What I seek

 "What I am seeking is not the real and not the unreal but rather the unconscious, the mystery of the instinctive in the human race." Amedeo Modigliani

Dispensation Art

 Dispensational Artist

The old Professor of Art was an ardent fundamentalist dispensationalist colorist, insisting that after the first two colors in the wheel, yellow and green, the rest were not meant for fundamental dispensational colorists, but for future Jewish artists as Chagall. And so they painted in their limited palette, wishing they were Jewish.

This is the silliness of the theology of dispensational teachings that said after Revelation 2, which was for the church, chapter three on was for the future Jews, not the church.

Blue moon

 I see

A blue moon rising

I see

Tranquility on the way

Do go out tonight

It’s bound to

Delight

I see mystery

On the way.

Bouquet boy

 Bouquet boy was up early Tuesday

For in his night musings 

The genteel were ordering

And he knew the day would be busy.

Lift away

 Lift away

The closeness was once a tame thing

All came within touching distance

Now the wild world lifts away

To return within the grasp some day.

Forever Soni

 Soni Forever Young

johnClare Stokes

Before he set out

On his final journey

he once again took

his magic box down

And with some 

Adjustments of buttons

And bellows

He made another 

Young

There were only 

Thirty six frames

And by the time it

Came to take his

Own portrait

The winder came to

A halt and would 

Not advance

But it mattered not

He had made 

Thirty six forever

Young

And that kept

The old man 

Content

All was not in vain.

To the memory of Soni Fine

Artist

Vincent birthday

 Vincent Van Crow

Today we honor Vincent Van Gogh on his birthday by placing our crow with his crows in the upper left in his final painting.

Bouquet boy thanks Vincent immensely 

From his works he borrows liberally 

Bouquet boy sends his crow this Monday 

to soar in fields of glorious color.

Symmetry

 And if thy symmetry 

Offend thee

Lop it off

Better to enter life 

With asymmetry

Than destruction with

Symmetry.

Abide

 Some they have the storm

Always just before them

Some they have the storm

Always inside them

Some they abide in the storm

And the Lord hides them.

Song of the Swallowtail

 Sonata in soar major

The Swallowtail song

Of which I have sung

Lifting spirits languishing 

Praise the returning 

 To the returning Swallowtail Kites

Moon spell

 When beneath a moon spell

All is far from a linear path

Alas with mirth it doesn’t last

it’s to the narrow straights to dwell.

Midway

 Midway

Johnclarestokes 

This past Palm Sunday 

There we  dwelt in pew cushioned

Diffused stained glass wonder

where even the lost felt comfort

It seemed so foreign to the Midway

in the stern austerity of the sabbath days

You were either all the way or far 

out of the narrow way

no almost persuaded

no sermon read to tickle the ears

there wasn’t time for vacillation

with yellow fever, crops not yielding

cottonmouths lurking, colic gaunting

eternity was an ever present specter

right there in the splintered pew

sitting right beside you 

You made peace with early on. 

Midway Baptist  

Union County,Florida

Wet Nikon

 I got a fancy Nikon who thinks it can swim

I take it down to let its lens get wet

In the shallows it cries , save me film!

In jumps ole F3 to rescue him!

Dead end

 Do roads really end? Some I am glad for their end, others I wish they would go on and on.

Roads end, rivers begin

Santa Fe, High Springs

Writing tree

 The writing tree by the Suwannee

This place I traced

And knew words were being written

For the branch was using tannic water

dipping and sending

to those downstream reading

Not home

 Not home

We went from tree to tree

Knocking

Searching for Him

Surely He would be in

Sadly nothing but the

Hollow ringing

Echoing deeply in

We will keep

Searching

Little Slayer

 Friday Anthology

John Clare Stokes

it was the yard that took it hard

the sweet gum scars were healing

slash pines rosin no longer oozing

jagged axe marks marking the spot 

about two feet above the ground

the lilies were again daring to come around

wiser this year from the beating

they took from the yellow shovel

the swing sighed from the stillness

wishing wistfully for some silliness

sky was trying to paint last years blue

it just couldn't seem to get the proper hue

sand pile struck out from the box

spread all about the one acre lot

once scattered never to return

for the castle roads and rivers yearned

even the caterpillars missed the little slayer

upon the asphalt being pillared

yards deserve better than this

yards little lads should never have to miss.

Palm Sunday

 Palm Sunday

Largely lost upon us

I hesitate to say I miss the pageantry

For some would say

It’s ritual and frivolity

Come and sit

 March Art

John Clare Stokes

Wasn't it good

To again see the 

first Lily to bloom

Soon the ones

You grew will

 Come too and

I shall show you

What we look

Forward to now

How good it is

Just to sit 

In March to

Welcome back

The Lily and

The hummers

Before the sweat

of summer 

While the greens

Are bright

The Blues in

Such contrast

Against

So many things

I know not their

Names come

And we just sit

And watch.

Old Homewood

Watercolor

Fathers Home place

Come ye

 Come ye staid daughters of Kentucky, its time around the blue to rally, we have vanquished the undefeated, now we face the Cardinal hated, led by the pitiful little Ricky, treating our fair ladies terribly, from Paducah to Paris to Pikeville come, heed the clarion call of old Caewood, Cals freshmen are maturing, come ye sons of Kentucky late, Wolverines we want in the final eight.

Onward

 Onward Christian artists

Hanging is your chore 

With the frame of Jesus

Sitting on the floor

Christ the class project

For the would be Gogh’s

Forward, little to the left

See the painting tilt

Onward Christian artists

Find a stronger nail

With the broken Jesus

How the artists failed

Come Rupp

 The Rupture and the

thousand win reign

Johnclarestokes 

Up on Pine Mountain

The fires were burning

Down in Pikeville

The snake handlers

were saying

The Rattlers are

Prophesying

The soon return

Of the Baron

The moon above is blue

Louisville we no longer dread

Cal’s one and done done

For years the Sheppard’s return 

It's a welcome ACC dread

Coach K is yet crying

St John Pitino is sighing why

Did I not stay

To see Rupp Returning

To send to reprobation

Texas Western

Chris Laettner

To see the banners hanging again!

Even so

Come Rupp

Roger out

 March 22nd is to the memory of Roger Sessler, on his birthday. Here Roger is in the trademark home made yellow jersey in the 2002 Horsefarm 100. We miss our friend.

The pull of glory

 The pull of glory

The drawing is sure and the pull is strong

O we resist for the time the journey home

Sufficient in the dwellings of our making

But soon that gentle hand we’re taking

Ushering us into the presence we so longed.

Mickeys mantle

 Mickey's Mantle   

by john clare  

 on a thousand fields 

 in a hundred tiny towns 

 there rings a familiar sound  

 of balls and bats of steel  

 around the diamond they run 

  to home their single goal   

to hear the old Mickey's yell,

 run little one! 

 their mantle of love passed

 to the precious souls...

Resurrection rising

 Resurrection rising 

Each day we neatly fold the

confessed sins in a little pile

in the corner of our tomb

encumbering us to remain

among the dead

to rise in resurrection life

First flight 

The exuberance of first flight

The open tomb far below

New creations first soar

Evermore into the light

Song

Malcolm Guite on Yeats' poem “Song of the Wandering Aengus”:

“I first read this poem as a young man, w[a]ndering around Ireland myself at the age of 19 on a full-blown romantic quest for truth and beauty that did not then find its fulfilment. I reread it now in middle age and each time I do it reconnects me with that first glimmering vision and questing heart of my youth, which has since begun to find its fulfilment in the beauty of the gospel, but still quests and yearns. For every Christian there is both a first vision and an unfulfilled ‘not yet’, and we must all say, in the words of another Irishman also indebted to Yeats, ‘I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.”

(From Word in the Wilderness.)

“The Song of Wandering Aengus"

W. B. Yeats

I went out to the hazel wood, 

Because a fire was in my head,

And cut and peeled a hazel wand, 

And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing, 

And moth-like stars were flickering out, 

I dropped the berry in a stream 

And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor 

I went to blow the fire a-flame, 

But something rustled on the floor, 

And someone called me by my name: 

It had become a glimmering girl

With apple blossom in her hair 

Who called me by my name and ran 

And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering 

Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands; 

And walk among long dappled grass, 

And pluck till time and times are done

The silver apples of the moon, 

The golden apples of the sun.

Waldron Landing

Falling Creek

Suwannee River

All abounding

 All abounding 

John Clare Stokes

The first lift

Of chalice wet

Broken and bereft

Grace abounding gift

The second mile

Of dusty dry

Hearts draw nigh

Grace abounding now

The night watch

Of empty tombs

Flames in upper rooms

Grace abounding comes

The ascending yearn

Into glorious clouds

Soon thunders loud

Grace abounding returns

Kiss the Son

Repentance given still

Comes graves chill

Grace abounding comes

Bones alive now run

Price Creek Cemetery

The three in one

Ole stok

 Get o'er it

Sure the oak is now long fallen

With all the fond recallin' 

Firewood to warm another

Boards for some deck afar 

It ain't doing a lick of good

To ponder on the what should's 

The oak bid it's time shadin'

So quit the pity pond wadin' 

No one even cared that ole oak

Meant so durn much to 

This ole Stok.

Topple it

 It's just an observation I'm making

Sure we all miss the untimely  taking

The spouse, the pet, the place

Gone and leaving us to face

The void no one or another can fill

But dang it, stop wallowing us

In the memory of the sorry ole Chimney.

Dreams

 In the evening dreams

There were unspoken things

Of ones I must have known

Why else in dreams i long

Or were they simply sirens

My unstopped ears hearing

Leading up to shoals

Into the churning undertow 

The scent of the wild

The waters raging loud

In the evening dreams

I'm drowning.

Rachel

 Rachel Kitty of the Cedar Key Artist's Co-Op

Of all the art, the thing that intrigued me was the kitty.

Zone system

 The foreign language of film. The flesh tones were placed on Zone XI and the exposure was for 1/60 sec at f8. The Tri-X negatives were developed as usual in HC-110 dilution B or five minutes at 68 degrees. The print was made on Varigam paper, Grade 2(no filter), and developed two minutes in Dektol diluted 1:2. The face was dodged for about 25% of the total enlarging exposure.

Primitive Camp

 The old time foot  washers

 

The tired ole Primitive campers

With the dirty, callous feet

Would stoop and truly weep

Following the Lord's example

Soon came the time shares

The condos by the beaches

Feet pedicured by Vietnamese 

The ole Primitive Campers

Ne'er the ole bunions to bear.

33

 Now that its been thirty three years since....  I really have come to miss....going into that office beneath the stairs....seeing the ole turkey feet paper clips...the gallery of familiar photographs.... hung from Sopchoppy to Monticello to Wilmore to Williston....the bald is beautiful sign...Goliath the boxer beneath the desk....flipping through the theology books.... the  sound of cars across Noble stopping at Travis Station...the familiar smell of well-aged wood and carpet...these are the things I shall never forget.

IT

 Itchetucknee Theology  

 by john clare   

 To be the first to heed the call 

 Come!  

Dance upon the sweet water 

 Go where the Manatee knows 

 to the flow unending   

strong and clear 

 Leap! 

 to the heaven leap  

 Tell those who dwell above 

 The sweet walk is below 

 deep beneath the shaky boat

  Come! 

 Hear the heron call 

  to the passer by 

  Know! 

 Know you have come 

 to the source of sweet flow  

 take the uncreated hand 

 step on and simply

 Know

Lips kissed

 I sought to make a list

of all the lips I most missed

who left without e’en a kiss

but oh, how long the list.

Farewell

 Farewell, old Coila’s hills and dales,

Her heathy moors and winding vales;

The scenes where wretched Fancy roves,

Pursuing past unhappy loves!

Farewell my friends! farewell my foes!

My peace with these, my love with those-

The bursting tears my heart declare,

Farewell, my bonie banks of Ayr.

The gloomy night is gathering fast

Robert Burns

47 since

 Now that its been forty-seven years since....  I really have come to miss....going into that office beneath the stairs....seeing the ole turkey feet paper clips...the gallery of familiar photographs.... hung from Sopchoppy to Monticello to Wilmore to Williston....the bald is beautiful sign...Goliath the boxer beneath the desk....flipping through the theology books.... the  sound of cars across Noble stopping at Travis Station...the familiar smell of well-aged wood and carpet...these are the things I shall never forget.

Monday metaphor

 Moody Monday

They are the worst moments

These mid-March Mondays

Musing morbidly cursing my

Taming longing again for the 

old purple shades of sin

Flesh wars raging in the warm

Golden morning light

The crow diving over the 

Calm red-shoulder hawk

Making a metaphor for me

Sitting atop that pine 

While Cat Stevens I guess

Will forever chime

Oh baby it's a wild world.

Steve Coleman

 Photographer John Stokes posted some soulful thoughts about his frustrations and his weariness of 'The Beautiful' photograph. And why a beautiful, yet shallow photograph, is often more lauded than a photograph with less 'surface beauty', despite that photograph having a deeper, richer story and character and soul. 

Of course, 'audience reaction' is all dependent on your audience. So you do need to choose your audience wisely. Nonetheless, it is also true in life. We only need to reference Justin Bieber, Kim what's her name and the Housewives of, well any number of cities. A quality which many of us would like, is often hijacked by the masses. 

Here is John's post. I'll 'cut and paste' here so more people see it (Facebook does not like links) but I will post the link later in the comments section. And thank you John for the nice mention of me. ( I get embarrassed when people do that ) 

"Something I find to be true is people for the most part just want to see something beautiful. And, they do not want to engage beyond viewing, then moving on. 

This I find to occur often, one example being when I posted a scenic of Cedar Key from long ago. It got around three hundred views. I followed this up with a photograph of the old Sundance bar and a couple and their little dog fishing from the pier at Cedar Key. To me, these two photographs were much more interesting and intriguing. But they both received around fifty views.

I am almost to the point of growing weary of posting photographs that receive the beautiful moniker. I really do not know what I am after, for I too gravitate toward beauty, it is in our redeemed nature. But on a deeper level I desire to go beyond the surface, obvious beauty of a scene to the essence level of portraying pathos, sorrow, hope, joy, anything but beautiful. Steve Coleman the photographer from Australia uses a Mamyia7 film camera capable of producing some of the sharpest photographs imaginable, yet he deliberately chooses to blur his images by hand holding long exposures. He is weary of the arcane, landscape cookie cutter, beautiful scenes so many crank out with their Canon Mark threes.

I would ultimately strive for the photograph to touch people on a deeper level, even to make them squirm, maybe question a reason for something, to cause a reaction, an engaging. And is that not what is at the heart of art? To convey a worldview of the artist? To cause one to view the world on a deeper level beyond the easy beautiful and moving on to the next beautiful.

Ray Stevens said Everything is Beautiful, In its own way,  and he was right. It is also a terrible cliche and each time I receive a beautiful remark, I think of the song and say, whoops,I did it again, stayed upon the surface.

And I will admit, we all are out for recognition. We are busy tooting our horns and screaming for notice.

It is difficult to shun the adulation and dare perhaps offend or challenge by offering photographs or works  that go to another level, even a darker level, for it is sometimes in darkness where light is fully appreciated.

I think of the photojournalist Eugene Smith.  In the seventies I was greatly moved and influenced with his photographs of the children and families in Japan sick from mercury poisoning from a chemical plant in their community. The birth defects were rampant. Smith captured in stark black and white the pathos, the sad humanity, and yet, the boundless love of a mother to hold dearly her deformed child.

Moving stuff. Way beyond the beautiful I am too prone to. Images I hold in my mind to this day. Who holds the beautiful sunset with azaleas I just took? Few." ~ John Stokes

Flee the dream

 Hidden hawk

All in a split second the red shouldered came crashing from the trees, barely enough time to swing and shoot, much less to check settings.

Hidden hawk

 Hidden hawk

All in a split second the red shouldered came crashing from the trees, barely enough time to swing and shoot, much less to check settings.

Price Creek

 On a hill beside the Price Creek

The pioneers sleep

Some since eighteen thirty two

Before Columbia was a County

Fought in most all the wars

From Indian uprisings

To the far foreign shores

Settled the land made a stand

And the dogwood blossoms drop

Quietly so not to disturb 

The pioneer sleeping. A very beautiful and timely post, John Clare Stokes. Buried in Price Creek Cemetery, along with his wife and a number of their family members and descendants, is Private Theophilus Weeks, who served in the Continental Line, North Carolina troops, during the Revolutionary War, the only documented Revolutionary War Patriot buried in Columbia county and one of our earliest pioneer settlers, with many descendants in this area. On Saturday, April 20th at 11:00 AM, the Edward Rutledge Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, and a number of descendants of Private Weeks, will dedicate a DAR Patriot marker, present an historical program and lay a wreath at the gravesite of Theophilus Weeks. The Sons of the American Revolution are also participating in this event. The public is invited.

March of madness

 The March of Madness past

Like an American Pie do you recall the day

the madness died?

When all the boys in blue knelt during the anthem

Claiming the black lives mattered more

Were you standing on some asphalt court

free throw line?

And did you hurl that ball over that chain 

link fence?

Or did you just sit and throw the old K hat away

I know it will always be the day we drove 

The Chevy to the levee

But the virus wouldn’t die.

But to me it will always be the day

Little boy blue removed his finger from 

the dike.