BirchLane.net

November

Thursday 28

Thanksgiving. The Menu:

Roast Turkey with Maple Syrup and Orange Glaze
Sausage/Apple Stuffing
Mushroom Gravy
Pesto Mashed Potatoes
Squash
Broccoli cooked in Garlic and White Wine
Zinfandel (to drink)
Apple/Cranberry Pie

Years ago, the reporter wrote in a story entitled "Cook of the week, Indian Food in Hoboken:" Bruce Barone may be one cook who has to have a hand in every pot. That doesn't just apply to situations, such as when he spends seven hours by the stove preparing nine-course Indian food meals for guests -- it appears to be in his lifestyle as well.

Though a writer by trade, Bruce's tastes in the arts appear as varied as his interest in cooking different things. His Hoboken apartment, which he shares with this wife Betsy, is a mini-gallery of artwork, varied music, diverse reading matter and photographs, which Bruce skillfully took himself.

Employed in Manhattan, the Ramsey natives moved to Hudson county almost a year ago and say they find Hoboken a nice place.

Characteristically, Bruce can quote what the 19th century actress Fanny Kemble said about Hoboken, as well as the Englishwoman Frances Trollope and William Cullen Bryant. (They all heartily approved.).

Says Bruce, "Cooking is just as creative as writing or photography. I've been cooking ever since I remember."

The magazine promotions man shares kitchen duties with his working wife just as he did with college friends on Nantucket. However, his attractive wife laughingly admits, "When he's in the kitchen, I'm out."

Monday 25. 

Matta, Chilean Artist of the Surrealist Movement, Is Dead. Roberto Sebastián Antonio Matta Echaurren, known as Matta, whose sometimes nightmarish, hallucinatory paintings made him a premier Surrealist and major artist of the mid-20th century, died on Saturday in Tarquinia, Italy. He was 90 or 91.

He described his own paintings as "the subconscious in its burning, liquid state; a conscious daytime substitution of the phenomenon of dreams."

Painting figures when abstraction was increasingly in vogue drew criticism in the United States, but he said the figures were necessary to express man's inhumanity to man. "He sought to send a message to other artists to inspire them also to deal directly with these kinds of difficult issues," Elizabeth Smith, a curator of a recent Matta retrospective, said

About his early paintings, Duchamp once wrote, "His first contribution to Surrealist painting, and the most important, was the discovery of regions of space until then unknown in the field of art." Matta talked about "inscapes," morphologies of the psyche, maps of the mind. Martica Salwin, the Matta expert, described inscapes as "visualizing the psyche, which means not just looking at one thing in one time, one point of time and space." Inscapes encompassed, she said, "the past, present and future all mixed into one."

"The Initiation," 1941, oil on canvas, 29 x 37 in.

Sunday 24

Thanksgiving Sunday. The last Sunday of the Christian calendar; the last Sunday before the first week of Advent.

The sermon is Compassion Is Heaven.
O come, ye thankful people, come
And raise the song of harvest home.
Absolute attention is prayer.
My eyes are closed. My eyes are
Still closed. I think of words
As prayer; help me to see
God, Shiva, Buddha
In every person I see
Today. We gather together.
We encourage all to listen
Quietly. Reflectively.
All those who are able
Are invited to stand.
Melt me, mold me, fill me, use me.
I want to paint this picture
Of the congregation; Dad
Turn the camera off; click.
Peace be with you.
And also with you.
The message today is
Prayer something I still understand
Or something I lost; the weight
Is in the sermon. Listen.

Saturday 23

Vessels and Vacancies. From an article in the November issue of "Art in America," on Eve Hesse:

"I have been a giant in my strength and my work has been strong and my whole character has been inside it." "I wanted to get to non art, non connotive, non anthropomorphic, no geometric, non, nothing, everything." "Chaos can be structured as non-chaos. That we know from Jackson Pollock."

Friday 22

The Spirit Levels. On the way home I stop to see this:

Thursday 21

Paradise Pond. Smith College, Northampton, MA.

Wednesday 20

Acceptance. Wondering what cross is mine to carry.

Tuesday 19

Resignation. Started a new job yesterday, quit this morning, and start a different one tomorrow.

Monday 18

The Late Paintings. Just finished reading a marvelous book, "Milton Avery, The Late Paintings." From the book:

In the essay "Impressionism: The Eye and the Poet," Jules Laforgue wrote: "Essentially the eye should know only luminous vibration, just as the acoustic nerve knows only sonorous vibration. The eye, after having began appropriating, refining and systematizing the tactile faculties, has lived, developed and maintained itself in this state of illusion by centuries of line drawings; and hence its evolution as the organ of luminous vibration has been extremely retarded in relation to that of the ear, and in respect to color, it is still a rudimentary intelligence." Clement Greenberg writes: "It is a question rather of the sublime lightness of Avery's hand and of the morality of his eyes; their invincible and exact loyalty to exactly what they alone have experienced. It has to do with exactly how Avery locks his flat, lambent planes together; with the exact dosage of light in his colors......Of course, all successful art brings us up against the mysterious factor of exactness but it operates to an unusual extent in Avery's case." Avery said: "I do not use linear perspective, but achieve depth by color--the function of one color with another. I strip the design to essentials; the facts do not interest me as much as the essence of nature."

Sunday in the Park after Avery by Barone

Sunday 17

Thank You. For visiting BirchLane.

Saturday 09--Saturday 16

Change. The French say that the more things change, the more they remain the same. George Odiorne's Law says that things that do not change remain the same.

These two views suggest that, change or no change, life will go on. I would like to suggest another rubric; things that do not change may not remain at all.

BirchLane.org is being reborn as BirchLane.net. It is not the "org" that is important; rather, the name BirchLane and I am thankful I could get the "net." Thus, BirchLane can continue.

As soon as I decide on a host/provider it will be up. But this is also a time to reflect. As Ecclesiastes reminds us, there is a time to sow and a time to reap. I do not want to be obsessed with change or stability, because I think either path can bring harm; rather I want to move forward and ask myself where is BirchLane? What is BirchLane. A domain? A Journal? A magazine? A publishing compay? A greeting card company? An art gallery? Kierkegaard once observed that life is lived forward but understood backward. The site was originally inspired by Lemmonyellow; encouraged by Erendira--both sites no longer function; and sustained and supported by Jouke and Bobbi  to name just a few (there are others).

So I come back to what is the vision for BirchLane? I think the vision is the glue that holds the domain together. It provides continuity amidst turbulence. It differs from a strategy because it is wide (and wise) enough to allow for opportunity; it leaves room for improvisation. A vision does not require exhaustive analysis; it is stretched, over time, from my knowledge, insight, values. The vision includes those things listed above; from the journal to the magazine, the online art gallery to the greeting card company. I believe I have the vision, and the sales and marketing skills to make the online gallery, for example, work, succeed; coupled with a conscience and courage to address the needs and the quality of the world itself.

I am looking for a harmonious integration. Thank you Kochanie for your insights.

Here is a poem I read yesterday advertising a reading at Smith College here in Northampton. It is called "Corona," by Paul Celan, translated by John Felstiner:

Autumn nibbles its leaf from my hand: we are friends.
We shell time from the nuts and teach it to walk:
time returns into its shell.

In the mirror is Sunday,
in the dream comes sleeping,
the mouth speaks true.

My eye goes down to my lover's loins:
we gaze at each other,
we speak dark things,
we love one another like poppy and memory,
we slumber like wine in the seashells,
like the sun in the moon's blood-jet.

We stand at the window embracing, they watch from the street:
it's time people knew!
It's time the stone consented to bloom,
a heart beat for unrest.
It's time it came time.

It is time.

Friday 08

Out The Window. I was at my desk thinking about what Simone Weil said ("Absolute attention is prayer.")  and I looked out the window and saw this:

"I like to seize the one sharp instant in Nature, to imprison it by means of ordered shapes and space relationships. To this end I eliminate and simplify, leaving apparently nothing but color and pattern. I am not seeking pure abstraction; rather, the purity and essence of the idea--expressed in its simplest form." ~Milton Avery

Thursday 07.

Missing New York City. As I am now once again unemployed, I spend my time looking for work, taking photographs, and checking the mailbox for mail; I  have not been  down to New York City in approximately three weeks. I miss it. But I also miss the hikes I took in the nearby woods a few weeks ago. I think I will stop writing and take Daisy for a hike.

Larger version here.

Wednesday 06

Blessings and Prayer. I count my blessings.

Today is the color of winter.

What do angels do?

Someone once wrote, "Life is short and unpredictable...learn to make the most of it...quit fantasizing about what you'd like to do and do it."

Simone Weil said: "Absolute attention is prayer."

It is the Bible I am holding. Salvation is found in deeds. Absolute attention. I need to work on this. Absolute attention.

Tuesday 05

Prayer. Last night it snowed on the mountain. I am alone in the lodge at Killington in Vermont. The boys are snowboarding. The lodge is more like a school cafeteria; long tables and plastic chairs; no fire burning, no ottoman to rest my feet. On the table Julia's photos for a special issue of BirchLane; my photos--a portrait of Ursula and others; a note from Alaina in which she writes "I am a mother. I breathe my child and her happiness is my blood. I fall asleep next to her. I wake up beside her. For the past 18 months we have never been apart for more than two hours (minus to special Tori trip)...I created two lives. I have given everything to this little girl. Been a part of everything, documented physically and mentally every major development and growth spurt...A wife, a mother, an artist, all these new responsibilities  and most obvious being really and truly just a young woman coming into her maturity and adulthood amongst it all;"  Helena's auto-biography; a note from Hesperia thanking me for sending a few books written by my brother Dennis to her; and a few books to pass the six hours I will sit here waiting for the boys to come down from the mountain. These are the totems I carry in my backpack today to the mountain, like little music boxes--when I see them I am at peace, happy and inspired; Alaina's words and photos bring my such great joy; when I saw her work for the first time I experienced what other lovers of art must have felt when they first saw a painting or a sculpture or  a photograph that made "it new." It was Julia who wrote last week asking me to read her poems. I agreed, having no idea that were 100 poems to read--100 poems! But I was honored and humored that she asked me for my opinion and I wrote to her listing my favorite ten or eleven. It may not be much of a lodge but I am enjoying my time here reading Helena's "A Highly Critical Autobiography" and Amanda's zines "Lovely Cruel World" and thinking about Alaina's photos and looking. Looking.

Monday 04

Death in the Family. My brother-in-law, age 42, beloved husband, beloved father of two (girl 11, boy who turned five today), beloved professor, beloved family member and friend, expert frisbee player and uncle, died at noon today after a short and swift bout with kidney cancer.

Someone once wrote: "The love of life is essentially incommunicable as grief."

He loved life.

Sunday 03

This Morning.

Saturday 02

Schism. Lately, I feel like my life is a puzzle, pieces that are not quite fitting together; I know they fit but I can't seem to find the cornerstone.

Friday 01

Place. I want to tell you a story. It is a story about place and inspiration. The story starts here. Many years ago,