alexandria:
implausible routeto another birth, the body known like my own.
My mother-in-law's birthday was yesterday, May 8, and I wanted to spend my drawing time with her. Originally I had thought of drawing a still life based on some of her things, or things that remind me of her, but then I looked at some of my husband's beautiful photographs of his beautiful mother, and decided, instead, to try a portrait.
While doing this drawing, I studied her face as I never had in real life, and afterward, I realized I had learned it in a new way. Later, in bed, I looked closely at my husband. What are you doing? he asked. Comparing your face to hers, I said. And there's not much resemblance, really. No, he said, I think I look like her father, my grandfather. Yes, I said, a combination of his face and your own father's, but narrower.
Curiously, both my mother-in-law and father-in-law had those deep set hollows in their cheeks.
She was a wonderful person; I miss her. Because she was a refugee from Armenia as a young girl, there was no birth certificate, and she insisted that she never knew exactly how old she was. But she would have been about a hundred yesterday. I miss her loving presence in our life; her laughter when delighted that made her face look like a little girl; I miss her love of fine handicrafts and color and flowers, her commitment to peace, her intelligence, her fierce caring for her family. And I miss her cooking: the taboulleh and kibbeh and yogurt soups, and especially her sambousek made for all birthday celebrations except her own. She's been gone for about twelve years; I'm glad we were fortunate enough to have her with us for so long.
Top of the Craftsman Tool Chest. Pen and watercolor on paper, 9"x6".
Sheer silliness here, but I hope some readers will be amused. Quite a few bike-related items here. Maybe another good title would be "STP."
This was good practice too: drawing all those compound shapes, none of which were lined up in the same plane, and trying not to get so stuck that the drawing lost all it energy.
That object with the dial and knurled valves is, ironically, the regulator from my old airbrush compressor. Haven't used that for its original purpose for a long time - we use our compressors (we have two) for cleaning delicate photographic equipment, and blowing up bike tires.
(Posted inadvertently for a few hours yesterday -- the post below now contains the missing link to J.'s website.)
With J., reflected in a window at a handicrafts market in Mexico City.
And finally we come to Jonathan, my love and life partner, about
whose contribution to my life I can't really speak without getting
emotional. I'm amused and delighted that just as I reach the ten-year
point in my own blogging journey (which he has both patiently tolerated
and helped over all these years, as I said in the comments, far too
often waiting while I wrote "just a few more words," or even being the
unwitting subject) he has started a blog of his own, with the very
sensible commitment of posting once a week. He's written a little introduction there and put together a short
slideshow of photos related to blogging and me.
Thank you, dearest one, for being you and sharing this crazy
world with me, for cheering me up when I get down, for enlarging my life
in so many ways, for making me braver and more adventurous, for always supporting me in my work and creativity,
for being unafraid to truly know me and allow me to know you, and for being there, not virtually, but in the flesh, every single day.
I'm getting ready to take off on a trip on Wednesday, so here are two posts from this week in February, five years ago, when we were still going back and forth between Vermont and Montreal, and my father-in-law was still alive. Enjoy.
Relentless snow. In the yard, wrought iron chairs buried under
mounding pillows; arching rose canes; circled peony rings, their thin
blue shadows.
Type etches a white screen, a page. Notes race over keys, under fingers -- courante, rondeau, capriccio -- drawing lines, circles, bodies; dancing out of the room.
"You know what we say in Arabic..." said my father-in-law on the
phone last week, after we'd told him everything was fine with us. "...If you don't have any worries, invent one."
Two nights ago my sister-in-law called to tell us that he was in the
hospital again, after another incident of chest pain strong enough that
three nitroglycerin tablets wouldn't relieve it. His regular doctor is
out of town, on a lecture circuit, so she wasn't there to keep him out
of the hospital, as their mutually-agreed-upon care plan had said.
We're going down tomorrow, but today I called and got the main
hospital switchboard, where I was asked to spell his last name
(something that never happens in Montreal - they know how to pronounce
and spell it here). She transferred me to the nursing station on his
floor, where I was asked to repeat the name several times more. Finally I
heard the beside phone ringing, and the familiar fumbling and delay as
he juggled the receiver on its precarious journey from the cradle to his
ear.
His voice sounded strong, and he was full of stories about the
staff's efficiency; the misfortune of being ill on a weekend when all
the doctors were out "enjoying their profits;" the way "all the
furniture in the room had been rearranged" since this morning. He had
needed to wash up in the shower and to his horror, two young female
nurses had been sent to the room. "Imagine! They wanted to go into the
shower with me!" he exclaimed. "I told them, 'Over my dead body!'" and
they sent a male instead, which was all right. he did everything for
me." Even though I couldn't see him, I could imagine his head shaking in
wonderment at this latest adventure. He said he was up sitting in a
chair, and that he was comfortable but wouldn't be released until
Monday, since there were no doctors anywhere around. "A helicopter just
flew by the window!" he reported, no doubt seeing the rescue helicopter
that transports accident victims and premature babies from the remote
areas of the region to the medical center. "Amazing! It's just
incredible what goes on here."
He ordered us to enjoy ourselves while we could. "How's your work
going?" It was fine, we told him - the irony is that we're working on a
publication about end-of-life care in American hospitals - but we didn't
say that. We assured him we'd see him soon. "I'll see you then, insh'allah," he said. "In Arabic we have a saying:'The devil never cracks his own pot.' Catastrophes keep happening, but I'm still here."
