The World Examining Works

A Red and Yellow Post

Heirloom tomatoes

aubergine and wildflowers at the green market.

Gosh!

The dog's head is rather pear shaped.

 

The Last Day of August

Exactly the sort of day one needs to go to the beach. The ladies below seem to agree. Lady #2 waved at me cheerfully.

We decided to get an umbrella since the temperature was 96F

This is the place you get the umbrellas from where the clerk, who wasn't there at first, writes your name, address and telephone number down in a ledger in case you try to abscond with it (the umbrella). I always like rather old fashioned, down at heels offices. Note the notice about ticks. Nature, as we all know, is very wonderful.....except for: bugs, typhoons, poison ivy etc etc.

I digress. Anyway, recent waves have altered the beach a little --for the better I think. Now there is the main ocean and the inletty bit.

Excellent for using as a surf board highway without the rip currents and all that stuff.

As the tide came in the inlet became deeper and deeper. Horse flies discovered R. (extreme top left under the umbrella!)

The whole day was lots of fun.

ps. the elusive Rauf has re-emerged into Blogland. He has a wonderful post here

Buildings from a Distance

I think I prefer things close up.

This is a view from the New Jersey side when you emerge from the Lincoln Tunnel  -- with bus window reflections and everything.

This is light being reflected off a very tall building near so called 'ground zero' which they are rebuilding astoundingly slowly. See below.

There is something pretty impressive about lots and lots of metal and heavy machinery.

The person who paints gray and yellow lines at the end of 23rd Street must have gone off for a break. Pretty cool drop-cloth.

Thursday Night

A mild evening

across from the Apple Store

 

where the bikers chat before roaring off into the night

in the triangle where 9th Avenue and 14th street intersect

salsa pumps from the speakers

and people dance

Other Places: A Writing Workshop in Morocco

 I'm very excited to announce that I'm going to be teaching a writing workshop at Maryam and Chris's enchanting Peacock Pavilions just outside Marrakesh early next spring  - February 19th- 26th to be precise - just when it's nasty and cold here and the blossoms are coming out there.......

 

This first picture is a collage of a window in the Bahia Palace, a camel bone mirror in the hall of our little house on derb Djedid,  the very same house where Blinky, the little cat below, was born.

Blinky now lives in the country at Peacock Pavilions.

I hope that the workshop at Peacock Pavilions, with its visits to Marrakesh itself and to Essouira on the Atlantic coast, will be a window into another world, a time for reflection and a door to greater creativity. I have lots of plans and ideas brewing.

Below is a collage of some of my memories of the two years I spent in the magical city.

 

Cats, art, fruit, flowers --above all else COLOR.

This is the house of a collector of Saharan artifacts.

 
 This is rue riad zitoune djedid (Olive House Road)

The workshop is limited to ten participants. Six places remain open.

Please contact me at elizabethwix@hotmail.com for more details.

The House by the Water

A friend has bought a long abandoned house

with a path that leads directly to the water.

How wonderful.

The neglected greenhouses are a photographer's delight --

neglected stuff always is -- providing all you have to do is look at it rather than do anything about it.

The sky visible though a missing pane.

I'm reminded of Roethke's poem, Child on Top of a Greenhouse

The wind billowing out the seat of my britches,
My feet crackling splinters of glass and dried putty,
The half-grown chrysanthemums staring up like accusers,
Up through the streaked glass, flashing with sunlight,
A few white clouds all rushing eastward,
A line of elms plunging and tossing like horses,

And everyone, everyone pointing up and shouting!

Technicolor GreenMarket

It goes without saying that the fruit at Union Square is much better than the wilted stuff in the supermarket.

The calla lilies looked exquisite ( and expensive).

The skeins of wool, though unseasonal, beckoned.

The onions did their very best to look plastic.........but would be wonderful with all the other veggies in a stew cooked to perfection in le crueset.

 

The coleuses and zinnias dazzled.

 

These two flowers, whose names escape me, are in a plastic bag in the back of a taxi coming home with me.

Earthbound and Ethereal

Yesterday afternoon

Susanna and I shared the Napoleon above at Bergamot, having spent the morning failing to add stuff to this blog's sidebar. Typepad makes things infinitely more complicated than Blogger. Anyone got any idea why? Typepad has nicer designs. Blogger is easier to navigate in general.

It was a very large Napoleon.

Then

we wandered by the window of Rootstein mannequins where fairies awash in purple and pink gossamer wafted ........

Coming and Going

Yesterday, we were standing by the tree stump garden bemoaning the fact that recently four plants have been stolen. However, it had lasted eight weeks without incident which is amazing in itself. Buster was playing with Gander. Then who should appear?

When people look as amazing as this, I feel sure they want to be photographed.  Of course they were happy to pose. No point at all in looking fabulous if nobody notices.

I'm not sure where they they were off to. They could end up in a painting, but I don't think they will.

Some of these people might, though they look a bit lonely.

In the back ground you can see the shadow of the little house they built downtown near the water and now have carted off to New Jersey (I think). Everyone is very busy wandering about looking purposeful as they tend to do in New York where everyone is astoundingly important.

Monday

The two winners of the Jane and the Essex Serpent giveaway are Cynthia and Moe. The books will be sent out tomorrow. I spoke to Susanna this morning and asked her what picture she was putting up for her post.

She said, "Just a teacup."

I said, "I'm probably doing plums."

When I looked at her post I noticed that her teacup is sitting on top of a cloth with all sorts of paint on it -- as are my plums. Synchronicity? or merely the fact that random paint blotches are often better than the paintings themselves...... ?

Shadowshotsunday/Family Picnic

On the porch, by the swimming pool, the girls discover flags and prepare to dance.

For other shadowshots from around the world go here

Giveaway drawing tonight.

Lemons

Nothing much to say

except the afternoon sun 

falling through the blinds

made the lemons stripy

Go to Susanna's blog or the post below for the giveaway which closes on Sunday evening.

The Uses of Enchantment: A Collaboration

Snow in the woods on the sort of day when wet clumps of it fall down your collar. The artist's hand is sprinkling the snow.

When I knew I was going to do this post, I asked Susanna to send me several photos she particularly liked. When they arrived I asked her if she had read Bruno Bettleheim's The Uses of Enchantment which is all about C.G.Jung and fairy tales and archetypes and things like that and she said she hadn't. Gosh!

We were talking last summer about the children's stories I was writing and how they could be illustrated. Here her niece Annabel stands at the edge of the water.....

Here Annabel stands like a wood nymph on the stump of a very old tree whose gnarled roots stretch deep into the earth. The stuff of fairy tales indeed.

This is a photo of Susanna's that I hadn't seen before where the old lady conceals her face behind the wisdom of the owl.

And last  Annabel's little sister Ellie dons the mask of a wolf......

Susanna and I have the same sort of sensibility, I think. The same love of myth and mystery. Her photo is on the cover of my story Jane and the Essex Serpent.

 

We'd like to give two copies of the book away in conjunction with this post and Susanna's post. If you would like a book, leave a comment on one of our blogs. If you visit both blogs you double your chances ....

 

The Uses of Enchantment: A Collaboration

Snow in the woods on the sort of day when wet clumps of it fall down your collar. The artist's hand is sprinkling the snow.

When I knew I was going to do this post, I asked Susanna to send me several photos she partucularly liked. When they arrived I asked her if she had read Bruno Bettleheim's The Uses of Enchantment which is all about C.G.Jung and fairy tales and archetypes and things like that and she said she hadn't. Gosh!

We were talking last summer about the children's stories I was writing and how they could be illustrated. Here her niece Annabel stands at the edge of the water.....

Here Annabel stands like a wood nymph on the stump of a very old tree whose gnarled roots stretch deep into the earth. The stuff of fairy tales indeed.

This is a photo of Susanna's that I hadn't seen before where the old lady conceals her face behind the wisdom of the owl.

And last  Annabel's little sister Ellie dons the mask of a wolf......

Susanna and I have the same sort of sensibility, I think. The same love of myth and mystery. Her photo is on the cover of my story Jane and the Essex Serpent.

 

We'd like to give two copies of the book away in conjunction with this post and Susanna's post. If you would like a book, leave a comment on one of our blogs. If you visit both blogs you double your chances ....

 

Queens' Colors

Could the light possibly be different in Queens?

Rather an odd idea. Sitting in the Thai Restarant looking across the street...

at the beauty parlor which had a sort of Hopper-ish air.

Then we walked out on to Roosevelt Avenue.

A Splendid Monday

a sizzle of bacon and sausages swimming in grease in a cast iron pan on an outdoor griddle and bagels and fresh fruit.......cheated and bought tea at the beach stand.. a coffee maker might have been nice...

however

there was a multi- tailed kite

 a thoughtful placement of  seashells....

 waves to be studied seriously

a green flag to be hefted aloft.....
 

 and last, an ambiguous message from a politician

 luckily rather far off so we won't bother with it

Looking at Things

Very decadent and exotic cupcakes that begged to have their photo taken.

A chain gang of very small children taken to Union Square to look at the fruit.

The dining table with the usual collection of stuff on it.

Stepping back, the same with a painting by Robert that has the same colors in (sort of)  as the picture of the children. 

A tacked up drawing, by me, of  some of the things on the table.  I haven't done any drawing or painting for ages, so this set me thinking, in no particular order, of :

 how very much more difficult drawing is than taking a photo

how much more one has to concentrate

that brown is a very dreary color

and that water color is very unforgiving

 and of how photos distort things

  and how art differs from life

 lots of stuff from EH Gombrich's wonderful Art and Illusion....

and so on and so on

All this makes picture #1 so very much more appealing.
 

 

 

Boats

The John J. Harvey, a rust-bucket of a fireboat,

had lots of people drinking pretty cheerfully on it.

A very gray evening on the Hudson with the requisite seagull.

Then the little boat set sail.   

Wet Day at the Museum

It rained at last -- just when we needed it not to. So we went to the Museum of Natural History.

Details

Much too much going on lately and very little time to contemplate nothing. Here some complicated ropes and wires and railings and things at Chelsea Piers. 

 

Here a disconcerting sight at the dog run. A solitary, autumnal leaf on the bench. Oh dear!

More mid-summery are a blaze of zinnias from the greenmarket this morning -- so wonderfully bright that they are almost too much....

Photos of people and paint. Very complicated too...... 

So rosemary and purple basil are needed as balm. Much too hot here and 'they' (TV weather people) have been telling us for three weeks that it is going to rain and rain and it doesn't.....