Redbud

There were:

luques          grilled shrimp        manchego cheese

poetry           Riesling               The Kinks

couscous      Absinthe*             Beethoven

art by Joe Brainard     yellow tulips       tiny purple flowers

trees in blossom        scent of ginger, scent of purple        tiny portrait of Jim Carroll

Extraordinary Machine       omelets         fresh parsley, oregano

Red Renunculous          Redbud, Crabapple, Dogwood         Spider Chrysanthemum

Arvo Part        "In the Sprintime of His Voodoo"     peppermint & lavender soaps

Oysters!          Pelegrino         blackberries, passionfruit          tiny photo of an angel

"love the one you're with"        earrings made of crushed Roman glass

"you go back Jack/                do it again/                   we're turning round and round..."

people of all nationalities        many flashing cameras (Andrea's med-school graduation)

and finally there was Rilke:

XXI

Spring is back.  The earth

is like a child, the poem white

much, o much.....for the trouble

of long learning, she wins the prize.

Her teacher was strict.  We liked

the white in the beard of the old man.

Now, when we ask what the green

and the blue mean, she knows, she knows!

Earth, you lucky one, play

with the children.  We want to

catch you, happy earth. 

The happiest succeeds.

O, what her teacher taught her

and what stands in roots and

long difficult stems:  she sings it, she sings!

*Absinthe is now legal in two places in the United States:  Ann Arbor and California.

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This new book inspired me to make some bedroom art today.
It is full of Matisse's pictures of his scissor masterpieces--tres magnifique!
The creation that I made was the silhouette of a ballerina
cut out of lovely soft pink paper from Hollander's in Ann Arbor, Michigan. 
The paper is laced with gold threads and I highlighted the silhouette
with poinsettia-shaped red tissue paper.

I liked one Matisse's quotes from page 107 of the book:
"Any artist who manages to produce necessarily attains the religious.
Thus I am conscious of assembling the materials, or working to try to
put them in some kind of order, but when the picture is done,
I have the feeling that I am not the one who painted it;  God is."

Here is the poem that accompanies the art:

The Ballerina

She dipped her hand in a chest of tutus
it turned pink.
that pleased her.
she fell full length into the chest of tutus.
she turned pink.
pink in voice and singing.
the ballerina.

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