Wednesday, October 9, 2024

Hurricane Milton embroidery posts

These mandalas, stitched in 2024, I post as Hurricane Milton increases its roar where I live in Florida.  Thankfully, I could post the below before loss of power.

My only question is, "Why Milton?"  And so I rename this powerful storm,  "Sophia."

SHE knows what she is doing.


  

STRAWBERRIES, BEES, AND LITTLE BOAS

12" diameter 

cotton threads on linen





EVE AND THE ACCEPTABLE FRUIT

AND UNION OF THE OPPOSITES




This poem written in La Calmette as a "global warming" storm impacted my hamlet in the French Pyrenees.


FROM GOSPEL OF THE CELLS

 

 

July 14, 2002

  

HerRage repressed

Could hold no more.

Detonating heavens roared.

She  flashed,

Crashing waves from above;

Madness pounding

The square of La Calmette.

Sheets of tears released,

                                                                       Funneling gullies;       

Anguish

Drenching

 The Earth’s floor.

“No more!”  She wept,

“No more

War.”

 

Shakedowns from branches

Stoned the forest path.

Winds screamed,

“Dead plums in the night!”

Breakdowns of stalks

Swept to swollen rivers.

Downpour roared,

“Corn rotted to the roots!”

All this

The torrent of HerWrath,

Her truth.

 

I heard the peasant say it in a dream,

C’est  le déluge du Nature,

Notre Terre, Notre Mère.

And in those corner rooms

Behind locked shutters,

Children huddled lost

From a lost summer.

Flickering lights from their T.V.

Speckled shadows on their faces

While night storms raged—

The bolts of Her electric madness

Swallowed shadows on the square

And children in the arms

Of their bewildered mothers

Sniffled, Maman, pourquoi?

 

We are silent.

The farmers, the students, the teachers;

The mothers; the fathers,

The leaders, the followers;

The ignorant, the wise.

Gnostics, agnostics,

The faithful, the knowing;

The poet, the madman, the thief.

We are stunned, we are silent;

Such is the pressure

Of our unacknowledged grief.

 

But yes, we know why.

Somewhere in the linings

Of our storm clouds

We know Her

The greatEarth,

The reception of our deaths and births,

The chalice of our ashes and our bones,

The breast from which food flows;

The quencher of our thirst

The glory for our eyes

The music to our ears

The reverence to our nature;

Our fear, 

The fear.

Oh Mother!

 

We shudder

In Her first light to the last

(The dawn of our resurrection

The dusk of our end)

So that we may begin again—

If only through her benevolence—

The only Mother of us all

The one Mother of us all

In whom we are born to trust.

The One we have betrayed.

 

And now Her torrential rage,

Held in HerBelly

Since her molecules were split

And before

And before

And before

Since we crucified her Myth,

Now is HerStorm

And our alarm.

 

How long has she waited for our

Confession, our amends?

Where is our shame?

Shall we repent?

Or be drowned in her unceasing rains?

The poet kneels before her Mass

A piece of dust, an ash

While roots are washed

Away from home

As HerGroans

Rumble

Like a fever

breaking

Into the lost summer of our Age

 Rumbling

On and on and on

Her  holy

holy

 rage.


Wednesday, January 31, 2024

"BLUE"

 


“Blue”

Cotton, metallic threads, pearls, glass beads on antique linen.

Image: 30 inch diameter.


What emerged from a blue time, a pressing-down time and 560 hours of tiny stitches?


Below: Roots and Branches to the skies 


Above: Rising Sun


Left: Earth, Fire


Right: Water,, Wind    



Doves crying at the moon

Flying doves heralding…

And then,

 

Les hirondelles , les petite filles d’air—

O swallows, little daughters of the air—

Holding in their beaks pearly omphali

And the new white thread

Circling

Protecting

Containing

 

Our “blue” planet.



BLUE




Sunday, June 18, 2023

THE TENSIONS OF THE OPPOSITES

 

The conflict between the opposites can strain the psyche to the breaking point, if we take them seriously or if they take us seriously…if all goes well the solution, seemingly of its own accord, appears out of nature.  Then and then only it is convincing.  It is felt as “grace.”

…it represents the result of the joint labors of consciousness and the unconscious and attains the likeness of the God image in the form of the mandala, which is probably the simplest model of a concept of wholeness.

…The clash, which is at first of a purely personal nature, is soon followed by the insight that the subjective conflict is only a single instance of the universal conflict of opposites.  Our psyche is set up in accord with the structure of the universe, and what happens in the macrocosm likewise happens in the infinitesimal and most subjective reaches of the psyche…

 

...I am thinking here of the simplest basic form of the mandala, the circle, and the simplest (mental) division of the circle, the quadrant or, as the as may be, the cross.

C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Late Thoughts), pages 335-336.


12 inches diameter
Cotton and metallic threads on linen


DETAILS

Upper right quadrant


Upper left quadrant, Albedo; Alchemical symbol silver


Lower left quadrant; alchemical symbol lead



Lower right quadrant


Moons


SIDES OF THE CROSS

Lower cross
serpent upward to cylinder spiral



Upper cross
Dove downward to cylinder spiral


Right cross
Dung beetle pushing left to cylinder spiral



Left cross
Dung beetle pushing right to cylinder spiral



CENTER
Alchemical symbol Philosopher's Stone









Thursday, January 26, 2023

PEARLS OF A GREAT PRICE

 


24" diameter
Cotton threads on linen




Details













Monday, October 17, 2022

 MOTHER PHOENIX

AND HER FOUR GOLDEN EGGS




COTTON THREADS, GLASS BEADS ON MUSLIN FABRIC





















Sunday, May 8, 2022

TREE OF LIFE 2022

 THE HIRONDELLES (SWALLOWS) CARRY THE NEW GOLDING THREAD 


Regard this new-formed golden token

Replacing the old thread frayed then broken

Held in the beaks of golden swallows

A circle of unity all this follows

Omphali centered with beads of gold

Alchemy’s mystery: Golden tree to behold.






24" diameter

Cotton threads and beads on antique linen







LOCKDOWN 2020/2021

 


12" Diameter

Cotton threads, beads and pearls on linen

Quoting CG Jung and his dismay of Europe's lockdown in WWII.




The swallows carry pearls of great price to our world

As even

"The spirit of the depths

have seized Mankind

demanding sacrifice..."

CG Jung