Art Is

"Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, 'I am alive, and my life has meaning.'" ~Karl Paulnack

What Doesn’t Kill Us

For Eve, remembering Sky
(February 17, 1979 - August 26, 2007)

More drew us together even
with (because
of, I would have said) two children than pulled
us apart or so
I thought for thirteen lonely (I see
now) years. It was a suicide that divided us
at last: your baby brother who could no longer
bear Atlas’s burden, could
no longer be what
being is. The earth
rolled off
his lean shoulders—a boulder crashing
down the long ravine you
& I walked, hand-in-
hand with our children—cracking the
wind, knocking you off
your feet, knocking you for
a loop, breaking
the ties that bind; your entrails ripped
from far beneath your heart & just
above your womb.

What MUST You Be?

"Musicians must make music, artists must paint, poets must write if they are to be ultimately at peace with themselves. What human beings can be, they must be. They must be true to their own nature. This need we may call self-actualization."

~Abraham Maslow,
20th century humanistic psychologist,
from Motivation & Personality

Abraham Maslow taught that the need to grow, to reach our potential, and to self-actualize is an absolutely fundamental need.

According to Maslow, this need to actualize is not a "wish" or a "desire" or a "sure would be nice to have" kind of thing. It's a NEED (like that need we have for oxygen).

To the extent that we’ve taken care of our more basic needs and we’re not satisfying this need to self-actualize, we’re gonna live with anxiety, regret and disillusionment. Period.

The specific manifestation of our self-actualizing process is obviously unique and varies greatly from person to person. As Maslow points out, in one individual it may "take the form of the desire to be an excellent parent, in another it may be expressed athletically, and in still another it may be expressed in painting pictures or in inventing things."

However, in all cases, the question remains: What must you be?

From Brian Johnson's thinkArete.com

Grief

(for Burt, remembering)

The river that wends
its way through the dark
forest of the mind is not a way from or to
but a forever fluttering falling
ribbon of no
consequence—its beginning its
end as (un)knowable as
g-d. What would we make of
the trees that line
its banks, shadow
its course
from the unclouded
sun? Who is it that floats neither
coming or going in a simple
birch bark canoe? This
is no marked year, no specificity
of time. We can never look away.

April 8, 1959

This is all
I am now as
all I was
before. The world
turns steadily on
its axis; the amaranthine
waves lap
their shores; the sun ever-
sentry shines
regardless. Like the dead
the days go on leaving; like
the days we
who live go on
living. All
at once I grieve
for what was and is no
more and celebrate what
is and always
will be.

Why I Go On

Because I can sense it
in the loons
stitching
the flooding sound, equable
on the puce & copen-plaited water
then under,
then reappearing
a measure north or south

again; in
how like love
these intentional divers
really are, binding
this lowering sky, this
rising sea, discovering
the balance between
patience

& passion. Because I can feel it
in the absence of the summer
swallows each new fall,
loss quickening
within the sentinel cliffs
they've left behind—the heart
so suceptible without
its mind's flywheels

to save it. I go on
for having given in
to resiliency, the work
of this forever
fluctuate world, epochal
year after epochal: loon over &
under its blue-aqueous fabric or swallow

in eternal flight . . . gone & here

& gone again.

A Beautiful Excuse (for Heather)

Much of the reason I don't write and photograph at the level I used to is that it becomes too all-consuming and all the rest of the world falls away while I'm in the process. I just don't have that kind of time. There are only so many hours in a day and ten minutes is barely enough time to get the boat in the water. I have whole rivers to run with steep, high canyon (albeit stunningly beautiful) walls with no place to get out of the boat once I start down the river of x, y, or z poem or photograph. Put a slightly different way, each poem, each photograph, for me, is an ocean to cross -- the pure physics of crossing means leaving everything else on shore. For me it's a choice between living in the world or interpreting it. As husband and father I choose the former. It's really as simple as that.