Today is Open Link Night at the pub, so I get to write about anything I want. There are already lots of little green starts coming up from the seeds I planted, and I painted the big rock I dug up from my garden.
When Mixing, It’s Important to Know There Are Warm Shades And Cool Shades to Your Colors
I made sure she came out and saw it: I don’t know why I needed her to see it
She instantly said, “It’s like one of your images. You made it look like your photographs.” I couldn’t believe it, with all its imperfections, she saw it, just as it was.
The rock, the huge-to-me rock that I dug up out of the garden plot I’ve been working for so many years; it was so big I knew I had to paint it, to turn it into a marker, a greeter, a part of the garden.
When I asked him if I could use the plot, the square of overgrowth where my grandfather had planted potatoes, he said, “Go ahead, but the soils bad.” After I’ve tried all sorts of different seeds and plants and worked and worked that soil for a decade, when I showed him this year’s planted garden, he said, “We’ll see. That soil’s bad.”
How can the soil that fed me those incredible baby acorn squash —that I didn’t even plant when the car wasn’t running and I needed food—be bad?
I was so surprised when I dug up that rock after digging in this same square of earth so long. But then, that’s what roots do: they reach down, and around those rocks, and while they reach, they grow and forget about those rocks as their reaching and growing pushes rocks to the surface.
It was hard to decide what to paint. I wanted to create something that would invite me into my garden to work, to weed and to tend, to pay attention. I wanted something that I would want to visit. That’s hard to paint for oneself. It had to have something right and wrong with it, change with the light.
And she was right, I tried to recreate overlapping colored lights with paint, to turn the curled metal of my small mirror into a vine. And she saw it. And she saw me without a word, she just knew it was me, inviting me to my garden.
For today’s Poetics prompt, Sarah invites us to verb animals and use those verbs or verb phrases—like “horsing around” or “pigging out” or our own inventions like “eagle over” or “ant the whole hill”—in our poem.
This Animal Kingdom
He is always sharking— dead-eyed stare, open mouth full of sharpness always moving—prowling for the next morsel to come too close
Me, I emu Unable to fly, I present a feathery girth over questionably designed legs with a deadly kick primed if he gets too close.
In the rare moments he’s not sharking, he squirrels—all his pouches full of nuts and seeds (mostly mine and the morsels’ he sharks)— but he squirrels lazily: I’ll find his burrow
When I don’t emu, I hornbill I spread my striking wingspan, and my caw, generated in my bulbous head, carries elation under the thick canopy, then using my curved, sharp beak I crack the nuts from his hollow.
Me, I Emu by Maria L. Berg 2023
Today’s images
Inspired by today’s poetics prompt, I thought it would be fun to use some animal filters with my new light-wrapped forms in the mirrorworld, to see if I could make them verb. I really enjoyed searching through my filters and picking out all the different animals I’ve created filters of over the years. The shark and the emu filters pictured above, I created to use with the fireworks last Fourth of July.
In my last abstractions post, I talked about The Power of the Center: A Study of Composition in the Visual Arts by Rudolf Arnheim, and the ideas of centric and eccentric composition. Arnheim goes on to talk about how forces like gravity can effect composition which I found interesting.
Arnheim says, “Walking downhill, dropping, or falling is experienced kinesthetically as acceding to one’s own weight. One is being pushed downward by a force situated in the center of one’s own body. . . .The dominant pull of gravity makes the space we live in asymmetrical. . . .Human beings experience the dynamic asymmetry, or anisotropy, of space by means of two senses, kinesthesis and vision. The physical effect of gravity is perceived as tension in the muscles, tendons, and joints of the body. Visually, the world is pervaded by a similar downward pull, whose influence on the dynamic character of the things we see may be illustrated by the difference between what goes on visually in horizontal and vertical surfaces.”
He continues to state that the horizontal orientation is centric composition, since all points have the same relation to the ground, but because of our physical interactions with gravity, vertical orientation is strengthened by a gravitational vector and is thus interacting with an outside center and an eccentric composition. He states that since we must put effort into upward movement, but not into downward movement, we perceive an element in the upper part of the vertical image as having more weight than an element in the lower part. Thus the element in the upper part should be smaller to counterbalance an element below.
Today’s images
I liked the new compositions I was making with the wrapped ring in the mirrorworld, but wanted to see if a smaller ring that actually fit inside the frame of the mirror would have better results. While looking for materials to make the form, I noticed some old wire hat stands I had and decided to try wrapping them with lights. I had three, so I stacked two of them, and wrapped them with colored lights, and left one as is and wrapped it with white lights. This idea has so much potential because they stand freely and I can move them around in relation to each other.
Inspired by Arnheim’s discussion of horizontal and vertical weight, I made a clear plastic filter and drew a symmetrical cross in black sharpie, and I cut out a paper filter with a symmetrical cross in the middle of a circle. The plastic filter creates texture, and I can layer the two filters and move the paper one over the plastic one to cross the crosses at different angles. These images show the paper filter.
What do you think? Do you feel a gravitational pull in the vertical image, but not the horizontal?
For today’s Poetics prompt, Lillian provided some portraits by Thorvald Hellesen (1888 – 1937) as inspiration. I chose “Portrait of Eivind Eckbo” painted in 1914 for today’s poem.
The Man in Motion
He is a whirl of spring air spinning, spinning always turning but with one eye holding my stare like a ballerina in an eternal pirouette one leg steady—in the shadow under there under his billowing cloak rising and falling, a dangerous snare— the other continuing the momentum pointing in, pointing out, so beware
He is fluttering soft petals on a fragrant breeze whirling, whirling, but that eye on me stares the head almost appears to have a plan to stay still as the body turns, but then all hair it snaps around and is back and then it does it again—SNAP! the head has come around, never losing that stare
And the spinning never stops as with each turn he becomes more aware that he’s a pastel shimmer in motion more breezy, more one with the spring air and forgets he has a leg on the ground in the shadows under that cloak that has flown off somewhere.
For those readers who are wondering where my Reading Novels Like a Novelist (RNLN) post is, those posts are on hold for now. I’m still reading and taking notes on a novel a week, I’m just not into spending the time writing about them right now. We’re having some early summer weather here in the South Sound, and I have flower beds to find, and ants to battle, lawns to mow, and a garden to plant, and the weird thing is; my back gets sore, and I get tired. What’s that about? This crazy excitement for working outside will hopefully last through next week and then I’ll probably get back to talking about noveling (and revising my novel, of course).
Today’s Images
I finally found some new pool noodles, so my floating studio has a new façade! I made a new tiny brad filter with a moving triangle on a triangle inspired by a diagram of Jean Victor Poncelet’s treatise on the projective properties of figures in Visual Thinking by Rudolf Arnheim.
While I was setting up my floating studio, a ginormous fish swam under it, and then came back to see what I was doing (sorry I didn’t take its picture, I was kind of stunned, and my camera was still on the porch). I think it might be a bass and live under the dock. I hope it comes to visit again, but not when I’m swimming.
It’s Open Link Night at dVerse Poets Pub which means there’s no poetry prompt, so head over and link up one of your poems and enjoy reading poetry by poets from all over the world!
For today’s poem, I’m continuing to focus on contradictory abstract nouns. I’ve collected and printed out an extensive list of abstract nouns ( I’m hoping to eventually have a definitive list of all of the abstract nouns in the English language to put in my three dimensional chart of where they fit on the continua of fear, control, and bias). At the moment, the words are on strips of paper in a cup. I selected peculiarity and sympathy to think about today.
Sympathy in Peculiarity by Maria L. Berg 2023
She says peculiarity is orange
like this Fanta orange? zesting fizzy, bright and sweet? she ponders, head tilted, then smiles and shakes her head
like a construction cone (worn as a hat), or safety vest (over an evening gown)? she laughs, then frowns, then smiles, her orange lips stretching almost to her orange hair staring into me, waiting silently
the orange peculiar to oranges?
she knows orange is my favorite color I’m in my orange flightsuit, drinking an orange soda, under an orange tree in an orange plastic chair
I would say that orange is sympathetic in an agreed juicy taste and spherical shape sharing an understanding of orangeness
but do they feel sorrow—as they fall from the tree—in the falling; do they feel peculiar in their oneness; do they feel compassion for the others still clinging, and afraid?
While contemplating the next steps in my study of contradictory abstract nouns, I started reading The Power of the Center: A Study of Composition in the Visual Arts by Rudolf Arnheim, and realized that focusing on composition, both in my images and in my poetry is a logical next step.
Arnheim proposes that there are two compositional systems: the centric and the eccentric. The centric is the self-centered attitude. The eccentric is the recognition that one’s own center is not the only center, and stands for any action directed toward an outer center, and is in turn affected by the outer center.
Arnheim states, “The tension between the two antagonistic tendencies trying to achieve equilibrium is the very spice of human experience, and any artistic statement failing to meet the challenge will strike us as insufficient. Neither total self-centeredness nor total surrender to outer powers can make for an acceptable image of human motivation.”
So Arnheim has set up a dialectic of composition: The centric system gives rise to the eccentric system which is in conflict with it, and the two create tension while trying to come to equilibrium. As he talked more about centric and eccentric systems they seemed to correlate with my ideas of inner and outer control.
Though I’m just beginning to read the book and think about centric and eccentric composition, I was inspired to try something new in the mirrorworld to change my compositions. In December of 2021, I tried making “wreaths of light” by wrapping lights around a metal ring. Today, I wrapped the metal ring in lights and put it in the mirrorworld. I tied it to a bar overhead so it would stand up. I’ve always draped the string-lights between the mirrors, so this changes many aspects of the compositions. The most interesting change is that the wires between the lights are no longer part of the composition.
For today’s Poetics prompt, Mish introduced us to the surrealist images of Erik Johansson and asks us to write a poem inspired by one of a selection of his works. For today’s focus, I was most drawn to “Drifting Away.”
Watching the Others Drifting Along
That explains a lot, really— It’s the waves (in the dip between the crests) that lull us into believing the fluffy clouds are harmless the crows cawing as they chase past the steeple carry no omen the open barn doors only invite the cattle home not to slaughter, not to ruin It’s so easy to forget the bottle will soon be tossed the upheaval will arrive
Outside the glass, the eccentric, the other center pushes and pulls, cycles and swirls, always
But in that lull, when the sun hits just right the water splashed and dripping could be a refreshing rain, not the evidence that I am only in a bigger bottle.
My Positive Bias on Fear and Control by Maria L. Berg 2023
Thank you to every reader who came by, read about contradictory abstract nouns, looked at my art, and read my poems. I appreciate the time you gave my work, and the nice comments and fun interactions. To finish out the month long project, I printed out the rest of the images, and put all of the months images in my three-dimensional graph I created yesterday.
My Negative Bias on Fear and Control by Maria L. Berg 2023
Contradictory Abstract Nouns
I really enjoyed how the A to Z Challenge inspired me to look at pairs of abstract nouns that I wouldn’t usually look at together, and wouldn’t usually see as contradictory. It helped me delve deeper into my idea that every abstract noun can be either positive or negative depending on personal perceptual bias.
Creating a three-dimensional graph of all of the abstract nouns that I looked at this month made me think that the Big Five Abstractions may not be: Truth, Beauty, Wisdom, Love, and Happiness, but others that represent each of my four quadrants and the center.
My graph also showed me that I have a positive bias overall, and the fight response to fear includes abstract nouns of equally inner and outer control, where the flight response is mostly inner control.
To explore the definitions of abstract nouns, I collected many texts on philosophy and psychology. I was excited to start exploring the works of William S. Sadler, M.D., the Discourses of stoic philosopher Epictetus, and the texts on human behavior by Adler. Along with the philosophy texts of Kant and Hegel, I have a lot of interesting reading ahead of me.
The Images
In creating this month’s images, I tried new techniques and combined some old ones in new ways. The most successful new techniques this month were controlled blur (using stickers to cover certain bulbs on the string lights), the “blinds” filter (strips of paper on o-rings on a piece of wire, so that they move due to gravity), Morse Code designs (adding the dots and lines of Morse Code to put words in the images), glue vispo (the different thicknesses of glue making the Morse Code look like language), and xylography filters with my wood puzzle piece designs.
I’m very excited that the sun came out before the month was over and I got to play with my floating studio again after the long winter. I created a second cage for my reflection balls, and like the results. I’m really looking forward to all the new possibilities.
Though my three-dimensional graph using my images isn’t a beautiful work of art in itself, the way mages cluster due to my constraints provides interesting insights through my color choices, shapes, textures, and compositions within each quadrant. I have a lot to look at and think about.
The Poems
Though I was feeling somewhat uninspired at the beginning of the month, my little brush with death about mid-month (toppling off the couch and hitting my head on the bookshelf while trying to take emotional furniture photographs) seemed to be just the fuel this poet needed. The prompt to write joke-form poems, was fitting for the possibly tragic hilarity of my situation.
I enjoyed stumbling upon The Nonce Scavenger Hunt while reading other poets, and trying some new forms. As usual, I enjoyed how the different prompts worked with my A to Z challenge topic to push me to write on the topic in ways I wouldn’t have otherwise.
So What’s Next?
I’m looking forward to getting back to my Tuesday and Thursday posting schedule, and returning more of my focus to my novel. I tried to continue my Reading Novels Like a Novelist (RNLN) posts during April, but I only got one posted, so I have some catching up to do.
I plan to spend time reviewing all of the work I’ve done in the last year on abstract nouns, and reflect on where my study is taking me. Though I find great joy in daily creative innovation, I worry that constant creation without refining my focus won’t produce the final images and poems I’m hoping will express and communicate to the viewer/reader the dialectic of every abstract noun.
As I review what I’ve done so far and think about next steps, I want to look at every abstract noun (in English) and put it on my three-dimensional graph, and choose my new Big Five Abstractions from my four quadrants and the center. Then, by looking at the graph, I want to explore my biases and where they come from, and what might change them to their opposite, to see the entire continuum.
Finding the contradictory nature in today’s abstract nouns was an interesting and challenging exercise. Many would say that zeal and zealousness have the same meaning, however, zeal is a feeling and zealousness is being full of or characterized by that feeling.
I thought writer Harvey Ardman’s answer to the question of how zeal and zealousness differ came closest to what I was thinking when he wrote on quora.com:
“Zeal” means having a lot of energy or enthusiasm for a cause or a task.
“Zealousness” has the same meaning, but with an additional connotation of obsession.
Harvey Ardman
I thought it was interesting that last year I wrote about zealousness as something positive and motivational, but this year because I was looking at zeal and zealousness as contradictory, zealousness took on a negative meaning to me.
This got me thinking about a third continuum of abstract nouns which is bias. During my studies of contradictory abstract nouns, I’ve come to the conclusion that contradictory abstract nouns are the same noun defined along a continuum of perceptual bias. So for today’s graph of all of the contradictory abstract nouns I explored this month, I added a third dimension, of positive or negative bias. Here’s my three-dimensional mapping of the contradictory abstract nouns along the axes of fear, control, and bias:
Three Dimensions of Abstract Nouns by Maria L. Berg 2023Positive Bias by Maria L. Berg 2023
Today’s Images
To find the zeal in zealousness and zealousness in zeal, I played with the same painting with a flashlight technique I used last year. I set up the tri-pod in the mirrorworld, and used a Kandinsky-inspired sharpie drawing on clear plastic filter. Using the timer, and trying different shutter speeds, I zealously attempted to write a Z and an M. My zeal waned when I got hungry.
Today’s prompt is to to “write a palinode – a poem in which you retract a view or sentiment expressed in an earlier poem. For example, you might pick a poem you drafted earlier in the month and write a poem that contradicts or troubles it. This could be an interesting way to start working on a series of related poems. Alternatively, you could play around with the idea of a palinode by writing a poem in which the speaker says something like “I take it back” or otherwise abandons a prior position within the single poem.”
Last year zealousness was positive. It was active and diligent, hard to discern from zeal. But today it’s a negative trait: it’s too much, excessive, obsessive; it’s pushy, single-minded and won’t listen; it is so devoted and convicted that it is a one way street to aggression and violence.
Last year zealousness was passionate and full of intense emotion, but this year that emotion has changed: from pleasure to addiction; from motivation to necessity at all cost; from love to hate. And that zealousness leaves a hole, a hunger, a vicious circular definition like a spinning magnet attracted and repulsed, and attracted an repulsed until the string breaks.
Last year zealousness was enthusiasm, a feeling of excitement for what’s to come. But today it’s contradictory, line-crossed to the fanatic, past the point of discovery and surprise, to the point of know it all and everyone else is wrong, and nothing will be the same, and something must be done because no one is listening and they all must see because zealousness is now all consuming, and the zeal is waning from hunger.
I still absolutely love the image I made for yearning last year. Much of my current yearning—strong, persistent craving or desire accompanied by tenderness or sadness for something unattainable or distant—to create thought-provoking images that express the contradictory nature of life, began last year during the A to Z challenge with my study of abstract nouns.
Yield can have a concrete meaning: the quantity or amount yielded. A quantity of goods can be counted, touched, measured, but yield has many other meanings: to give up, as to superior power; to give up or surrender (oneself); to give as due or required; to cause; give rise to. With the opposite meanings of “to give up” and “give rise to” also makes yield a janus word.
In The Mind at Mischief, Sadler uses yield in defining security:
Security is the emotion we feel when we yield to our inherent gregarious instinct. Man is naturally a herd animal. He feels safer when he is one of a crowd of his own fellows. This emotion of security is the well-spring of the impulse of self-preservation, and when indulged, yields that feeling of safety which we experience as the result of companionship with those of our kind.
William S. Sadler, M.D.
Notice that the feeling of safety is a yield of the emotion of security. In this way yield is an abstract noun. Yield is contradictory to yearning in that a yield is something in hand, a result, where yearning is something distant, wanting something that may be unattainable.
Today’s Images
For today’s images I created a second reflection ball cage, something I have been yearning to do, but thought I needed more pool noodles. Instead I used an old one that had curved into a U and joined it with a couple broken pieces to close the cage. Then I used my wonder and wisdom transparencies behind my cut-shape filters. What a yield. It really feels like painting with light.
Today’s prompt is to write a two-part poem that focuses on a food or type of meal. At some point in the poem, describe the food or meal as if it were a specific kind of person. Give the food/meal at least one line of spoken dialogue.
I. I toil, yearning to live off the harvest. I turn the compost, and dig as deep as I can, loosening the soil for the roots of future plants. Every year my hopes soar, certain that this year will be different: that I’ve put in more effort than the year before; that this variety will be heartier than the last; that the birds and insects and weather will work with me not against me this year I yearn for spirals of pole beans reaching up to tall bright-yellow sunflowers, bowing their big heads over plump orange pumpkins, growing big enough to carve scary monster faces set to glow on long, dark, chilly autumn nights, or mashed into a vibrant pie filling to celebrate a day of thanks for a bountiful harvest.
II. And the sprouts pop through green against the dark earth, a bountiful yield in every row and I patiently wait for them to grow, to flower, to fruit but the sun beats down, and the leaves are nibbled, weeds encroach and choke and they refuse to grow as if to say, We would rather die than nourish you. There is nothing you can do to make us happy. But with a creator’s love, I dress the small, damaged leaves of the surviving, kale, lettuce, and chard and savor every bite of my luxurious yield while imagining what I will do differently next year.
Experience Writing 