On Monday the I Ching advised me that in the face of current unavoidable hard times to go within and seek growth, wisdom. So, in humble obedience, I spent the greater part of the day painting and reading and painting and watching the movie “Bright Star” by Jane Campion – about the poet John Keats and his true love, Fanny Brawne. (It’s common knowledge that crack for me is spelled B-r-i-t-i-s-h C-o-s-t-u-m-e D-r-a-m-a and I’m also known for supplying others who have the same addiction. Come on in to Lisa’s Costume Drama Crack House...If You Dare, it says over my door.) There was a scene where Fanny makes a butterfly farm in her room, at a time when she was getting these incredible love letters from Keats, from he who was the last and greatest of the Romantic poets, and swooning. Was she swooning? Or was that me? Who wouldn’t swoon in such a situation, especially when viewed in hindsight through the lush lens of Jane Campion? In the room, fluttering on her hands and her heart were these dusty blue and iridescent butterflies that I like to use a lot in my art. So there was a resonant correspondence, of the soul stirring sort. While I was watching this scene in the movie one of the sheets of paper I’d painted with deep vermillion, hints of permanent magenta and splashes of a lighter, iridescent blue, the same as the butterfly wings, was drying on the kitchen floor. The air was soft and almost still. Nothing – not outside or inside was pressing me to be or do anything other than this. I was swooning in the poetry and the beauty of it. And yes, I checked, it was me...swooning.
As it should be, as it should be.
