liquid snow instantly

We’ve had some serious flooding here. I think these images say the rest….

Nikon D300, AF-S DX Zoom-NIKKOR 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5G IF-ED
1/320 s @ f/9, ISO 200
(looking east to below images vantage)

Nikon D300, AF-S DX Zoom-NIKKOR 12-24mm f/4G IF-ED
1/300 s @ f/11, ISO 200, Aperture Priority
(looking west to above images vantage)

What you should know is that both these images were taken from the Downtown City Center of London, Canada, at the Forks of the Thames River. It is pretty rustic up here in Canada, in this city of 380,000 people, nicknamed The Forest City. I am always chasing bares from the doorway, no not bears.

Gerard

queen wasp sarcophagus

I think that the philosopher Rousseau was correct in his critique of Descartes “Critical Historical Method” (Cartesian Method) when I see this picture. Rousseau might have said, if we kill the frog to understand it in terms of science, we can’t really understand the frog in its complexity. A frog is made of more than muscle and sinew, which is all you have when it is dead and under the microscope. It jumps from lily pad to lily pad catching its food, sunning and generally doing Froggy things. Even in understanding the frog’s behavioral aspects, it may also have something unique and immeasurable such as a soul.

This dead queen wasp’s sarcophagus lies on my studio window ledge, to remind me of my own temporal existence. I had to kill this queen’s nest last summer, in order to trim a tall cedar hedge where its very large paper hive was hung. Devoid of life, its empty shell lays here collecting dust. It saddens me.
If art is catharsis then here is my celebration of this queen’s life gone by.

Nikon D300, AF-S VR Micro-NIKKOR 105mm f/2.8G IF-ED
1/60s @ f/22, ISO 200
SB800 Flash TTL-mode
cropped, CS3ext post processing, sized

_______________________
I feel better already – thank you camera and thank you lens.

Gerard

wildlife photography

I came across this beautiful Mallard Duck today while walking in Gibbons Park, London, Canada.

Nikon D300, AF-S VR Zoom-NIKKOR 70-200mm f/2.8G IF-ED
1/125s @ f/16, ISO 400, aperture priority

decay in the core

The old Capitol Theatre
London, Canada 2008

I went into to the studio here in London and seemed to have secluded myself for the better part of a decade.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve lived in New York as an artist in residence with CrossPathCulture. I’ve worked in South Africa on a major project for a few months. I’ve been to London to see the Tate Modern. I relaxed with my family in Portugal, Vermont, and Ottawa. I hiked through the beauty that is the Queen Charlotte Islands Canada (Haida Gwaii) with my wife, as well as cruising the West Coast of Canada from the border of Alaska to Vancouver. I have visited Spain and the beautiful city of Seville. My wife and daughter went to Morocco. In simple words it is not as if I locked the door of the studio and did not come out because of a Rip Van Winkle deep sleep (sleep is good).

What I mean is that while I’ve been living in London Canada, I’ve secluded myself from downtown London where I spent my youth. Sure, I’d go downtown from time to time for an exhibition, dinner or an event but I haven’t really ambled around the core streets in the daylight. Like most I’d often just drive to a suburban mall and shop there. When in New York I’d be out much of the time but here in London I very much lived like a hermit.

I went downtown today to jury a student work to receive a small prize for a 2nd year Fanshawe College exhibition. While downtown, I noticed that the much of what I loved about our centers architecture has fallen into decrepitude or changed into a post-modern nightmare of generic modern buildings none of which has any lasting beauty. It made me sad for the buildings.

I love my current job as student consultant and graduating student instructor because it took me downtown. Sadly / happily, it opened my eyes to the decay in our core.

Gerard

flowers in my studio

Hibiscus have been blooming in my studio all winter long. I'm happy with that as there is still snow on the ground outside.

Nikon D300, 105.mm f/2.8 Nikkor VR
0.8sec @ f/36, ISO 200, Focal Length 105mm
SB-800 & SB-28 Flash
tripod mounted

first day of spring not last day of winter here

Dusk at Peggy's and Marvin's

Nikon D300
18-70mm f/3.5-4.5 lens
18mm 1/5 @ f/3.5 ISO 800
Photoshop CS3 Infra-Red application

a grey day in my yard

Nikon D300, 12 - 24 mm f/4 lens,
f/8 @ 1/400, 200 ISO

new scultpure detail

A Nikon D300, 105mm f/2.8 lens,
f/3.2 @ 105mm, 200 ISO
SB800 Flash set to Auto

straight out of the camera only sized with Photoshop CS3ext

---

It's all about the glass with the camera and this is very sharp and bright lense. It's all about the desire to stop ? in the new sculpture.

This new work promises to be interesting, I'm excited by it from these macro-photo perspectives.

a new rig and glass

I bought a new rig and some new glass and thought I’d give you a photographic taste. This is the first image that I have published from this new camera and lenses. This photo is straight out of the camera except that I had to size it down for the internet. The image is a detail from one of my recent works in progress in the studio. I don’t want to show much more of the work as it still has a way to go before completion and I’m superstitious about showing unfinished work. But this post is about my new camera and lenses and not the studio.

A Nikon D300, 105mm f/2.8 lens, f/3.5 @ 105mm, 200 ISO
straight out of the camera only sized with Photoshop CS3

---

I get very intimate with my camera, as we do a lot of things together my camera and I. It is always with me; damn we even go on holidays together. I learn to love my cameras or I get rid of them. I still own every one that has been good to me from the last 35 years.

This new rig: a Nikon D300 12.3 megapixel D-SLR camera is pretty……. well it is; simply put, it is amazing. It is not necessarily the nicest camera I have ever bought as I have some nice cameras with amazing pieces of German optics but it could easily become the nicest. It is certainly the smartest camera body I’ve ever owned. This new D300 feels like it is going to be a great friend and serve me well.

Cameras are really nothing though if you don’t have some decent glass to put in front of them. I’m trying three focal lengths on this new body.

For Macro --- AF-S Micro NIKKOR 105mm f/2.8D (used in above image)
For Wide Angle --- AF-S DX Zoom NIKKOR 12-24mm f4G
For in between --- AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-70mm f3.5-4.5

All this precision made glass and this incredible camera body still need a human eye and brain to make anything-worthwhile come out of it. Without the artists mind and eye, all you’re really left with is some very, very expensive bling, bling --- but it sure makes you look good wearing it.

grass spirals

our gardens sleep but not our eyes

To Winter

Depression like winter often lasts to long for me.

A large and dirty snow bank down the street from me.

---

To Winter
by William Blake
(1757-1827)

`O Winter! bar thine adamantine doors:
The north is thine; there hast thou built thy dark
Deep-founded habitation. Shake not thy roofs,
Nor bend thy pillars with thine iron car.'

He hears me not, but o'er the yawning deep
Rides heavy; his storms are unchain'd, sheathèd
In ribbèd steel; I dare not lift mine eyes,
For he hath rear'd his sceptre o'er the world.

Lo! now the direful monster, whose skin clings
To his strong bones, strides o'er the groaning rocks:
He withers all in silence, and in his hand
Unclothes the earth, and freezes up frail life.

He takes his seat upon the cliffs,--the mariner
Cries in vain. Poor little wretch, that deal'st
With storms!--till heaven smiles, and the monster
Is driv'n yelling to his caves beneath mount Hecla.

---

Gerard

say no more

Capela dos Ossos
(Chapel of Bones)

need i say more

Alcantarilha, Portugal

GP

how many lips in a tulip

never too many tulips always too many lips

G.P.

these tulips make me concupiscent

I'm Dutch izn't dat vweird.

GP

toolips, twolips, TULIPS

There's two thousand words.

GP

jerry, jerry quite contrary

crocus

narcissus

???

primula

This is how my garden grows!

GP

a great day to be a Gunner

Arsenal 2 - 0 Juventus

Champions League
Quarter Finals

Thierry Henry scores the 2nd goal for Arsenal F.C.
against Juventus — The Old Lady of Turin
(confused then click on this link)

Theirry's face says it all

kiss the crest
keep the faith
up the arse

believe

pensée

Call me Myopic.

Unfortunately one mans myopia can't be another man's foresight.

— like garbage and treasure —

bear with me

I’m very busy just now; with a public monument for the City of London as well as working in the studio. When I’m done my day of work, I don’t feel like writing more. I’ve been playing video games to relax. I’ll try to fill you in as soon as I feel like it :)

GP

Otherwise, I'm happily depressed as usual?

suddenly no more snow

I went to downtown London today to visit my accountant. This is what I saw. I noticed that one couldn't see snow for as far as the eye could see.

I know one thing my accountant didn't see it this way. You can't find your soul in a ledger sheet and that's why accountants need us artists, even if we don't make sense in arithmetic's.

This is a lofty view from the London main offices of KPMG, looking east. Well sort of.

It's what I saw in any case.

GP

where do all the birds go?

“A sad image of a dead seagull mixed into the sands on the shores of Lake Erie. I often wonder where birds go to rest their eternal peace as there are so many.”
He said reaching for his medicine.

and even more snow

more snow and more snow

winter has its own rewards

even branches reach for hEaVEN

inside and outside of the same white pine bow

white pine - inside below - outside above - white pine

a gentle snow

fairy tale of a day

Yes, wind still passes through my body; they haven’t shoveled me down into the cold earth yet! “Wind passing” is a strange metaphor don’t you think? Something not unlike having a “egg sucking good time”, which I wouldn’t recommend repeating quickly. Then again, that wind is passing through my ears.

I’ve been very busy working on an honourable project for this community. It is something I believe in and which if realized, I hope will have real aesthetic beauty. It has taken most of my time these last two weeks

So, while I haven’t been writing, I was thinking of you mum as well as the other two readers of this blog. I hope your having a swinging time.

I went out today and photographed this image looking into our neighbour’s backyard. If you look carefully under the seat, you’ll see rabbit tracks heading towards you. It was a very tale of a day today or is that a fairy tale of a day today.
I have many beautiful images from today; I will try to post a few over the next days.

I love the solitude in this image, with the swing seat covered in snow and only rabbit tracks underneath. I may be going local?

GP

my dream new york studio

It’s often an exercise in futility but the seed of imagination can be fun. No not creativity but rather the daydream.

What if? What if I could cure a disease, bring peace to an area in turmoil, feed more people, and discover a cool eco-tool that would make the world a cleaner place. These of course are all the good sides of daydreaming ‘what if’.

The futile side of ‘what if’ is just a little more vainglorious. My father in law Nick once told me an interesting story based on it. Two Russian peasants on a long journey, stop to rest and start to discuss how great it would be to have a colt. They discuss each individual’s aspiration for this colt and this causes them to fight because their dreams are so radically different. To fight over an imaginary colt that neither have? Funny thing, the human condition.

From time to time, I have these later daydreams. I have a nice fast car but when I’m next to a nicer faster car I daydream that “Wouldn’t I enjoy that car more than my own”. You get the point.
Not the deadly sin of lust, or jealousy, just the seed of it in ‘what if’. The same sense aroused in any of us who may buy lottery tickets. If I had a million dollars, I’d buy… The momentary dream of how life will be different if you win the ‘big one’. Of course, it’s just another tax implemented by the government on the poor. But it only cost a buck or two for the dream, and it can last until you check your numbers after the draw. It sells so well that these days every level of government is in on the game and revenues it generates for the state. But enough of that… Funny thing, the human condition.

Well I got me one of those little daydreams and it’s called my ideal studio. I’ve posted on this topic once before “My Dream London Studio”. Well this is my second installment.

My dream studio in New York City is not in Manhattan. I know this goes against many successful New Yorkers principles, one stays in Manhattan, Soho, Chelsea, Tribeca. I figure, success means you can live and work where you so desire. So, my dream New York studio is out in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn. It sits on the Hudson River as it ventures out into the Verrazano Narrows and flows out to the Atlantic. You can see the large ocean going ships and the tugs coming and going, to be reminded of destinations far away or coming home. It brings out the Amsterdammer in me, living by the canals, the North Sea and the Markermeer. Standing at Hoek van Holland and watching the large ships leave the harbours of Rotterdam. It’s a very comforting place and even has the touch of Dutch architecture from the 1800’s. The studio is at the very far right of this picture below.

my dream New York studio - click for enlargement :)~

From this vantage, you can see across the waters to lower Manhattan to the left of the studio. From there to the left, you can see Jersey City, then the Statue of Liberty, on to harbour terminals in New Jersey and the tip of Staten Island. Sadly, you can’t see the incredible Verrazano Narrows Bridge, crossing from New York to New Jersey; it’s one of my favourite New York bridges. I just love this location. To my Manhattan friends all I can say its closer to you than Staten Island, there is lots of room to stay over and I always keep a fresh bottle of Single Malt Whiskey on hand. Wait there’s one other New York idiosyncrasy, there is ample room to park, or moor your vessel for that matter. The cops are nearby for security and it has a beach. Okay, I lied but it does have a ladder.
Just look below at the front view it is stunning. The first change will be the name of course!

my dream New York studio

Now I’ve had a beautiful New York studio with some incredible views, which is discussed and depicted on my website “Gerard’s Studio in New York”. This studio is different because this one is my dream studio. What, do you want to fight?

Funny thing, the human condition is.

GP

rot and decay - life and death

rot and decay

For the first time since November, we have been able to see the ground instead of snow. It seems that every January or late December we have a thaw, bringing temperatures up to the high of 0 -- 5 Celsius during the day. The warm temperatures accompanied by a few steady days of rain have melted the 25 cm of snow that still covered the earth. It looks like late-fall again, rather glum and dark.

Trying to make the best of it, I planted the last of our early tulip bulbs in the moist ground, as I hadn’t gotten to them before the first serious snow fell. That snow has been with us until now; this was a very good day to put those bulbs in, giving them enough time to be frosted before spring.
As I walked by our big stand of maple trees, I looked down to see the earth covered with its blanket of rotting leaves. It was a metaphor of decay, calling out to ponder on the question of ‘death’. It remains a mystery to me as I have yet to existentially cross that threshold.
I really must change my medications with all these moribund thoughts?

a carpet of decay

The Merriam Webster dictionary describes Death as:
1 : a permanent cessation of all vital functions : the end of life -- compare BRAIN DEATH
2 : the cause or occasion of loss of life
3 capitalized : the destroyer of life represented usually as a skeleton with a scythe
4 : the state of being dead :(
5 a : the passing or destruction of something inanimate (the death of modernism)

Wow that’s some serious shite. The “state of being dead” seems to be a permanent thing.
If you consider the cosmology of existence as presented by our current Cartesian thinkers and scientists, it seems that in our modern time the saying from “dust to dust” should be expressed as from “nothing to nothingness”. I think that their meaning of nothingness needs to be redefined. It was once described to me as: draw a circle and call what falls outside it ‘nothing’, death is the erasure of that circle. Complete and absolute nothingness.

life and death

The more I meditate on death the more I become convinced that it is an abnormality of existence. By that I don’t mean not part of existence but rather an aberration in it. Like knowing, something is wrong by seeing the “strings of code” float by on the monitor of the “Matrix” just after the “smith virus” starts to copy/multiply itself. It just doesn’t feel right to think the “circles erasure” is the culmination of life - nothingness. I won’t even go to the next logical plateau, predicated on the aforementioned premise and ask if this is death, what is the purpose of life. I think Sartre said it best in his book “Being and Nothingness”.

When I look out at the forest floor and I see the decaying leaves rotting in this damp of winter, I do not see signs of permanence. To the contrary, I see signs of a cycle of life. I believe that nature talks to us, pointing to underlying truths about the reality we all share in common.
When I visit the “corpus” of a deceased friend or family member, I get this overwhelming feeling that this is not a farewell. I see it more as the French do when they say “Adieu” (until we meet with God) instead of “salute” or goodbye.

It is all a theory because I have never met someone who was dead and rose again to tell me. By dead, I mean for a few days or psychical death. That said I find the outworking of how death is described by Saint Paul to make the most sense to me. Death is the result of sin and sin is an aberration in the matrix of life, otherwise put as “the fall brought by sin”.

Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death,...

I just can’t wrap my mind around the idea that death is just another meaningless point in the life of organic matter. Using the “scientific methods model”, the very fact I cannot comprehend it must mean something. I am therefore I think, as opposed to I think I am therefore I am. I am assuming that we all agree that the purpose of life is not death; the purpose of life is love. Death continues to seem out of place.

I guess what I’m really saying is that life is the grandest and most treasured way of expressing love. Love of another, a vocation, expression, the means to achieve good for this “fallen world” through love.
Sin would be best described as “the seven deadly sins” 1. Greed 2. Gluttony 3. Envy 4. Sloth 5. Pride 6. Lust 7. Wrath; all of which do not in anyway root themselves in love -- except for maybe self-love which is an oxymoron, Narcissus says it better.

In taking Paul’s description of “death” and “life” as praxis, it changes the whole way which you view reality.

1 Corinthians 15: 54-56
54When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory."[a] 55"Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?"[b] 56The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.

Though death still has great fear with me, it is more a sign of my lack of faith than what I know I should trust. Death is an enemy and an abnormality in existence. It is the harvest of sin but not life. When I have these fears, like a mantra, I remind myself:
1 Corinthians 15: 24-26
24Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. 25For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

Even walking amongst the stench and decay on the forest floor it speaks to me that:
2 Corinthians 2: 15-17
15For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. 16To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life. And who is equal to such a task?
2 Corinthians 4: 11-12
11For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body. 12So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.

As I look down, I am comforted to know that life is at work in me, suddenly all is right with the world or my frame of mind anyway.

This beautiful carpet of wet soggy leaves screams meaning at me as doe’s death; life is meaningful, as is death. I will always choose life.

Then I turned my head towards the Buddha and saw that the lichens, fungus and moss where happy. Then again, this Buddha always wears a smile in a way that ceramic things do. I left for the house seeing spirals of green and red and thinking that this would be a good first post for the new years.

Death where is your victory, death where is your sting?
Happy New Years, happy life, may you be blessed in this year to come.

GP

knocking down the pins

Bowling?

Man has bowling changed since I last went. The squeeze, da progeny, and I went bowling on Boxing Day.

It was kinda fun and I was amazed by just how much bowling had changed.

Sadly, gone are the days of The Big Lebowski, with The Dude polishing his ball in a linen towel. Those were the days!

It has become a freak show of over indulgence: short film clips digitally projected on numerous screens at the “pin” end of the lanes. Black lit lanes where neon coloured illuminated balls roll down lanes, which can be automatically programmed to give each individual players various preferences, such as bumpers, computerized coaches, etc. I do like automated score keeping! 15 of us went and played 2 games each using two lanes for approximately 2hrs and 15 min for a cost of CDN $95. With Sarsaparilla drinks and some small snacks throw in an other CDN $60-90 bucks.
Now with all that potential, you’d think they program the LCD projectors to show clips of movies like that masterpiece movie by the Coen brothers mentioned above. No funny clips of Jackie Gleeson’s bowling on the Honeymooners. A series of vapid and ephemeral clips, which made you think you were watching Sesame Street over your toddlers back or MTV hits clips today.

Poster Images from the Lebowski Fest

There wre no images or posters from the “Dudireno” Lebowski Fest in New York, not even a still from Gutterball. Just the same monotonous fill of images which we see every day and could pave the way from Columbus Circle to the Brooklyn Bridge in New York, so mindless we can’t remember a one.

This electrified environment, with the comforting sounds of pins falling and the smack of balls pounding wood, was then augmented by the shrill call of popular top 10 hits amplified to the sound of a private jet revving up on the runway of Trenton Airport, NJ. Is there such a thing as bowling music? If no, then how about the Blues?

That said, I’m no stick in the mud and I did find a way of enjoying myself in the company of friends and loved ones. It’s still bowling and what’s not to like about sticking three fingers in a heavy acrylic ball, forcing it to roll down a hardwood lane to knock down a set of 10 pins. Damn I had to find some joy there because my score totals sucked so bad I’m still hearing the passing of wind through my ears.

It seems like an appropriate way for me to post my last post of 2005, talking about bowling. A noble sport and short of joining a league, I think I may start a quest to find “the perfect bowling alley”, then again, maybe I won’t, but I can dream about it.

So in closing why not take this quiz: Which Big Lebowski Character Are You. I did.

Happy old year my friends, see you in the new one. So now, I’m not thinking of balls but sinking apples, or is that raising apples.

GP

________________

This one’s for you Chris A. we must go bowling someday, yes!

merry christmas - light in the darkness

Christmas eye candy
from our gardens

In these the darkest days of the year, I am reminded that light shines in the darkness.

I look outside my studio and see our gardens in their winter sleep, waiting for the return of spring. So to has my life been this last year, a gentle sleep as my fields laid fallow waiting for a new spring.
As I turned fifty, I have arrived at a point in my life where I feel that I can now create what I wish, not to prove myself to anyone or even myself. I have been set free from the need to demonstrate my skill to curators, critics, society, or museums. I have already proven myself time and time again over the last thirty years of making art -- it has given me such great pleasure (as paradoxical as that may seem for an artist that has dealt mostly with pain and catharsis in their work).
One would think this a liberating experience, which it is. Sadly, I have spent the last year transfixed on those lights shinning out of the darkness, heading towards me as I stand on this highway of life. A difficult and at times perplexing time in my life as I ask myself what I really want, like a child in a candy shop.
I am happy to say that the light, which hastened towards me on that dark road, was not my demise. Rather, like the star that directed the Magi it was coming to take me home. It is where I am now and as I reluctantly embrace this newfound freedom trusting it to be true. I hope this to be a very productive and liberating year. May we all remain so directed guided by that light...

So many of you have stood behind me in these troubling times but none more than our God and my family -- my cup runneth over. I am so grateful to all of you for having such faith in me. I wish the same blessings for you and yours: a paradigm shift where love is the axis of change and integrity remains true.

From me and mine, we hope that love rules in your abode and that your wants and needs will be met in this New Year to come.
Thank you for blessing us with your friendship and support!

May the God of love bless you with faith, trust and love - Allah hum di de la.

Gerard Pas

Note: the above image is a compilation from the more than 10,000 photographs I took from our gardens this past year. I organized them in this pattern to create an “Eye Trick”, if you stare long enough the white dots suddenly turn black / grey and back to white — light shinning in the darkness.

i will always choose life

downtown London looking east from
the East Branch Fork of the Thames River

London usually gets about 51 cm. of snow in the month of December. It is only two weeks into the month and we’ve already received 47 cm. It has snowed almost everyday this month. I’ve shoveled a shite load of snow out of our driveway. We have long icicles hanging on almost every house on this dead end that I live on.

I like living on a dead end, if not for the apparent reasons such as very little traffic, for the power of using it as a metaphor. I live on a dead end and it is a dead end. “No Exits” are oxymoron’s, so while our dead end has a “No Exit” sign placed at its entrance there of course is an exit, being the same entrance which ones comes in on. I therefore could not live on a “No Exit” street; rather it is simply a dead end.

Now this dead end runs into a large recreational park, which has tennis courts, basketball hoops, soccer fields a fully enclosed and all year permanent ice rinks. So in fact, our dead end runs into a living beginning, which in a poetic sense makes sense for me -- dead end—living start. I like living on the edge.

I continually look for where the road really dies and haven’t found it yet but I see, hear, and smell the living start every day. I will always choose life but love living on a dead end. There are times that I feel living on this dead end, that there is no exist, which I call my Jean Paul Sartre times. Then I remind myself I’m living on a dead end and not yet dying on one. The again maybe I am and or will die on a dead end which will indeed be the end as I will be dead.

However, I will always choose life.

this image is by Steve Jenereaux

GP

Thames River levy

Downtown London looking east from the Westside of the Thames River Levy.To the far left is the historic Blackfriars Bridge. In the distant right is the Queens St. Bridge. Harris Park is directly across the river with downtown in the background extending to the far right.

180º panorama of downtown London from the Thames River levy

detail of the Blackfriars Bridge from above panorama

Just another grey day in the late afternoon before another snowstorm hits us later this evening. The Thames River is not yet frozen. As a teenager I used to cross the river on the ice to get downtown.

GP

six hectares

snow where ever I go
in all the six hectares

thank you Voltaire
I brought my glasses for snow

__________________

ode to Candide

six perspectives on last nights winter storm

I photographed this image at 2 am. in the morning. It was orange, so I thought I'd adjust the colour balance and liked all six.

father - dad - son | abutilon hybridum

My dad asked me to take these abutilon x hybridum flowers into my studio so that they might survive the harshness of winter outside. Of course, I agreed - I would say yes to most of the things that my old man asks of me for as he doesn’t ask for much. Funny really, because here I am at fifty and I still need my pa to help me with questions of gardening, plants and much more. I consider myself fortunate to have his expertise at my side. You know for years he stood before me, then beside me and now my dear old dad stands behind me.
I’m blessed to know this of my father because my dad’s father, my namesake, died when my dad was just a mere boy of 13.

He gifted me this beautiful Flowering Maple (abutilon hybridum) and it sits in my studio just now looking somewhat shocked by the change. Dad’s can do that to you too. My old man never had a role model as a father during his teen years and it showed during my teen years. I’m not going to list pop’s sins here, as they’re probably not unlike your father’s sins. He’s hurt me as I’ve hurt my son.
The one thing that binds us together is not just blood but unequivocally unconditional love. I love my dad with all his faults, as I know he loves me with mine. So should a son love his father and a father a son.

flowering maple - abutilon x hybridum

How much more does our heavenly Father love us and He is faultless.

I’ve been pissed at God to, or at least I thought it was God that I was angry with. In hindsight, maybe it was not God but my notion of fairness of which I blamed Him.

Life is unfair and the unfairness is distributed unfairly!!
Life is fair and the fairness is distributed unfairly!!
Why pain and why me.
Shit happens but why does it always happen to me.

Like my dad, God always came to me when I cried for help. In fact I can say today that where it not for God, my life would have been terribly different. He has always been my Island, the rescue from my own stupidity and from circumstance.
God has never allowed me to take the role of victim because there has always been means for me to leave that place.

God’s love for me has never waned, grown tired and long after I’ve thrown in the towel He is there, even in the darkness. Though the light has shone in the darkness, the darkness has not understood it.

I know now that I really have no cause to complain, because my Father has always loved me unconditionally and it has always been me who has attempted to set the terms.Bless me Father… Give me your strength!

abutilon hybridum - flowering maple

Thank you for grace and for always being there for my dad, my son, and me.

GP

first snow storm

We had are first significant snowfall yesterday. The first snow is one that ends all the feelings of dread of waiting for that first major snow fall because it is a done deal a “fait des complete”, it snowed. We had a brutal north wind push in snow squalls off the Great Lakes resulting in a fierce storm.
The school where my wife works, in a town about 50 km. north of us, was closed today in what we call a “snow day” as the school buses are cancelled with such inclement weather.

In the north of Canada, the Inuit peoples have something like a hundred words to describe snow, as the Dutch have many words for the water that travels through their land. Some of my favourite snow words are spindrift, snow squall, and my all time favourite melting as in its melting away.

My gargoyles don’t seem to mind the brutal cold that accompanies a brisk squall as they just sit there and are covered in snow with no complaint.

I think that some of the plants celebrate the embrace of the cold such as these Rose Hips that turn a succulent red at this time of the year and make for a delicious cup of tea.

So that’s it, lots of snow and wind makes for a good storm and today being warmer accompanied with sun, it’s all just dazzling before my eyes.

GP

a calm for the weary

Today was rest day for my weary soul. I went to church which felt good, I really should go more often as our church is what we’ve made of it and just now it’s real fine. Alive with God followers, it is named Forest City Community Church if you should ever care to visit us here in London.
I spent the afternoon cleaning flowerbeds for their winter rest and planting bulbs for my spring renewal. This also felt good as it was a pleasant enough of a day to spend the afternoon outside.

While working in our gardens I came upon another of the many varied ornamental grasses that we grow in the gardens. I was silenced by the subtle beauty of it’s now seeded plumes. This grasses doesn’t come into this feathery state until after the frost tells it to, as that same frost tells me that I to must prepare for the long cold winter ahead.

I felt a feeling of well being, at peace with the Creator and creation while stewarding over this beauty. I’m a blessed person and my table is full, my friends are true, my cup runneth over with the blessings of a most gracious and bountiful God, as well as my own hard work. It was a satisfying day and like these exquisite plumes, it was calming to my sometimes-troubled soul.

another of the grasses from our gardens

such subtle beauty

then caressed by the sun

I’ll have to tell you the proper name of this grass in my next post as it’s late and I can’t remember its name from memory.

GP

first snow

I’m not going to show you an image of snow even though I saw my first little fluffs of snow this evening. I know we had some flakes dropping last week also in the wee hours of the morning but I didn’t see them. I worked at the Monastery today decked in all the regal of winter fashion with my thermals on underneath. We were still cleaning up leaves and yanking frozen dead annuals from the flowerbeds, it was as cold as the balls on a brass monkey because of the brutal north wind howling down on my son and me.

Tonight when I saw those first flakes of snow swirling in the night air I couldn’t help but think that I many places in our world they would call this “snowing”, where as most of us here in CanDada just shudder and think of what’s to come not just a few flakes in the air.

In all this cold and with our trees stripped bare by the same north wind that buffeted and oppressed us working outside today I still found these marvelous warm colours on the leaves of a Smokey Bush (I’m sorry I don’t know the proper name for this shrub just what we call it here in the province.) I was really stunned by the colours of these leaves and thought I’d share some warmth with you in this otherwise cold account of my day.

leaves on a Smokey bush

Remember what they say in cold countries like Canada, Finland, or Norway: there is no such thing as cold weather just poor clothing choices. So as most Canadians hear from their mom’s, when growing up here “Make sure you wear your coat.”

May all your days be warm and toasty and your hearth burn bright.
I consider statements like the above to be like an antidepressant in terms of what I’m really thinking about the damn cold. I say them so that maybe in cordiality I might find some warmth from what I otherwise am not looking forward to even with all the beauty winter provides.

GP

austere wind

I don’t believe I truly conveyed the starkness of the north winds stripping our trees of foliage in the lower image of my post below “north wind”. I was too preoccupied with the sky in the aforementioned image as it had its own intrinsic beauty. Truth is I don’t see many sunrises, they always occur at such a ghastly early hour that usually find me sleeping; unless I’ve been out lone wolfing the evening hours in the studio.
I put together this composite panoramic image to establish just what I mean when I say stark. I think this image of the southeast to the south-south-west corners of our land confirms just how austere our skyline has become with the parting of leaves.

GP

north wind

Last week was a splendid fall week, as this image of my backyard affirms. The warmth of Indian summer. The leaves all changing colours accompanied by a thick carpet of the same leaves. Beautiful sultry fall days.

Yesterday was a cooler day with powerful north wind that stripped most all of the leaves from our trees. This morning when I awoke, I went out at the sunrise and took this image of what the north wind had left behind.

Today I took all our outdoor furniture into the shelter of the shed. Over the course of the last few weeks, I’ve emptied all the flowerpots and begun the work of prepping the gardens for their winter sleep. Today the starkness of late fall made an impact on me, as I know the north wind takes the leaves but in the next weeks will also bring us snow.

It was a beautiful sunrise.

GP

trees enlighten

I love the way light plays within the fall canopy of the trees.

This first image is looking up into a large Sugar Maple, which grows in the back of our yard. It’s a cool day and the sky is cold light grey slate. The inner canopy is shaded but it rendered me this beautiful photo. Thank you tree!

This second image was taken along the banks of the River Thames, in the Blackfriars neighbourhood of London (the other London: Ontario). Very near to where I photographed the Blackfriars Bridge below.
It was photographed on a splendidly warm fall day with the sun’s setting casting light onto the east bank of the river. It grows next to a friend’s home who plays in the Nihilist Spasm Band.
The light in this tree was incredible and though this image works I was not truly able to capture what I saw through the inability of the camera and its user being me. While I’m satisfied with the result I know what I saw was even more stunning. That said, the light in the foliage was exhilarating and I thank the “maker” for getting it just right.

GP

the maple leafs

Some Maple leaves for you today. It is beautiful to look into a tree and see such vivid colour screaming back at you. I will let these images speak for me.

GP

URBAN maple trees -

our home

This image of a group of urban Maple trees is located some three blocks from our home here in London Ont. (the other London). URBAN Maple Treez, jeez that sounds like some kind of Canadian TEaRyOuRwrIST movement; eh (I love the fact that tear and tear are spelled the same - we really have to fix that. I suggest we spell tear as tair). Urban Maple Treez would have something to do about the colour of our flag and the fact that our colours do run and fade. Unlike our cousins to the south whose flag colours do not run from anything - it is insured by a shitload of Smith and Weston’s.
For me it’s just like watching the leaves float downstream to become sediment and nurture life – eh CanaDADA (cf. photo below). Truth be known, I’d rather have a tree for our symbol than an avian scavenger; that’s the extent of my stigma. Although the most beautiful Bald Eagles I have ever seen where all in trees (or flying) on the island of Haida Gwaii in the North Pacific Ocean. Bald eagles in trees? Just because your paranoid doesn’t mean they are not out to get you.

and native land

GP

Thames River — Blackfriars Bridge

Well fall is in its climax here. As I am somewhat behind in writing so then am I behind in my photos. No not behind in taking photos, just in showing them to you - here are some images that I took over a week ago. They are from along the Thames riverside, the Thames runs right through the middle of London (yes also that London but I mean this London) and provides its own tranquil beauty to our city. What you have to understand is that photos below were all taken within the core of our downtown or very near it. 350,000 people walk around in these woods in the middle of our city. I must admit it is one thing that keeps me sane in living here. I much prefer to live next to the ocean like Amsterdam or New York and being Dutch the little parts that make me desire to live next to the sea. So here in the middle of the Great Lakes, I am grateful to have a river and bridges to cross. None of these Bridges is compaprable to the Brooklyn Bridge or the Verrazano Narrows Bridge in New York. More on this later.

I took these images on a very warm Sunday along the Thames river just as the leaves were about to change, some already changing colour. My family and I, in the many years we’ve lived here, have walked, cycled, and seen these sites time and time again. They never cease to please me – whatever BS is going on in my life I can always go to the river and find my thoughts and my expression of thanks to God for creating such beauty.

Gibbons Park from the west bank of the Tames River.

fall leaves under the Gibbon’s Park footbridge

That then takes me to bridges. London has no bridges of any world quality as the aforementioned bridges in New York. That said it does have two charming old steel arched bridges. The bridge below is named The Blackfriars Bridge. It crosses the Thames River from the downtown to a charming neighbourhood called Blackfriars. My parents have lived in this since I was about 14 or since 1970. Even though I lived near this bridge for a large part of my life as a youth; even now, I visit it frequently. In fact I love this bridge so much I did a painting / photographic piece on it in the 80’s. I’ll talk more about that work some other time but I will show you the watercolour portion of it below. I regret that the painting looks a helluva lot better in life than here but you’ll have to go to Museum London to see it as they have it in their collection.

Here’s my favourite bridge in London and were you to visit me here, we’d walk along the banks of the Thames from Gibbons Park to the BlackFriars Bridge, along to Harris Park and up to the Museum that houses my painting below in the downtown. We might even stop at my parents for a coffee along the way as they like me to visit. By the way, the painting below was painted in 1984-85.

The Blackfriars Bridge from the west bank of the Thames River

my painting of the bridge from near the same view some 22 years ago

GP

frost

On Friday, we had a very severe frost as I mentioned in the post below. While it wasn’t a hoarfrost killer it was still an intense frost. I think these images from one of our potted Dahlias tell the whole story. The irony is the first image was photographed on a cold grey day a week or two ago and the second on this marvelously warm sunny fall day after the frost. I love the Mandela in the first image. The second image is almost abstract except that I know what it was before, although I can also love it for what it is now.

pre-frost dahlia

post-frost dahlia

GP

fall is upon us

Well we had a serious frost last night, not the absolute killer of frosts but good enough to freeze any plant that bares a lot of water. My begonias, lilies, and the rest all lay withered with their life juices staining the soil or patio, as the cold wringed every ounce of water and colour out of them. A sad sight as these plants, the impatiens for example, are always at their best just before the last frost freezes them back to sleep. Hell for me is a cold place, the kinda cold that burns like fire – a touch to dry ice.

Yesterday I took my dog for a short walk out behind the Monastery of Precious Blood Sisters where I work. This was what I saw looking to the north. Yes, the Nuns are in the city near the University of Western Ontario. Its beautiful here: considering London is a 350,000 people city, we still have lotsa open spaces where you can collect your thoughts, the nuns have it good at their monastery plenty of time to pray and spaces to do it in peace.

What I saw on my walk was the beginnings of the true fall – I took the image below for you. After last night brutal frost, the leaves in our yard were falling so fast in a gentle breeze. You could hear them touch the ground with a tic – tic – tic. Like a good kabouter (gnome), I was outside putting up storm windows and getting ready for the winter. For the next two week’s we’ll start to see all the leaves fall and the barren trees they sustained with life.

GP

grey days

For the most part today was a cold and grey fall day.

Then this hot air balloon traveled right above my head so that I could look up at the gondola and see the people flying by. It made me feel better about the day to wave up and hear them say hello.

GP

the grasses of the field

We had our first frost last night. It wasn’t a killing frost but the roofs of our homes were covered with a fine white frost by around 2:00 am this morning. The car windows needed to be scrapped if you woke up early, I didn’t, but I saw it before sleep. I am happy to see the seasons change; it’s a complete cycle of life.

I see this seasonal change in the grasses that we grow in our gardens. We grow several varieties of ornamental grasses - I’m very fond of grass :) I also like grasses because they conjure up in me the words of Moses’ prayer or Psalm 90. When I think on Moses word's, I am reminded of the ephemeral nature of life itself compared to the age of the cosmos and even in our smallness, there is love - discussed in my post below

Chasmanthium Latifoilum - ornamental grass
on a warm fall day in september

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Psalm 90 v. 2-6, 14-17 “Moses’ prayer.”

2 Before the mountains were born
or you brought forth the earth and the world,
from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
3 You turn men back to dust, saying,
"Return to dust, O sons of men."
4 For a thousand years in your sight
are like a day that has just gone by,
or like a watch in the night.
5 You sweep people away in the sleep of death;
they are like the new grass of the morning-
6 though in the morning it springs up new,
by evening it is dry and withered.

14 Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love,
that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.
15 Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us,
for as many years as we have seen trouble.
16 May your deeds be shown to your servants,
your splendor to their children.
17 May the beauty [b] of the Lord our God rest upon us;
establish the work of our hands for us— yes,
establish the work of our hands.

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Chasmanthium Latifoilumin
in the cool short evening light of october

Just some of the grasses from the field and our gardens.

GP

Thierry Henry

This is Thierry Henry celebrating his home goal in front of the Tottenham Hot Spur “away fans section” at Highbury during Arsenal’s unbeaten season of 2003/2004. Arsenal are the first English team to have broken this record for more than a hundred years. Arsenal 2 – 0 Hotspurs. It is one of my favourite Arsenal images as the Spurs fans jeer at Henry, this being his hundredth goal. Arsenal later went on to win the English Premier League that season in an away match at Tottenham Hotspur – White Heart Lane - London, where Henry also scored the winning goal. This goal and his back heel under pressure goal against Charlton last season are two of my favourite Henry goals, not necessarily his best just my favourite.

In my opinion, Henry is one of the greatest strikers to have ever played in England, Europe, and the World. Just to watch him play is like looking at fine art. His pace, vision and skill at dragging defenders out to the wings before running into the penalty area only added by his ability to score – what a finish. To quote Dennis Bergkamp “I would say that Thierry is the complete player. It is quite amazing he can do so many things at this level of football”. As an Arsenal supporter all I can say is “We’re not worthy”.

Thierry Henry, scored two goals today in Arsenal's Champions League match with Sparta Prague to beat them by 2 – 0. In so doing, Henry goal count surpassed the highest goal scorer record at Arsenal held by Ian Wright at 185 goals. It took Henry 303 games to reach the new club record of 186 goals and counting higher every match, he plays.

I salute you Thierry Henry, thank you for brining so much pleasure to my life through football / soccer.

GP

ornamental cabbage

ornamental cabbage

I really don’t know what more to say other than another spiral of delight. Standing here looking down from above it becomes “Entropy inside a cabbage”, which sounds firmly rooted in the earth somehow. Yes the universe is unfolding just as it should it be.

entropy inside a cabbage

GP

last of the Cosmos

last of the Cosmos

Catchy title don’t you think. The last of the cosmos; now that is a real dilemma!

Here I sit pouting over the inane, my winter doldrums which begin with my “last of __________” syndrome, the last hummingbird, flower, dragonfly, leaf or songbird. It is ironic that “the last of the cosmos” has a much more serious ramification because it is so absolute: the very last of, no more, all gone. The very last of all the zillions of creatures, organisms, and beings that cohabitate this huge cosmos. Now that is a real depressing thought.

As depressing a thought as before there was cosmos there was nothing, then something sparked through chance and time (how something comes from nothing is beyond my cognitive conception) and from the gaseous clouds, we were born on this blue planet in this cosmos. How meaningless is life if it is predicated on a notion that love is just an evolved social behaviour, a human anthropology. The highest act of love we consider one person giving their life for another – you know, if I could have died instead of my child I would have given my life for them -- and you actually can give your life so that they can live. Don’t tell me that love is just what monkeys do after a billion or so years of evolution. They simply find or evolve love and then even go as far as to anthropomorphize it into spirituality. It’s not how many monkeys could end up writing a Shakespearean play, no it’s how many billions of monkeys did it take to evolve love. Now that’s a real depressing thought.

I’m all fixed and everything is humming along that way it should be: cured of melancholy (sounds like a bad sausage “cured melancholy sausage”). The last of this year’s cosmos flowers, as celebratory as these blooms are of life and our senses, is thus nothing to fret over. They grow back, and I know the simplicity of nurturing them. That would all change if it was the last of the cosmos because then these might very well be the last of the cosmos in the cosmos.

If God is love and created the cosmos for his pleasure, so that we creation, could enjoy it forever then how big is God? It is really a mute question because any interaction we have documented on God does not talk about God’s size, so it doesn’t matter. That said, if the God of love could create this universe by fiat, God must be immense, bigger than the soup of gravities that hold all the planets and stars in place. Looking out at the cosmos means God is big.
The funny thing is that God always choose to reveal him/her self in the smallest of ways; other than being the spark igniter in that nothingness before there was something and which we marvel at when we look at these small Cosmos flowers. Yes these simple flowers.
Another poignant example was when God came to visit the prophet Elijah.

• 
  “11 The LORD said, "Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by." Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. 12 After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. 13 When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. Then a voice said to him, "What are you doing here, Elijah?"
  1 Kings 19 versus 11 – 13.

After all these monumental, earthquakes, storms, and fires God was not in them but rather God was the gentle whisper, which spoke out to Elijah. How deeply profound for is that not how love speaks. God didn’t want a temple or a graven image just honour, is that not love.

I have never seen Neptune but I know it is there. While I can see Venus and Mars in the night sky, I know they are real because we have probed them with our machines. I digress, I wonder if Martians see our space probes as anal, similar to those probes described by the hundreds of citizens of this planet who have received such probes by Martian abduction.
My point is that I have never seen God except in a way that could be described as anthropomorphic to science, but ever fibre of my being has seen God. I see God in love and I see God in these flowers both of which are unexplainable in this unfathomably large cosmos – how love, why flowers.

I’m healed of that silly “last of _________” syndrome, but still on citalopram / Celexa :)

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Here then are the last of this season’s cosmos.

GP

hydrangeas - one bloom of love

only the one bloom

Nature like life, in as much as life is also nature, provides some real whacky shite at times. You can love something in nature and by the fact you do, you make it so happy that it doesn’t flower for you. It’s weird really because you’d think it would be the reversal -- more love more flowers, more money more art, more pills more happy feelings, more is less unless of course less is more, more of more, more, more, more… and the one with the most toys at the end still dies
So, I have this large Japanese Hydrangea bush, which I have given an inordinate amount of attention to this season. Short of going out and talking to it, (my neighbour already thinks I’m weird), this plant has gotten everything else. When the heat of the full sun causes it to shrink into seclusion, we’d water it, with all the other amenities a gardener gives. I wanted to see the glorious bundles of large blooms covering the entire plant and with a sulphur bath; those petals are a stunning washed out cobalt blue. Well as it where, when Hydrangeas normally bloom there was nothing happening on our shrub, nada, nix, didily squat! You’ve got to wonder.

the bloom of love

So here we are on this ladder of depression as it ascends into the purification of winter and what should suddenly appear, one bloom, the bloom above. Before the frost and with no time to form seed this one bloom reveals itself. It defeats the laws of nature! My hydrangeas have been exceptionally strange this year. What with a recent planting forming an exquisite handicapped bloom (what many discard I treasure – see below) and now this one pinkish bloom, I’m scratching my ass and wondering.
What’s worse is that I suck at tuff-love, next year I’m going to have to deal it out in order to make the shrub and the new planting happier. Weird, you bet. It’s like anti-depressive medication you take it to feel happier but who really wants to be there, meds for happiness, I’d rather just be happy without the meds. What do you do? You have to wonder when a plant wants tough love to make it happy.

(what many discard I treasure)

GP

tuberous begonias - can't shake the "last of" thing

I’m back on “the last of” theme, well sort of. By the way no one has offered me an alternative frame of mind to get away from this depressive “last of” mindset which so dominates me this time of year.

As the fall progresses, I’ve noticed that certain plants really put on a great show of bloom, almost as if they know they are soon to be frozen. Plants that hold a lot of water seem to do this most. It’s like their “swan song” before the bulb goes into hibernation for the next season.

So, from the mundane to the exquisite my Tuberous Begonias put on a fall display of bloom which truly makes them one of the most brilliant shade flowers.

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The last of my Begonias before the big freeze.

GP

orchids - happy thanksgiving

Up here in Voltaire’s soon to be “four hectares of snow”, we’ve started to get our first frost warnings. Last night it went down to 4 Celsius and the last two days the mornings have been rather cool. I actually turned our central heating on yesterday to take the chill out of our house. More signs that fall truly is setting in. Beautiful bright and warm days with cool evenings, real fall days.

my fathers Phalaenopsis Orchids have come into bloom

It seems fitting then that up here in Canada; this is also the weekend that we celebrate the harvest with “Thanksgiving” weekend. Yes on October 10th and not in November like our cousins to the south of the 49th parallel. I think it makes sense as our harvest just happens earlier than in America, were we to wait until November 24th all we’d have to celebrate is barren trees, hoar frost and maybe a slight dusting of snow.

So today me and mine went to my parent’s home to take part in the pleasure of our greater family and thanksgiving. I enjoy seeing my nephews and nieces, sisters and my entire wife’s family also. Today being Sunday, is a gloriously sunny day and the leaves on the trees are starting to show some fall colour change, but not fully.

My father, Martin, had been a landscaper for more than 40 years until he retired a few years ago. When I was growing up we had greenhouses and my life has been surrounded by plants and trees, as well as a lot of turf management. My dad has always prided himself in growing plants and has a real passion for Orchids. I took these images at his house from just one of his orchid plants, which has recently come into bloom. They’re beautiful things orchids are.

my dad’s orchids

I have a friend in New York; he is an executive for a very prominent global corporation. That is his work, but for the rest he’s an Orchid grower and what a privilege it is to go to his home and see very rare Orchids that bloom only for a short time every few years. I love them and visiting with him is one of my favourite and privileged things to do when I am in the City of New York. I also mention him because the few times I’ve been in New York on American Thanksgiving, he and his wife have had me over for the holidays with their entire family and have always made me feel at home: their son Tommy is one of my closet friends in NYC. I have a lot to be thankful for on this Thanksgiving, not just my family but also my friends.

Jim and Mittie's home in Upstate New York

I don’t have enough time to dedicate to this passion and I’ve substituted other plants as my “poor persons orchid”. There is a lot to be thankful for and I wish you all the happiest Thanksgiving. Thanks for reading my blog!

sweet peas – one of my “poor persons orchid”

iris - another poor persons orchid

GP - can you name a few poor persons orchids?

why the last - clematis

the last clematis bloom on this vine before next season

You know, the more I think about it the more I can start to see how my mind begins its slow sojourn towards winter depression. It starts with the means I communicate to myself during the fall. What I mean is my thinking process. For example these images of Clematis, above and below. This Clematis bloom on this vine is probably the last bloom it will have this season. When I saw it there reaching up over the gargoyle on our back deck my initial reaction was – oh the last bloom of the year. When I see the roses, I think the last roses of summer. I start to preface my thoughts with “the last” of what ever may still be blooming in our garden. So, with everything I see in our garden being framed in “the last”, I realize that I’m already planting the seeds of depression. The last of anything is a depressing thought. Think about it yourself for a minute - the last whale, the last bird, the last flower; it is all too depressing isn’t it.

Now, I’ve never been one to think much of the power of positive thinking. To me that concept is a lot like wearing a clowns costume, you can paint on a happy face and adhere a big red nose on the face of it, but it doesn’t change the facts. You can put someone in a fancy ornate coffin but they are still dead. Sometimes I think positive thinking has away of making some people half full of the glass they are drinking from. You see this all the time in the most bizarre ways: when the old woman is hit on the way to doing groceries, you can’t spin it happy by saying “Oh well, now she doesn’t have to get the groceries.” Here’s one for you: he was a ruthless dictator but a benevolent one – you can’t be a benevolent dictator.”

At the risk of sounding like a real sap, maybe I should just paradigm shift my perspective of things when fall comes. It’s not the last Clematis bloom just the last one before the new ones. The ones that are coming after the frick’n freezing, ice, and snow, sometime close to eight months from now. Alternatively, these are the final blooms before the radiant fall foliage, just before the leaves blow off the trees and the branches pray to heaven for the sun to return.

See I’m feeling little better already. I lied.

Someone help me spin this in a healthier light than my dismal view please! Help get “the last” out of my lexicon.

detail from one of our last clematis blooms

GP

sedums - dragon's blood

I mentioned Sedums in yesterdays post. Today I’d thought I’d show you one of our Sedums photographed in mid summer and today in the fall.

Before I do, I’d thought I might go back to yesterday “Blue Monday”. After writing the post, I went on with my evening and couldn’t get the idea out my head that my comments on winter and the preparations it requires of us here in Canada, might somehow seem like complaining. It’s not really a complaint more than it is a fact, similar to societies of the past we must ready ourselves and our homes for what can be a brutal season. I just don’t like doing it but it’s not all doom and gloom unlike societies of the past we have “big box stores” and super grocery stores. Otherwise we’d of been canning and pickling all summer getting ready for winter.

That said I wouldn’t want anyone to think that while I observe the signs of fall all around, I’m not enjoying the beauty, which surrounds me, all the while fretting over winter. I strongly believe in “stopping and smelling”, the air, the earth, the fragrance of the flora and fauna of all four seasons. I’m grateful for the beauty of my habitat, this beautiful country, and all beautiful countries. Yes, even winter provides its own incredible beauty but after more than 40 of them here in the Northeast I’m very inclined to the South of France or South Africa throughout the winters. South Africa when you’re poor as it’s so cheap there, our winter is there summer, and the south of France when you’re just rolling in money so it doesn’t matter what things cost there. South Africa is just amazing and if it weren’t so far away I’d spend much more time there, I just love sitting on the patio next to the pool and hundred-year-old geraniums while watching the Sacred Ibis in the palms above our head. I also like sitting on the beach near Durban, by the Indian Ocean, watching the large waves roll in with surfers trying to catch a ride. I did a photo-painting of the Indian Ocean near Durban for my website: to illustrate a friend’s poem we published there – to view this page and read Chris Angell’s poems click here.

The Indian Ocean looking towards Durban 2001

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Sedum – Dragon’s Blood

This herbaceous perennial, is from a large group of plants with succulent green leaves. Its foliage and flowers are both attractive and change marvelously throughout the seasons. Another quality is that it is very drought tolerant and does well on poor or dry sites in the garden. We have several different genuses but I like these the best. I regret that I can’t tell you which genus ours are just that they’re Sedum. I also like the common name of Dragon’s Blood as it conjures up interesting images as you see its fall foliage.

Sedum in midsummer

detail of midsummer Sedum

the same Sedums - Dragon’s Blood photographed this afternoon

detail of fall Sedum reveals why it’s called Dragons Blood

macro of Sedum petals

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GP

feeling blue on a monday

I’m feeling rather “blue” today. A bad day, a Monday.

I hate shopping at a “big box “store when you need help and there’s none to be found for a hundred aisles. When you do find someone, they tell you it’s at the complete opposite end of the store, in an area were you would have never gone only because the aisle description is almost antithetical to what your looking for. Like looking for dairy in the meat section of the supermarket, it’s just not kosher. Sure, one could say dairy comes from a cow thus an association, but why would anyone look for screws in a plumbing section even if they were both made of metal.
The only good thing to do at a “big box” store is window shop; if you’re in a hurry forget it. Hate them.

I’ve started on the annual process of preparing the house for the forth-coming brutality of ice, wind, and snow. A few of the windows in the house need to be modernized in terms of insulation. When the house was built they we’re not as fussy about insulation. With the current prices of fossil fuels, we have to be to keep the house, snuggly warm for all the little dwarfs and gnomes that live in our rafters and crawl spaces throughout the freezing time. You know that clear sparkling night when the house has a ½ metre of snow on it, with icicles cascading from the edge of the roof as the north wind takes relent from its fierce blowing. Beautiful yes, but bitterly cold, so cold that bricks of the chimney crack.

Fortunately, we’re not there yet. I worked without my shirt in the sun but as I worked, I looked all around and saw all the signs that the fullness of autumn is soon to unfold. So I’m feeling blue – saddened.

my Asters slowly fade away with fall

as do my Daisies

The last of my Asters are slowly withering away, as well as my Daisies. The Sedums have begun to change colour, some of which I’ll show you in the days to come. The tops of distant Maple Trees have started to change colour, not a sudden change to the brilliant colours after a killing frost. Just a natural change of colour with the loss of a leafs chloroform, that happens at this time of year. The sun is hot but the mornings are damp and cool with dew thickly coating everything. While the windows are open tonight, we’ve had to shut them a few times already because of the chill in the air.

I’m feeling blue and on a Monday. Sounds like a song?

GP

jack in the pulpit seed

Jack in the Pulpits in May

Remember these “Jack in the Pulpits” from my May 15, 2005 posting of the same name.
Below are the seeds, which these above plants produced. I think they are simply amazing as they start from the Pulpit turn into these large green berries and then as fall comes turn to an orange then a brilliant red. Laying on their sides because of the weight of the seed these simple plants produce a cornucopia of seed.

The Jack in the Pulpit takes a few years to develop into a mature flowering plant from the seed. I grew all my own plants from seed. When you see the above image from spring and these seed pictures from fall, you can see why I enjoy these plants as much as I do.

In some ways the seeds are more interesting than the flower in terms of vivid colours. What a blessing the garden provides in all its stages throughout the seasons.

I wonder what Jack is preaching from his pulpit?

Jack in the Pulpit seeds Sept. - Oct.

GP

fungus and Haida Gwaii

Fungus or Fungi is actually called a kingdom – the fungus kingdom.
It’s weird stuff as it’s the sort of thing you don’t want growing on your body but in nature it provides some incredible visual delights, not to mention just how interesting they are as living organisms. Fungi provide a critical part of nature's continuous rebirth as fungi recycle dead organic matter into nutrients.

We have a big old Maple tree, growing in the very back of the property, where new fungus grows for us every year. I always trip out on how; in just a matter of days, these babies suddenly grow out of the side of the tree. There always huge, fleshy and so organic looking. I get a kick out of them because they're large enough to sit on if they didn’t break with the weight of me on them. I can see why gnomes, fairies, and pixies sit on them in our folklore.
Fungus is a visual delight to look at, from all perspectives.

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The tops are smooth, in as much as a cedar-shingled roof is smooth.

The sides reach out like large hands and fingers inviting us to succumb to their comfort in sitting on them as described above.

From the bottom, they are a strange living organism of soft, fleshy airy little cells that cause my mind to wander.

The bottoms look like a sponge or a coral from under the sea. They provide an architecture even more abstract and bizarre than the sweet honeycomb.

All the above images are from the same fungus, taken on the same day at the same shooting.
You can click on them to enlarge them.

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Sadly, their life is ephemeral. I guess if a fungus is growing on your toes or feet this short-lived character is a good thing. Those mushrooms that pop up after a evening rain and are gone by the noonday sun always blow me away and that’s not from consuming them, I just like looking at them. The funguses that grow on our grand old Maple tree live for about a month.

The best funguses I have ever seen where while walking in a remote forest of giant Alaska Sitka Spruce on the Queen Charlotte Islands or Haida Gwaii. My wife and I made this sojourn a few years ago. First, we drove 40 miles of logging roads, made of shot rock that could easily take out all four tires or putting a gapping hole in your oil pan. Often on these roads you come onto giant logging trucks with tires the size of pickup trucks which quickly forced you to the side of the road or perish as they are not able to stop for you. We then walked for several hours through what was paradise, leaving me to feel at times that we were the first people to ever see or walk there. Mushrooms, growing the size of small tress dotted the moss covered forest floor. Once the beauty of mushrooms has enticed our scrutiny of the forest floor, we couldn't help but notice Lichens as well. All over the forest floor and up the trees grew Lichens grew; they are a symbiotic union between fungus and algae. Funguses were growing from the side of trees that were so large that whole cities of fairies or pixies could live there. All of this under the canopy of 50-metre tall trees, laden in a blankets of moss, reaching down to the forest floor. It was incredible, a spirit quest and I certainly had an epiphany on this walk. We walked through this forest for hours until we came out on a snow capped mountain fjord or inlet on the Pacific Ocean, the west side of the Haida Gwaii. It was one of the greatest blessings of my life to stand there amongst these 3 to 4 metre (sometimes even larger) wide trees, some of which stood before Captain James Cook even sailed up these western coastal waters more than a two hundred years ago.

So, when I look at these fungus now growing in my own domain I think back on that marvelous journey and am once again grateful for the privilege. That said, had we of not taken that voyage to Haida Gwaii, these fungus growing on our grand old Maple tree are beautiful enough on their own.I hope you like my images.

GP

Ps – on a funny note: I thought I really was in paradise until we turned a bend and standing there in front of us was a huge black bear. Fortunately, the bear was stuffed with berries, revealed in the scat he left for us so he couldn’t be bothered with having to kill a meal; us. Not to mention the Mountain Lions that roam these woods. It of been paradise if I didn’t have to be on guard for them.

what many discard I treasure

Sometimes nature kicks out a freak even in flowers. If you like, a crippled flower; not unlike myself with an atrophied left leg. When these flowers pop up in my garden, I give them special attention so that they can live a full and happy life. There are times that I am completely surprised by the results as I was this year. One of our very young and recent plantings came up with the wackiest of blooms.
This recently planted Hydrangea set up three blooms all of which were anything like a complete and healthy looking Hydrangea flowers. I had given this plant a lot of love, water, fertilizer and many acid baths to change the colour from a normal white to a bluish colour.

These images convey the bloom it presented me. Though an abstraction of the normal Hydrangea flower, I was still very pleased by how it rewarded me.
If this flower, as handicapped as it is, can still provide such beauty, screaming that life has meaning and more so when loved, how could it be different for any other living thing?
Love is a powerful and nourishing force on everything it touches. The rewards in flowers may not be as stunning or showy as in healthy examples but the rewards are there none the same. In the realm of compassion sometimes, the reward is even more gratifying. Love is such a powerful thing on all that it touches. This must be "good stewardship" were love touches even the earth we walk on.

Therefore, I haven't shown you my big healthy Hydrangea shrubs, rather this stilted and abstracted bloom that I find equally as interesting if not more when looking at it in the abstract. The fact that my affection for it enabled it to reproduce makes it that much more special.

My beautiful crippled Hydrangea Bloom

This Hydrangea only had the five big blooms with this amazing center.

GP

happy and seeking company

Westham 0 - 0 Arsenal o9-24-05

My views on the game.

Not to be too simplistic but Arsenal sucked. They made the Hammers look good and good on the Hammers for rising to the occasion.
I think there were some poor calls and I thought the Hammers where getting some good shoves in using Man-U’s approach from last year. They have Teddy Sheringham but Arsenal has Dennis Bergkamp DB10, sadly injured.


I once did a painting about being on the top called “Sisyphus’ Descendants” << http://www.gerardpas.com/lrahm/gallery/sisypdet.html >>. The point is we’re not up there in that lofty place now. Be certain it is damn lonely up there, and is it was Roman’s Chelsea Army are stifling up the air there now – like a bad ABBA song “geld, geld, geld...”

Therefore, we have company for the time being in the middle of the table. Remember what I always say “Money is the root of all evil the only thing you can do with it is share the misery and buy art from depressives :)” I can just see that little pink smirk smile to the Left side of Roman Abramovich’s face now. What with the price of gas at the pump, oil at record highs, the number one team in England and Russia – things are looking good and if that is being at the top it’s damn lonely up there. What an oxymoron – a social society climbing as a team would make the summit more agreeable and Roman the Russian sits there alone alone while Veterans starve. I hope Stalin is rolling in his grave, which that prick deserved, rolling in his grave that is – “Gulag” is not a word describing the sound of imbibing.

Lonely at the top, boo f’n hoo -- I’m crying like John Terry or Rio Ferdinand.

My point about how money can’t buy you happiness just find you company when in misery.

Boo

Hoo

As for Arsenal, my head was spinning as though I was coming down from a high (the top - lol). My head was swirling and I started pumping back the Bitters like a weightlifters workout. It was like bad sex nobody could finish.
What was with that force field around the net? Did you see how Van Persie’s ball just bent away from it? Ouch, ouch, out come the Advil’s so that I can take my beer stained kit to the dry cleaners.

Am I going to bail? Nope!
If I had money like Roman, I’d buy a personal license plate that read “A12SEnal4LIFE”.

Go Gunners – more gunplay please, much more gun play.
As intials are short for gunplay.

GP

aster what?

Someone called me an "ASTERHOLE" today.
I replied, "You'd know one, ASTERWIPE"!

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Me being a piece luv'n person what else could I have said?click image to enlarge
Just ask all the rest of those that dislike me.

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I guess it is all a matter of perspective. The difference between seeing the world as an ASTERHOLE or a ASTERWIPE.

:)~

asters - new york asters faster

Aster flowers

Fall presents a whole new array of colours in the garden. It’s so much more earthy than springs vivid colours. There is no “autumnal” painting palette in Canada that wouldn’t include earth colours such as Yellow Ochre or Indian Red what with the burnished oranges, glowing reds, buttery yellows, overtones of copper or bronze.

A cluster of Asters

I’m sorry, I forget what genus of Aster these are but I also like New York Asters – jeez, that sounds like some serious NYC family name like the Carnage or Rockafeeler families. My favourite name in this American royalty genus is Angell – what’s not to like about having the last name of an Angell: Mr. Gabriel Angell. I’d of liked my last name to have been Pax, but I got Mr. No or Mr. Wong Step, Mr Step Forttwo, Mr. I. Dunno - Pas in French.

Asters growing in our garden.

I bought a new car last week, well new to me. Vroom, vroom it’s a sweet ride. I love it cause it classy, comfortable and very, very fast. Did I mention that I liked it because it's fast, if I haven’t it takes you to the speed you want to be at very quickly, nice on those long drives to New York to see the Asters in my friend’s gardens.
It has an advanced 2.5-liter, 20-valve, V-5 engine that produces a lot of horse-power, with impressive torque for quick acceleration. A nice toy! All this to get me to the Asters faster and arrive there without a sore back.

The one with the most toys in the end still dies!

Arsenal play Westham tomorrow at 5:30 GMT – go gunners!

GP

sweet autumn clematis

Sweet Autumn Clematis (clematis terniflora or clematis paniculata)

Well it’s autumn. Up here in the “land of long winters” and “Seasonal Affective Disorder” (SAD isn’t it) we are starting to think of frost in the weeks to come -- first soft then the killing frost. It is no wonder that so many of us suffer from SAD, when you have to start thinking of frost in September. As far as I’m concerned SAD feels and is described similar to pure Depression – it all sucks, depression that is even if you can cure SAD with a light bulb.Right now, we are enjoying the end of summer and doing it with elegant and fragrant delight through our Sweet Autumn Clematis (clematis terniflora or clematis paniculata). I propagated this one last year and this is its first season of blooms. It grows out about 10 metres before it blooms in late August-Sept. The fragrance, particularity at night, is subtle, sweet and enjoyable. The blooms though simple in terms of other varieties of Clematis are dense and thus stunning by magnitude. We grow this one on our deck as it quickly covers and then supplies a wonderful scent, on those fall afternoons of sitting in autumns yellow sunlight.

As ours is still young it still needs a year or so for the root system to mature, it has quadrupled in size just since last year. By next year, if nature permits it should quadruple itself again and I’m hoping it will look more like this one below. It is a nice way to bring in fall – pure simplicity without a lot of show but rewarding nonetheless.
Another small way of crawling further out of that rut of the blues or depression.
GP

lotus flower

Lotus flower leaf

Even without its magnificent blooms, I still find the Lotus leaf a beautiful marvel floating on or above the water. The Lotus flower symbolizes so much about what is good in life. The Lotus flower is the only plant to fruit and flower simultaneously, as it emerges from the depths of the muddy swamp. To some it symbolizes the manifestation of the universal Buddha Nature or Christ Consciousness inherent equally in all life; spiritual enlightenment. I am more of a skeptic about such terms as universal consciousness and spiritual enlightenment but I love it for what it is. Growing from the mud at the bottom of ponds and streams, the exquisite Lotus flower rises above the water and is usually white or pink with 15 or more oval, spreading petals, and a peculiar, flat seedcase at its center.
These Lotus leafs grow in a friends “Curing Pond” as indicated by her tile work around the pond. It truly makes me feel better, when I sit there next to it with her and marvel at the wonders of nature even these simple leafs. The pond seems to work and her friendship is a like a healing balm, which I am fortunate to have. I say this because sometimes we take things for granted like friendship. For example: the East Indian lotus, N. nucifera, found in southern Asia, was introduced into Egypt about 2,500 years ago but is no longer found in the Nile region: how could this of happened.

The Curing Pond by Jamelie Hassan

virburnum

Virburnum or Snowball shrub seeds

Viburnum or Snowball shrub is from the same family as Cranberry. Its berries are reputed to produce excellent jam and jelly. For me it conveys the fullness of summer with its beautiful berries. The berries stay for a long time and we use them to attract migrating birds in the late fall early winter. The fullness of summer is upon us and the harvest will soon begin. I like this time of year as it also provides a pause from garden work between the seasons. Yes, it is time to smell the roses.

GP

nasturtium

a nutritious and beautiful garnish

being and nothingness

Is it like the cosmos being sucked into a big black hole? Alternatively, is it like entropy, a vortex that somehow holds this universe in place and stops it from spilling into “empty space” similar to a smoke ring.
Is it something dissolving into nothingness? This cannot be because then that something would have to be consumed by nothingness in the strict sense of nothing at all, no content, complete emptiness.
Is it just a sunflower?

GP

no oxymoron

Sometimes the mundane can be so, well, it can be extraordinary (oxymoron?).
I consider the Hosta or Plantain Lily as an ornamental used by architects to create low maintenances plantings -- thus for the most part somewhat mundane.
Then you see them bloom like below, where the flowers look like fine Art Nouveau jewelry. Not so mundane are they.

hosta

It’s funny how if you stop sometime and observe the ordinary, yes even the mundane, it can reveal its own intrinsic majesty to you.
It is as though we get these small glimpses of heaven surrounding us at times; what life is without the strangeness of death and decay.
You may see this as the cycle of life – birth / death, the ying and yang. As an eternal being, I recognize the living God, the God of love. I still find death perversely strange and that’s why I cling to the love of God! I guess that is why the killing of an innocent person on my behalf also seems so extraordinary.

This God is not a god represented by clay or bronze sculpture, prayer wheel or tolling bell but the formless God of love, known as I AM or Father. I want to live in the presence of complete love forever and not die as in NO MORE, utter nothingness.
There is nothing I can do in life to earn this, not enough prayer wheels to turn or bells to chime, simply put it is a unconditional gift of love from God; as it should be.

GP

obedience PLANtS

Obedience is something that I lack entirely. As difficult as it is for me to comprehend it has its own transcendent beauty. I guess I could use more of it.

obedience plant
Physostegia virginiana

"Obedience Plant" is called such, because if the flowers are twisted on the stem they will remain in position.

I think of it as “ephemeral Bonsai” or “temporal art”, when I look at them and think that I could manipulate them into geometric forms with wire.

GP

hibiscus

Three reasons for loving mid-summer.

The Rose of Sharon has come into bloom in our garden. We have three different varieties that dazzle our eyes. The first is the national flower of Korea, “The Rose of Sharon” which is native throughout Asia and India. The second is a hybrid of this shrub, a “Double Bloomed Rose of Sharon”, and comes in diverse colours. The third is a native Hardy Hibiscus which grows native to our climate and which I have not represented here by photograph but will once I have a better image.

Rose of Sharon - Hibiscus syriacus

Double-Bloomed Rose of Sharon

Tropical Hibiscus

This Tropical Hibiscus has been in my possession for more than 25 years and grows in my studio in the winters, spending the summers on our deck.

I love them all and the many colours they now come in. They make the mid-summer that much more joyful with their radiant blooms and the hummigbirds that flock to them.

dragonfly

This is one reason I love summer, I can be distracted by the most common and yet wonderful of things such as the beauty of this Dragonfly up against my tool shed. In the small and large of insect world, all have their own unique intrinsic beauty.

Funny thing is that while I realize the above to be truth I still have an aversion to some insects such as Maggots, White Grub Worms (I squish them between my fingers) and Ear Wigs. Whatever beauty is in these I still have yet to discover.

Yes just another paradox in my life! Then again, I ask you if I loved insects as Francis Assisi loved birds and animals would they make me a saint? Just a thought.

GP

summer

Yes summer is a fine time of the year.

I'm still alive and grateful for it!

Well I haven’t died in fact I’m very much alive. I may feel like I’m somewhere between life and death, caught in a type of living purgatory but I’m here. I’ll always choose life over the alternative because life is such a wonderful gift, all of it.

I haven’t felt much like writing lately as you can see. Summer is so wonderful and I have so much to do. Go to the cottage, the beach, holidays, work etc. I seem to like writing in the cooler seasons of the year.

I went out and bought a new camera yesterday. It’s a sweet rig and I’m so happy to have this new tool to document my work and take wonderful pictures. I bought this camera because of what it can do, as seen below in these two photos of Echinacea flowers from our backyard.

Magenta Echinacea with Bee
click to enlarge

White Echinacea
click to enlarge

This camera can shoot up to 1.25 inches from the object; it is great for macro images of flowers. Did I say I love it? In case you are wondering, the camera is a Nikon COOLPIX 8800 Digital.

When fall comes, I’ll get my proverbial ass back in gear and load a hundred or so images from my garden that I took this summer. For now thanks for caring and know that I'm busy in the garden.

Yes, I got a new toy and what a toy it is!

GP

finding the lake of healing

the sunsets on Lake Huron

I have spent the last several days up at Lake Huron, one of the Great Lakes, which we have the privilege of using when living here in Ontario. For my local friends: I spent it at the Pinery Provincial Park.

It’s been so blistering hot here as of late that we almost dare not go outside for fear of melting with temperatures that feel like 42 Celsius because of a combination of temperature and humidity or what they call the humidex reading. It has been brutal.

I really enjoyed the lake because it changes your whole perspective on this unbelievable heat wave we’ve been having this last month. When you feel uncomfortable, you jump into the crystal clear water, swim around for a few moments and you’re good to go for another hour or at least until your hot again. That’s all we did for the last week and while normally I would see this as self-indulgence, I have to say I really enjoyed myself.
No computers, no city, no hassles, just swim and eat and swim some more.

I wish depression had a lake to jump in, swim around a bit, until you’re good to go or until you need to jump in again. If only life were so easy but then if it were maybe people would only spend their times on the shore of that lake and not do anything else because it would be so tempting not to leave. Like the fountain of youth, I’m all for finding that lake. You know that I’d just open my eyes and it would be the lake already in front of me.

Pas' Pensees

I’ve been on a bit of a mindbender lately and well it’s no fun. I’ve always used my art as a catharsis to exorcise those demons that from time to time cling to me not wanting to let go, depression being the biggest threat these recent years.
I have never been happy in the role of victim and I don’t want the closing words on my life to included that word depression. So this is my attempt to claw back. I’m not much in the mood to write a long lengthy diatribe so to start I’d like to just write some Pensees in the same vain as Blaise PAScal who wrote "The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me." Here’s my first then.

I used to pride myself with the intelligence that I had acquired until I realized by it that I was as stupid as the rest of us.

_____________________________

These delicate Sweet Peas (Lathyrus odoratus) grow in our gardens. I don’t know who they are but they say the Iris is the poor mans Orchid. If that is true then Sweet Peas are the Orchid of the complete destitute as they cost the price of a bag of seed or free if you pluck them from the vine. If you look at the top image, you can how I come up with this conclusion as this small string of Sweet Pea look as though they might very well be Orchids.

GP

depressed but still flying

I regret I haven’t been writing much. I haven’t been doing much of anything and I think it’s because I’m feeling terribly depressed. I haven’t been taking pictures, doing my own work; I’m just at a complete stand still. It’s not good.

Just to add to my frustration, I’m at loss for words to describe why. Yes, it’s exceptionally hot out just now with humidity we’ve been reaching temperatures that feel like 40 Celsius everyday. My studio is 34 and too hot to work in but that is no excuse because I’ve worked in hotter temperatures while in Africa. I haven’t been feeling well and my blood sugars are a little too high lately. I haven’t been able to shake this cold and still have a nasty cough and runny nose. I feel like shit and the world outside looks shitty from my air-conditioned house. Maybe my medicine isn’t working, I don’t know. All I really know is that I feel very depressed.

All I really feel like doing is flying jets in virtual reality and killing other combatants online by dropping ordinance on their heads or sending a heat-seeking missile up their derriere / engines – in the end it matters not to me as long as I get the kill. I’m a relatively good if not excellent pilot and usually win top aviator in any round I fly playing EA Battlefield games.

I’ve been piloting these aircraft:
F-15 Strike Eagle - Fighter Bomber, two seats (pilot and weapons officer)
F/A-18 Hornet - Single seat strike fighter
F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) - Single seat fighter bomber
MiG-29 'Fulcrum' - Single seat fighter
Su-34 'Fullback' - Fighter bomber, two seats (pilot and weapons officer)
J-10 - Fighter
Su-30 'Flanker' - Fighter bomber
I’ve been a gamer since I had my first computer a 1984 – 8086 IBM Laptop back in 1985. I was a “real time strategy” player for the longest time but in the last 5 years, I play only “Online First Person Shooters” like Battlefield 2 Modern, which has aircraft. I get a thrill out of flying supersonic jet fighters. My online pilot name is die2soon.

Why is it that when I feel this way all I want to do is fly and kill?

Jet comes to a stop but the missle…

…just keeps on going. Whoops wrong button!

Maybe the 2 sequence images above describe how I feel, in this case I’m the out of control missile. I think I need help not with online killing but with my head as it’s killing me.

One other thing which has delayed my posts has been that I couldn't figure out why my image software was not uploading to this site. Today I looked around and realized the Blogspot now has it's own upload interface which makes life that much easier to compile these posts.

Anyway I suck how about you?

GP

sundrops for june 23rd

Every morning of my birthday, I have walked out into our gardens where I’ve observed that this quaint petit little yellow flower comes into full bloom. As such, I consider it my birthday flower because it is the most profusely blooming flower in our garden on this day.

The flower is called Oenothera fruticosa Youngii L.: narrow leaf Evening Primrose, or Sundrops. It is very common throughout most of Eastern North America and is very easy to grow. I realize that Hallmark and most other seller of birthday commodities consider the Rose the June flower and I have no objection to that as the Rose has its own charm. For me though my birthday flower remains the Oenothera fruticosa: Sundrop or Evening Primrose.

It’s easy for the Rose to gain more attention than the Sundrop with its large petals and marvelous scent and I do consider it royalty in the garden. Nevertheless, the meek and less pretentious Sundrop has its own splendid way of saying happy birthday to me with a smaller voice and after 50 birthdays, I do not think I want it said much louder than that.

This plant provides a great paradox for me, Sundrops by day but Evening Primrose by night. Bright and cheery through the day but also making it’s comment through the night.
That is what I appreciate about the meekness of this plant is that it gathers its name Evening Primrose because its scent is barely noticeable during the day but at night, it becomes subtly sweet and strong. That’s how I’d like to live my life: be bright and cheery and know just when to turn on the charms, remaining humble throughout.

GP

Robin (Turdus Migratorius or Red-Breasted Thrush)

I am a privileged human, blessed you could say. I get to make a living from two of the things I love most about life, art and gardening.

Today was a Nun day Monday where I worked at the Convent / Monastery. It was a beautiful last days of spring ‘day’, an early summer day, a workday.
We pruned the bottoms out of a grove of Aspen, de-seeded the Lilac with a light prune and cleaned up some dead limbs from a lovely White Birch Tree that’s going through some hard times these last two years. It is in a stand of about seven Birches trees, which I’m very fond of, the white peeling paper like bark.

One other thing I did today in my stewardship of the land was to clean up the broken body of a dead Robin. Its body lay in the middle of a grass field. From the damage done to the birds broken back, I can only think it was hit from above by a large Hawk. A large Red - Tailed Hawk lives in the woods nearby; one also lives near my house as well. I found it melancholy to have to dispose of its lifeless and already fetid decaying body. Such are my chores.

I not only found it sad because of death but I’ve been building a relationship with a family of Robins that have nested in our Norwegian Maple next to the deck. We watch the female and male coming and going laboriously with food for their three young chicks, which are rapidly becoming fledglings. I found this to be such a privilege, as I was writing my earlier post of March 29 “It is official, spring is truly here!” I couldn’t get a good photo of the Robin. Then as though a larger blessing awaited my earlier disappointment (May 31 “our garden becomes violet”, a mated pair of Robins built a nest in eyes view of my daily life. We sit on the deck and these birds provide us with bemusement as we try and not imprint too much of ourselves on them – I have been tempted to be Pavlov but resisted it – you know three trained Thrushes at my command like a Falconer – I don’t need that many worms.

As it is, I did climb up and take these pictures for you without coming to close or so I thought. When I first got up to the tree, the young birds reacted as though they heard an approaching parent and threw themselves up to receive yet another tasty morsel, their parents have been working so tirelessly.

After a moment or two, they realized that I might present a risk to them and pulled themselves deeply back into the nest, hiding in their own down comforters, cute really. I left them be and soon watched the father return with more food and everything was natural again. I only hope no Blue Jay hunting party discovers them, although they are getting large as chicks, Jays can be such raiders as beautiful as they are.

I’ll keep you posted on these birds. In the meantime, I’m getting weeks behind on all the flowers from our gardens. I think of it this way I’ll have something to write about in the winter.

GP

asymmetry - symmetry

I have never been one for perfection as in “the ideal”. I think it comes from the fact that I limp when I walk and thus I’ve been forced to see the world in an asymmetrical way. Don’t misunderstand my intent here I search for perfection but am continually reminded that because of the human condition it is fleeting, ephemeral or temporal.
As an artist for example, I see the conditions for perfect composition but I realize that in the Golden Rule the criteria for perfection is based on how to make the viewer read the painting and not necessary balance as in a weigh scale.

As my own body is deformed by polio, defined by the ideal of perfect body, I’ve learned to love asymmetry. The wonky wheels, the broken, the not quite complete, all have formed affection with me. Myself being one, I have been a tireless crusader for imperfections beauty and value. Therefore, I can make a statement such as “I love my polio-withered leg as much as my very strong perfectly formed leg” (click to see image). These my two legs create a balance for me and remind me of our human condition.

Coy in my neighbour Hilda's pond.

So it comes to symmetry, I find what attracts me most is when indeed it comes about by coincidence, serendipitous almost an accident. This brings me to the two fish above which I photographed at exactly one of those moments of symmetry, while they swim past each other in the pond. They are in perfect symmetry, almost as though mirrors of each other, then in the blink of an eye they are not again; very satisfying to my eye and reassuring to my spirit. I think if we lived in a perfectly symmetrical world, it would be rather dull and lackluster. Sometimes we need the dull, the mundane, the serene, if only as a barometer to gauge the excitement of perfection. In other words, sometimes the little thing that people ignore as plain and simple can be the beautiful if only you spent enough time looking at it telling you that in its imperfection lies the truth of its beauty.

How does that apply to art? Well I find the characters in Breugel paintings much more compelling than the paintings of beautiful people such as Ingres. I admire that painters like Van Ruisdael always left the broken limb in their landscapes. I admire landscape painting that conveys both the beauty of creation but also the ferocity of nature. All of these types of work show beauty but also remind us of its temporality and our human condition. That to me is good art because it allows people to accept themselves for what they are. You can still see beauty but not feel measured by it. You can be beautiful in asymmetry - like me and my crippled leg, or a broken wing, or deadend limb.

GP

today i did what plants do

Today I took some rest, as prescribed myself and lay in our hammock in the gardens doing what the plants do; looking at the sky contemplating the weather. I'm feeling much better. A cold sky today after much needed rains.

GP

ps. thank you for your concerns

i'm still under the weather

Okay, well I’m still as sick as a dog and probably from overworking. Did not sleep much last night because of dry hacking cough but I feel recovery coming and think the worst is behind me.
Subsequently, to my regret I have not felt like doing much work of any kind including this blog.

Therefore, for today, I am just going to catch you up on some beautiful images that I didn’t include in some of my posts below, or these flowers have only just come into bloom in the last week.

pink peony detail - gotta love these delicate petals

gorgeous yellow artic peony detail

a better image of the artic peony in full bloom
as seen in this post below

more stunning poppies from our garden

Wish me well and there will be more on the way in the days to come. I hate summer colds and this humidity doesn’t help with the breathing, fortunately I do have central air conditioning.
Sick I must be, because even as bad as I felt today, I went out to the garden to take more photographs. I really need to learn how to rest.

GP

lupine

I begin my blog today by saying that I am too sick to be writing or doing much of anything else. I worked Saturday pruning the bottoms out of large trees to allow more light under the canopy. I then proceeded to prune all the shrubs and hedges. After about 13 hours, I was totally spent. Then I paid for it Sunday, spending the entire day in bed only wishing I were in a comma so that I wouldn’t have to feel the pain. How bad was it, well picture this: I was staring off into to oblivion when I realized that mucus had been pouring out of my nose onto to my upper lip, dripping to my lower lip then running back into my mouth which was open trying to get extra air as my lungs are so restricted. Not a pretty picture and that about sums up how I feel – what a mess. I dragged my sorry arse out of bed today to walk in the garden and make this post for you. Now I’m going to lie down and leaf through the yellow pages looking for an oxygen tent – what a mess.

This pale Lupine gets its name from the Great State of Texas, home of the President of America but I can’t remember either of their names. I know it is something spindly and not bushy.

Lupines as Fox Gloves don’t live that long lives so you need to guard your seedlings from ‘the bad wabbit”. I do admire the floral spike that rises from the plant until it hoists its floral head above the foliage revealing itself for all to see. It is a splendid flower and I love the mountain meadows covered in Lupine, the ones in Italy, Austria, France, Spain, or Switzerland, they’re all equally beautiful. Meadows of swaying Lupines gently persuaded to dance by the winds.

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They are another abstract flower to me, these spiky, conical towers that rise from divided leafs of emerald green foliage. Looking from above they provide a marvelous sight of slowly unwinding conical forms, spiraling up gaining in colour saturation as they ascend a staircase to the blue heavens of sky above and the warm sun that inhabits it.

Remember that I love spirals and look for them everywhere. This Lupine provides such a stylish spiral as the flower pods ascend ever upwards, swelling until they climax in full bloom. It’s my imaginary floral phallic hanging out of a pair of 60’s green pants. Something Sigourney Weaver conjures up in your mind.
Happily I’m a flower that has both sex glands so this isn’t about sex, or is it Mr. Sigmund Control Droid, spidering this site looking for dissent?… lol :)~ This is just the flowers, birds and the bees part of that equation. Sexy don’t you think?

Okay, my favourite Mel Gibson line “Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they are not following me!”

Jeez what a post this is, Elmer Fudd, Bugs Bunny, Sigourney Weaver, Mel Gibson, phallic flowers, it’s like Hollywood, Bollywood all rolled up into one and for the same great price. Thank you Lupines, for exorcising my garden demons. You see more proof that gardens are good for your state of mind.

So how’s your sex today, I mean how is your day?

I’ve completed my text on William Burroughs

Gerard Pas and William Burroughs, Brussels, Belgium 1979.

It seems fitting that I would write about the beauty of the Poppy, its bountiful seeds, and its pernicious sap on the same day I announce that I have complete my text on “How I came to know William Burroughs” which I have written about earlier below.

It’s a sultry tale from my twenties while I was living between Amsterdam and New York. I hope that when you read it you understand that it is a chapter of my life and not my life. An important chapter and one that I felt after these almost 30 years I should write. Well I did and its ready for you to read. Just Click on the link.

“How I came to know William Burroughs
Confession of a wild boy”

By Gerard P. Pas

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So now Poppy Flowers – complimentary flowers to a lurid tale but not an ending.

poppies | ={pas -|- sap}= |

Now I’ve had a long standing relationship with this flower. It has been my master once or twice in my short life. Yes, the sap of the Poppy has lorded over my being both in its raw but preferred in its refined way. I have supported many Afghan, Burmese and Thai farmers during the course of my addictions and not in a spiritual way.

This is my “Beauty and the Beast flower”. Consummate beauty and pernicious bestiality locked within the Disneyland inside its addictive grasp. True escape from pain and no worries or cares about the search for meaning, lies within its power. Dr. Feelgood until you run out of Dr. Feelgood, then the demons come out.

Now I get to see it just for its beauty, I have been freed from the shackles of needing to stare at the picture for hours longing for Junk. I have been liberated from not understanding pain and suffering and needing to cover that understanding in a opium haze, further clouding the issues. I no longer need to suppress those issues with that addiction. I still have others addictions, tea, beer, good wine, slabs of red-meat, grass and Arsenal Football Club; not in that order. God answered my deepest prayers inside those opiate deliriums and like Jonah in the belly of the fish (death); he reached out to give me life.

Now that I am freed of my bonds to it, I can see the Poppy for the beauty it possesses. I want to share its beauty with you below. I like that about sanctification it cleanse you of your previous ways and allows you to view it from a redeemed perspective. What a renewing of the mind!. The plant gives such a gaiety as a flower and not an addiction as its sap =(sap -- pas)=.
We have many, many Poppies in our full sun garden. They are with us almost all summer through their various arrays of species. I even grow the Afghan version as a botanical curiosity. Here then are just a few that are in bloom from the garden of delight.

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I begin by showing you the story of one Poopy, as it works it’s way from bud to bloom. These images where taken over the course of the last two weeks.

the bud

the bloom creeps outwards from the bud

to reveal itself as the wonder it is

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The next three images are from blooming Poppies in our garden of delight. I have photographed them all as colour mandelas for you. They are so incredibly delicate, as though made of thinly woven silk or paper.

pinks

saffrons

Saffron wheel Mandela

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Lastly, some petit, simple Poppies, that seems to grow on a vine producing blankets of flowers. I will have many more Poppies over the next months to show you. I’m still a Poppy lover just in a more positive way. When close to death with aging and or in pain maybe the other way again as in the “pain control pump” beep, beep, beep, ...

tiny miniature poppies

In memory of William Seward Burroughs.
GP

peonies

Just three of the different coloured Peonies that grow along the southern exposure of our home. What a delightful and rewarding flower is the Peony, all of them right up to the Tree Peony.

what a delicate Mandela

This white Peony is my favourite of all our Peonies. Its supple petals are so subtle to look at, as perfect a Mandela as the Lotus Flower. I really love this flower because of how the white petals work as colour, a good subject for an oil painting.

I am currently using a full 768 x 1024 version of this above flower as my desktop image and am offering it to you as a download by clicking here “Pas Peony Wallpaper”. It truly is a beautiful desktop image and easy to use: just click on the link and then save the image (right click or apple key to save). I assume you know the rest but if not just ask I'll be happy to help. The jpeg image is 570kb and 768 X 1024 pixels.

My gift of flowers to you, enjoy – it’s a nice way to start your machine and your day.

Artic Peony

I love the soothing cool yellow with its peachy inner petals of the Artic Peony, this one has already started to drop it’s petals.. My dad gave me this one so I think on him when I look at it. Aah, dad we shared one common love of flowers, wait he’s making sculptures out of clay and I’m… oh yes, he still loves his flowers to.

bright

This Peony no matter when I photograph it comes out with these vibrant magentas and shocking reds. It is so bright that it’s gaudy! I just can’t imagine anyone wearing this colour except maybe Liberace clones in Las Vegas, looking for the where about of Elvis, after a recent spotting of him at the Wal-Mart; or which ever store needs some quick press.That said it does look nice in a cluster.

GP

iris and lilac

These pale yellow Iris are my favourite Iris in the garden. I had to take this image at dusk so that I could show you the colours, as the full sun washes out the yellow. This yellow flower grows under my Japanese Red Maple next the purple Rhododendron, which makes a nice complimentary show of colour.

These Iris are more showy alone and don’t require the subtle surroundings as the above Iris do. They grow in our primary garden in full sun all day.

I’m so far behind with the images I want to show you that I’m only just getting to the Lilacs, which bloomed over two weeks ago. They are so sweet with fragrance that when a gentle east or southeast wind blows it scents our bedroom delightfully, where it grows next to the east window. You can see our bedrooms other south window in the above image, just left of the Iris.

Turned on the central air conditioning today for the first time this year as it’s getting as hot as hell out there; predictions of a humidex of 40 Celsius for the next few days. The plants are going to love it; we on the other hand are going to suffer as with that humidity the sweat has no place to go. I love it more than winter any day but not every day.

I'm just going to be bringing images and short narratives for the next while to catch up with the flowers. May and June are such wonderful months for Perennials.

How was your day?

GP

money and reilgion - thrift & star of bethlehem

Well, another scorcher of a hot day in the sun, too much sun for me but the plants sure love it! We planted all the Annual Flowers at the Monastery today. Yes, I’m two weeks late but the nuns didn’t mind – I give them a good deal for my labour, so me thinks they have little to complain about anyway you look at it! It was a very common commercial planting of Impatiens and some cutting flowers like Snapdragons, rather drab really. No money, no funny, and they lack the vision to see that with unlimited resources I could turn their Canadian Headquarters into a slice of paradise with Perennial Gardens. More work equals more money, equals threats of cheaper wetback otherwise slave landscapers to replace me. You know “blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth,” so be it, I give what I can and you’d be surprised what people will take. I always hoped to work for the Pope but I had visions of painting his ceilings. On the bright side, I at least get to cut his lawns, provide sustenance to his gardens and trees, even if that is not what I had envisioned. He pays the bills on time to, unlike me always trying to scratch up enough coin. All this talk about money and religion made me think back to living in The Netherlands, Dutch Thrift to be exact.

Armeria - Thrift, Sea Pink, Cliff Rose

This plant reminds me of my native homeland of Holland as it grows along the North Sea shoreline. Many times, I have walked the coastline of the North Sea and I very much love doing it. I also like the Northern Coastline of the Province of Gronnigen moving South-West towards the Wadenzee and Friesland.
America has many different colours and flowers from mid-spring to mid-fall. Not bad considering how long our winters are, brrrrrrr. I grow a few clusters as borders around our primary garden. This flower has given me some trouble documenting it – it keeps telling me to get an upgrade from my current Nikon Digital, to the newest model with a closer macro range. $1,000 dear me, I wish I had it but alas I do not and I am Dutch :)

Things are happening fast with flowers in the gardens and I’m running behind in all the images I have for you. I may spend the next few weeks just dumping images with fewer texts to catch up with the cornucopia of flowers in our gardens.

Suffice it to say when my loved ones and I go out for an evening walk, on the lawns and in the gardens, it brings calm as you stand before the wonder of such beauty as the Creator has provided. It surprises me not that life began in a garden and evolves into the City of God, Jerusalem.
What’s nice is that I live almost in the middle of the Forest City (London), fifteen minutes by bicycle from the downtown core. Yet, I have been blessed to have this marvelous forested garden because on these old inner city blocks the land parcels where all very large and some people still keep woodlots or forested backs like us and all but one of my neighbours, my next door neighbour.

I thought I’d leave you with this dainty little flower, it deserves to have so much more said about it. It’s tiny but it has a big and interesting storey dating back to before the Greeks, too big to blog here but if you’d like to read it then click here.

Thus the Dutch Thrift and the Star of Bethlehem – money and religion. My ode to the nuns of the monastery -- all that and a Dutch Gardener to boot just not to hard as it hurts.

Star of Bethlehem - Ornithogalum umbellatum

coral bells

coral bells

Common Name: Alum Root, Coral Bells, Rock Geranium
Botanical Name: Heuchera micrantha 'Palace Purple'

Just a little red bell against a vibrant blue sky. We like these plants as borders and they can tolerate drought and love full sun.

Me I’ve had too much sun. Being a gardener is not for the faint at heart unless you work small. With all our beds I spend a lot of time working in the gardens. Yesterday was one of those days, all day. Today I worked the beds from 6:30 until 9:30 after working at the monastery cutting very long grass all day on our big tractor, 6 hectares of long grass. I’m tired and I’ve had too much sun.

I like working in the garden in the evenings our early mornings when the sun is not scorching down on you. I look like a bloody lobster today, from top to bottom except for my candy white ass. I think the nuns might get alarmed if I cut in the buff, besides my posterior would still be white as I’d be seated on the tractor. You know, I think maybe I’ve had too much sun, damn I’m writing about my behind. Sorry!

Enjoy the Coral Bells. How was your day?

great Solomon's-seal

great Solomon's-seal

Great Solomon's-seal (Polygonatum canaliculatum).

I like this plant, it uses rhizomes and therefore spreads well in the shaded, semi-shaded areas of our gardens. For parts of our woodland beds we use it as a groundcover, see above image.

flowers of the Solomon's-seal

I like the fact the name conjures up King Solomon for me. I think he must have been an incredible person, a Renaissance man long before the Renaissance. This guy was the real deal, a poet, art connoisseur, architecture "the temple", a scholar, righteous, a King and lover of God. If you have, any doubts read this poem, which he wrote in his Book “Song of Songs”.
I mean I get hot when I read this. It’s a very sexy poem. I want my lover to write me such words and desire me as much. Is this not a song of love? Is it a song of longing for the City of God? It's good...

Song of Solomon 7 (New International Version)

Song of Solomon 7

1 How beautiful your sandaled feet,
O prince's daughter!
Your graceful legs are like jewels,
the work of a craftsman's hands.

2 Your navel is a rounded goblet
that never lacks blended wine.
Your waist is a mound of wheat
encircled by lilies.

3 Your breasts are like two fawns,
twins of a gazelle.

4 Your neck is like an ivory tower.
Your eyes are the pools of Heshbon
by the gate of Bath Rabbim.
Your nose is like the tower of Lebanon
looking toward Damascus.

5 Your head crowns you like Mount Carmel.
Your hair is like royal tapestry;
the king is held captive by its tresses.

6 How beautiful you are and how pleasing,
O love, with your delights!

7 Your stature is like that of the palm,
and your breasts like clusters of fruit.
8 I said, "I will climb the palm tree;
I will take hold of its fruit."
May your breasts be like the clusters of the vine,
the fragrance of your breath like apples,

9 and your mouth like the best wine.

Beloved
May the wine go straight to my lover,
flowing gently over lips and teeth.

10 I belong to my lover,
and his desire is for me.

11 Come, my lover, let us go to the countryside,
let us spend the night in the villages.

12 Let us go early to the vineyards
to see if the vines have budded,
if their blossoms have opened,
and if the pomegranates are in bloom—
there I will give you my love.

13 The mandrakes send out their fragrance,
and at our door is every delicacy,
both new and old,
that I have stored up for you, my lover.

Courtesy of http://bible.gospelcom.net
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under great Solomon's-seal

wisteria vine

wisteria vine flowering

Sadly, in every garden, there are those plants that want special attention and what is surprising is that sometimes that special attention is to shock or brutalize them somewhat. Our Wisteria Vine above has the most magnificent cascading waterfall of colour when it comes into bloom this time of spring.
The last two years it has failed to flower for us. I know it is because it gets so much attention growing next to my principle garden and thus within the reach of the sprinkler. It’s just too happy and needs a jolt. That means work, as you have to root prune the plant, which in our case means root pruning a tree, as this Wisteria is very large. So I’ll spade out a trench inside the drip line, then using a deeper reaching shovel, cut a complete circle around the plant severing the roots. This will shock the plant and it will want to reproduce producing flowers next year. It’s a lot of work.

wisteria vine cascading a waterfall of colour

But then look at the above detail of our Wisteria blooming and tell me is it worth the effort? Nature needs to be nurtured sometimes and when done properly it produces some startling results. I try to think of the work similar to my Bonsai trees needing root pruning but on a grander scale with the same wonderful results when you sit back and enjoy them. I want to be a good steward of the gifts creation has bestowed me with tending like our garden, our trees, and then outwards from there to forests and our environment. I start at home and then take small steps outwards, hoping that they can and will have a positive and enduring effect. I know the Creator wants it this way and I am willing to be the steward. What a privelege it is to tend this garden in all it's beauty and hard work.

what the stars say to me

Before you read on, I am not trying to proselytize or even get up on a soapbox this is simply my accounting of how my view of the Universe changed.

When I look up at the myriads of stars, on a clear waned moon night, I no longer feel insignificant in the Universe. Knowing that pain and joy, the travails of life all have meaning changes the way you see the night sky. The stars answer you and say “You have such value that the God of Love gave you birth so that you could have the benefit of marveling at its astonishing wonder and awe”. No shit! It blows my mind! It is bigger than big-bang!

When I was a young man, I’d often lie on the sandy beaches of Lake Huron, far from the light pollution of the cities and look up at the night sky. I’d cry out in PAIN to the stars beseeching them to answer my call as to “Why such pain had to BE?” Looking up at the stars, then sometimes under a veil of tears, I always felt so small, microscopic, insignificant, next to a spiral galaxy some 60 million light years away – Virgo - in the Milky Way.

Messier Galaxy

As I laid there alienated from myself and blemished in creation the stars reply was silence; deafening and resounding silence. My tears were met with a numbing stillness until the LOVE of GOD was revealed to me through Christ. His gift to us in dying for pain had such meaning and value that God himself was humiliated onto a Cross, for my sufferings and to liberate me from them. Christ died so that the pain of sin and our estrangement from creation would be remedied.

If God is Love and in Love, no evil can dwell, God gave forewarning to our forebears what the knowledge of Good and Evil would result in -- DEATH. Sin is the cannibalization of our existence through pain, suffering, consternation, alienation, and finally death. Death being the absence of life is complete estrangement from GOD, the Ying of Yang without the Taoism, LIGHT and not DARKNESS, nor LOVE but EVIL. Death is the outcome of knowing evil and I have known such evil. I have been in the belly of the fish and scorched my flesh on the ambers of HADES – complete estrangement from the God of Love but for grace.
The stars only began to answer that I truly had value in the cosmos when I realized this truth and acted on it in faith, accepting Christ’s gift of forgiveness and honouring God by trying not to sin again. Yes, I have failed miserably too many times but God’s love is bigger than my hubris.
I have never seen an angel or spoken to a fiery bush. Waves have not parted before me, nor have I survived the terror of pestilence by a mark on my door. My good friends always asserted that when I became a Christian it was a result of too many pressures. That my traveling the world, exhibiting, performing, lecturing and with my then chemical dependency of living the life of a junkie. They said my visions of “hell in paradise” were the manifestations of a nervous breakdown. I never discounted that as certainty but the fact remained that the God of Love used those experiences to reveal the truth of life and death, good and evil, to me. The fact I may have had a nervous breakdown could not remove the truth revealed to me through coming to that point and having a breakdown. Where it not for God’s message, that all sufferings have such an inexorable value that Christ gave his life for it, were it not for that I would be dead.

Tribeca and the World Trade Center Towers
New York City, spring 2001

I would not have suffered the indignities that life and I myself have served out. There have been days when the cruelty of life outweighed life itself. Such terror, human depravation have I seen in life, climaxed with the coming down of the World Trade Center Towers in New York while working there on an exhibition of my art. I would have joined Camus and Socrates, nodding in accord to the Apostle Paul with his conclusion that “If the truth of Christ is but a lie and dead are not Risen, let us eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.” I might have even speed the process up had I the same elevation as the victims above the 80th floor, forgive the metaphor. No, I have always chosen life and life is to know and experience love!

Whirlpool Galaxy

Now when I look up at the night sky knowing what I do, I feel as though I truly belong. Indeed, it says that I am whole with the universe, as well as dwelling in it. It says to me that I, all of me, my joys and consternations have value, my life is meaningful. My pain is sanctified in the marks left on Christ’s Resurrected body. Yes, Christ carried the marks of his wounds even to have Thomas investigate them empirically. My only reply is to say, Alleluia, all praise, honour and glory be to the God of Love made manifest in Christ Jesus. No greater JOY have I ever known; oh death where is thy sting, oh grave where is thy victory? Let us sow, sustain, harvest, and be merry for tomorrow we will be resurrected carrying our wounds as marks of our sanctification in Christ.

GP

columbine

Here are just some of the Columbines that grow in our garden. What a delicate, almost fragile flower it is. Columbines are glorious in form and striking with diverse colours; an amazing plant. I only regret in my contaminated mind that when I hear Columbine, my mind conjures up Columbine high school in Littleton, Colorado and the massacre which occurred there. Truly the images I will show you next are what Columbines should always awake in our thoughts, sweet tender beauty. In Good versus Evil, Good will always prevail.So now some Columbines from our garden.

This flower can be paper-thin and its petals are transparent allowing light to pass through them. They make for interesting studies when backlit by the sun as seen in the above photo. I’m very happy with this image, both as composition and as a study of light. Columbines are such a thing of beauty.

I thought I’d share my photography method for documenting flowers with you. First, I compose the image and take a photo or two. The above is one of these and is wonderful just as it is, although it does not convey the details of the flower well it is artistic.

Then I take another shot of the same image but this time I “flash fill” the subject. In other words, I simply force the flash to work and provide the light I need to document the subject matter as seen in the above photo. This too is a great image and conveys the anatomy of the flower. Both images were shot with in seconds of each other as the clouds convey; both have their own separate charm.
I love the sharpness that the flash creates and how the camera “stops down” to give more colour in the sky. What I love most is the subject matter and that’s what makes for good art: knowing it, understanding it and loving it. This white Columbine is simply exhilarating with its cool white petals against the tall cumulus clouds in the background. I know that they’re no longer rare or stricken to Alpine Meadows like Lupine but I still enjoy them nevertheless.
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These are some of the yellow Columbines from out garden. I just marvel at the complexity of these dainty blooms. This image was taken in low light so that the subtle yellows could receive better saturation on the image plane. As these grow in the shade these plants are long and leggy making for an almost oriental presentation. We’re waiting for pink and purple Columbines to come into blossom soon. I love these tender delicate flowers they’re just stunning.

What’s not to love about the Columbine? May God have mercy on the survivors and show his grace to the victim’s families. Help me also to think of Columbine for what it is, such a delicate handwork of creation.

GP

our garden becomes violet

Violet is the predominate end of spring and beginning of summer colour of our garden.

our gardens turn royal purple to welcome in summer

My garden turns violet and green at the end of spring, here you see wild geranium transplanted from Vermont in the foreground, the bloom orbs of the Chives, which will soon blossom in violet, with a background of indigo Iris and purple Alliums. Together with the Rhododendron and other flowers, I’ve already shown you, my garden truly turns a verdant royal purple to welcome summer.

Red-Breasted Thrush (Robin) nesting

It is funny for me when I mentioned the Robin – Red Breasted Thrush as spring approached, it truly represents the arrival of spring for us here on the 45 parallel - earlier post of March 29th 2005. I say funny now because the Robin has come back to me as spring slowly becomes early summer. As you can see, a Robin has made a nest in my Norwegian Maple tree next to my deck. It made me happy as a “tree lover” because there used to be a very large soft Maple where this hardwood now stands. That old tree had Woodpeckers and an array of other birds. This is the first bird to have nested in this tree, next to my deck where my tall old maple once stood. It sits on its eggs and carols us from the tree with a “tyeep” and prolonged “tut-tut-tut” as we dine outdoors. What is also funny is that I wanted to include a photo of a Robin for that above post but everyone I took was of poor quality. Gladly, the Robin appeased my desire for photos, only not according to my timetable. I guess Robins are like that because for me they never come soon enough to herald in spring either during our long hard winters.

alliums

In my post below “spirals can be fun”, I mention the Allium Flower that grows in our resplendent gardens. I used to live in Amsterdam and would often take a train down to Rotterdam. That train would always go through Harlem and the flowers fields of Holland. These plants remind me of those trips on the train as you’d look out and see an incredible patchwork of colours from the endless fields of flowers. I always remember the large fields of Alliums and so when they bloom in our garden they take me back to spring in the flowers field of Holland, my birthplace and loved home.

Soon this purple and the advent of summer will be complimented by its complimentary colour of yellow in sweet Iris and dazzling Columbines. Another wonderful study of secondary and primary colours.

GP

rhododendron

Rhododendron have come into bloom.

As I mentioned in my post below on Iris’ my Rhododendron’s were about to come into full bloom. Over the weekend, they did just that.

I am happy to say that in my minds-eye just now, I’m walking through the Rhododendron forests of Nepal in the lower Himalaya. What ecstasy it is, such unsurpassed beauty which none of us could create, only to document or render through art. These various coloured flowers up against the clear cobalt blue sky with these mountains in the background, I’m certain that I’m in Shangri-La. I cannot think of a flowering tree that is more vibrant and beautiful, with such large blooms as the Rhododendron.
Come with me then, to the mountain passes of the Himalaya as we walk along the banks of the highest river in the world Dudh Kosi towards Chomolangma, or Qomolangma ("Mother of the Universe"). I am humbled by the experience and praise God for the privelege to partake in such beauty.

Here are some images from one of my Rhododendron to help you on your journey

Free Tibet!

Such a delicate bloom, enjoy!

GP

Now that European Soccer Season is over.

Thierry Henry silences Spurs Fans.

If I had just one image, which could sum up my 2004-05 season as an Arsenal Supporter, a Gooner, a Gunner, this would be that image. It is of one of the greatest footballers of all time Thierry Henry TH14 after scoring a goal. Henry just mesmerizes me as I watch him play, what skill and finesse; he has such a brutal finish.

As Henry does to most opposing side’s fans, here he demands the jeers and pejoratives of Tottenham Hotspurs (Spurs) fans after silencing them with another of his well crafted goals.

Thierry Henry is one of the best footballers in the world and this would be my football picture of the year as a Arsenal Gunner. The looks on the various faces of the crowd show such contempt, shock, anger, all kinds of emotion; I love it.

Thank you Thierry TH14 for letting me watch your wonderful skills get you top goal scorer in the English Premiere League yet again, kudos’. Thank you Thierry for truly being a Gooner like myself. What a season!

I had a whole host of other images that I compiled as my images of the year, in the end I thought this one image summed up soccer for me this year. I also would like to thank Arseblog for doing such a great job of keeping me informed of what’s going on with the club and this picture.

I’m a dyed in the wool Arsenal Fan. That said, congratulations to Liverpool FC (the Pool) for winning the European Champions League Cup, Champions of Europe.

Liverpool's John Arne Riise

iris

Iris has started blooming in our backyard.

Not much to say today, worked hard in the gardens of the Monastery. I’ve been working on a meatier piece to publish here but it is not ready yet. So with little words just enjoy these events from our garden.

I do love Iris in all its varying forms. I have a few kinds and these are the first to bloom. I found by turning the image sideways I could make it larger for you to see its utterly beautiful display, the beard , the stigmatic lip and style arms. This image really titillates me, as the purple against the dark greens makes such an excellent secondary colour study – I remain an artist.

click image to enlarge

I also thought I’d show you something I’m eagerly waiting for, my Rhododendron to come into full bloom in the next days. The buds all ready to burst a lovely pale violet bloom, but they are so intense just now. I love these and they make me wish I were in Holland walking along 3-meter high trees of them as they grow there. Better yet, how about walking in Nepal and the forests of Rhododendron as they are blooming in the Himalaya. Oh yes -- more on that later.

That’s all for now. Enjoy!

Rhododendron buds coming into bloom.

How was your day?

what the bleep do i heart Huckabees know?

When I’ve looked out at the fabric of the cosmos, it has indeed spoken to me of good and evil. Not just spoken of it, it is has screamed it at me, or maybe I should say it has cried out to me. It has said we live in a world fallen from love into a harvest of death but also the hope of redeemption and the privelege / joy of life.

I’ve seen it in this cold spring Canadian sky from my backyard looking towards the center of London (Friday May 20, 2005 at 6:30am EST).

I’ve seen it looking at the same sky at night under the light of a full moon (Monday May 24, 2005 at 2:00am EST).

I’ve seen it in my beloved city of dreams and failures - landing at LaGuardia Airport, New York (Saturday May 21, 2005 at 9:45am EST).

I’ve seen it in death and the reality of nature. What was once a dead cat and now is a flattened piece of leather on the streets of Brooklyn, New York (fall of 2001).
What saddens me of this image is that no one cared, just leaving the cat's carcass on the road for thousands of trucks and cars to turn it to this, someday the rain will just wash it away. This poor creature died in the city, as it would have in nature.

I’ve seen it in birth and the cycle of life. An Osprey nest made in the light standards of a soccer field in North-East London near Fanshaw dam (summer of 2004).

Wherever I have looked in the cosmos whether it is the things made by humankind or nature itself, I have seen the indelible signature of God on all of it saying that all of life has such meaning and our decisions have consequence as we can affect the outcome of the universe by choosing love.

I picked these rather straightforward pictures because they are ordinary and would not sway your reaction, it would be easy to place a majestic landscape before you and say the above statements. I just wanted uncomplicated images from daily life to say that I see the above in the simplest of ways through the common images of my life. I guess I’m saying that I’ve been to and in New York long enough to know that I’m trying to sell the steak and not the sizzle, in that non-Madison Avenue way of things.

GP

i heart truth

I Heart Huckabees.

If as Karl T. Jaspers insists the final existential outcome of “authentic existence” results in us all making decisions, then living by the consequences of them, I would like to ask, what makes us choose those decisions? If we beings are simply made of the fabric, of the universe what makes one decision positive or negative, good or bad, right or wrong and why should any truly matter in the Woof and Warf of it all?

Macrocosm - I know it is true when I look here

When I’ve looked out at the fabric of the cosmos, by looking at the night sky for example, it has indeed spoken to me of good and evil. Not just spoken of it, it is has screamed it at me, or maybe I should say it has cried out to me. It has said we live in a world fallen from love into a harvest of death, the consequence of a poor decision you might say. Yes, the cosmos cries out that there is good and bad – it’s just that its reaction to it may seem muted at times, as the stars continued to twinkle even over the death camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau or the killing fields of Rwanda. The cosmos may seem silent but it is not, as the truth of good and evil are sewn even into the very fabric of existence. That big blanket which Bernard Jaffe (Dustin Hoffman) describes is indeed also connected to morality and ethics, good and evil.

Microcosm - I know it is true when I look here

We were once told that the achievement of the knowledge of evil would make us like God and that is why God had asked us not to choose to attain it. That half-truth was the most pernicious of lies as the perpetrator neglected to remind us what God had forewarned should we gain it. The knowledge of evil only precipitates the purchase of death, which is the separation of the God of love. In the light is no darkness, evil cannot dwell in good. That God is Love and no evil dwells inside love; even the knowledge of evil cannot live there. That was humankinds first existential decision and the cosmos and we have been living the consequences of that poor decision ever since.

William Blake - God Judging Adam 1795

As we all have this inherent understanding of what is good and evil how does this cosmos continue finding balance, instead of fluctuating towards the one or the other – affirmation of love or the chaos of absurdity. What in fact is the glue that holds this cosmos together? It is love. Love holds the chaos or oblivion at bay through common grace; you could call grace the sustainer which stops the something from pouring into the nothingness of entropy if you’d like – in that quantum physics way of things.

The universe also speaks back existentially and says there is love. Why? Because God is love and love created the cosmos. The universe was created for God’s pleasure so that we might enjoy it forever – it was a gift of love. All of us know in our hearts what is evil, it’s no surprise that murder isn’t celebrated in any culture except under the evil pretext of war and war is not love; war is hell. As we all know evil, so do we all know that we were created good as beings for love, the love of a parent for a child for example. We know that we are the God of creations children, separated from him by that knowledge of evil and its reward of death. This is not an existential relative but rather and absolute truth. The outcome of evil is usually evil unless the grace of love intervenes. These are the decisions we all make but the outcomes remain the same, evil can not begat good or good, evil unless the grace of love intervenes to redeem evil. There would not be a soul who perished in Auschwitz that would say their death there somehow enriched the world, yet even there they created music, and flowers grew from window boxes on the barracks when they lived. Even in the darkness, the light has shone and given this most heinous of human acts, genocide, meaning to us the living as to why we should choose love.

We don’t need to smack our faces with a ball to find a moment of nothingness on a Zen plane of conscientiousness, because our pain matters, it has value as does our joy. If you return to the eternal, pool of consciousness and don’t leave a ripple in that existentialist way of Zen, this is nothing more than death. We all leave a ripple and therefore we must choose life, love and as such that means we must choose God. If the end were truly death as in, no more being - nothingness, why would our existential decisions be nothing more than the Absurd Universe which Jean Paul Sartre describes in his book “Being and Nothingness”. Even Sartre made ethical and moral decisions (The Algerian War) based on the true underlying fabric of reality, that we are all created in the image of a God of Love. When Sartre became a communist, ethics suddenly became his choice and he would suffer the realization: that the praxis of his philosophy has a price. In the laws of cause and effect of psychics, even good and evil fall within those parameters. That is the nature of this existential reality and propositionally put forth by Christ’s sermons. Do we choose to love our neighbour, help the man on the road to Damascus? Alternatively, do we put ourselves back in the center of the Universe ignoring the reality of love and the laws of cause and effect only to serve our self, assuming to understand the infinite as finite beings? Hubris truly is a sin.

Even “I Heart Huckabees” came to that conclusion without that mention of God. (I digress; I did find it odd that they choose a group of peculiar Red-Necks to portray a religious family and not Mother Theresa for example.) The philosopher Albert Camus answered the charming French existential detective Caterine Vauban (Isabelle Huppert) presuppositions many years before and his stoic conclusion of simply taking of his own life; suicide. If as Vauban concludes in the movie “Life is an oscillation between the cruel and the absurd theatre of human drama the peace attained from simply being and not thinking.” The conclusion of “not thinking” might indeed be the same conclusion, which Camus postulated in his work “A Happy Death” where in he says, "You make the mistake of thinking you have to choose, that you have to do what you want, that there are conditions for happiness. What matters -- all that matter is -- is the will to happiness, a kind of enormous, ever-present consciousness. The rest women, art, success -- is nothing but excuses…” As if to say that only the decision matters and in that conclusion even it is meaningless. In a world without the God of love, all is but vanity, pain, joy, and human aspirations are all meaningless; thus, life is futile and empty as empty as death.

What does the big picture really say? It says pain and suffering have meaning and value; they make us human and tie us to our own humanness in understanding the outcome of evil. The resurrected Christ carried his wounds on his sanctified body for Thomas to put his hand on and finger in. The knowledge of evil will indeed evolve us to a higher being, although not the one Lucifer described in the Garden of Knowledge, rather it is the knowledge that knows our inseparable nature we have to a God of love. A God that created us in love to enjoy creation and the fabric of love throughout this cosmos forever.
Knowing this makes the decisions that much easier. Choose life, elect to do “good” and honour God’s Love in all that we do.

That is the good news! Knowing this gives us the information we need to make critical decisions and have foresight into what the outcomes might be. If we choose to love our neighbour, even if our neighbour can find no love for us, the outcome of our decision will always remain the same, even if our neighbour elects to harm us as the reward. If we suffer for love how much more does that say if even pain has meaning: the Passion of Christ? It seems to me that “I Heart Huckabees” based the final decision of the two main characters Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzman) and Tommy Corn (Mark Wahlberg) on a complete leap of faith, they choose to do good in understanding their common humanity, being cut from the same farbic. I ask again, what makes their decision positive or negative? Using the formula of the film and existentialism, the only thing one can truly celebrate is that they made a decision; the rest is purely absurd and an excuse.

I Heart Huckabees

I enjoyed this film as it made me think and anything which causes people to question, “Why are we here?” is good by me. I wish more of Hollywood would stimulate such questions in us. A well done movie even if its outcome is bleak, it made me laugh!

spirals can be fun

I have this thing for Spirals

There are times I just like to doodle using spirals, even with my photographs. I don’t per-say call it art but I do call it having fun with art and spirals -- nothing more and certainly nothing less. Like this spiral I made out of a photo of the Allium Flower just beginning to bloom in my yard-- purely and simply fun. When the thirty or so Alliums growing in my flower beds come into bloom, it is a striking sight but this image was just for play – consider it a slow news day from the garden if you’d like. That said, I’m still having fun with my garden even if it is by only using Photoshop.

Here’s another which I did from a previously submitted image of the Fritillaria found in this post “Fruithilarious to Fritillaria and back again”. If you’d just like to see the original image of this flower click here or click on the image below for enlargement.

Enjoy.

waves of green wash over me

waves of green wash over me

Sometimes I let myself indulge in the forests.
To be washed over by seas of varying greens.
Emerald green, viridian green, sap green, every green.
Here in the cathedral of Juglans Nigra
under this canopy of black walnut.
Soothing soul and stirring my heart.


__________________________________________
Arsenal played Manchester United to a 0-0 draw in overtime, to win the game on spot kicks 5 to 4. Arsenal takes the silverware home this year with an FA Cup victory. Good on you lads, well deserved – go gunners!

my dog is getting old

Well I indulged myself today. I have not much to say other than my dog is getting old and I love him dearly. He and I went out into the yard and sat under the stand of maples while I played my Penny Whistles or Tin Whistles. It was just really nice and I enjoyed playing, occasionally petting or belly rubbing my dear old dog. I think he likes Celtic music, I know I do.

These are some of the things we saw in the yard as I played a jig or two and then some slow airs.

Japanese Maple - I like the leaf against the sky or at night
it reminds me of another leaf

Trilliums our Provincial Flower in Ontario

Crab Apple in Bloom

_______________________________
Well tomorrow is the big Cup Match day for my beloved Arsenal who play Manchester United for the British Football Association FA CUP in Cardiff Wales. It promises to be an exciting match and I’ve been thinking about for days. The match begins tomorrow at 2:00pm GMT or 10am EST and I’m going to have my Arsenal Shirt and Scarf on singing Gooner Songs all morning. My wife is going to New York for the weekend to catch a play and do some shopping; I can therefore be a soccer hooligan at home. Go you Gunners!

a bouquet of woodland flowers

A bouquet of woodland spring flowers for you. Lavender “Forget Me Not” next to whorls of white “Sweet Woodruff” with its fragrance of “Coumarin”, with the blue and pink blooms of the “Boy Girl Plant” (Lungwort) as a background; all perennials from the apothecary in our forest.

I spent the day at the monastery, working the gardens ready for the planting of anuals in the week to come. Yes, I’m tired. It was a brutal day in more ways than just work -- too much aggro.
This scene of serentiy at twilight, was a very comforting place for me to sit and think at the end of this day. Enjoy my gardening!

GP

P.s I am not a Buddhist but I like the idea of thinking on God a lot more than I do.

the cathedral of our magic tree

The entrance to the cathedral of our magic tree.

This grand old tree has stood in this spot longer than there are houses on this city block on which we all cohabit together. It is truly a majestic large Black Walnut Tree, which sits in the back of my neighbours and our property. This neighbour and I have no fences between us and he loves trees or at least tolerates their existence enough to leave them alone, a wise decision. He controls the destiny of this tree until another person takes hold of his domain, I see myself as its keeper. I spend a lot of time with this tree throughout the seasons. I am very fond of it although I do not know its name, other than: Black Walnut (Juglans nigra) - a deciduous tree from the Walnut Family (Juglandaceae). By name, I mean of course its identity, such as mine in the name Gerard that means, “spear power or thrower”. I’d like to know its name, maybe it is just Juglans Nigra and that works for me. Let me introduce you to my friend then, Juglans Nigra.

Inside the cathedral of Juglans Nigra - the magic tree.
A composite image of the magic tree in our backyards.

This tree reaches a height of maybe 30 metres plus or minus a metre or two; suffice it to say it is huge. What you cannot see is that the leaf buds have only just come on but have not yet opened, it waits until there is little chance of frost before it unfurls its canopy.
This gargantuan tree stands in the middle of this block from all perspectives of the compass. There are a few Elms, which may be as tall in the park nearby but the reach of this tree is by far the largest of any other tree on the block. You come to understand why its strength is sought after for the use of furniture, when you see its limbs extended out over you, standing underneath it.

To get to the tree you must walk through the entrance of my large grove of Sugar Maples where the terracotta head of Buddha sits under a set large low-pitched chimes (see top image). Once you have entered under its canopy you can see that it is surrounded by several large conifers and some large ornamentals trees such as a flowering Crab Apple. At Juglans Nigra’s feet is a wall of stone made of large boulders and large broken slabs of city concrete. It is a formidable environment and this tree speaks of power sitting here as King in the middle of this block and in our backyards. I have a great deal of respect for this tree and it deserves it, with its one ton limbs reaching out over top of you. I would go so far as to say that I have cathected with this tree on the level of love, I love this tree.

As an Anti-Cartesian thinker I believe that the question “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” is a valid one, superfluous maybe but valid nonetheless. If the Fairy Folk and the animals that live on this block had a main meeting area they would be sitting near or on the stone wall around this great tree, under its canopy in the full moonlight. Thereby it is a magical tree to me. I know this as truth as I lay in the long grass of summer under its reaching limbs. My friend Juglans Nigra embraces me when I do and I in turn it.
The photo is a digital composite which I softened the overlaps using PhotoShop. I could not photograph the whole tree from a distance as it is shrouded by a whole grove of trees on every side, thus my composite. I hope you like my photos but more importantly learn to love Juglans Nigra the Black Walnut; our magic tree.

GP

My heart is bleeding.

The Bleeding Hearts have come to bloom in my garden.

Every now and then, I need a bleeding heart, someone to listen to my concerns whether they are insignificant or grandiose. I need someone to confess my secrets and speak of how I feel about them. I may have succeeded or failed through life but sometimes it is just good to have someone to listen and if trusted help me gain perspective on both. Fortunately, I have a trusted and highly valued analyst, a psychologist. Sadly, I don’t see her enough and there are times I wish I had a direct line, like the red-phone.

That’s how I feel today. I’m down in the dumps because of personal concerns surrounding my work and its production. I feel betrayed by the ignorance of youth and how in youth’s arrogance sometimes speaks without considering the deeper ramifications of their words. I’m not speaking of my youth here.

As an artist, I have spent most of my life just making what I feel a need to make without concentration on marketability, sales, or the other accolades of success. There are those amongst me who feel otherwise. That a work of art or a written passage only has merit if it’s being published or sold – if not it either is a failure or not work at all. What I mean is that the labour involved in writing for example, is not work to them unless it shows some kind of recognized value as in publication - payment.

I ask how many great works of art in all mediums have been ignored in the artists’ life only to be seen as masterpieces with time. Imagine Vincent Van Gogh’s regret when he visited his brother Theo's gallery in Paris to see that all his paintings were still there, stored in the storerooms of the gallery. Yes, he saw that as little 1% of the 800 or so works he made in his 10 years of being an artist had sold. It must have been very hard for him. Imagine then that when he went his brother said, well none has sold so you mustn’t be working hard enough or that you’re not really an artist until they sell. This didn’t happen to Vincent, or I don’t think so, although he did kill himself shortly there after. Anyway, it has happened to me.

I made a choice 30 years ago to pursue my work with integrity and not chase the dollar. I’ve had good luck with recognition of the work but none with sales. So just now, I’m being valued by those whose opinion should matter, that my endeavours are worthless or not even work unless my writings are published and that my works aren’t a success unless they sell. If it were just the outside world saying it, I’d have no problem dismissing it, but when it’s coming from people, that you thought would know better it’s like a knife cutting into my heart, my bleeding heart.
Please, I’m not naïve I know that bills must be paid, that’s why I garden for a living.

I don’t intend to write a long polemical argument as to why I think they have let me down but sadly, they have, and I feel alone as a result. When I ask if success is sales, then maybe I should take a survey of what images would sell best and paint those, would these be good art? Their answer is, well if it is not working then make change, adapt and yes, maybe you should take such a survey. You know why I cannot do this!

My cousin is a very respected and learned Psychiatrist whose wife is the Dean of Psychiatry at a University in the U.S.A., they told me that in a survey of what images relax patients in waiting room, the image of a boat moored in a bay gives the client peace and comforts them while they wait. Should I be doing paintings of boats?

I’m the kind of person that takes that above demographic and paints a pirate ship in that bay plundering all those contented and sleepily moored boats. I want to shake them up. I want them to take to sail and venture out of the bay to where danger, but also great joy awaits them, out in open sea – that’s what the damn boat was made for and not a tent on water. Sadly, that doesn’t sell and so to does my work not sell. This might be more telling about me and why I’ve never done well at selling art, most people just wanted to be herded into security and the lulled into a feeling of personal peace and affluence. Until a fully fueled passenger, jet comes crashing through your 50th storey office window and continues through the floor until only its engines go flying out the other side of the skyscraper as did happen at the World Trade Center in my beloved New York. If I could really paint, the shit that makes people fall into a trance neglecting to ask the obvious questions such as “Why do so many 3rd World People hate me this much that they’d fly a plane into this tower?” I’d wouldn’t be painting that shit anyway as I’m not a Social Realist as in Stalinist USSR-CCCP. No thanks, I leave that to the spin-doctors. However, let us not forget their message in this age and that seems to be fixed almost entirely in saying “Fear thy Neighbour”. It saddens me as I really do like my neighbours, and would not like to live in such a world that does not attempt to love its neighbour instead of fearing them.

I feel alone, misunderstood and my heart is heavy with disappointment. Therefore, my heart is bleeding. Why must I justify myself, yet again to another doubter whose formula or burden of proof is unattainable to me because sales have always been small and the profits fleeting? I guess I totally suck at it, big time! Nevertheless, my Burroughs text for example using their equation is considered wasting time and not real work unless it finds a publisher. I will press on and finish what I started but even the truth for me remains: if it is never published, sold, or even read, I don’t care; it is still my attempt to contribute creativity to this world. That is my reward, that is my success that is my privilege and in the end, that is the integrity of making art. I don’t make art because I can but because I have to. If I have to think who will buy or publish it, I may as well give up because, well you know why – I suck as a “company” and view economics as the dismal arts.

Pray for me as I need strength to dart the arrows of doubt that hedge me in from doing what I believe I must, even if it is considered frivolous to those that matter to me.

Jack in the Pulpit

Well I’m over the tree thing for now. You know I’ll never be over the tree thing. I’ve walked the boreal forests of Haida Gwaii (The Queen Charlotte Islands), British Columbia, Canada (just below Alaska). There I walked amongst trees that have stood since Captain James Cook sailed the coastline more than 200 years ago. These trees reached heights of more than 50 metres. When my wife and I walked these forests, it was as though we were the first living beings to put our eyes on them or frolic under their girth. I’ll never be over the tree thing.

I worked under the trees today. I try to spend as many hours as possible working in my garden on Sunday. Just now, I am trying to relocate plants that are found in our natural habitat here in the Carolinian Forest of South Western Ontario. When our big tree next to the house had to go last year, I was worried that these plants might perish with all the sudden additional light. Trilliums for example do not like a lot of direct sunlight and other plants like Solomons Seal, May Apple, etc. like to be in forest environment. I’ve been busy moving samples to other areas to see how they will do there. Today was a nice damp and sometimes wet day, ideal for transplanting.
It is hard work but its fun and makes me feel at one with the world and myself. I need that, as it has been a tough weekend on the psychological front.

I thought I’d share these incredible plants with you. I love them, as simple as they are and as unpretentious are its bloom. They grow in sunlight but also shade. These grow along the side of my studio. I started them from seed many years ago, so I have a stake in propagating them. They are “Jack in the Pulpit”. Haven’t we all seen them in our children’s books, with the little Jack smiling inside his Pulpit? They are in full bloom here.
Enjoy!

Jack in the Pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum)

Jack in the Pulpit is also known as Indian Turnip (Arisaema triphyllum).
Plant Type: a herbaceous plant, perennial, can reach 65cm in height (25inches).
Leaves: plant has basal leaves only. Usually two but sometimes one. Each leaf is divided into three almost equal parts.
Flowers: The flowers are irregular in shape and are up to 8cm long (3 inches). They are green with purple or brown stripes sometimes brownish. Blooms first appear in mid spring and continue into late spring. The spathe (pulpit) is most often green streaked with purplish. The spadix (jack) is covered with tiny male and female flowers.
Fruit: A cluster of bright red shiny berries.
Habitat: Rich moist woods.
Range: New Brunswick south to Florida.

In folklore, there is one account stating that the Meskwaki Indians would put finely chopped root from the Jack in the Pulpit into meat that they would leave for their enemies to find, principally the Sioux. The meat was flavorful and would be consumed, and then in a few hours these enemies would first be in a great deal of pain and then die! It is reported that they also used it diagnostically by dropping a seed in a cup of water and if the seed went around four times clockwise, the patient would recover and if less the patient would die.

A closer detail of the Jack in the Pulpits from my home.

See how simple and subtle is their beauty. The leaves have not yet unfurled but ready themselves on this cool wet May day. I just love the way the light comes through its translucent female flower petal with Jack the Spadex inside her. I can’t say enough about how happy they make me.

Be sure to click the photo for an enlargement.

trees I know personally

A 360-degree composite photo of the tree line from my backyard.

These are some of the trees that I have the privilege of knowing personally. I have watched them and cared for them for the last twenty years. I have seen them all grow and tried to enhance their lives. They are the trees from my backyard.
These trees have watched my children come into life and grow playing underneath them. They have cooled us in the heat of summer. They have marveled us with falls glory in changing colours. They have calmed us in winter’s serenity and spoken of that same season’s fury. They have given us hope in spring as they do now. They are part of my family

I stood in my yard and took these images in a 360-degree rotation focusing on the top of the tree line. The top right photos is north, the cold white sunset is west (left), and the trees illuminated by springs cool setting sun are east (right).

I just thought that after my diatribe on trees you should at least see how many big trees I have surrounding the perimeter of my land. You see I love trees. In the days to come, I will show the magical tree in the centre of my neighbourhood, a grand 30-metre Black Walnut; it is where the fairies and the pixies play.

I live in the Forest City with Purpose and it has much to do with the Forest.

When is art, art? Some people think that good art is art that sells. Is it? That equation makes my art worthless, as I have not sold much in my life of work as an artist. The funny thing is, when I have compromised my work for sales, even through necessity, it has failed to sell also. I always thought of that as a message from the God of Love, telling me not to compromise myself. Maybe I have been mistaken and I am but a fool. I have tried to say to my constituency that pain has meaning. That the sufferings of life have inexorable meaning, as they create in us the very things that make us human, in the condition of our frailty and temporality. In my short life I have made masterpieces but there in did I find my value? No, it was in the fact that that God of love created me so that I might enjoy him and discover his creativity forever. There in lays my meaning.

If art were measured by success, integrity, or sales, which would be the truth of good art? It has always been simple to me and that is that good art is the art of integrity to each individual artist. The problem is that bills need to be paid and debits repaid and I have not been able to repay these with integrity.

In terms of financial burdens, I cannot liberate myself through my art, or my loved ones as a result there of. I am caught in the fulcrum of a spinning mandala from which I cannot escape. My need to create and to sustain my artwork. My desire to provide for my family, my loved ones. My wish to find peace in the turmoil of not being able to succeed at all these objectives and happy to find success in only one at a time. Sometimes it’s like a swastika mandala and very oppressive.

I’m feeling rather melancholic today almost depressed! Damn swastika mandala.
Help, I'm being oppressed!

we need trees – stop the murder

I just had this picture of a child nestled inside a tree, looking out to the edge of the forest from his resting place, watching in abject horror, as that forest was being “clear-cut”. As he gazed farther, he could see that all the workers of that “clear-cut operation” identified themselves, with these words emblazoned on their uniforms “Acme Toothpicks”.

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redrum eht pots - seert deen ew

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we need trees and love your neighbour

Remember these from my "May 2" post, they're Primrose (Primula)
Well here they are this evening at sunset - Primrose (Primula)

Well after yesterday’s tirade I feel a little like that damn bird that went around saying the sky is falling, the sky is falling.
Well I’m here today to say that while the sky isn’t falling the tree did, it did not crash into my house and kill us all as I feared yesterday. I had this picture of the four of us all impaled on limbs of the tree, as it lay crashed through my house. Could you imagine that as an epitaph “He died doing what he loved” - yikes – hugging trees.
Oh yes, Chicken Little.
It’s amazing how traumatized I become when I see trees being murdered. Where are the damn Ents when you need them? Their probably in the pharmaceutical industry making tranquilizers.

Well I am not beyond change, like the stunning Primrose growing in the backyard. I’m turning over a new leaf. From now, I’m going to fight if someone starts cutting down trees, the damn dirt bags. You’d think they get the bleeping picture. Maybe I could force them to watch “The Day After Tomorrow” a bunch of times. No that’s to kind.
Here’s what I’d do. I’d force their eyes open so they couldn’t blink, thus letting the smog aggravate their eyes until they really stung. Jeez, my dad was on a nasal-canula with an oxygen tank in tow for almost two years. When will people ever learn? We need those trees stop the murder now.

This is my new slogan:

WE NEED TREES – STOP THE MURDER

Norwegian Maple in my backyard with fresh new leaves.

I know I’m to love my neighbours and that’s what I’ve been trying to do. That is why I didn't flip out on him when he told me and I suffered through his tree-goon hit squad – actually it was a three goon shit squad. In the end it’s a fait-des-complete, he still murders trees and there’s not a stick on his property (okay just the ones that fall over from my place). What is a person to do? We do need the trees!

GP

Suffer the fools!

My neighbours tree on the edge of our properties.
It hangs over my house seen in the background.

To begin, people who live next to artists should not be allowed to start a chain saw until at least noon and I should have the right to go and stick that chain saw up their poxy holes when they do; maybe it could even be running as I insert it.
Good morning to you! So started this day and yesterday, with the sound of a whirring chain saw followed by a chorus of cussing and that swearing was not mine. The workman was cussing as limbs started falling in places he didn’t want them to go.

As a person who owns a landscaping company and who has worked or been surrounded by this business most of their lives, I’ve dealt with a few trees in my time. I learned from my dad that if we couldn’t fell a tree to the ground ourselves, it was better to hire a professional tree service to sub-contract the work for us. I watched my dad drop too many limbs taking out all the wires of a house before he came to this realization himself, luckily for him he never had a limb go crashing through a customer’s roof. When you’re cutting a tree between two buildings, and its limbs weigh as much as a ton, it’s better to leave it to the pros. That’s what I do.

So my neighbour doesn’t like trees and for one reason or another over these last ten years, he has had every tree cut from his property except for this last tree on his front lawn and on the edge of our properties. There were some real beautiful trees, like a huge Elm some ancient large Cherry Trees and others. I don’t know why he dislikes trees and I’ve always thought to each their own, so I haven’t harassed him or chained myself to those trees to try and stop him.

That was until yesterday when I was told he was cutting it down. In and of itself I was disappointed because this tree provides shade for our house in the summers, keeping the hot afternoon sun from our roof and it looked nice. I attempted to convince him that if he wanted to grow better grass he could prune the tree upwards, but he wanted no part of that. The tree murderer in him had a larger voice than my voice of reason.

What is distressing is that he asked a tenant who rents from him to do the job. A nice guy but a yobo nonetheless. They started their work at 8am so I quickly moved our cars before hand. The following events have been a stressful to me as they would be to any of you.

He entered this 12 to 15 metre tree with a ladder and a chain saw, no safety harness. He started sawing off limbs until he cut a large one, which took out the power and phone cables to my neighbour’s house. At that point, I started to worry. I went out and asked him to be careful. "No, no, I know what I’m doing" he replied. My neighbour who is trying to save a buck let this man do the work as he said he could save him a lot of money. Damn, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Next, I watched him tie a thin cord to a limb, while a friend held it to secure it from falling. Yes, you use a rope to take out a limb and control its fall. As he cut the limb, the 200-300 kilos of weight came bearing down on his accomplice, who while not wearing gloves, almost had his fingers jerked out of his hand by the thin cord. All this while I watched in utter horror from my study window.

Now my worries had turned to fear. This tree was being taken down by a bumbling fool and his sidekick Igor. As he took out my phone and communications cables for the internet, he could see by my alarm as I rushed out quickly to see what had happened. He realized that maybe he need some better machinery. As far as I was concerned, no machinery in the world was going to help this situation. In my opinion, he needed a brain transplant for even undertaking such a job. The worked stopped for the day.

So here, I sit today as I watch them use a $500 a day “scissor lift” rental to essentially continue their exercise in stupidity. Now I’m cussing mad and worried that at any moment the largest limb hanging over my house will come crashing through my roof onto me as I sit here and write. I’ve watched him take out more wires. Look at my picture and see the cables wrapped around the pole, yes they where attached until a short while ago. I just saw a huge limb come down and hit the corner of the neighbour’s house, denting the aluminum and tearing off the eaves trough.

I’m beside myself with worry. These bumpkins don’t have insurance so when and if the damage comes I’ll have to ask my neighbour to make the repairs. My house is the one with the sun flag and the huge Blue Spruce on the front lawn. My neighbour asked me what I thought, I asked him if he was prepared to assume the liability if someone or property was hurt. He started to look worried because he could clearly see that these were complete amateurs taking down a very difficult tree. I watched another large limb come crashing down almost taking out the streets power lines, as the chain saw blade almost made contact with his leg. I shrugged my shoulders and walked away mumbling “You get what you pay for.”

Last year I had a huge 25-metre tree taken out from my backyard as it was rotting and sitting over my studio and house. My wife and I wept at the thought of losing it but the reality was it had to go or come down on our house later in a storm. Even though I have the very best of chain saws and all the harness and safety equipment, I also have no fear of heights (respect yes) as I used to rock climb for years. I still paid a pro $1,500 to come in with a cherry picker truck and take it down piece by piece. He did a great job and it was worth the peace of mind. So far, my neighbour’s idiot worker has already spent over $500 for the scissor lift will need to spend another $ 500 tomorrow. Then there is the chain saw costs, the labour and who knows what it will cost when and if he breaks the rafters of my house. Suffer the fools!

Worst of all, we’ve lost another beautiful hardwood maple from our quaint little street. I feel guilty I didn’t go out and give it a big hug to say goodbye, it had been our friend for twenty years and at a young age of fifty was too young to die. I've kept a large portion of every tree that we've had to cut on our land and often look at it thinking of the grand old tree it used to represent. Yes I love trees who doesn't - oh yeah my neighbour.

If you ask me, why are idiots allowed to run chain saws and why can’t I stuff it up their arses when they do. That’s the problem with this country everyone thinks their a lumberjack, and they don’t care: because they wear plaid heavy cotton shirts.

Otherwise, how is your day?

__________________________

On a happy note Arsenal played the last game of the season today drubbing Everton by 7 to 0.

A rough day of it

I have had a rough day – didn’t feel well through most of it.

I looked over the last few posts and thought to myself that this is all frivolous. Am I so full of myself, that I’d think anyone would even care about “my tour of London, Canada”, let alone London, Canada? Jeez, on any day, it’s hard for me to get excited and I live here! Maybe it is my purgatory?

I just don’t feel like writing anything of note today. I have been working hard on my “How I came to know William Burroughs” text, images for eventual publication. I thought I’d give you a little sneak of a photo anyway. It’s of Bill and me in Brussels, Belgium in 1979, on our way up to Amsterdam. I’m happy with the way this project is unfolding.
Here’s the image.

Gerard Pas and William Burroughs, Brussels, Belgium; 1979.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll get up a head of steam and write something, if I don’t it’s because I’m too busy with work or I just haven’t gotten over the melancholy of today.

My dream London Studio

I guess I’m in the touring spirit so here’s another entry in my tour of London, Canada. This one is a little more self-serving as it is based on my dream of where and what I’d like my London studio to be.

PUC Substation

This building is located on Carling St., between Richmond and Talbot St. in downtown London. It is a Public Utilities Commission (PUC) substation.
I like this building not because it’s anything to write home about. I lived in Europe for too many years to be instantly impressed by a frieze, column, or cornice.
The frieze on this building is relatively standard consisting of a name carved in cement. The portico façade is nothing that will set the architectural community humming with its fake columns. The cornice work doesn’t rank with the Elgin Marbles but it is there. Altogether, it’s a formal early twentieth century building, which has been changed to fit its utilitarian function as a substation for the PUC.

Pas Sensation

So using my imagination and a little help from Photoshop, I’ve given you some of the restorations and changes I’d make to the building to make it into my London studio for both sculpture (ground floor) and painting (top floor). I liked this as a studio for several reasons: it’s downtown and not far from my house, it gets light from three directions and no southern light. It’s big enough to store finished work and give the room to work on new works. It’s independent from other buildings with its own entrance. With my changes, it would also have very large doors to move large works in and out. The street it is on is a low traffic street so I could pull a large truck up and load art without bothering others. That alone is enough reason to want it as my studio.
As you can see from the image above I’ve changed the doors on the ground floor, sandblasted the brick to a nearby colour match, and had my name chiseled into the frieze above “Pas Sensation”.
Therefore, this would be my dream studio in London, Canada. It would be nice if it looked over the Thames River just a block away but moving it is a little bigger job than my dreams and then I’d just build my complete dream studio anyway. This will do.

before and after

Now my current studio is satisfactory for clean work such as painting but sculpture must be done some place else so this would unify my work environment into one location, which is ideal for me.

Carling St. looking east to One London Place.

In closing, I’ve included a surrounding snapshot of the street in front of the building looking east towards One London Place, which I wrote about in the post below. It is on a one-block street across from a good restaurant and café “The Marienbad”. Perfect for me right now.

Okay, it doesn’t have the views of my old New York studio but then it’s not New York (click to see), it’s quiet London on the Thames, Canada. My old studio in Amsterdam during the seventies was my best studio to date with New York coming in second. If I had this as my London studio, it would definitely take third. If you came to visit me in this studio, we could bask in the light, drink coffee or single malt, and cross the street for a good meal when we had finished looking at the art.

I’ll show you my current painting studio, which I built at my home here, some other time.

Ps. Arsenal beat Liverpool 3 to 1 yesterday, which locks them as second place in the EPL and a position in next years EUFA Champions League. Good work lads - now for the FA Cup against ManUre, aka Manchester United.

One London Place

Another entry into my tour of London, Canada. It’s most certainly not for its size, next to most buildings in New York this building is small potatoes at 24 storeys high. Nevertheless, it is the largest building in London, Canada and can been seen from any angle approaching or on the outskirts of the city. I’ve marked it on the photo below just to give you a sense of how it looks on the skyline.

Skyline of London showing One London Place.
As seen from from Brescia College U.W.O. looking south.

One London Place is our newest and as mentioned largest skyscraper in London. It is located at 255 Queens St. at the corner of Wellington St., owned and operated by Sifton Properties. One London Place’s primary tenant is London Life Insurance, the people with the green lawn below and from which vantage I took the photos. As far as buildings go, it’s not a blemish and as its surface is mirrored, it often reflects the sky, which I like. Overall, it is a nice building and does have interesting architecture. I’m not going to give you a history of the building or any other details, as I’m not including this a must see site; you can see it everywhere; so you must see it whether you like it or not.

One London Place, London, Canada.

That is why I’m posting it in my tour. You see it where ever you are in London. London is primarily located in an old lake basin, carved by glaciers during ice age times. The downtown is low and the surrounding areas are elevated, as can be seen from my image above of the “skyline”. This basin effect is why it is “a must see” all over town. No biggie but that is the way it is even at 24 storeys.

One London Place or rather 4 London Places
As photographed by yours truly just 4 you.

Now this building does carry some sentiments for me as many tall buildings do around the world. When I drive into New York City (NYC) one of my favourite vistas to view is the one that opens up for me as a driver once I cross the Tri-Borough Bridge and get up on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway (BQE). Just as you drive up onto the BQE, an elevated highway, you see Manhattan open up before you looking down its length from the north to the south of the island and the Financial District. This holds special meaning to me because it means I almost home or used to be as my sister sold that house. Every time I see this view I think why have I stayed away so long as it always marks my return to NYC, even if I’ve only been gone a week.
So it is with One London Place, in coming home to my family and house here after being away. I’m driving back from wherever I’ve been and on the horizon; the first building I see is One London Place in the distance. When I see it, it means I’m home and I like that feeling. To be with my family and back in my studio here. This building always stands there heralding the fact that I’m back in London, Canada. Now there are those of us who live here that would say big deal. For me it is not so much being back in London but rather being with my loved ones and no matter where I’ve been I’m always happy to be with them.
Therefore, I included One London Place in my tour if only because were you driving back with me in my car, I’d point to it on the horizon and say, “Were home or will be in a few moments”. That is reason enough to include it in my tour. Hope you enjoy my photomontage above.

GP

postscript: Arsenal plays Liverpool today, should be a good game. Go Gunners go!

When I need to see GREEN

I thought for today, that I’d simply add to my favourite things to see in my London, Canada Tour, which I started below.

The greenest lawns in all of London Life.

This may very well be the most expensive lawn in the world or one of them anyway. It’s the lawn of one of London’s oldest corporations “London Life Insurance”. This company has its headquarters in London and its building takes up a city block. Around that building, in downtown London, is this verdant lawn. Truth is, it is more like a putting green and may very well be the largest putting green I’ve ever seen. They take such immaculate care of this lawn and it always sparkles, manicured and cut almost to the ground like a putting green; this lawn has no weeds and is always watered.
When I want to see GREEN instead of RED (click to see my red) I go down to Dufferin St. between Clarence St. and Wellington St. and stand on their lawn, looking down at the turf. Greener it does not get.

I will say that some people think it weird to have such a lawn, even avarice, but for me, I like it because I like looking at green. This lawn is an abstract, unlike a natural green forest for example. It is kind of like Bonsai, it looks natural and is made of growing things but completely controlled by the gardener or bonsai artist. Bonsai lawn if you’d like. It is most definitely rare and I’d take you to lay on it with me until the police shooed us away.

By the way, my lawns at home aren’t to shabby either. What can I say, I like GRASS; nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Enjoy Greens everyday!

London Life Insurance, London, Canada.

Postscript: I finished the draft on Burroughs last night so I thought I’d post today, don’t know about tomorrow.

I'm Beat but not as in 'nik'

The first of my backyard gardens,
closet to our deck and visible from the studio windows.

Well I am thoroughly exhausted after a hard days work at the monastery. Adorers of the Precious Blood Nuns are real taskmasters, their all betrothed. I like them; I just don’t know what they make of me.

Add to my tiredness the fact that I worked until the wee hours of the morning last night writing. I’ve been working on my current “love work”, the story of how I came to know William S. Burroughs and our escapades together. I’m beat, as in worn down and not as in ‘nik’. Funny thing is that at 50 I’m too young to have been a Beatnik, even if I’ve met most of them in my artistic sojourn, they were all 25 years older than I was.
I also am not a hippie, I consumed hippie like Beatles’ Bubble Gum cards or my Beatle Lunch Pail. That said, I do love flowers and would encourage another counterculture movement that had flowers as its focus.

Anyway, I want to finish the text on Burroughs soon, maybe even the rough draft tonight. Then I’ll work on the many photos’ I have of Bill and Beat Company to illustrate the text. Then it should be done and I’ll post a link and the info here as I intend to publish it on my website in the Memoirs Section of the Library. I hope that it will be complete in the next week. I may lay off posting here for a few days so that I can finish it.

In the meantime, I’m going to bid farewell. Hope your day was as nice climatologically as mine was (as seen above in my generic garden picture taken at 17:00hr EST)!

GP

You'll never walk alone

Liverpool fans celebrate their teams' victory over Chelsea
in the UEFA Champions League semi-final
Liverpool 1 - 0 Chelsea at Anfield Stadium last night 05-03-05.

Well it went to sleep with my toothless smile and woke up still wearing a grin after Liverpool dispatched of Chelsea from the EUFA Champions League Cup last night, at Anfield in Liverpool.

I’m a dyed in the wool Arsenal Fan (Gooner) but last night I never could have been a bigger Liverpool fan, as the Pool clinched a difficult game to remove Chelsea from the Champions League. I sat at the edge of my seat most of the second half singing along with the Pool fans hoping they could hold off their small lead to victory, which they did. When the game was over, I jumped from my seat as though my beloved Arsenal had just won the game. Thank you Liverpool for allowing me that short glimpse into the love of your team, a love I know myself first for Arsenal, then the Dutch National Side and Ajax Amsterdam. Liverpool was just great and their fans are second to none in England.

I don’t want gloat but I’ve been waiting most of this soccer season for someone to wipe that pompous grin off Jose Mourniho’s smug little GQ face. In so doing, I’m sure the Pool put a smile on many soccer fans faces throughout England and beyond. Kudos’ to the Pool for fighting the brave fight.
I harbor no resentment to the Chelsea squad as this season they’ve played well and for the most part cleanly. In Chelsea’s win of the English Premier League (EPL), I congratulate them, they deserved it. However, this game and Liverpool cutting them down a notch, humbling the arrogant Chelsea Administration was a gift; one not wasted on me. It goes to show that money can’t buy you everything, as Chelsea has seemed to think this entire season. Soccer can be such a cruel sport! Big boys don’t cry… although there were ample tears shed last night at Anfield, both of joy and disappointment as the pictures below convey.

The first thing I did was call my brother-in-law Henry (not Thierry), as I was feeling rather jiggy. He’s a big Pool fan along with other members of his family, dispersed in the Irish diasporas, around this world. We had one of those soccer male bonding things, but it’s hard to slap his arse through the telephone.

Therefore, I lifted a glass in toast of Liverpool last night, singing “You’ll never walk alone…” That is you’ll never walk alone until this coming Sunday when you play Arsenal and we drub you 4 – 0. :}~

Below are some more images from the game which I lifted from Getty Images – please don’t sue me, I’m just an artist and I’m not making any money posting them here and I have credited you.

Enjoy, I know I did.

Soccer what a sport - it truly is the beautiful game.


Big boys don't cry! It's okay, I cry all the time.

Please click on the images to enlarge.

I have this thing for spirals

Lilies of the Valley along the side of my house.
They will soon come into bloom.

I have this thing for spirals. I look for them everywhere and when I see them in the sky, the earth, fire and water, all of nature, they bring a subtle smile to my disposition. Be it in the crown of a head of hair, the dance of the whirling Dervishes, a stately column, the wonder of space, in the math of Fibonacci, or in the turn of a plant or flower like above, they always catch my eye. I’m even enthralled by Einstein’s theory of entropy because of the spiral form it takes in space when considering the effect of a vortex. I am titillated (yes titillated) by the Minotaur’s Labyrinth and the Cretan notion of a uni-cursal maze: you can get lost in it even though it goes in only two directions, in or out. It is as though they saw it as a state of mind, rather than the right-angled topiary maze of modern times. Spirals are my comfort eye candy; I can spin in and out of them forever.
I really have this thing for spirals. I draw them all the time. My idea of doodling is drawing a perfect spiral, as drawing perfect circles is more like work.

I worry too much as if I was someone caught in a uni-cursal spiral maze. Mostly I worry about money and not having any of it. It sucks big time being an artist some days. I don’t want to die destitute like Rembrandt or Mozart, or the millions of other artists throughout time. It’s feast or famine and sadly the feasts are fewer than the famine. I worry too much because of all the dynamics of being in a marriage with university aged children or soon to be. I just worry, worry, worry… inwards and outwards, in this uni-cursal maze.

I wish that I could commit the verses below to my rote memory.

26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

28 "And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31 So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?'

Matthew 6:26-31 (NIV)

my worms eye view

Violas against a backdrop of Primrose and Grape Hyacinths.

I noticed that I really like the worm’s eye view when I document nature. Does loving this perspective, next to and close with the cold ground, say something about me?

Primrose (Primula) waiting to come into bloom.

Late blooming Primrose (Primula) from the pharmacy in my backyard. Sweet fragrant oil of Primulin.
My favourite of this genus is the Evening Primrose, which summer has yet to unfold.

If my heart began to think my head would start to feel.

My Bleeding Hearts are soon to come into full bloom.

These Dicentra (Bleeding Hearts), make my heart tell my head it’s good to be alive! My garden is a cornucopia of emotion, filled with splendor and an encyclopedia of knowledge for my head. Together they make me feel whole and complete.
_________________________

Mornings are hard one me, taking much too long to reach cogency. It is as if I need the medicine (Celexa – Citalopram) to feel a few pounds lighter and ambulate. I’m at war with myself and my body is like the battered ground affected by that war.

Van Morrison said in the lyrics of a song that if his heart could do his thinking his head would begin to feel.

The war between what your emotions tell you and what your head informs you to be real. A life ruled by passion or logic. My passions have too often caused my head to forget its role before passion tears me apart. At other times, my head has blocked my passions to convince me of truth. There in lies the balance, when one's passion or the head rules over the other the balance is gone. When your heart tells you it is true your head should be able to see it clearly as well. If not then something may very well be unbalanced in your perspective.

I have done this with love, confusing love for infatuation for example. I began a quest for love similar, to the Greek/Roman God Apollo chasing after Daphne, who fled from his embrace and turned into a laurel tree. Being just a mere mortal I found myself continually chasing love but in the end the pain of the chase drove me to want to kill off all my emotions using hard-drugs. (I did a painting discussing this subject based on Apollo’s son Phaethon – click to view.)

That is why I wanted to take the medicine (mentioned above), to be able to discern between my passion and ardor and what my minds perceives to be true. If love is truly blind, then I consider my mind the blind person’s white walking stick, to lead me through the labyrinth and out of the maze of the Minotaur.
I consciously choose to live my life ruled by passion for a few years. What it got me was to want to suppress all my feelings because they took me to a place of pain and heartbreak as mentioned above. Had my mind kicked in, or rather had I of listened to its scream, I’d of seen more clearly that I was on a path towards peril. The passion alone was not enough to help me see and I had suppressed my mind from doing its job. The outcome was depression, which is an emotion until it starts to take over your mind as well. I can’t live there anymore; my critical mind is part of the corpus of my being also. Now I spend the time trying to find the balance between the two. Maybe I’ll find that balance, I’m praying that I will and I feel that I will. I’m also relaxed enough to give it some time, as my short lives experiences of these last 50 years also make up what I am; I can therefore wait for healing.
The one thing I will not do is let my passion rule me as I’m tired of living like a leaf tossed back and forth in a stream, even if it is a stream of consciousness. My mind tells me this is the best path and my heart agrees.

I’m writing this because a friend came by my studio and told me their 14 yr. old sister is refusing to take the same medicine as I use. She often finds herself in a fetal position on the floor unable to deal with the day. Her reason for not taking the meds is that she wants to feel and thinks the medicine might be suppressing her emotions. I want her to realize that if you let the passion rule your life entirely and not inform it with your mind, sometimes the outcome defeats the goal, as your life slowly sinks into the emotion of despondency. I’m not saying take the medicine. I am saying look at where your emotions are taking you and then question if this is the outcome you desire; use your mind to discern. Laying on the floor in a fetal position, feeling the weight of your emotions, and letting them handicap or constrain your ability to effect change is not a happy place to be.

I’ve been there. When I saw the underlying issues, I was able to let my mind fulfill its purpose and help solve some of the problems thus lifting the cloud of depression, so that I could act. If this is all the meds do then they are a success. Yes, if there just used as happy pills it defeats the purpose.

If happiness is a state of mind, then use that mind, informed by your emotions to find the peace you’re looking for. For me it came as an intervention by God and my own will to survive. If not for this, I might have listened to my heart and these pages would have been blank, as my mind would have perished into oblivion and decay through the cold embrace of death. This is not what I wanted or where I wanted passion to take me. God opened my heart to see that life is the greatest gift of all, why would I allow only my emotions to take that gift away, as much as I wouldn’t want my mind to rob me of the joy of life itself.

G.P.
_________________________

I Forgot That Love Existed

I forgot that love existed troubled in my mind.
Heartache after heartache, worried all the time.
I forgot that love existed
Then I saw the light
Everyone around me make everything alright.
Oh, oh Socrates and Plato they
Praised it to the skies.
Anyone who's ever loved
Everyone who's ever tried.

If my heart could do my thinking
And my head begin to feel
I would look upon the world anew
And know what's truly real.

Van Morrison from - Poetic Champions Compose

It is love your neighbour not fear them

In this case, the gap between people's ears as it can be equally as dangerous.

God summed up all the rules and laws of the Old Testament with one simple law – love your neighbour. Simple and easy enough to understand with no fancy-dancy turn three times, then throw chicken bones in the air, kinda horseshit. It works for me and I wish I could match that simple rule everyday; alas, I am just merely human.

So against the premise that “loving our neighbour” is the summation of the law what do we find so prevalent in our current society but an economy of fear using our neighbour as the apex of those fears.

I woke up this damp Saturday morning to read our local paper “The London Free Press”. The headlines read, “Do your neighbours grow pot?” Running in the column next to this headline article was a supplemental article on the same story titled “Neighbours one day, suspects the next.”

In that supplemental article, you read such statements:

1. “…the quiet young couple that used to bring her food whenever they barbecued were taken away in handcuffs one day when police seized more than 100 pot plants”
2. "He said he worked in Niagara Falls and would bring us wine," XXXXX said, adding the couple also had a small child. "They were so nice to us."
3. “And on Speight Crescent -- a street near an elementary school -- neighbours were shocked when the home of a young couple who had lived there for three years was raided.
4. "They're the last people on the street you'd expect," said neighbour XXXXX. XXXXX said the people -- who still live there -- are good neighbours.”
5. “It could be any street in the city.”
6. "They are the last people on the face of the Earth you'd expect," XXXXX said. "If they came up and got out of their car, you'd be like, 'Them?' "
   

The whole point is that the kind family that lives next door may very well be the bogeyman, the evil pot-smoking deviant of society, heavens they could even be growing the stuff. It seems the paper and the police want to create an environment of paranoia to do what? Help you love your neighbour, not exactly more like fear them. Magnify this fear motivation with all the other aspects of danger in our modern world and your suddenly living in a walled community with a security camera hanging on all four corners of your house and forgoing your civil rights because anyone might be the bogeyman. Ironically, the neighbour, an executive, might be a very responsible member of our society while working for an athletic shoe company that is exploiting children’s labour all over the third world; but that’s okay somehow because he only smokes pot and not grows it. Then again, if they look foreign (in our white lily assed world) he may very well be related to Osama through the evolutionary chain and thus must be a terrorist or support them because they read the same books he does, like the Koran. When does this fear mongering stop?

It’s funny because together with these articles comes a list of things to watch for and a map of all the houses busted in London over the last year and a half. All of these articles written under a banner of, the enemy could and probably is your neighbour, fear them.

First the list:

Signs your neighbour might be running marijuana grow operation:

- The outside of the house is untidy and ill kept. (I’ve got a neighbour like that he never does anything to improve his property and cuts the lawn twice a year.)

- Garbage bags filled with soil and plant material are thrown out. (Damn, that would be me as I’m a gardening nut with huge flower gardens around my property that need to be attended. Hey, for that matter so are most of my neighbours and our city have “green days” monthly to recycle garden waste.)

- Covered windows. (What can I say it keeps my house cool and protects my watercolour paintings? The blinds in one of our bedroom windows, facing the neighbour are rarely opened.)

- Bright light can be seen through the windows. (Okay, don’t have that, unless I’m reading at night because with age so goes my eyesight, or sometimes it just happens when I bump my head into the wall, and I see bright lights - I guess that doesn’t count.)

- Tampered or bypassed hydro meters. (Okay, this is done from inside the house but thanks for that tip I’ll be sure to ask all my neighbours to see their control box and meter.)

- People are never at the house for long. (Like when were on holidays or when I’m in New York working. Dang, I have a single neighbour up the street who doesn't seem to be home much.)

- People enter and leave through the garage. (Like most of middle-class North America. Why did they invent automatic garage door openers?)

- Construction and ventilation fans can be heard. (Is that what that humming inside my head is. Alternatively, might it be the air conditioner and the furnaces cold air return in the winter. Then again I also live next to an apartment.)

- People arrive and leave with garbage bags full of property. (Boxes are okay but plastic bags are not – this spells doom for the man from glad. Bags full of property?)

- People bring lots of soil and growing equipment into house. (Shite, this would be me again as I just love my house plants and from time to time I need to buy a watering can or a bag of potting soil.)”

* use the above links to see the list without my comments.

Now the Map:

What kills me is that map, they provided, it shows a marijuana leaves in 40 places all over our city: representing houses where people have been caught growing as little as 12 plants in the last year and a half. Every neighbourhood from the north, east, south, and west. If this was a map of gas station locations, it would look just normal and I’m sure some petrol companies wish they had 40 stations. My point is if these grow-ops are as common as Seven Eleven variety stores what is it telling us? Somebody is smoking that shite which they're growing in those buildings. We live in a supply and demand society! Canada has some lax rules when it comes to possession of cannabis but the government is sitting on its hands when it comes to legalizing it because of USA pressures. So many people are smoking this stuff here that growing it has more outlets than our controlled liquor board or beer stores in Ontario. The article reinforces this with this quote from the front page “Walk 10 minutes in any direction and your likely to find marijuana grow house, police say. Big houses, small houses, nice houses….” Jeez, I have to walk twenty minutes to go to our local regulated beer store. What does this say? I think it reinforces my point above, common everyday Canadians are smoking weed and need to get it somewhere other than some crime driven family business out of South or Central America.

Oh CANADAbis

The whole thing is preposterous. When I was in Africa, you’d drive down the highways and byways and see marijuana growing in the ditches along the side of the road like weeds. Should they just cover the whole damn continent in a cloud of Agent Orange or Round-up? This plant grows everywhere it seed finds germination like a dandelion. So why the hysteria?

In my humble opinion then: In my gardening business, we have a joke when we spread fertilizer on the grass (as in lawn), we call it “job security” as the grass keeps growing, and we keep cutting. I think the police are doing the same thing but their manure or fertilizer is a “tissue of shite”, to do exactly what - job security. I wouldn’t mind that as I don’t dislike police, I respect them and wouldn’t want their job and I’m not looking to see them loose their jobs. What I resent is fear mongering to do essentially the same thing, using fear to do what exactly, fear your neighbour. I’m looking out from my closed blinds now looking at my neighbours house looking for any piles of garden waste or garbage bags in front of the house, just in case. Laughable, I better open the blinds in case my neighbour fears me.
You know we have a problem and it has been around ever since I was a kid in short pants. People want to smoke weed and to do so you need to be able to get it and as the government only uses its crop for medicine it has has to be got somewhere – supply and demand. Therefore, what do they, we do? I guess you ask your doctor for a prescription.

Enough already; what a bunch of crap, I'm choking already!

Ps. For you law enforcement types. I love you to. I respect you and the hard work you do! Isn’t that respect and being a good citizen enough. Please don’t turn me on my neighbour as it is easy enough when they, with a shovel, fling their dog shit across the fence or don’t mow grass for weeks at a time. My neighbour is also an Arab and one of the nicest people living on our street – no relation to Bin Laden. NO, I don’t grow it myself, as there’s a location to purchase it within ten minutes of everyone’s house, remember :)~

Sometimes I do ask “I moved from Amsterdam for this – what was I thinking?”

Spring fine long freezin zealand sky.

Spring can be a damn fine time of the year. What a season! Although each season has its own particular glory, I love them all. I just wish Canada’s winter wasn’t so fricken frezzin long. New Zealand is the place for me!

The Magnolias hunger the sun, fully laden and expecting to bloom in its warmth.
I do so enjoy its lustrous pink petal against this cold April sky.

What more can or need I say.

Codex to the poem below

I just drift away looking at the red veins
in the saffron petals.
A sweet saffron of cadmium orange.
The male stamen reaching
out from the female carpel.
Balanced against a cold April sky.
Words cannot describe such splendor.

The stigma, style, ovary, and ovule are often known collectively as the carpel or female parts of the flower.
The filament and the Anthers are collectively known as the Stamen or the male parts of the plant.

courtesy of http:/www.naturegrid.org.uk/qca/flowerparts.html

WOMAN are BEAUTIFUL

Fruithilarious to Fritillaria and back again.

Well, what a day! I’m freeeeeeeee of writing my Memoir’s as a blog, no more staying up for hours trying to make my own subjective deadlines. Yippee Yahoo. What the Jiminy Cricket was I thinking in the first place. Live and learn I guess. I truly am the survivor of my own stupidity. Thus the Fruithilarious!

I worked at the monastery today in what was just generally a miserable day. It started with snow pelts then progressed to drizzle and a shower or two. Working outside is great but some days it really is for the birds, because they’re dressed for it.

At the end of my workday, I came home without the pressures of slaving over my keyboard trying to finish another 3,000-word essay to post here. Instead, I went out to my garden and photographed these wonderful images.

As promised, I would show you the Fritillaria imperalis when it bloomed in my garden (read my post of Wednesday, April 06, 2005 “Fritillaria imperalis”).

Well here, they are and I dare say that every garden should have one because it is simply incredible in its stunning beauty.

Traditional image of the Fritillaria taken in my backyard.
Just to isolate a parameter of how it’s generally documented!____________________________________________

The same flowers photographed from another angle, mine.
I see it as art rather than botany - growing things.
Beautiful are they not.

If your not convinced of its absolute beauty - a little closer view.
Stunning wouldn't you say.
It's like the weirdest thing to look at against the cold April sky.

Well this picture is worth a 1000 words.
If this image doesn't convince you, nothing will.

I'm very hAPPY with the way these imAGES turned out.
Happy images are better than drugs and more fun to do.

I just drift away looking at the red veins
in the saffron petals.
A sweet saffron of cadmium orange.
The male stamen reaching
out from the female carpel.
Balanced against a cold April sky.
Words cannot describe such splendor.

This beautiful flower, which grows in my garden, made coming home such a pleasure and wiped the misery of a cold wet day away. It truly is abstract with its downward pointing flowers at the top of a stem, just below a tuft of upward, pointy leaves.
Look at it — I just marvel at God’s handy work.

By the way, blogging became fun again today. Working on my website remains a job. Do click on the images to enlarge them there so much better larger. I only wish I could give them to you as raw image.
G.P.

Why I appreciate Pirate culture.

Well I’ve been busy moving my Memoirs materials to my website, coding pages and redoing images for these texts. As a result, I’ve been a little to busy to do any photography for you today. I am happy to tell you my Memoirs will be operational at www.gerardpas.com in the next 24hrs. To visit them please click here http://www.gerardpas.com/library/ and follow the link. For the time being here is a little ditty, I wrote for you on.....

Why I appreciate Pirate culture.

In my opinion, pirates were probably the most progressive culture of the 16th and 17th centuries. They displayed an understanding for the handicapped and their rights, which was unprecedented even by today standards.
Thereby, I think that pirates had one of the most progressive cu