I write short pieces of what I call, Philosophical Prose.
They compliment my art and satisfy a desire I have had to bring visual art and writing together.
They compliment my art and satisfy a desire I have had to bring visual art and writing together.
This first piece is the narrative which runs through my first book of prints,'Consolation'.
There is a story
An event I tell my part of the story by living my life By making pictures of what I see When one views art, look not for the artist but for oneself. That you enjoy this work is my wish. To make a Human a star must die. So here I am, organized dust. That draws! That can look upon itself and the nature of things. Fortunate to have but a moment. Grateful for a walk on part in this cosmic play. I like a stream, it's ever ending encounters It's intimacy. We are trading tendencies all the time. I experience Human curiosity, Human limits. I am drawn to the realms of the animals, plants Our water womb. I witness the life cycle. I answer the call for all things to show themselves. I am learning my lines. I am my medicine bag and my memories. I learn the price of wisdom is courage. They are both, everywhere. |
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I submit to creativity inherent. I am swimming in an event, it is the stage It makes demands. The more I witness the story, Nature incorruptible. The more honestly I see. I find refuge in Humanity. I say thank you to nothing and everything. I live long enough to have self knowledge, to be calm. Content to watch the mystery unfold, without remorse. I ride a passive beast. Brave enough to turn away from certainty that is not. I want to find joy in learning something new, even on the last day of my life. I will become part of a dust cloud once again. When the Sun eats the Earth and sings it's last song for a new story. I embrace this. For all will be there still. p garayt |
The following is the first four pieces of prose for a new book of prints called, 'Hypothesis'.
Each will be accompanied by a drawing. I will add each page as it is completed and anticipate eight or ten pairs.
They will not be posted here in the order they will be published.
Each will be accompanied by a drawing. I will add each page as it is completed and anticipate eight or ten pairs.
They will not be posted here in the order they will be published.
Water
Water common.
Water precious.
Blood of all, it is the first law.
All that was still is, no more no less.
Messenger,
shape shifter,
creator, destroyer.
Our deep distant womb.
An amniotic embrace without prejudice.
Beautiful sorcery most invisible.
grinding rocks to fill the Oceans wounds.
Nature's chemistry,
worthy of worship.
Yet, we may merely immerse ourselves
in it's changing language of mystery.
We get but a glimpse of waters impossible closeness
to Natures embrace.
The ocean takes us all
and we will touch everything.
I dream of communion
and lay my head on the bottom of the sea.
p garayt
Water common.
Water precious.
Blood of all, it is the first law.
All that was still is, no more no less.
Messenger,
shape shifter,
creator, destroyer.
Our deep distant womb.
An amniotic embrace without prejudice.
Beautiful sorcery most invisible.
grinding rocks to fill the Oceans wounds.
Nature's chemistry,
worthy of worship.
Yet, we may merely immerse ourselves
in it's changing language of mystery.
We get but a glimpse of waters impossible closeness
to Natures embrace.
The ocean takes us all
and we will touch everything.
I dream of communion
and lay my head on the bottom of the sea.
p garayt
Conformity
An enlightened culture in a city at peace.
A free thinking people swept up in creativity and optimism,
in Humanity's unspoken genius.
Empathy and respect keep the common good.
An inspired intuition keeps the future.
There is laughter.
Still.
Seeking hosts, it comes.
A virus.
It's only weakness is to be seen, to be seen to soon.
This virus is conformity, a conformity for it's own sake.
Wearing the mask of dogma.
It first infects the incurious and fearful,
the unemphatic, the egoists.
Their certainty brings them to despise
the very earth below their feet,
and so conspire to be above it.
They become grim, unmoved.
Will we know them
when they turn the colours grey,
when they taint our children's journey with guilt.
Will we know them,
when they pervert the joy of our bodies
and make all the world suspect.
Will we know them,
Full of words and deeds that do not fare.
Full of morality and punishments so important.
Will we know them.
When we feel the shroud of conscious death
descend upon our shoulders.
Will we forget that we knew them,
when in but a few generations a new Dark Ages
manifests to bind the human once more.
A few witness and despair.
Observe.
Only the unnatural, only a deceit
must be imposed through fear and ignorance.
Humanity needs no prophet, no agent.
If free to engage with reality, in this profound library of mystery.
It is children that will know them.
Children who are free to play and speak their minds without fear.
Children who are given the world most honestly.
Children who never abandon their wonder,
as they live on.
Enlightened.
Immune.
p garayt
An enlightened culture in a city at peace.
A free thinking people swept up in creativity and optimism,
in Humanity's unspoken genius.
Empathy and respect keep the common good.
An inspired intuition keeps the future.
There is laughter.
Still.
Seeking hosts, it comes.
A virus.
It's only weakness is to be seen, to be seen to soon.
This virus is conformity, a conformity for it's own sake.
Wearing the mask of dogma.
It first infects the incurious and fearful,
the unemphatic, the egoists.
Their certainty brings them to despise
the very earth below their feet,
and so conspire to be above it.
They become grim, unmoved.
Will we know them
when they turn the colours grey,
when they taint our children's journey with guilt.
Will we know them,
when they pervert the joy of our bodies
and make all the world suspect.
Will we know them,
Full of words and deeds that do not fare.
Full of morality and punishments so important.
Will we know them.
When we feel the shroud of conscious death
descend upon our shoulders.
Will we forget that we knew them,
when in but a few generations a new Dark Ages
manifests to bind the human once more.
A few witness and despair.
Observe.
Only the unnatural, only a deceit
must be imposed through fear and ignorance.
Humanity needs no prophet, no agent.
If free to engage with reality, in this profound library of mystery.
It is children that will know them.
Children who are free to play and speak their minds without fear.
Children who are given the world most honestly.
Children who never abandon their wonder,
as they live on.
Enlightened.
Immune.
p garayt
There is a deep anxiety in the Human condition
to manifest intuitively, a contemplation of memories.
To embrace the sum of our experiences, draw wisdom from this
and desire to be touched by the genuine.
The King
There is a castle on a hill, it fits the time.
Foreboding and cold.
Odors carry tension through the air.
Feast and fine linen above, moans from the dungeons below.
A King's guard at the gate,
from which a road runs away over the lands for trade and war.
Down on the road with staff and beast,
a tinker navigates the hardened mud ruts in his path.
The tinker passes the castle each day,
thinks of God but does not linger.
Today he pauses for a novelty.
It is the King himself, alone in a stone window looking over.
He thinks a rare moment for a king.
A man bred like an orchid and trained for the court,
all spontaneity vanquished.
The tinkers cart catches a rut and draws him back to his task.
The King watches a drama below.
Refugees at his gate in need of empathy.
A family with their precious bread and sticks,
limbs weary with a life of porous circumstance.
The kings guard do not reason and have no discourse.
Seeing neither value nor consequence in these witnesses to a sadder place,
they need not testify.
The refugees, waved away with threat of violence, hesitate,
then renew their courage for a return to the treacherous road.
The King, still undisturbed, feels compelled to act without consult,
without precedent, no whispers in his ear.
He ponders the unfamiliar nature of this moment as repressed empathy
begins to breach the bars of his imprisoned spirit.
He thinks he recognizes one of the guards, from a hunting party maybe.
He recalls the words of a wise council from his youth speaking of a caution,
a caution of identity.
"A prison with an unlocked door is still a prison if one cannot will their leave."
He had said.
The King hurriedly summons a young charge from the hall
and bids him take a message to the guards.
"Tell them to let the refugees pass, and they are not to be molested."
"Here is my seal, make haste!"
It will not be long before the King is drawn to duty.
He is animated but wary, as if hearing an unexpected sound from the forest dark.
He knew not the vulnerable.
Walled off by a fortress of child propaganda.
Ever distracted with duty and performance
under the shadow of tradition and fear.
Hardened by plots and cruel sex for the cold births of future Kings.
A wholly manufactured presence, with armour.
The King now stands hesitant in the hall.
What destiny can there be in a birth but for place and circumstance.
Did these not bare the village whores son to the King's guard
and condemn the refugee to wander as in purgatory.
The tinker plies his trade in this random stream.
Indeed,it will deliver a babe King unto the breast of the nursemaid.
The King remembers the words of the council once more
and absorbs the chill of revelation.
Even he, of such a birth was in this prison,
perhaps the darkest park.
And just then,
a glimpse of a door.
p garayt
Tussle and Fro
There is a large wood in which a river runs through, both dividing and uniting this old place.
Along one side of this river two men met, having been walking the riverbank from opposite directions.
A sphere demands contact.
Both men had been searching for a home. They decided alone but in similar spirit that this riverbank was a place
where they could be. A place to bear their weight.
Neither wanting to cross to the other side and both having an intuitive awareness of their mutual need for company,
they agreed there was enough riverbank for the both of them.
The river stretched away in both directions far beyond their needs, so neither felt restrained.
They had been talking under an old tree which arched like a bow out over the river and it's silent presence inspired
a common mark. Not a fence nor border, just a symbol and both men settled the side of the tree from which they had come.
The leaves fell and grew back again and again as the seasons spun their tales and lay bare her lessons.
Tussle and Fro kept themselves busy, having much building and learning to do. Content by the fire,
sharing knowledge learned, all seemed to ebb and flow through them.
One spring day the tree which hung out over the river failed to bloom.
It was dying.
A disturbance.
Tussle was the first to notice. Fro as away exploring as he liked to do and was sometimes gone for days.
Tussle, thinking it would be a thing to do, planted a new tree right beside the old one and went about necessary things.
When Fro returned Tussle showed him the barren tree and explained what he had done. Fro stood silently for a moment
staring down at the sapling and much to Tussles surprise became agitated.
"Why did you plant it on my side of the old tree?" Fro said, painfully straining with something new. "But Fro, what does it matter,
does the river bank not go on for ever anyway?" Tussle said, his voice trailing off, distracted by a chill from the edge of the wood.
Fro didn't answer. Incensed by Tussles flippant response to his feelings, he just turned and silently returned to his cabin.
That night while Tussle slept, Fro made his way across the moonlit yard to the sapling.
It was as though he was only watching himself, powerless to stop as he pulled up the sapling roots and all,
leaving it to die on the earth.
Reason had fled.
Tussle awoke the next morning and drew water for the new tree. After standing over the sapling for a time, head bowed watering can
in hand he felt strange, sickly. Tussle's fingers slowly opened dropping the watering can at his feet. His mind detached, his steps brought him to Fro's garden. Tussle calmly crushed Fro's spring seedlings underfoot, then slowly started back to his yard.
When Flo arose he thought of what he had done during the night and again a odd feeling crept into him. He pushed open his door
and breathed the fresh spring air, hoping to feel familiar. As he exhaled Fro turned his head and saw the destruction in his garden.
He glanced up, eyes widening to see Tussle just entering his own garden.
No birds sang.
Fro made his way over to Tussle's garden. As he passed the stake which had steadied the sapling he casually removed a piece of rope still hanging there. Walking up behind Tussle and without a word he slipped the rope around Tussles neck, strangled him and lowered the lifeless body to the ground. Fro briefly stood over Tussle's body then slowly moved a way.
He witnesses the colour bleed out of things, feels the forest, dense without depth and cannot breath the air.
Moving towards the river he pauses under the the old tree. Fro had not dropped the rope, it still dangled from his fingers.
Glancing over at the sapling then looking down he saw he had unconsciously fashioned a noose
and with a graceful haste hangs himself under the arch of the dying tree.
A bird chirps.
Ropes rot, trees fall, the seasons weave their temporal fates.
The local mammals will feast for a time, the birds and mice will have their fill.
Time blankets of autumns hide the work of bugs and microbes, worms and snails.
Tussle and Fros story is hidden deeper and deeper into the growth, reclaimed.
It is how things are and are not, the melting of matter.
Eternal.
In the forest and to all the life which endures there still, their time was no more significant than any other.
The rivers water-blood, indifferent. Tussle and Fro were now, as they were, gone.
Returned.
Like all things which for good or ill, relentlessly and randomly manifest upon the Earth
simply to be, in their time.
p garayt