Reality has Eaten Away So Much of Us….But Summer, at last

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Summer Grass

 

for Judy Brow, 1940-2019, friend. 

One year, I sent her my lilac bush clear across half the continent.  It did not make it but she never said I was mad. 

Reality ate my lilac bush and now it is eating its way through my heart. I stamped my little feet and said: I have had enough of this.

 

The poets knew to come.  The Swedish one said:  Summer at last (below)

The second, the Pseudonymous Watt said:   Then you laugh amid, and atop the dance of bright lights……(from Everything Forever, 6/13/2019)

 

 

Tomas Tranströmer, 1931-2015, Swedish

Translated by Robert Bly, 2001, 2017, from The Half-Finished Heaven, 2001,2017

 

 

So much has happened.

Reality has eaten so much of us.

 

But summer, at last. 

 

A great airport — the control tower leads down

load after load with chilled

 

 

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Downward for the Moment, 2017, oil on canvas. Georg Baselitz, German born 1938.

  Private collection loaned to the Hirschhorn Museum, Washington, DC in 2018.

The museum noted that this painting is based loosely on Marcel Duchamp’s 1912 Nude Descending a Staircase

 

 

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Dystopian Couple, 2015, oil on canvas. Georg Baselitz, German born 1938.

Courtesy of the artist and White Cube to the Hirschhorn Museum, Washington, DC in 2018.

 

 

people from space.

 

  Grass and flowers — we are landing. 

 

 

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Woodstock, NY. With loving thanks. 

 

 

The grass has a green foreman. 

 

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Alluaudia ascendens, a succulent native to Madagascar.  Longwood Gardens Conservatory, Pennsylvania.

 

 

I go and check in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

8 thoughts on “Reality has Eaten Away So Much of Us….But Summer, at last”

    1. Thank you for your words. And especially for recalling that I am not – we are not! – just posters on a blog site but real humans!

      The flowers are one of the long-term outcomes of Lady Bird Johnson’s encouragement to plant native wild flowers. Do you remember that campaign?

      Best, Sarah

      1. I don’t remember the campaign, but I’ve heard of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Texas.

        Our blog posts are carefully crafted, designed to be static creations for the world to visit and admire or learn something from, our own little museum galleries. (I like to refer to my blog as my Cabinet of Curiosities.) However, we live in the real world, whether we talk about it on our blogs or not. In the two years that I’ve been reading other blogs, one blogger lost her mother and another lost his wife. These losses came as a surprise to me. Aren’t we in control? Don’t we get to design our lives like we do our blog posts?

        Enjoy the flowers, Sarah! Brad

      2. I know that people pour out their lives on certain social media. It is possible that there is slightly less than that on this kind of platform. Perusing some blogs, I get the idea that this kind of media – and others – are escapes from the real lives and the real problems.

        I suppose all uses are ok so long as people are not hurting themselves or others and are aware how they are being tracked.

        Thanks for your comment here, Brad.

    1. Thanks for your words.

      A lot of this artist’s works are upside down. It is his trademark signature, apparently. I think it is just a eye-catching device to distinguish himself from the pack. But that does not stop him from being considered one of the most influential German artists of his day.

      Shall I send you a post on him? Sarah

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