Green Horizon!

I ran into the field,
Dallas, that ugly giant corpse, was a shadow in a distance.

I ran and ran
Letting the mud have a fight with my boots,
Miles of unreachable horizon and the muddiest ranch on earth!

I ran to the taste of blood on my lips,
To the weeping of my lungs!

I ran to that unreachable horizon,
To maybe find something green in this muddy farm!

I ran and ran to the unreachable horizon,
My lips bled,
My lungs wept,
I ran to the end of my green hope,
Horizon was still in the distance!

Happy New Year! (Design credit Rahe Sabz)

Kitchen Haiku!

In the little jungle on the kitchen table,
The wild flowers were the only survivors.

The tulip was the first to go!

October 2007, California

Not A Fish Fossil!

The semester is over. Maybe I should say its ‘demanding part’ is over, for the work of a grad student is never-ending. These days I am mostly working on my exhibition project. It is very exciting and I hope it engages the viewer with the same excitement. Unlike the show project, my study on Dubuffet goes slowly. Dubuffet’s writings are very poetic and full of short witty segments. Take a look at a couple of them in adoration of lively, dynamic and unconventional art:

A Fish Fossil
As its timeliness retreats, a human work becomes what a fish fossil is to a fish. Please don’t hold it against me, but in my fish tank I prefer the humblest, the commonest, of ablets,* so long as it’s alive (and delirious to be alive), to the most illustrious fish fossil.

Necrophobia
A man asks for a companion, and he is brought the mummy of Thais. The most gorgeous woman in ancient Egypt, he is told. She doesn’t interest him he would rather have a live girl; the maid, for instance.**

Out of the Frying Pan, into the Fire
It’s funny to note how much the artists of today*** worry about the durability of their works. Things have gone so far that artists are denying themselves all bright and dazzling colors, because these colors might eventually tarnish. These ones prefer to paint in dull hues right away. Does the intoxication involved in art harmonize with such inhibitions? Many painters fully cognizant of the reason, work hard at bland but durable pieces rather than at more pleasurable ones, which they fear will last only ten years instead of fifty.****

Woman Trying on a Hat' (1943), by Jean Dubuffet

* Ablet is a small fresh-water fish.
** It is ironic that a couple of days ago the news of Louvre returning five fresco fragments to Egypt came out.
*** Dubuffet wrote these around 1945. I am wondering how much of it (importance of the durability of an art piece) is true for the artists of today – our today, the 3rd millennium today?
**** Dubuffet’s paintings in the 40s have vivid colors. Later, in the 50s his work becomes thick and monochromic, but he never used fade colors. (The quotes are from: Dubuffet, Jean, Notes for the Well-Read, trans. Neugroschel, 1945, in Jean Dubuffet Towards an Alternative Reality, Pace Publications inc., NY, 1987.)

Unbreakable!

A knot exhausted by the playful forces of her fingers
Gave up, unraveled itself to her eager hands.

A lost battle from the beginning.
Like believing in something, knowing it would break!

The knot, not a knot any more,
Only a piece of string resting on her lap,
No hope of wining the already lost game,
And no playful force in her tired fingers!

She picked the string up and began making an unbreakable knot!