sorry, I've been a bad blogger this last week

I've caught a terrible cold on my trip to the states. I've been coughing non stop for two weeks. My practice has gone down the drain and I'm tired. I just want to sleep.

teachers training

my favorite store in New Orleans....

I got my daughter some tiny chandelier ear-rings, with blue gemstones.....

Come for a walk.....

New Orleans-the Venice of North America

"New Orleans is North America's Venice; both cities are living on borrowed time. Here we are fighting the mud, the heat, the rain, and the insects, trying-if you squint your eyes a bit-to create a Paris in the swamps. Our architecture, and the way we live, are here because of a particular attitude, an attitude about time that is different from the rest of the United States. New Orleans won't change-this is the source of the decline-and yet it does change: but somehow, layer after layer, it stays the same. New Orleans doesn't want to be practical, or to follow the trends in the rest of the country, yet it still works as a place to live; I don't know how. And it sure is fun living here!"

-Joel Lockhart Dyer- artist and New Orleanian-

art

(Pictures from the New Orleans Museum of Art Sculpture Garden).

The nature of a work of art

is not to be a part, nor yet

a copy of the real world

(as we commonly understand

that phrase),

but a world in itself,

independent, complete, autonomous;

and to possess it fully

you must enter that world,

confirm to its laws,

and ignore for the time the beliefs,

aims, and particular conditions

which belong to you

in the other world of reality.

(Oxford lectures on poetry: Professor Bradley: 1901)

I'm back

The river starts like a spring and the story just came out. The river starts like a spring and he's like a newborn baby, tumbling and spitting, and one day, attracted by a puddle, he starts to run. He scurries and scampers and wants to get to the marsh, and, after being followed by a big bubble, he does, and at the end of the run he goes into the meander. Then he skips and dances and runs until he's exhausted, and he lies down by the lake- all horizontal lines, ripples, reflections, God made and untouched. Then he goes over the falls and down into the whirlpool, the vortex of violence, and out of the whirlpool into the main track of the river. He widens, becomes broader, loses his adolescence, and down at the delta, passes between to cities. Like all cities on the opposite sides of the deltas, you find certain things in one and not in the other, and vice versa, so we call the cities Neo-Hip-Hop-Cool Kiddies’ Community and the Village of the Virgins. The river passes between them and romps into the mother- Her majesty the Sea-and, of course, is no longer a river. But this is the climax, the heavenly anticipation of rebirth, for the sea will be drawn up into the sky for rain and down into wells and into springs and become the river again. So we call the river an optimist. We'll be able to play the ballet in any church or temple, because the optimist is a believer.

-Duke Ellington-

I'm back from my trip. I've been enjoying the heat, the food and the mood of New Orleans. I've read loads of books and worked on my practice while the heat was healing my body after a long and hard winter. I want to share one read, that you should read if your ever plan on going to New Orleans or if you just feel like reading a great story who really does great justice to this endlessy fascinating city. The sound of building coffins by Louis Maistros is a wonderful read.

It's good to be back....