Sunset, Tuesday, 15 September 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

Every once in a while I look for events that might be worth commemorating. Today there were things like Napoleon reaching the Kremlin ... hmm, no ... Confederates capturing Harpers Ferry ... interesting, I guess ... Germany adopting the swastika on its national flag ... hmm – oh, O.K., here.

1963. The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama.

Not to be forgotten.

Blue cloud, rose light. Crystalline web, smoke ribbon. Strange that something so absolutely common as atmosphere should seem so infinitely complex, in the form of the sky.

Sunset, Monday, 14 September 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

The analogy between sunset and a home run can be difficult to avoid.

I’ve been trying all evening ... just can’t escape.

Going ... going ... gone! ... over the wall ... clean into Tuesday.

Sunset, Sunday, 13 September 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

If you leave it to the sky to describe itself, you get something that’s way too modest. Plain. (As plain as day.) Filled with complicated details – usually too many – but very, very plain.

Listening to the sky describe itself is like hearing your lover fret she’s ‘too this’ or ‘too that’ ... you just want to take her in your arms and say, “You idiot, you have absolutely no idea how beautiful you are.”

Sunset, Saturday, 12 September 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

Having spent the day driving through Madison, Culpeper and Rappahannock Counties trying, with dramatic lack of success, to find us a place, I’m left with little to say. Here, then, is something little by definition – a ‘literary’ haiku.

MOBY-DICK

Begin with Ishmael
End with Ishmael and the whale
Typhoon of pages

One more, in honor of house-searching:

WORDSWORTH

Lines composed above
Part of nature that I love
Subdivision rights

Sunset, Friday, 11 September 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

The trees stood all day in the light just as if they were real.

The sky talked a blue streak. I mean, it would not stop.

When I looked to the mountains in the west, I could have sworn my vision framed the borders of something and I was standing in the middle of it, and not at the very outer edge of something else.

I acted accordingly. For the most part. Then, as I was painting, I realized I wanted to try to catch something that was whirling away from me, just outside the frame. I couldn’t tell what it was, so, as usual, I guessed.

What we see is always an approximation between here and there. You could say that’s neither here nor there. I would agree but it doesn’t stop me from trying to put it all together.

Sunset, Thursday, 10 September 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

Happy sunset to you all. William Blake, “Night”:

The sun descending in the west,
The evening star does shine,
The birds are silent in their nest,
And I must seek for mine,
The moon like a flower,
In heavens high bower;
With silent delight,
Sits and smiles on the night.

Farewell green fields and happy groves,
Where flocks have took delight;
Where lambs have nibbled, silent moves
The feet of angels bright;
Unseen they pour blessing,
And joy without ceasing,
On each bud and blossom,
And each sleeping bosom.

They look in every thoughtless nest,
Where birds are covered warm;
They visit caves of every beast,
To keep them all from harm:
If they see any weeping,
That should have been sleeping
They pour sleep on their head
And sit down by their bed.