Tag: Ekphrasis

• June 29, 2012

  Joan’s drawing

  When, a few weeks back, Joan asked me whether I would like to have one of her drawings, I thought only, “Which one?” There are 30, perhaps as many as 40 drawings hanging in the fourth floor hallway. There were ones of younger frail women and others of cocksure men. Neither sort would suit. For…
• June 20, 2012

  Beauty in human frailty

  There is beauty in human frailty if only we look closely. Beauty in human frailty because life is so many things at so many times in so many ways. And there are fathers and mothers and there are lovers and friends. And then there is enmity and tragedy: the shards and stains and yoke torrents…
• May 26, 2012

  The good camera and the stillness of transience

  Dearest C, I am looking at your photos. You have such a good eye for these quiet moments that open in the midst of all else. I think what all your photos share–not just these but all those you’ve shown me–is a sense of wonderment and a meditative eye for what is just now coming…
• May 25, 2012

  The teapot in the coffee shop

  I noticed the texture first, the graininess, that is. Then the color or rather colors, especially the white light coming from the viewer’s far left, the lantern lit up like a gig lamp. Then the wooden chairs with their swooping, semicircular backs. And finally, behind the traced-out line, my eye came to rest on the…
• February 10, 2012

  On the consolatio da filosofia

  The mouth of one crosses the mouth of the other. The first eye is visible but not the second eye, unless the second eye is also the eye of the other man. The two faces are not superimposed neatly, one upon the other. One lies behind the other. Much belongs to the young and not…