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  LOVE DOES THAT All day long a little burro labours, sometimes with heavy loads on her back and sometimes just with worries about things that bother only burros. And worries, as we know, can be more exhausting  than physical labor. Once in a while a kind monk comes to her stable and brings a pear, but more than that, he looks into the burro's eyes and touches her ears and for a few seconds the burro is free and even seems to laugh, because love does that. Love frees. Meister Eckhart (1260 - 1328) Today I spoke to my Cousin, who has taken on the work of caregiving for my 98 year old Aunt and my 101 year old Uncle. Aunt has been taken off of medical supports to prolong life and put on 'comfort care' as her body cannot survive the pneumonia she contracted after hip surgery from a fall.  Although we had not talked for years, our conversation picked up where it left off, insightful, empathetic, spiritual, and extremely funny.  I am remembering the winter that my Cousin g...

  The work I do at my art desk speaks an allegorical language. It speaks to me as I am in the midst of collecting and then working on drawing the image. It speaks to me after I step away from the image. It speaks to others in its various stages of completion. It speaks a visual language. The subject of the image. The quality and organization of the pencil lines. The comportment and composure of the composition. The size of the work, the scale of the image. The relationship between figure and ground. The relationship between light and darkened areas.  It speaks in a language in constant dynamic formation between centrifugal forces that seek to keep things apart and centripetal forces that strive to make things cohere (Bachtin et al., 1981). It speaks in a language that is fragile, with meaning emergent and declining in relation to our individual reading and understanding, but also the context within which we encounter the language.  I may not necessarily have the words to ...