The Crucible of Changes, Pastel on Paper

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For what it’s worth, it’s never too late, or in my case too early, to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit… start whenever you want… you can change or stay the same. There are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. I hope you see things that stop you. I hope you feel things that you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life that you’re proud of and if you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.”

Benjamin Button

In Taoist philosophy, yin and yang arise together from an initial quiescence or emptiness (wuji, sometimes symbolized by an empty circle), and continue moving in tandem until quiescence is reached again. It is impossible to talk about yin or yang without some reference to the opposite, since yin–yang are bound together as parts of a mutual whole. Yin and yang transform each other: like an undertow in the ocean, every advance is complemented by a retreat, and every rise transforms into a fall. Thus, a seed will sprout from the earth and grow upwards towards the sky – an intrinsically yang movement. Then when it reaches its full potential height it will descend.

Nothing is completely Yin or completely Yang.

The nature of both Yin and Yang flows and changes with time.

One aspect increases the other decreases to maintain overall balance of the whole

Four possible imbalances exist:
* Deficiency Yang
* Deficiency Yin
* Excess Yang
* Excess Yin

Yin and Yang can be subdivided into additional aspects.

The Crucible of Changes, Pastel on Paper print. Click on image for larger view. Purchase limited-run 11×17 print for $17.00 + shipping and handling. See more here.

Growth Spurt, Pastel on Paper print. Click on image for larger view. Purchase limited-run 11×17 print for $17.00 + shipping and handling. See more here.

Shut Up, Pastel on Paper print. Click on image for larger view. Purchase limited-run 11×17 print for $17.00 + shipping and handling. See more here.

Glance In The Reliquary; Dry Pastels. More Ascender’s Dry Pastels. Purchase a small print.

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And this, then,
is the vision of that Heaven of which
we have heard, where those who love
each other have forgiven each other,

where, for that, the leaves are green,
the light a music in the air,
and all is unentangled,
and all is undismayed.

To My Mother by Wendell Berry

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There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

There Will Come Soft Rains By Sara Teasdale

The imagery in the poem is dreamlike; the idiosyncratic use of the adjective ’shimmering’ in the second line to describe sound rather than light, and the phrase ‘wild plum trees in tremulous white’ makes the image seem ambiguous and hard to imagine, as plum trees are not white (plum tree blossoms are however white, so it seems rather likely that this refers to a blooming plum tree in spring) and ‘tremulous’ suggests a kind of shaking movement which we would not normally associate with trees (probably tremulous is used in a figurative manner here, as for example ‘a tremor of excitement went through the audience’, so it is simply used to describe a feeling associated with the vision of a plum tree in full bloom).

The use of metaphor in the poem to further illustrate the image of the robins wearing ‘their feathery fire’ implies the idea not just of the colour of the feathers but also how warm they keep the birds. The robins are also personified; their birdsong is described as ‘whims’, which contrasts them with the swallows whose appearance, despite the unusual way their sound is described, is far more naturalistic. This draws attention to them and perhaps suggests they are emblematic of something more than birds which have outlived humanity; they are perhaps a symbol of the leaders who have led humanity to its destruction. The poet also places them on a fence rather than a more organic perch, further connecting them with humans rather than the natural world. Some have suggested substituting on a low fence-wire with over a glowing myre to eliminate this connotation.

The poem “There Will Come Soft Rains” from her 1920 collection Flame and Shadow inspired and featured in a famous short story of the same name by Ray Bradbury.

Little Robin Redbreast; Dry Pastel. Purchase a small print.

Eye Opening For Rose; Dry Pastels.More Ascender’s Dry Pastels. Print Purchase.

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Beauty is ever to the lonely mind
A shadow fleeting; she is never plain.
She is a visitor who leaves behind
The gift of grief, the souvenir of pain.

Beauty Is Ever to the Lonely Mind by Robert Nathan

Many of Nathan’s stories seem to have an other-worldly air about them, though he was never classed as a writer of science fiction as much as a writer of fantasy. In 1940, he wrote his most successful book, Portrait of Jennie, about a Depression-era artist and the woman he is painting, who is slipping through time.

“Time was when Robert Nathan toyed gently and amiably with his congenital melancholia. Always a writer who preferred fantasy to strict realism, he once put his deepest convictions into the mouths of dancing dogs, unwed mice and such philosophical creatures as Isaiah, the stoic horse of The Woodcutter’s House. When he was not bringing wisdom out of the mouths of baby tumblebugs and suckling pigs, he was engaged in mild satires on religion (The Bishop’s Wife, There Is Another Heaven). But Depression, if it did not quite succeed in bringing him down to solid earth, at least caused him to desert the seraphim and the kingdom of talking brutes. His first real commercial success, One More Spring, followed the fortunes of a group of indigent outcasts who sought shelter in a street cleaner’s tool shed in Central Park. Still in the realm of fantasy, this rueful little fable cut close enough to the essence of lean-year reality to please those who detest animals that behave like humans… (read more at Time)