Painting a Wave

Lia Melia , "Songs of Melusina"

Painting a Wave

"Painting a wave requires no system,"
The painter said, painting a wave.
"Systems may get you flotsam and jetsam,
Seaweed and so forth. But never a wave."

There was a scroll or fine-lined curve
On the canvas first, and then what looked
Like hair flying or grayish nerves,
Which began to move as the painter worked.

"Painting the sea is a lot of trouble;
It never stops still for a moment, so
I try to make it internal, mental,
As though I stopped it, then let it go."

Something began to pulse and tumble
Out of the brushes, the ink, the chalk;
A long black line commenced to tremble,
Then, like a fishline, started to jerk...

With what at the end? "I think I've caught it,"
A drop of water hung by a hair,
"If I could only stop it a minute!"
The drop began to race somewhere.

Spreading out in every direction,
A bird of thread, caught in a storm,
Trying to say "Connection! Action!"
But in the end it was very calm.

Soon there was water under water,
And over the sand a sun...a moon?
Who could have seen that wave of water
One night ago? Or a thousand and one?

Who could have seen the lid of water
With its thin mascara of buoys and corks,
With its lined horizon's distant glimmer
Of maybe a skyline like New York's?

Now there will be that morning evening
Tide dyeing the water's pulse,
The wave drying in ink. The Wave.
Moving, momentous, motionless.

Howard Moss

Here is the question - how do you capture motion in art? Imagine the days before photography, before slow motion, the days when people didn't know if all four hoofs of a running horse left the ground midstride, or if one was always touching the ground. The things we have seen since! I've spent my share of time watching extreme slow motion videos of bursting water balloons and watermelons on Youtube, and it's utterly fascinating. But how does an artist approach the task of portraying motion - in a still, unmoving medium? I love how this poem looks at that question. 



  

Sabbaths

Kurt Jackson, "Fungi Hunter"

Sabbaths 1999

Again I resume the long

lesson: how small a thing

can be pleasing, how little

in this hard world it takes

to satisfy the mind

and bring it to its rest.

With the ongoing havoc

the woods this morning is

almost unnaturally still.

Through stalled air, unshadowed

light, a few leaves fall

of their own weight.

The sky

is gray. It begins in mist

almost at the ground

and rises forever. The trees

rise in silence almost

natural, but not quite,

almost eternal, but

not quite.

What more did I

think I wanted? Here is

what has always been.

Here is what will always

be. Even in me,

the Maker of all this

returns in rest, even

to the slightest of His works,

a yellow leaf slowly

falling, and is pleased.

Wendell Berry 

Wendell Berry writes on this theme so well, so 'satisfyingly', in my opinion. "How small a thing", "how little in this hard world" - can fill us and lift us and be enough. How the trees and mist rise in a stillness that is almost eternal. The landscape is itself just a place and a moment, but it evokes so much more. I mean, here's a man on a walk in the woods, and it's good, it's - that old word we don't use much anymore -  meet. It recalls him to that moment after God created the world, when He looked at it all, and said, "It's good", and then he rested. Wendell seems to have that sense within himself of God resting. What a cheering thought. That God would find pleasure in a man walking in the woods, and in a single falling leaf, well, it says a lot about him.

 

Be Still

Esa Riippa

Be Still

Be still until the waters clear.

Do nothing until the darkness ends.

Rest until the storm clouds pass. 

Wait for winter's breath to die.

Nature does not fight against itself

Nor does it dance when the music ends.

from "War Cry On a Prayer Feather: Prose and Poetry of the Ute Indians", Nancy Wood

Sometimes I need a hand on my shoulder, a word in my ear - "Be still." It's something beyond merely waiting or resting. Being attentive, letting things work but not working myself. Allowing things to come and go, observing the changes, but resting in the sense of the whole. Action where none avails is wasted, wrestling the elements will not change them. Be still. Wait until the waters clear.