Abundance, creation, art--

Detail of "Spectral Reflections" by Robert Stephan,
from "North Carolina Glass: In Celebration of 50 Years of Studio Glass in America"
The Fine Art Museum, Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, North Carolina

I've been reading portions of saints Athanasius, Augustine, and Maximus the Confessor--have found much of it interesting, very different from our own day. The early church was a bit too busy with persecution and heresy to focus on art, though Augustine has wonderful things to say about the act of creation by God and about gifts and the perception of the beautiful.

The lovely thing that he says about the nature of creation is that it comes from God's abundance. Once creation exists, it needs--human beings need--to move closer to the fount of things, to "the Fountain of Life" in order to be filled with light and "given perfection, splendour, and bliss." To draw close to the light and fragrance and beauty of the creator is to "cry out in joy, confessing your glory, like a man exultant at a feast." A greater abundance gives rise to our abundance.

And isn't that what we feel about art--the best of our art, if it is not some dreary, tweedling thing of pretension and faux intellection and rejection of beauty--that it comes from a great spill of feeling, a waterfall of light that flashes right through us? Creation is a gift, born in abundance and the desire to make.

Wiki-Tikki-Clive

Clive Hicks-Jenkins, maker of the gorgeous interior and exterior art for Thaliad and The Foliate Head, has a lovely new entry at Wikipedia. I have a guess at the writer (definitely not implying Clive!), and must say that he did an excellent job. A lot of Wikipedia articles about writers are "bitty" or else strike one as written over too much time by a committee. When I last looked at mine, my fingers itched to change some things and to get rid of others, and to combine pieces into a bigger whole. But Clive's is a great compact introduction to the multi-faceted man. Enjoy.

New-fallen stars

Up at five

to make breakfast and see somebody off to a meeting... The chickens have scattered to Bard and New York, Binghamton, and a sleepover. Strange to have only two people in the house. At five the world was wonderfully blue and virginal, with snow and hush and stillness all around. Lovely heavy dusting of stars over roofs and walks and perfecting the whiteness of the snow on earth and trees.

Now here I am (or shall be, shortly) practicing Mozart's Ave Verum with Leonard Bernstein conducting but not scolding me if I sound sleepy: O, you magic of the internet! And I shall read something wonderful (what? maybe more in my Poems from Asia) and fool with my own poems before I wander out the door.

Doofussery

In the realm of internet not-magic, I managed to delete my list of people who wanted a newsletter (clever girl!) If you want to be on the list and haven't already sent me a note via twitter DM or facebook messaging, please let me know. I'm thinking each (occasional) newsletter will come with a story or poem, new or reprint. Not sure what it will be, though different from what I do here. Leave a note, or you can also drop me a line via smaragdineknot [at] gmail [dom] com.


Elsewhere: excerpts from 2012 books (A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage, Thaliad, The Foliate Head) at Scribd. Thaliad at Phoenicia Publishing. See page tabs above for more.

Marly at Waylines

Alisa Alering of the changeable hair and quick pen has interviewed me for a series called The Writer's Room at Waylines (issue 2.) She asks some curious questions, and I reply in kind. Perhaps I should admit that my writing room is much messier now, and the walls are obliterated with pictures to the ceiling. Enjoy.

Elsewhere: excerpts from 2012 books (A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage, Thaliad, The Foliate Head) at Scribd. Thaliad at Phoenicia Publishing. See tabs above for more.