Pardon Old Fathers

"Pardon old fathers" - that phrase came to mind as I wrote in my journal about a recent trip to Hendersonville, NC and environs with a dear friend at the end of June.

Why "Pardon old fathers"? As you can see, I was drawn to the charm of a few barns in various locations and the photos evoked memories of childhood visits to my grandparents Butler's home in rural Algonac, MI. An iconic big red barn stood on the property, near the garage, and Grandpa Butler very kindly and patiently would let me use the barn door as a target whenever I wanted to pretend I was an Indian huntress. (Remember, this is about 1964 ...)

So, the barns at Connemara Dairy Farm on the grounds of the poet Carl Sandburg's last home, a National Historic Site

in Flat Rock, NC, and on the road to the Yummy Mud Puddle studio of Claudia Dunaway and John Richards gave me the chance to 'shoot' barns once again, with less damage.

While not technically a barn the personality of Shawn Ireland's shop, near his kilns, just made me smile. My friend purchased a gorgeous bowl as an early birthday present for me, which I use nearly every morning as my teacup.

My friend and I covered quite a few miles - even climbed to Chimney Rock and Hickory Nut Falls - in our three-day- stay in the area, and rested a spell on the grounds of the Penland School our last afternoon. I haven't been able nor do I ever hope to forget the graciousness and talent of all the artists we met, the stunning beauty of all the artwork, the delicious food at locally owned restaurants, and the breathtaking natural beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Last year I initiated an experiment wherein I sought out alternative sources for Christmas gifts for my loved ones and friends. Some of the gifts I made myself (paintings, photos, clothing I sewed myself) and some came from places like the Spruill Gallery in nearby Dunwoody. So, on this short trip I was quite happy to get a start on some of my alternative Christmas shopping for this year there in the shops and galleries.

Too, the visit has inspired me to try new methods and materials, so this

Christmas should be interesting!

Since I am posting all these photos of barns I thought the stunning anthropomorphic paper rooster who rules over The Well Bred Bakery deserved a space in this gallery!

[[Photos: Top, Water Trough at Connemara Farms Dairy, Barbara Butler McCoy, June 2011; Second, On the Way to Yummy Mud Puddle, Barbara Butler McCoy, June 2011; Third, Shawn Ireland Pottery Shop, Barbara Butler McCoy, June 2011; Bottom, Paper Rooster on the Mantel, Barbara Butler McCoy, June 2011]]

To Know William Shakespeare ...

The lunatic, the lover and the poet, at this point in the month of April, celebrate, honor and acknowledge the life and art of a man, William Shakespeare by name, whose impact upon Western literature and Western culture resonates more strongly year upon year. Shakespeare's art has also influenced culture in the East - witness the work of Akira Kurosawa.

In the West the phenomenon of the 'letters to Juliet' is a case in point for Shakespeare's influence. When I learned last year that a movie with that title was to be released I just shook my head. I figured the letters to Shakespeare's tragic fictional lover were meant to be only narrative devices to entice us. Not so.

I stumbled across a copy of the book of that title by Lise Friedman and Ceil Friedman and learned that letters to Juliet, all with love as their 'argument,' have been left at her tomb and mailed to the city of Verona, Italy for nearly 200 years. Veneration at a tomb reputed to be that of Juliet Capulet has, since early in the 19th century (early 1800s), attracted "an increasing number of pilgrims ... (Curiously, as the adoration of Juliet increased over time, Romeo's 'presence' was no longer required.)"

As I wrote previously, I believe Romeo to be William Shakespeare's alter ego, shall I say, so his presence is vital to an appreciation of Juliet's character and William Shakespeare himself. Some may ask why anyone cares anymore about "a pair of star-crossed lovers" who end their plight by taking their own lives. Many young women, in fact, dismiss Juliet for just that: "Kill yourself over a guy? That's just stupid."

As the centuries of veneration of and letters to Juliet attest, the story of these lovers has taken root in the world's imagination. Imagination has a vital influence upon one's heart and mind, thus whatever influences it deserves consideration and study. In this case the influence derives from the mind of William Shakespeare, of Stratford-upon-Avon. Yet what can we know of the presence which considered Juliet's model and crafted this character? Nearly 450 years after his birth William Shakespeare's life is cloaked more in mystery than buttressed by material evidence. We ask, to borrow from Yeats, "Those masterful images because complete/Grew in pure mind but out of what began?"

Quite simply I believe that Shakespeare gave us clues about himself in his art, most especially in "Romeo and Juliet." To begin this study, however, I turn to Sonnet #76 because in it the reader learns that Shakespeare's love, the Dark Lady, is the ALL of his art. His verse is "barren of new pride," "far from variation," and all his "best is dressing old words new." He states that "every word doth almost tell my name." "O, know, sweet love, I always write of you,/And you and love are still my argument."

Read his work, read him.

The couplet concluding the sonnet packs in some significant information: "For as the sun is daily new and old,/So is my love still telling what is told." That pair of words 'my love' signifies two subjects - his love as a state of mind and heart; his love as the object of his love who is, herself, "telling what is told." The allusion to the sun in the couplet points our attention to Juliet, the light breaking the darkness, and indicates to me that the play is as much about Romeo's/William Shakespeare's mind as hers.

In fact what emerges is a portrait of two lovers who have become one love. Know one, understand one of the lovers, and the other is known and understood. There is an intimation of this in the dialogue of each. "Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven/Having some business, do entreat her eyes/To twinkle in their spheres till they return." (Romeo and Juliet, II.ii.15-17) "Give me my Romeo, and when I shall die/ Take him and cut him out in little stars/And he will make the face of heaven so fine." (Romeo and Juliet, III.ii.22-25)

Together, wedded, they are heaven's light, sun and stars. Romeo is to Juliet a face of heaven so fine, so to speak, and Juliet is for Romeo "Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear." Heavenly love, a beautiful life - right? Love, heaven, beauty - what could go wrong? Such dear, rich beauty of body and mind - why end it in suicide?

This is the challenge of the play, I think. It is not easy to see love die - until one realizes that the death, the suicide, is symbolic. The deaths of Romeo and Juliet are tragic, yes, but beyond that they are a dramatization of verse 33 of the gospel of Luke, chapter 17: "Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it." Romeo and Juliet take their lives IN their own hands, demonstrating theatrically this teaching.

The decision to take one's own life in one's own hand, to guide one's life by one's own compass, was quite daring for someone living in the repressive society of Tudor England. There were any number of entities vying for authority over the lives of others (church, state, family, spouse, guild, censor). Every would-be authority had its preconceived notions about what should be and was willing to enforce them. Transgressors were stigmatized, exiled, or executed.

The consequences of one's actions weighed heavily upon the mind even if the transgression was known only to oneself. It could be a bed of thorns, lying awake contemplating the regrets and anxieties of things done or not done, things said or not said. These two lovers, however, looked at what they truly were, not merely at their regrets or at what others held they should be.

As I wrote previously, Shakespeare portrayed his love, Romeo's Juliet, as living at a higher level of consciousness than he lived when they met. He learned of his Self, in part, from her, and I think we see evidence of her tuition in some of Juliet's lines, which echo some verses from St. Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians. Compare, "Thou art thyself, though not a Montague./What's Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,/Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part/Belonging to a man," (Romeo and Juliet, II.ii.42-45) with, "For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ." ... "If the foot should say, 'Because I am not a hand, I am not of the body,' is it therefore not of the body?" (I Corinthians 12: 12, 15)

His love's singular point to William Shakespeare, as I see it, is that one aspect of one's self, one's experience, does not constitute the whole Self.

Shakespeare's allusion to this chapter of First Corinthians sheds light on the character of Juliet's Nurse and her influence in the girl's life. Verse 13 of I Cor. 12 instructs that all have "been made to drink into one Spirit." I feel strongly that it is that drinking of the one Spirit that Shakespeare intends us to understand in the Nurse's discourse (I.iii.18-53) about nursing Juliet as a babe.

As a babe Juliet, the Dark Lady, was fed upon the Spirit and grew with its nourishment into the woman who came to love William Shakespeare. Again, I Corinthians influences Will's art in offering an image of this nourishment and learning: "And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able."

Juliet learned, as did Shakespeare, to examine all they had ever learned about themselves, all their 'methoughts,' to use some lines from Nick Bottom, the Weaver in "A Midsummer Night's Dream": "Methought I was -- there is no man can tell what. Methought I was and methought I had -- but man is a patched fool if he will offer to say what methought I had."

That reference to "a patched fool" calls to mind another teaching from the gospel of Luke, 5:36: "Then He spoke a parable to them: 'No one puts a piece from a new garment on an old one; otherwise the new makes a tear, and also the piece that was taken out of the new does not match the old.'" Romeo/Will, it seems, looked at all the 'methoughts' he'd learned to apply to himself and realized, "Tut, I have lost myself. I am not here./This is not Romeo. He's some other where." (I.i.205-6) Juliet illumined his life and mind and he understood he needed a new garment of Self, not some foolish patch job that would disintegrate.

So, in what spirit does one reconceive one's concept of Self? As Juliet and love are all his argument he constantly thinks on truth and beauty because the Dark Lady, still telling what is told, taught him according to Philippians 4:8: "Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there by any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things."

They each considered these things and forged for themselves a 'marriage of true minds.' Romeo alludes to this when he says, in effect, that Juliet's eyes are stars. She sees as he sees, he sees as she sees.

In "Romeo and Juliet" we glimpse Juliet as a babe even as we see her as a teen. Further, as I

think the Dark Lady was approximately the same age as William Shakespeare, and that she was known to the theater crowd, I sense he wrote the part of Juliet at the behest of that crowd. I also sense he wanted the crowd to see Juliet and think of this verse, Philippians 4:9: "Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me (Juliet) do: and the God of peace shall be with you."

I have come to see this play as being existential, just as "Hamlet" is. Yet, lest we feel Juliet's death was an unnecessary end consider, please, Luke 8:52-55, the story of the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue, thought to be dead: "Now all wept and mourned for her; but He said, 'Do not weep; she is not dead, but sleeping.' And they laughed Him to scorn, knowing that she was dead. But he put them all out, took her by the hand and called, saying, 'Little girl, arise.' Then her spirit returned, and she arose immediately. And he commanded that she be given something to eat."

[[Scripture verses: Luke 33:17 NKJV, Luke 5:36 NKJV, Luke 8:52-55 NKJV; I Corinthians 12, 12, 15 KJV, I Corinthians 12:13 KJV, I Corinthians 3:1-2 KJV, Philippians 4:8 KJV, Philippians 4:9 KJV. As I understand it, the King James Bible is the closest to the Geneva Bible, which was in use for much of Shakespeare's life.]]

[[Bibliography: Friedman, Lise. Friedman, Ceil. "Letters to Juliet." New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2006.

Yeats, William Butler. "The Collected Poems of William Butler Yeats (Richard J. Finneran, ed.)." New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1996.

All references to Shakespeare's plays are to those published by the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C.]]

[[Photos: Top - Homemade birthday cake for my son, April, 2011; Middle - the Sun on my courtyard wall, April, 2011; Bottom - roses in a McCoy pitcher, 2011 (all by Barbara Butler McCoy)]]

Through a Glass Darkly

"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?"

"The Second Coming"

William Butler Yeats, 1920

Passing homes in the darkness of early, early morning or of evening I see windows decorated with lights, beacons of welcome and hope for humanity in a weary world.

The image of people as light in the world has been with me for some time, most especially since my post for "Dia de Los Muertes" (please see previous post). That post, in turn, prompted reflections upon and contemplation of Be-ing one's Self, no strings attached, of gaining and holding that "privilege of a lifetime ... being who you are."

His Holiness the Dalai Lama asserts that "our primary concern is seeking happiness and avoiding suffering" as we meet what Bruno Bettelheim describes as "psychological challenges of gaining a feeling of selfhood and of self-worth and a sense of moral obligation." Bettelheim maintains, and I concur, that such is necessary if we "hope to live not just from moment to moment, but in true consciousness of our existence."

Eastern traditions teach of paths to en-light-enment, to a rising toward pristine awareness. One important element of these teachings is that of examination of the person's mental processes, including their motivations. As previously noted our primary motivation in life is seeking happiness and avoiding suffering and "the chief influence for the foundation of motivations comes from the mind."

An examination of one's own mind to bring one's consciousness further toward en-light-enment is no quick or easy task. "Mental phenomena ... do not evidently have a location in space, nor do they lend themselves to quantitative measurement." How may we study our mental processes as forces of motivation affecting the quality of our Light, our lives? How do we do this, we who are everyday people with relationships and jobs and goals and worries? We are few of us monks or yogis or poets or quantum physicists. How do we do this?

Years ago I was presented with an image of light and life that has guided me through many of life's psychological challenges. Not long ago I realized I had received another image of light and life as a guide in everyday life. I sat in the World Peace Cafe one evening quietly waiting for my sandwich to be delivered to my table while my husband surfed the Web on his iTouch. From our table by the window I looked out into darkness and saw the grouping of over-sized Chinese lanterns hanging in the cafe projected onto the street scene outside the cafe.

I know those lanterns out on the street were illusions, some trick of optics, the light waves (or are they particles?), the properties of the window glass and who knows what else. I have now come to see that scene as a vivid lesson in the way illusion can and does influence us as we walk through our earthly life.

Indians, according to Joseph Campbell, teach that illusion (maya) holds 'A Veiling Power that hides or conceals the "real," the inward essential character of things; so that, as we read in a sacred Sanskrit text: "Though it is hidden in all things, the Self shines not forth."'

Someone tries to hide himself down inside himself.

Audioslave

Although the white light of Truth has been veiled from consciousness, our minds must engage in their creative function and evolve phenomena. So our creative function, our Projecting Power, projects "illusionary impressions and ideas, together with associated desires and aversions --- as might happen, for example if at night one should mistake a rope for a snake and experience fright."

Now we come to the beautiful part, the part wherein it is possible to reach the Truth through the obscurity and illusion of these phenomena. For, "when viewed a certain way, the phenomena themselves may reveal what normally they veil ..." This demonstrates the "Revealing Power of maya, which it is the function of art and scripture, ritual and meditation, to make known." For the moment I suggest that we simply take some time for ourselves to contemplate whatever illusions present themselves as guiding forces in our lives.

Our "impressions and ideas, together with associated desires and aversions" have been formed by and large upon falsehood. We owe it to ourselves to look at these things. Many times a change of perspective eliminates the projected illusion and frees us to consider its source -- which is what we need to do. (As an example, when I shot the accompanying photo I could not see the reflection outside from another window, only that nearest the lamp.)

Here I turn, not surprisingly, to William Shakespeare - his "Hamlet" to be precise. The prince has just informed his one-time friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that Denmark is a prison. They disagree. They "think not so." Hamlet then informs them that "there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so."

Think about it.

We can see the Truth of our Selves, just as we can see the light of a candle or a lantern "through a glass darkly."

Love after Love

Derek Walcott

The time will come

when, with elation,

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror,

and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

[A bibliography for this post includes:

Bettelheim, Bruno. "The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales." New York: Vintage, 1989

Osbon, Diane K (ed.). "Reflections on the Art of Living: A Joseph Campbell Companion." New York: Harper Collins, 1991

Shakespeare, William. "Hamlet." New York: Washington Square Press, 1992

Varela, Francisco J., Ph.D (ed.). "Sleeping, Dreaming, and Dying: An Exploration of Consciousness with The Dalai Lama." Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1997

Walcott, Derek. "Derek Walcott: Collected Poems 1948-1984." New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1986]

'Foul Rag and Bone Shop'

For the last week I have been contemplating the startling fact that I had found an actual place - a place I had never seen nor known existed - which I had 'made up' and written down in my notes and in the blog. I cannot say it enough: I just made up a place and gave it a name. I never suspected that a place loosely fitting that description existed.

The more I considered this the more I understood that I had experienced 'creative visualization' at its fullest. My introduction to the concept came in the form of a book I read decades ago. The exact title escapes me but it was roughly "The House that Gilda Drew" and was a title I acquired through the Scholastic Books program. (Oh, how I looked forward to those flyers and the chance to buy books!)

These days I would recognize Gilda and her family as likely being homeless as they constantly moved as her father searched for employment. Through all the travels, all the schools, Gilda dreamed of a certain house she wanted to live in one day. She drew it time and time again. Then, one day she saw the house itself. Sadly, I do not remember how it came to happen, but in the end Gilda and her family did indeed move into the house of Gilda's dream. That story has always remained in my mind.

I wonder now if that story was in the back of my mind when my fourth grade teacher, Sr. Mary Henry, a Dominican, took one look at the tree I had drawn in crayon on art paper and informed me that it was not a tree, that 'There are no trees like that.' I said nothing, but in my mind I retorted, "Just because you haven't seen a tree like that doesn't mean there isn't one.' Years later, to satisfy myself, I looked through a book and saw that my tree could have been a very mature weeping cherry!

The discouragement was replaced by my resolve to be a writer as under that same nun's tutelage I quite happily discovered that those sentences and paragraphs and all that other grammar stuff were the nuts and bolts of the stories I devoured.

Not long ago I discovered some quotes attributed to Ms. Georgia O'Keeffe in my notes. They had been posted on one or another of those websites offering fine art posters for sale. This quote leapt out at me: 'It belongs to me. God told me if I painted it enough I could have it.' I read between the lines of that quote and came to understand that Ms. O'Keeffe very likely believed in the principle that life would imitate art provided she practiced her art, lived her art.

I pulled Hunter Drohojowska-Philp's biography of Ms. O'Keeffe ("Full Bloom," W. W. Norton & Co., 2004) from my shelf and paged through it for one of the stories I remembered from Ms. O'Keeffe's school days which, ironically, involved a Dominican nun passing judgment on one of her drawings (p. 27) Ms. O'Keeffe chose to respond differently to the nun's stinging judgment of her drawing efforts than I did to Sr. Mary Henry's. In fact, at some point she 'decided that the only thing I could do that was nobody else's business was to paint.'

Independently of one another both Ms. O'Keeffe and I chose art as the means of being our Selves despite the judgment of an early teacher. The most inspiring aspect of Ms. O'Keeffe's life and work was that she practiced her art on her terms, however shaky she may have felt at times.

Ms. Drohojowska-Philp relates one instance of self-consciousness at a time just prior to Alfred Stieglitz's introduction to her work, when few established artists were understanding that work. 'After staying up all night working, she felt the results to be "effeminate" but she was unsure of the implications. "It is essentially a woman's feeling - satisfies me in a way," she admitted. "There are things we want to say - but saying them is pretty nervy." Once again, she was thinking that it was all "a fool's game" when she learned of Stieglitz's approval.' ("Full Bloom," pps 106-7)

Nearly thirty years after Alfred Stieglitz first glimpsed the work of this extraordinary woman she produced another piece I consider to be self-conscious, a pastel on paper entitled "My Heart" (1944). She was then 57 years of age and had bought a home in New Mexico only four years previously, a home with stunning views of her beloved pedernal.

Ms. Drohojowska-Philp wrote, 'The Navajo believe that the Pedernal is the birthplace of their "Changing Woman," who represents earth and time.' (p. 368) In full view of that Pedernal, that mountain, Ms. O'Keeffe imagined and presented to us an image of her heart. 'O'Keeffe named this drawing of two stones after her heart because she thought they "looked hard."' Hard as pieces of the 'Changing Woman,' perhaps?

For myself, when I consider that heart image she offers I am struck by a parallel between her work and that of the poet William Butler Yeats in the closing years of his life, specifically the poem "The Circus Animals' Desertion" (1938-39). I quote here the final stanza of the poem:

Those masterful images because complex

Grew in pure mind but out of what began?

A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,

Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can

Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut

Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone

I must lie down where all the ladders start

In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

Many are familiar with the paintings of skulls and pelvises Ms. O'Keeffe executed. (My favorite is "Pelvis with Distance.") There are paintings featuring ladders in Ms. O'Keeffe's oeuvre as well. Her studio must surely have contained stained rags and a collection of skeletons to qualify it as not just any studio but a "foul rag and bone shop of the heart." She painted her heart out, and in the end it was hers, always had been. I suspect she cherished the irony, as I do, that the nun's judgment had been passed in a schoolroom at Sacred Heart Academy.

These remarks from the commentary about the 2008 exhibit "Georgia O'Keeffe and the Women of the Stieglitz Circle," (HIGH Museum, Atlanta, GA), which included work by Pamela Colman Smith, Katherine Nash Rhoades, Georgia Engelhard, Gertrude Kasebier, Anne Brigman and Alfred Stieglitz point to the enduring significance of "charms the brush laid on with tints in sweeps and flourishes" : 'her work and that of the others "laid the groundwork for the idea that women artists possessed a powerful creativity equal to that of men and their stunning images convinced Stieglitz ... that women could reveal a new and uniquely feminine perspective on modern experience."'

For Ms. O'Keeffe the perspective from her foul rag and bone shop of the Pedernal, the Changing Woman, gave her her heart and gave the world a beautiful vision of life lived artfully.

Top Photo: "Crossing to the Everlasting," Barbara Butler McCoy, oil on canvas, 12"x24," 2007, after "Sky Above Clouds," Georgia O'Keeffe and the author's photograph

Bottom Photo: "A Bowl of Cherries," the author, 2009

2D or not 2D?

It is my great joy to write this piece to honor the 445th anniversary of William Shakespeare's birth, 23 April, 1564.

Curiously, although I read "Julius Caesar" and "Macbeth" in high school (I was one of the three witches), I cannot say I truly discovered the wonder of Shakespeare's art until about eight years ago. For most who harbor aspirations of the writing life the 'canon' of Shakespeare's work - indeed, the man himself! - looms so frighteningly large that one is unquestionably intimidated and too, too many of us skirt round him altogether. He is a colossus in the tide of literature, yet his 'thees' and 'thous' and scrambled syntax trip our tongues and make us giggle in discomfort.

Hearing one of his plays or sonnets is quite confusing to the uninitiated ear. We suspect the players have extraordinary talent to make sense of and 'con' all those lines! Modern film productions of the plays do not always help, either. I do wish there were many DVDs available with subtitles to make this work more approachable although I do wonder what it says about us that people listened to these plays hundreds of years ago so eagerly that Will Shakespeare's Globe Theatre was commercially profitable?

As well, I wonder at the perspicacity of both Rafe Esquith and his youngsters, fifth graders at a public school in Los Angeles for many of whom English is a second language, who learn and perform one of the Bard's plays every year to international acclaim. Yes, they have tackled "Hamlet" and "Macbeth."

So, what broke through this wall of intimidation for me and prompted me to approach these works? Actually, the question should be "Who broke through ...?" A player, one Robert Lindsay, who has performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company and in various international productions (Captain Pellew in A&E's 'Hornblower' series for one.)

At my son's urging I checked out a VHS copy of a 1982 BBC/TimeLife production of "Much Ado About Nothing" starring Robert Lindsay, happily, as Benedick. Almost immediately, in the first scene, Mr. Lindsay's delivery of a single line tore down all my trepidation about approaching this literary canon. As his buddy Claudio questions him about his opinion of the young Hero, Benedick asks, "Would you buy her that you enquire after her?"

The abhorrence evident on his face and in his tone could have been attributed to a number of conditions surrounding sixteenth century courtship and marriage, but I saw it as revulsion at the very idea that a woman was considered chattel, tangible property to be bought and sold. The hint this gave of the mind behind the plays stopped me in my tracks. And so it began.

I am but an amateur, but even so I agree wholeheartedly with Robert Graves who said, "The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good..." Once, on a plane, a woman and I discussed literature and I shared my belief that William Shakespeare's work has endured because it deserves to endure. What is that cliche? He is "a proven performer." He always delivers. My experience enforces my opinion that a bad production of a Shakespeare play is still much better than many films today.

The essence of the power of William Shakespeare's work for me is summed up in a quote from the poet Rainer Maria Rilke: "The universe is wide. In us it is deep." My experience with these plays and sonnets (remember, I am a novice) is that at some point in every exposure to them I feel that something in the depths of myself has been touched, has been given breath, has risen. A portion of another William's work, William Butler Yeats' "The Circus Animals' Desertion," applies here I believe: "Heart-mysteries there ..."

Some mystery deeply hidden rises to life. Some mystery of life unfolds as yet others remain enfolded.

Perhaps this is the sort of experience that led the noted scholar Harold Bloom to assert that William Shakespeare is responsible, in drama, for the "invention of the human." These heroes, heroines, villains, and clowns are not cookie-cutter, paper-doll, masked characters. They are everything you are and everything I am at our highest and our lowest, our most comical and most tragic.

Though only Juliet speaks the question, " ... wherefore art thou ...", Will Shakespeare's art asks us time and time again, "Who are you? Why are you you?" Juliet knows the answer does not lie in those surface characteristics of name and physique. How two-dimensional! What is the mystery of you?

I think Juliet speaks this immensely important question because Shakespeare's model for her was the woman he loved, a woman shrouded in mystery whose presence in his life, it seems to me, constantly affirmed his courage to explore, if you will, 'Wherefore art thou Will?' This woman, this 'Dark Lady', he believed to be the embodiment of fairness, kindness, and truth - truth being beauty as Keats wrote.

Juliet asks her question from the height of her balcony. Court poets of the era often placed women above, out of reach, but Shakespeare, I believe, was sending a different message for does he not find a way for Romeo to climb to that same height? Does not Juliet later provide a rope ladder for her love? William Shakespeare depicted his love on the plane whereon he believed she lived, a higher plane of consciousness, and in Sonnet 105 he adjures us, "Let not my love be called idolatry." This is no idle show. No, indeed.

William Shakespeare chose time and time again, for more than half his mortal life, to be guided by his love, his Muse, whom he praises in Sonnet 105, lines 5 and 6: "Kind is my love today, tomorrow kind/Still constant in a wondrous excellence." His answer to this kindness, excellence, and constancy is in the remaining lines of that quatrain: "Therefore my verse, to constancy confin'd/One thing expressing, leaves out difference." Near the end of this sonnet he proclaims the "wondrous scope" this constancy affords.

In devotion to his Muse he dared to reach for a heightened consciousness. He dared to leap into those "Heart-mysteries there." Given the intrigue and turmoil of court life and the Reformation I do wonder if, perhaps, his creativity was his saving grace?

Recently as I read his Sonnet 137 which begins, "Thou blind fool, Love, what dost thou to mine eyes," I began to realize that this sonnet is the Bard's assessment of his own reaction to characters modelled upon his love! If I may be so bold, I think he is telling us, "In things right/write-written true my heart and eyes have err'd/And to this false plague are they now transferr'd."












It helps me to know that performances of his writing made even Will himself stop and remember that the beauty up on the stage was a stage beauty, a painted boy if you will, because I am always knocked off my feet at some point by his work. With his players, his illusions and allusions, his dialogue, he gave us humanity and love.

So, since I am already on the ground, I think I will bow to the wisdom of William Butler Yeats:
"...Now that my ladder's gone
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart."

Top photo: Bas relief honoring William Shakespeare, the Candler Building, Atlanta, GA
Middle photo: Bud of a William Shakespeare 2000 rose from David Austen roses
Bottom photo: Shakespeare's 'globe' and books, gifts from my son

DVDs I recommend, for starters: "Slings and Arrows," Seasons 1-3; Al Pacino's "Looking for Richard," and his performance as Shylock in Michael Radford's production of "The Merchant of Venice," and, yes, Baz Luhrmann's "Romeo + Juliet" because I suspect it captures the intensity of 16th century London even as it's set in 20th-21st century California.

Honest

I am an avid journaler, have been for a number of years after reading Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way". Before I started writing in journals I would sometimes sit writing installments in a long letter to my best friend and I noticed that every time I let myself loose in the stream of my thoughts answers and inspiration for use elsewhere would present themselves. So, when I read about 'morning pages' in "The Artist's Way" I figured such a journal would be the way to capture all those gems on a daily basis.

My best friend still receives letters from me, and I from her - her husband says he really admires the way we persist with our epistles in these days of email - but my journal has become an ocean of consciousness, no mere stream! These notebooks, I often think to myself, would be a psychiatrist's wet dream. When the trickle of inspiration became a river I decided I had better find a way to set up a catalog or index so that nothing would fall through the cracks. There is nearly always lag time between the moment inspiration strikes and the moment I formally begin a project, with periods of illumination of details sandwiched between those moments.

To catch all these moments of inspiration and illumination I have begun to cull through the pages and note entries on my desk calendar. This exercise is usually how I occupy myself on road trips to Virginia with my husband or in other oddments of time.

Yesterday I came across an entry which illustrated dramatically the service art provides in my life as I pursue my creativity. The entry is dated September 7, 2008, only one week after I had launched my first blog, with the first post inspired in part by William Butler Yeats' poem "The Circus Animals' Desertion". Here is an excerpt from that entry:
" ... I hate it when I get testy ... As I wrote that ... I realized that perhaps the way to counter this feeling is to just keep returning to that warehouse in Melissa's dream.
"I must admit that the landscape of that dream is where I feel comfortable. You know, it feels honest. Is that strange? I don't mean it to be, but there, there among the discarded things, the broken things, "the sweepings of a street", for me in this time it is one of the few places that feel honest to me!"

Even now, over four months later, when I consider those words I know I hit the mark. There is no pretense in an abandoned place, a forgotten place, filled with abandoned, forgotten things and people if such places are occupied at all. There is no pretense about piles of refuse and decaying structures. Stripped of pretense and lacking artifice such places hold for me "heart mysteries there".

Now here I must note a paradox: I arrived at these heart mysteries in this forgotten place stripped of artifice - through artifice. With ingenuity, inventiveness, I found sanctuary.

Artifice practiced as creativity leads to what is honest, and what is honest is all we need to change the world.