for days now
i awake in
emptiness —
not unlike
fear, a kind of
vacancy
as if
flying
above an ocean
with no map or
navigation, only
fuel enough for
the remainder of
life and
the silent sclaffing
sound of the
propellor
the sea, a flat
horizontal of mottled
filigree, blue in green
spread between
air and floor
why remain in flight?
what is this in me that wants
to wait and see?
chris woodhull
sometimes in the day,
sometimes at night
I walk outside and in,
all around the wooded property
not looking for anything
in particular, nothing really
but this and that, hoping,
no, not hoping: wondering
if the incessant searching
or hunting or waiting
for something to happen,
to move, from beneath
the thing I call my life,
will give it buoyancy.
chris woodhull
glance:
she looks my way
and i look hers
eyes open
as windows
without a word
we think —
who are you?
windows open
eyes turning elsewhere,
mind moving
into privacy
where we
sit and
think about such
things as meeting
strangers, new
friends we
may enjoy —
i sip coffee, she reads
wondering and wondering,
we both
return home.
chris woodhull
the bank of trees, in still wintery
nakedness, a closet
nothing open, waiting
all hidden, yet awake
each tree a finger, distending
holding something within
sleeves of snow scatter,
disappearing, ground breathing
listening
all this, soulful knowing
past and future
all of this, nothing alive and
yet alive
how?
how did this road get here?
I have been walking
this lane for hours,
cut between the wide stand
of poplars and pines
all this roadside
solemnity suggesting someone?
they say a baby
is the essence of a human
where did the baby go?
everything within me
whispers
here!
by chris woodhull
When the gentleness between you hardens
And you fall out of your belonging with each other,
May the depths you have reached hold you still.
When no true word can be said, or heard,
And you mirror each other in the script of hurt,
When even the silence has become raw and torn,
May you hear again an echo of your first music.
When the weave of affection starts to unravel
And anger begins to sear the ground between you,
Before this weather of grief invites
The black seed of bitterness to find root,
May your souls come to kiss.
Now is the time for one of you to be gracious,
To allow a kindness beyond thought and hurt,
Reach out with sure hands
To take the chalice of your love,
And carry it carefully through this echoless waste
Until this winter pilgrimage leads you
Towards the gateway to spring.
who knows where
we will be in a year
but now, here,
on this small ledge
a mountain porch opening
into the night with listening
pines and a cathedral moon
i hold your hand
that made the tea and
for the first time
the thrill of love
returned to me,
without stain —
it could have been a
prayer.
our souls, my soul is a
feathery invisible breathing,
lifting and panicking
with delight —
why here and why now?
who made this,
who made us,
where will we be in a year?
chris woodhull
You’re studying art? But how are you going to make a living?”
SStahhhp this!
Why do we keep asking artists this question?
If I counted how many times I have been asked this question and gotten the “look” that comes along with it I could….I don’t know…But main point, is that artists are bombarded with this question. And BELIEVE ME we are already thinking and worrying about it. Why reinforce that self-doubt? Artists know that their profession includes daily risk taking.
I recently attended an art lecture given by the artist Sharon Louden and she said point blank that “It takes a community to be an artist.” Hell yeah. And not just a community of artists, it takes all types; left-brainers and right-brainers alike.
And so with that being said I speak to everyone, lets become a community of challengers, motivators, appreciators, lovers, and thinkers.
-paris / art by patrick bremer
What’s the point?
So you wanna know about Jesus, huh?
Yeah. I mean, nah dude, stop, I really don’t care but if you got something to say, say it.
You’re the one who brought it up.
Ok never mind.
Ok.
(pause)
Dude just say what you gotta say. If you can’t make it simple forget it.
..let me see…really at it’s core the good news is about one thing: and one thing only the impossible got abolished.
I don’t understand.
The impossible got abolished. Nothing is impossible. All that negative shit in your head is not true.
I don’t understand.
Look. When Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation what did he do?
Freed the slaves I guess.
Yeah and do you think the white brothers down in Texas, when they found out, went out to the fields, rounded up the workers and hollered, “Hey y’all are free now. President just changed things up. Y’all can go on? You think they did that?
Nah probably not.
Really?
Ok, damn, I know they didn’t.
Yeah so a bunch of Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger got on horse back to ride down to Galveston, Texas to give them the news. It’s called Juneteenth, the oldest known celebration commemorating the ending of slavery in the United States. This was two and a half years after the signing of the emancipation proclamation.
That’s kind of like what I am talking about with the good news. The good news is not advise but news. Something happened! Jesus did something decisive. They don’t put things in the newspaper because it is interesting or good advice. They put things in the paper because something happened, something shifted. That’s what I mean. Jesus did something. He freed the slaves. He abolished the impossible. And yet you don’t believe it. You still living on the plantation.
You got a point.
Yeah I got a point.
That’s cool. But you know something?
What?
The plantation is real. I can see it.
It’s what you know to be true that is real whether you can see it or not.
christopher
Beauty needs a lover. Without a lover beauty is not beauty. It is life. Almost. A seed. That is how it seems to me. Things are not beautiful in and of themselves unless I notice them in and of themselves. The moment my eye catches it, “Ah! Yes!” then it unfolds and becomes beautiful. Do you see what I mean?
If something is not beautiful this does not mean that it is ugly. It’s just not yet, beautiful. Almost though. It’s a threshold, a doorway. Almost anything you interact with becomes beautiful if you open your eyes, reach out your hand, breath it in.
Beauty is a relationship, a discovery, a beholding, even a bewilderment. It is a recurring accident if you let it.
One of my favorite moments of beauty comes from Helen Keller, reaching out her hand to the world. In her own words:
“We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Someone was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout.
As the cool stream gushed over one hand, she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motion of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten – a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew that “w-a-t-e-r” meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand.
That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away.
I left the well-house eager to to learn. Everything had a name, and each name gave gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life. That was because I saw everything with the strange new sight that had come to me.
I learned a great many new words that day. I do not remember what they all were but I do know that mother, father, sister, teacher were among them – words that were to make the world blossom for me, “like Aaron’s rod with flowers.” It would have been difficult to find a happier child than I was as I lay in my bed at the close of that eventful day and lived over the joys it had brought me, and for the first time longed for a new day to come.”
christopher woodhull
Monks & Mannequins 