13 Ways of Looking

Raven detail from "The Watch"

Inspired by Wallace Steven's "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" which you can read online by clicking the link.


Thirteen Ways to See a Raven

1. The opportunist never sleeps.

2. Three blackbirds is a good omen representing   
    brightness and goodness. 
    Perhaps Wallace was in good spirits that day.

3. Ignoring change, the bird was blending, adapting, 
    playing.
   Or, simply delivering a message of doom in the face of nature's dramatic change. (magical change)

4. Blackbirds (corvids) are monogamous representing relationship longevity .

5. The blackbird sings in riddle, allusive and suggestive.
    Perhaps the tune is like the bartender's last call!

6. The ghost appears outside the window, waving warning or just playing.
    Perhaps the weight of winter is seeping in.

7. The blackbird should not be shunned because of its blackness for its value is gold.

8. The spiritual blackbird, the watchful eye.

9. Significant moment , birthday?
    Life map mile marker. Personal growth , one step closer to death.

10. Emotions soar when the blackbirds fly.
      Feelings can be dark as death,
      or bright as the sun,
      even on a cloudy day.

11. Perhaps, death follows closely.

12. When the blackbird stirs, nature is on the move.
      The pace of the planet is a fine rhythm.

13. Always present, the blackbird never sleeps!


And you, faithful reader? Tell us how the blackbird looks from your perspective. Help us get 13 responses below. 

Dwell in Possibility: Religion, Science and the Art of Metaphor

Detail from the painting titled "The Watch"

In The Life of the Skies, Jonathan Rosen talks a lot about the fracturing of the world (or the western mind) that happened after Darwin. It's a fracture Rosen himself is still trying to heal, through birdwatching as an mediating activity - one that makes people look up and see. For Rosen, as for many of us who love birds, what we see when we look up is the glory of a bird, but also all that the bird represents - literally, spiritually. Metaphorically.


He talks a lot about naturalists of that time - Darwin, Alfred Lord Wallace. And about how they also sought the divine in their work, whether this was made explicit, or not. Wallace, for example, spent years on the Malay Archipelago before he finally found the bird that sent him on this quest - the bird of paradise - a bird in which the natural and the spiritual seem to meet by virtue of a name!

Rosen uses poetry to really bring out the spiritual aspect of birding. He connects Alfred Lord Wallace's quest and love with Wallace Steven's mystical bird, the one in "Of Mere Being" that sings "in the palm at the end of the mind." Rosen makes a good distinction we really appreciate between the materialist versus naturalist.

Marcus responds to this idea in a way that reminds us of poetry, reflecting on his life, confined, yet metaphorically free through the natural world he creates in art. The following words to the conclusion of the post are his thoughts, shared with you. The featured image is a detail from his current work, the painting, titled "The Watch," which you can see in progress in the slideshow to the right:

My confined life is metaphorical happiness.
I should be miserable because?

But, I do not accept misery as a solution.

Self value is part of measuring happiness.
I have purpose, the result is bliss.

Emily Dickinson pops up the the book Life of the Skies too. Her poem, "I dwell in Possibility" evoked this response:

Why not live a life without restriction.
An infinite perspective is the fountain of youth.
Which feeds our hunger to search in a spiritual and or scientific way.

I love the intertwined idea of science and religion. Because I breathe the metaphorical, my acceptance of both is satisfying. I am not grasping for Big answers! Content with the obvious, focusing on MY metaphorical foot print and embracing what is real.
This is my consumption!
Reality is the foundation, for I live in an abstract frame.
Escape through paint, brush and love? YOU BET! If your mind becomes bored with your heart, you are defeated.
Rock on!