Happy New Year, New Moment, Blue Moon

If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly

noticeable, these things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable.

If you will love what seems to be insignificant and will in an unassuming manner,

as a servant, seek to win the confidence of what seems poor, then everything

will become easier, more harmonious, and somehow more conciliatory,

not for your intellect—that will most likely remain behind, astonished—

but for your innermost consciousness, your awakeness,

and your inner knowing." —Rainer Maria Rilke

Full Moon in Blue, Santa Fe, New Mexico. ©Elsa Kendall

Once in a blue moon is here, December 31st 2009. What makes it so special is that it comes not only on New Year's Eve, but is ushering in a brand new decade. To learn more about this phenomenon you can check this link.

Inspired by a meeting I recently had, I've been revisiting a book I've not looked at in a while, the poet Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet". It is a treasure indeed. There are so many parts worth quoting, but this seems appropriate for now.

How could we be capable of forgetting the old myths

that stand at the threshold of all mankind,

myths of dragons transforming themselves at the last moment into princesses?

Perhaps all dragons in our lives are really princesses just waiting

to see us just once being beautiful and courageous.

Happy New Decade

New Year

New Moment

A limited edition of this print is now available. For information please click here.

Happy Winter Solstice

Look closely to see Parlez's special greeting.

Click here to go to the treasure.

Wishing you all a Blessed Winter Solstice and nature's beginning of a brand New Year!

The Winter Solstice: Astronomically marks the beginning of shortening nights and lengthening days.

Interpretation varies from culture to culture, but most hold a recognition of rebirth.

Birds of a Feather: Amazing Crop Circles

Just browsing through the wondrous etsy.com pages and came across these images of crop circles taken by a chap in the UK. They are both from 2009. This first one looks a lot to me like peacock feathers. I have long been a fan of these amazing feathers, not only for the colors of the exquisite eye, but also of the symbolism that accompanies it.

The second one looks very much to me like an owl, another favorite bird of mine. Both of these were made this year, and the jump from geometry to geometric birds is quite something.

Truly amazing, both!

There are a lot of naer-sayers about the crop circles, but I ask you: who could possibly do this on a tractor in the middle of the night?!

To see more of Steve Alexander's work, you can click here.

Vivaldi: The Painter

Villa Tempietto Barbaro, Maser, Italy. Designed by Andrea Palladio Photo: Stefan Bauer

This morning I've been listening to BBC Radio 3 on line. What a gift. There is a special on Vivaldi this weekend. We all know The Four Seasons, often played a great deal this time of year, but I knew little else about him. I had visited areas where he lived and worked, though, and was fortunate enough to spend time at this amazing villa on a hot summer day, after a lunch with a friend and a lot of chilled Lugana. It didn't detract from the experience at all; the Veronese frescos are still vibrant in my inner eye, and the beauty of the villa (partially still inhabited) is timeless.

If you are interested in spending an hour with Catherine Bott speaking with the wonderful conductor Claudio Scimone (who at 75 says he's much more enthusiastic now than at 25) at his home in Padua, Italy, click here. A lot of illuminations with response to the counter-reformation, universal liberty for all, and how music replaced words that could never be spoken without fear. All interspersed with some wonderful selections from I Solisti Veneti, a group from one of my favorite regions in Italy, that has specialized in showcasing the work of composers from the Veneto for the last 50 years. It will be available for one week.

Vivaldi is a great painter of music. His bright colors remembers the sky of Tiepolo, and his dark colors are the colors of Tintoretto and of Tiziano. Even if these artists were living before Vivaldi, Vivaldi was playing their world. The simplicity of the architecture of Palladio is the simplicity of Vivaldi's shape, and it's also the great weapon for which Vivaldi conquers the whole world.

—Claudio Scimone

If we could use only weapons of beauty and mystery...

Allegory of Wisdom and Strength, c. 1580

Paolo Veronese

Jeanne's 12th Annual Craft Fair Saturday December 5th

To view larger, please click on the image.

You are warmly invited to Jeanne's 12th Annual craft fair at her home on Saturday from 10 am - 5 pm. Louise (wearing the hat) and I will be there with more hand-made items: crochet hats and fingerless gloves, and Pearl Girl jewelry. Lots of great eats and hot chai as well, and other wonders from some gifted artisans.

521 Del Norte Lane, off of Paseo de Peralta, near the main Post Office at Federal Place. Paseo going west, past Scottish Rite Temple, right on Grant, over the little bridge, left on Rosario, first right on Del Norte Lane.

Between the Worlds

~Dusk is neither night or day~

I love this idea... The same can be said for dawn.

Sunset at the ninth hole, Quail Run, Santa Fe, during a wedding celebration.

The flowers on the arch are real, and were just gorgeous.

Wisdom

I was walking past a little area of our shed and saw this. The innate wisdom of the creatures is just stunning to me. How does this friendly spider know how to make such a wonderful web? Most have seven different glands for each type of filament they need to create.

I had my suspicions but just found out for sure that, "The tensile strength of spider silk is greater than the same weight of steel and has much greater elasticity."
For more fascinating info on spiders' webs you can click here.

"Without love, wisdom's birth is impossible.

For wisdom is knowledge correctly applied through the construct of love."

HAPPY HOWLIN-EEN!

Ed visited recently in Santa Fe. We went to a matinee of Where the Wild Things Are and then stopped by a little early pumpkin carving party at cousin John's house. Bet you can't tell where our inspiration came from... :-)

Musical Fun

FUNNNNNN!

. . .endurance requires real internal work,

a daily flexing of spiritual muscle that is grist for the mill of the Gods,

grinding slowly and growing our beauty.

—Judith Gayle

“True strength is delicate”

“True strength is delicate”

so said Louise Nevelson, a Russian-born American abstract sculptor.

She had 88 years to experience and share this lovely thought as well

“I never feel age. . .

If you have creative work, you don't have age or time.”

~We are each of us the divine painter of our own Master piece~

The painting above is by one of my favorite artists who happens to live here in Santa Fe, Carol Anthony.

The egg altar is in the home of my dear neighbors, Lola's parents.

And the robin's eggs are the creation of one of the many wondrous birds who live(d) here in our neck of the woods.

America's Best Idea

"I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown,

for going out I found, was really going in" —John Muir

A new film by Ken Burns premiers this Sunday on PBS. It's called "The National Parks: America's Best Idea", and is an epic, six-part feature that took five years to film. Excerpts have been shown on PBS and the cinematography looks outstanding. For a look behind the scenes click here. It is so beautifully done, as usual with his work. He just keeps getting better and better. It runs in two hour segments, Sunday through Friday. Enjoy~

A Quiet Corner in My Neighbors' Garden

I think this qualifies as a shhhhh, Secret Garden...

Where do you go when it's 90º in the shade?

To the shade... next to your favorite cat mint bush... and wait for a bit.

Maybe do a little day dreaming... maybe wait for someone to come by and give you some rubs.

Hunting the Hidden Dimension

I was looking through ASMP's website and found this photographer's work. And then this amazing image. I shamelessly copied it to my desktop to look at again and again. And then I decided to share it with you, giving him full credit.

You can view it larger here by clicking on it. If you would like to see more of his work, please click here.

This image seemed to illustrate to me the kind of brink on which we all currently stand; in the midst of a vast unknown, full of peril, full of possibility. It looks like White Sands, NM, a bizarre configuration of gypsum sand in the middle of a desert basin. I was there in December once and remember the distinct feeling of strange as I took off my shoes and wiggled my toes in cool, white sand without the sound of ocean waves.

Things are not always as they seem, and that is a blessing to understand. Our minds are so limited, and such tricksters! Speaking of which, I was enthralled to watch Nova on PBS this last week, from which the title of this post comes. It was on fractal geometry and you can watch the whole thing here. I loved seeing how many dried and true mathematicians poo pooed the work of Benoit Mandlebrot several years ago, and literally told him he was nuts. Einstein was right, "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds". Mandlebrot wrote The Fractal Geometry of Nature, and I look forward to checking that out. Here's an image from it from Wikipedia (where else?)

I am vastly under-qualified to explain it so best to check it out for yourself but essentially "A fractal is generally "a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole." Suffice to say: it is cool!

In the program a physicist by the name of Nathan Cohen was interviewed. He was a Hammer (a Ham radio enthusiast) and a professor at Boston University in 1988. His landlord forbid him to put up an antennae on the outside of the building. By chance, Cohen went to a lecture by Mandlebrot and became intrigued by this work. Long story shorter, he went home and pondered the problem of the forbidden antennae and decided to try something out on his own. Instead of taking a line of wire, he took that same line and bent it to look something like this:

It worked. It worked better than a traditional antennae. It worked so well he continued to explore it, and in the mid 1990s obtained a patent. His work has contributed to the evolution of cell phones. You can read more here.

What has an image of a person doing the yoga tree pose in the middle of a 'beach' in the middle of a desert, have to do with fractal geometry and a man who was told no, and took the no and moulded it into something exceptional? I cannot explain why to you in words, I just know it does. I also know that when we are confronted with no's and cannot do's, with apparent limitations in our perceived physical realities, that inherent in this is a great, big, fat uncollected blessing. It is unknown, and it may seem perilous. But it is full of possibility.

They Fledged On the Full Moon

This was taken a few days before, with mama delivering a nice bug

to one of her three chicks.The full story coming soon!

Independence Day

On July 4th Parlez and I went exploring in the trees. It been a while since I'd played with him and my camera. We had a lot of fun.

Here he is doing his Cheshire Cat impression.

As I craned my neck upward he said to me

"Mama, guess what?"

What, Parlez?

"I can see Russia from here."

Really?

"Nah, not really. That's one of the dumbest things I've ever heard."

Lola and the Green Smoothie

Today I was pup sitting for a lovely girl called Lola. She and I went down to the garden to pick fresh greens for a nice summer green smoothie, because... I found a Vita Mix in her kitchen. (And it really is her kitchen :) If you have never used one, they are amazing whipper whirlers that blend solid food into a pureed liquid, while still retaining the desire to actually drink it.

We put in: arugula, red chard, blueberries, apple, peach, young coconut flesh and coconut water, strawberries, unfiltered apple juice, and a cup of still mineral water. You can add just about anything as long as you remember to keep the greens dark and leafy. The sweetness of the fruit makes the greens taste delicious, and the enzymes in the raw begin working on your system immediately.

Tips I just learned: Keep the ingredients simple–mine may have been a bit too exotic. Don't use starchy veggies like carrots. And most important, don't chug your smoothie. You are meant to chew it, so that the saliva starts to break everything down, and begins to secrete digestive enzymes to aid in digestion. Voila!

My sweetie had been gardening and he said the ache in his shoulders went away about a half an hour after drinking it. Can I say he was none too keen to taste it in the first place? Now, he's a convert. Lola, on the other paw, still prefers her dog biscuits.

Fabulous Femme Photographer: Lillian Bassman at 92

ARTS / ART & DESIGN | July 17, 2009

Culture: Femininity, Salvaged

By GINIA BELLAFANTE

Photo by Damon Winter/The New York Times

A great article in the New York Times about Lillian Bassman here.

I'm going through my collection of photography books. I found one by Lillain Bassman and wondered who she was, apart from being an editorial and commercial fashion photographer. "Was" being the operative word. To my delight she is alive and well, living in NYC, and using Photoshop on her old fashion photographs, like every 92 year-old photographer does. Wot?

It is very inspiring to me to see she was a graphic designer in the 40's, a photographer in the 40's–60's, and now a digital dame (for the last 5 years). I bet her Keds are part of the secret... Thank you LB for sending me the link.

Wonder and One Blue Eye...

Seahorse in the desert. ©2008, Elsa Kendall.

A little point and shoot close to the glass and this guy and I had a very nice interaction.

His eye is about the size of a pin head.

I love these marvelous creatures and feel blessed to have spent some time with this one

and his tank mates. Click on him and you'll see more eye to eye. Magic... Whimsey...

Julia in the Raw

Photo from National Geographic's website. Click here to go see, and listen.

I just found this blog through a google group for the pure and wondrous doTerra essential oils. Julia has some amazing recipes for green smoothies (blech, you might say, but they look surprisingly good ;), and various other inspirations.

Her latest post shows a prairie dog praying/contemplating, with a quote from Terry Tempest Williams' latest book, Finding Beauty In a Broken World. I'm currently reading and loving this: I've spoken about Terry's work before on Bird's Eye View. Click here to see this dear photo of the prairie dog, and read a brief excerpt from her book.

Utterly Amazing: The Living Camera

Photographic "Bake Sale" at the Santa Fe Photo Workshops this Saturday

If you happen to be in town on July 11th for the International Folk Art Market, or for any other reason, please take a short detour and come by the Santa Fe Workshops' HQ to browse and add a print or two (or three, or four, or more!) to your collection.

Karen Kuehn, David Michael Kennedy, and I will have vintage silver prints, cibachromes, C-prints, polaroid transfers, and some pigment and encaustic pieces for sale this Saturday, 9 am - 12:30 pm. Prices from $50.

Click on this link for Google directions and a map. Come by, smell the roses, crunch an apple, and share some stories. There may even be brownies...

Need more info? You can find me here: blog@elsakendall.com

Seeing Into the Life of Things

"With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy,

we see into the life of things." –William Wordsworth

Photographed at the Birch Aquarium, Scripps Institute of Oceanography,

San Diego, California. ©Elsa Kendall, all rights reserved.

The Sand Dancer

It's just past the Bacardi ad... Thank you Angela for sharing this with me.

Thou

I've been doing some research lately. Without the internet I don't know how I would have come across as many jewels as I have. The Internet Sherpa led me to another: Thou Noesis, which means divine intelligence. Which led me to some jewels about Athena, who was probably of Minoan descent, but associated with the city of Athens; and who was apparently known by a higher title as well: Thou noesis. Her companion animal was an owl.

I remembered the owl I had found on the new Capricorn moon last year, and called her Athena. I'd never found an owl before. Perhaps this is where the 'wise owl' idea comes from; its association with Athena, who is the goddess of wisdom, among other things. And Sweetie recently came across a beautiful owl feather which he gave me, and graces one of the many 'altars' I seem to create around my creative spaces. Somehow, this is all connected. 

It got me ruminating on the English language. And how, once upon a time, we called one another thou. And perhaps most of us had no idea we were acknowledging the divine in each other, just by using this one little word. I wonder when we stopped using it. William sure used it a lot... You can click on his name for a mini history lesson.

More of Athena, the little screech owl... Clicking on the image will give you a larger, clearer view.

Her feet and legs amazed me...

Sleeping soundly...

Rear Curtain Sync

No, this is not a new type of furniture. It's a flash setting... :)

I'm not too fond of artificial light, honestly, unless maybe it's light painting. But with Parlez, flash is fun. Man, is he fast. He's a great training buddy, I have to say. Not the best stand in for a bride-to-be, but he's pretty darn decent. He's not too fond of flash either, as you can tell.

I won't tell you what he brought in and ate right in front of me just after this shot. All except for the entrails, the nose and two very long front teeth. I won't tell you, but judging by the condition of the teeth it had led a long and very full life...

Just Because...

Who was she? I'm working on learning more about that for a writing project... But she was pretty amazing, and unfortunately paid the price for that. However, we hope things have changed a bit in the last 1560 years since her assassination. She appears to have been an inspiration for many. More on her here.