Blog – Spinozablue

The move is all but complete, and we’re fairly close to being back to normal. The main thing needed right now is for our many fine contributors to let us know if there are formatting issues with their works. We did our best to keep the originals intact, but for some of them, especially the poems, the ride was far too bumpy and jostled them out of position, here and there. Please contact us to let us know of any typographical errors, and we’ll fix them ASAP.

We’ve also added two new poems by Doreen LeBlanc, who has graced the pages of Spinozablue before.… |To be Continued “Mid-Summer’s Return”

More Breaths for a Change

May 15, 2020 Spinozablue

County Clare and the Sea. Photo by Douglas Pinson. 2003.

It’s not difficult
But it is impossible
To know when the self Appears unhidden untainted
Bereft of the artificial

Like a diamond in the earth
Before the mines

The rings the false smiles
The campaigns to make us
Feel worthy
It’s not difficult

But it is impossible
To know the moment
Most extreme
The highest highs

The lowest lows
That remain ours
Alone
Pristine

Primordial

— The ancients told us
It was in the Middle Way
That we decipher
That we sync and connect

With what is true
With what is unhidden
Only in that time and place
Between things and events

But I wander
And fall toward
The Romantics
And their post-Baroque

For advice
For succor
Their wisdom
And excess

Their rejection of Hamlet times
Of indecision and hesitation

Jump and ye shall find!!… |To be Continued “More Breaths for a Change”

How to be Human for a Breath or Two

May 13, 2020 Spinozablue

Pandora’s Box, by John William Waterhouse. 1896

The visitation of a blessing
The moment of passion changes us
But the man thought he saw something
That wasn’t there until

Until he saw her as she really was
As she really was because of him

Looking back on his Columbus days
On his belief that thousands and thousands
Of years could be negated by a ship
He knows now that it wasn’t so

That what was special about her
Was special with or without him
That while his own being impacted her
It did not could not create her

Beyond his own mind
His own dreams of essences lost and found

The Beatles said
We become nay-ked
The Beatles said
Let it be

Kierkegaard said
Life can only be understood
Backwards
But it must be lived

Forwards

Are we ever really human
For a breath?… |To be Continued “How to be Human for a Breath or Two”

C Pam Zhang’s mesmerizing How Much of These Hills is Gold

April 14, 2020 Spinozablue

*How Much of These Hills is Gold*, by C Pam Zhang. 2020. Riverhead Books.

The American West of our imaginations, back in the day. Back in the days of cowboys and gold rushes, San Fran brothels and deadly coal mines, horse thieves and mountain men. The American West of our rather limited imaginations, if we grew up with a certain kind of preset range of ideas, photos, movies, stories and dreams in our heads; which, of course, to one degree or another, means pretty much all of us.

But it’s different if. Way different if, we’re of that tribe that ended up dominating all the other tribes, and all too often take it for granted that our stories, movies, ideas and dreams should be the focus, the main narrative, the supposedly real history of our West.… |To be Continued “C Pam Zhang’s mesmerizing How Much of These Hills is Gold”

Portraits, Spirits, Islands on Fire

April 8, 2020 Spinozablue

*Portrait of a Lady on Fire*. 2019. Written and directed by Céline Sciamma.

The Tempest before the storm. Rocky shores, an island, a remote, semi-protected place for women alone. But they aren’t. And they know it. They know what awaits them offshore. They know what surrounds them, has always surrounded them. They know the countless obstacles in their way. Not just being young women. But being young women in love. Being jeune filles who love each other in 18th century France. Or anywhere else, for that matter.

Sciamma’s film is a dream, a haunting, pre-Raphaelite dream, set on an island off the coast of Brittany in 1760.… |To be Continued “Portraits, Spirits, Islands on Fire”

Self-Reliance in the Age of Pandemics

April 2, 2020 Spinozablue

*Into the Wild*, 2007. Directed by Sean Penn. Based on *Into the Wild* (1996), by Jon Krakauer.

It was never the case, at least not in the modern world. Outside a few. Outside a few lone souls, able to live on grass and berries. Able to hunt and gather, make their own shelters, their own clothes, treat themselves when they got sick. Pull their own teeth. Make and fix their own modest tools. Having next to no layers between themselves and the earth. Right there. Being there always. Right on top of the earth, like mother and child.

And they better be beyond lucky.… |To be Continued “Self-Reliance in the Age of Pandemics”

Zen Fields Beyond the Canvas

February 16, 2020 Spinozablue

Flaming June, by Frederic Leighton. 1895. Museo de Arte de Ponce.

You were my dream
So the poets say
So they spin and wrack their minds
How to express what can not be

Love
Love of
Love of her
Of life

Of the stars
Anything that crisscrosses
Their eyes and ears
Their fifth or sixth dimension

Like the waves they see
As stand-ins for her
Like the mountains they see
As symbols of her strength

The irony the melancholy
Of it all is
Of course the non-abstract
Nature of her

The total lack of symbology
In the way she moves
The way she smiles
Only when it’s necessary

Only when there is nothing else
To be done

She smiles at the perfect time
In a perfect way

Thus rendering all symbols
All analogies all parables
Superfluous
At best

She was my dream
Because of that
Her dreamless self
The beyondness

Of it all
The stark raving madness
Of it all
As if no art were necessary

As if no dreams were needed
     Or possible
          Created
               Or imagined

Or pinned to page or canvas
By us
For us
She did not require them!!… |To be Continued “Zen Fields Beyond the Canvas”

Spinozablue

An Eclectic Journal of the Arts

Browsed by
Category: Blog

Mid-Summer’s Return

July 15, 2020 Spinozablue