Above the Vast Water

Above the vast water
waves of blue far below
I cast myself into a sea of air
Beyond the land,
beyond the shorelines
The confines of earth in my wake
I soar through whitecaps of cloud
like a swimmer, plunging ahead
So easy I stroke
through boundless skies
the color of lake and color of sky
merging into a horizon
of undeniable joy
I bathe in the blue,
spirit cleansed
purified in the pristine air
One quick gasp of breath
my soul releases its weight
as I turn my horizon
and watch it invert
The weight of my life and
all of its sorrows fall away
in a steep tumbling waves
then rise up to crest the top
on unbroken vigorous wing.
My thoughts like birds
towards the sky taking flight
rising up from the earth
as we take wing
to answer the call of our souls
in the language of air
- Brigid

Well folks, it was either writing that or a Scandahoovian lutefisk haiku

Mysterious cod
we smother you in lye
now you taste like glue

Someone asked me why I write, why I take photos. I'm not sure exactly. They are hobbies I just took up in the last 3 or 4 years, as work involved much more travel and I needed a way to unwind at night that didn't involve my lugging a piano or other musical instrument around. Creativity for me, the expression of it, through picture or word, is like my flying.

Art when really understood is the divinity in every human being. It is simply a question of doing things, anything, well. It is not an outside, extra thing limited to drawing or painting but is part of our soul. Some of the most gifted artists I know aren't artists as normally defined, or writers as typically viewed, but are bloggers, crafters of bits and pieces of humanity in all its beauty and ugliness, offering us uncanny reflections of the warrior spirit in all man.

When that type of artist is alive in any person, whatever his or her kind of work may be, he or she becomes an inventive, courageous questing creature who captures the interest of others, provoking, informing and simply opening our minds up to discovery. Where the mainstream media is trying to close the book, he or she opens it up, showing that there are many more pages left to come.

Nations in turmoil try and stifle him. Yet, the world would stagnate without him, just as the world is beautiful with him; for he makes us think and feel and strive as he himself gains in the work, not outside of it. Museums of art will not make a country an artistic country. But where there is the art spirit there will be precious works to fill museums and libraries. Better still, there will be the happiness that is in the making. Art lends itself to symmetry, relativity, the laws of ordered growth, the economy of life -things we all need to recognize.

The true artist regards his work as a means of talking with men, of saying his beliefs to himself and to others. It is not a question of being paid for it though when I've had my work in a magazine and received a check for it, I was quite pleased. It is not necessarily a question of willing acceptance on the part of the public. I have people that like my writing, I've had the jealous troll that derided it. That is not why we do it. If we are welcomed and paid it is very good, but whether or not we must say our say. And many are the better for it.


For myself, the photography, the writing, is a way of celebrating, of showing what it means to be alive, and the most salient feature of existence is the unthinkable odds against it. For every way that there is of being here, there's an infinity of ways of not being here. Historical accidents wipe out whole universes with each movement of the clock. Statistics label us ridiculous. Thermodynamics prohibit us. Jihad Terrorists want to kill us, if we're not taken out first by hurricane, flood, ice or tainted food. Fate does not discriminate, snatching equally from brightness or shallow routine of purposeless life, without warning, in a inscrutable tick of the worlds clock. Gone without tears, only a moment to grasp one's annihilation at the very hands which illustrated by ordinary, the entrusted restraint of a life.


Life, by any reasonable measure, is impossible, and my life—just being here right now, in this place, with those around me who love me, amazingly more so.

I remember a moment when I was staying at my family home after my Dad had suffered a mild stroke, walking into the home of my childhood, carrying groceries and seeing my Dad so still on the couch, it appeared he wasn't breathing. For just an instant, everything went into high relief, like a scene in a 3-D movie - the Safeway bag dead weight in my arm, the sun glinting off my old piano against the wall, Dad's slippers on the floor. My whole life suspended, bathed in bright June sunlight. In the short terrible space between that moment and the next, when he opened his eyes and smiled, I got a glimpse of grief as it would look in this new incarnation. And perhaps, for those of us who have had that glimpse, it is partly the encroaching darkness that makes the light so vivid.


Artists in the 17th century understood this so well, depicting it in paintings of luscious fruit and wildlife, a ripe red apple next to a fox so carefully wrought that a single drop of blood can be seen along a fine whisker. In studies of faces that bloom in layers of ancient varnish, the curve of a a child's cheek revealed gradually, the glint of light on a coat of arms or the promising, secret gleam in a woman's eye that belie the fact that the persons in these visages are hundreds of years gone. For that moment, in those paintings they are still with us.

These things that I love, writing, art, music, are a way of saying, in the face of all that impossibility, or dangers that lurk in dark streets or dark clouds, just how worth celebrating it is to just be here. The other thing that I love, my weapons of history and defence, their care and use, speaks as to the knowledge that I will protect those things that I cherish in every way possible.


So I try and write a little every day, take a few photos. There are many days I give up needed sleep in order to do such things. But if a day goes by without my doing something related to these things, it's as though I've forgotten something as essential as breathing, as though I had neglected to get up in the morning. I usually do these things mostly alone, not from any anti social tendencies, but because frankly, I prefer my own company to large groups of people, parties and noise.

I spent part the day reviewing reports of violent ends, and as I began to press pen to paper, my eyelids were heavy, my own mortality bringing on the weariness of an unwanted nap. As I gather my thoughts today , I think about those that were snatched from us and their spirits linger in my mind, soft as down, yet still as lead. I become aware of my own heartbeat, the whoosh of my own secret blood through my veins, my simple aliveness.


I look out on a vista of ice and snow and see the sun coming down. I have a cup of coffee, I have the day off, and the house is warm. The sunlight comes in through a yawning window, dust motes flying on sun rays, fainting surges of motion. It's a bright sharp day, filled with the wanton capacity of winter, the unbelievable soft sheen of promise.

I put down my work, as I'm off duty anyway, and I put my hands to keyboard. My mind empties of worry and fear and with the vibrant stroke, a brush of fingers on keys, there begins the painting of words. There are no worries, I am simply here with the extraordinarily perfect prayer of another day on this earth. I am alive, and that is something to savor, with slow quiet and firm loving hand.

And shouldn't I have,
knowing that this might be the last,
raced my craft around the sky once more,
just to feel the stick clasp my hand back,
joined in the thrall,
dancing with the wind
waltzing with the blue
knowing that never after should I feel so free,
so sure in risk, so sure in this, my calling
taming this sky with the pride of experience.
my future just a glint in the horizons
I hurl myself up to meet my fate

- Brigid