More Arvo

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The Victoria Cross Flower

The Victoria Cross Flower
By Arthur Stilwell



Crocuses are daring scouts! They come in courage
To reconnoitre the retreating troops
Of winter, braving the perilous aim
Of sniper frost and machine-gun sleet,
To plant the purple glory of their flag
Upon the emptiness of no-man's land,
As signal for the safe advance
Of all the armies of summer's flowers.


(Originally published Country Guide)

Medium: Pencils H and B

Medium: H and B Pencils

Medium: Pencils H and B

Mr. Smith's Peach Seeds

Jodle

 



 

"Most experts agree that yodeling was used in Alpine folk music in the Central Alps as a method of communication between herders and their stock or between Alpine villages, with the multi-pitched "yelling" later becoming part of the region's traditional lore and musical expression. The calls may also have been endearments shepherds used to express affection to their herds. The earliest record of a yodel is in 1545, where it is described as "the call of a cowherd from Appenzell".

It is thought that yodeling was first introduced to the United States by German immigrants in Pennsylvania in the early 1800s. As the new settlers traveled south through the Appalachian Mountains and beyond into the Deep South they came into contact with Irish immigrants, Scandinavians (practictioners of a unique yodeling called kölning), and other nationalities including African slaves who communicated with "field hollers", described by Frederick Law Olmstead in 1853 as a ‘long, loud, musical shout, rising and falling and breaking into falsetto’. German yodeling may have converted southern field hollers into a more musical form and combined them with Irish narrative ballads, resulting in the unique form of the yodeling tradition in America. But it was Jimmie Rodgers, who combined the southern Black blues with the yodel in the 1920s, who introduced and popularized the American yodel in the United States." --Wikipedia

What is jodeling and what is field hollers, one could safely assume, goes back to the dawn of shepherding and farming itself, on all continents; though I would like to think its origins were even more primal than communication between people (or people to animals) over long distances: more like the spontaneous banishing of ghosts and shadows from the lonely hills, pushing back the boundaries of fear (it probably also made the animals produce more wholesome milk), declaring mastership over nature as children redeemed in Christ - like Tom Bombadil with his constant singing and pouncing from place to place.

That, I think, is the true origin - which is not natural, like art. To use William Golding's Lord of the Flies as an example: what is natural is to tell all the others in the deserted primal jungle island to shut up and to satiate them with meat and to cut off the sow's head and spit it on a pole as a peace offering to the Beast.

What is not natural is, in the midst of mounting tension and primitive chaos, to take up the conch and, standing in one's dignity, give wind to it, for all to hear and gather up their attention to something higher - precisely when fear would tell one to be practical.

Art is an extraneous exertion of the soul.

Zäuerli I guess is a Swiss jodeling group. I definitely could not listen to it all day, but I do like it. I first came to know the sound through Werner Herzog's at times ecstatic, at times pretentious film Heart of Glass. This is the beginning of the film:

Swain

Little Silences
By Owen Swain


When a loved one dies “before their time”
and no one tells us,
Time heals…

When we are pressed in, overwhelmed
and no one says,
God never gives us more than we can handle

When we are grieving beyond the vale
and no one says,
I understand exactly how you feel

When two lovers hold hands and heart
and neither says,
anything at all

When we don’t say, I’ll pray for you,
but in secret we do pray

When our child dies
and no one says,
She’s in a better place now

When they do not say
I’ll pray for you
but before their Father, in secret, they do pray for you

When no one presumes, patronizes, plagiarizes or pontificates
the little silence makes the world richer.


Owen Swain - art + poetry & such

Chichikov

A TASK

By Pavel Chichikov

I have a task for you, He said

Difficult for such as you

Pray for every enemy

And those you wounded, not a few,

Unceasing ask it without stint

As if your own soul needed it

As it needs and as it will,

There is no better prayer to pray,

Pray it now without demur

Pray it always night and day,

For that is how you need to be

If you would rise and follow Me

All are Mine, a formal dust,

I made them be as be they must

From moistened particles of clay

Which rise and move and speak and pray,

But move they will with limbs of light

Body, soul to be made right

Then you must be woven of

Such cloth as is the cloth of love

And that is purely golden thread

Without a mixture of the dead

And if you all the wounds forgive

                  Repent as well and you will live 

WHEN THE CLOTH IS FINISHED 

By Pavel Chichikov

Will you let this rain of sorrow cease?

Yes I will, He says, in lovingness and peace

Shall we meet the loved ones whom we cherish,

Love them better till our grieving vanish?

In Me there is no sorrowing nor can there be,

For in My presence grief is banished instantly

And grant a consummation of our love for You?

Yes, so far above your love are all things new

When my Lord of light will it appear,

Will it be tomorrow’s day or night, next year?

It is My grace to weave such light from sorrow,

                  And when the cloth is finished never is tomorrow 



The Poetry of Pavel Chichikov

Papa Quote

"The only really effective apologia for Christianity comes down to two arguments, namely the saints the Church has produced and the art which has grown in her womb. Better witness is borne to the Lord by the splendor of holiness and art which have arisen in the community of believers than by the clever excuses which apologetics has come up with to justify the dark sides which, sadly are so frequent in the Church's human history. If the Church is to continue to transform and humanize the world, how can she dispense with the beauty in her liturgies, the beauty which is so closely linked with love and with the radiance of the Resurrection? No. Christians must not be too easily satisfied. They must make their Church into a place where beauty - and hence truth - is at home. Without this the world will become the first circle of Hell." --Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger

Medium: B and H Pencils

The Coyote's Story

The Coyote's Story
By Arthur Stilwell



I'm only an old coyote
(Pronounce the word I pray you--
To imitate our well-known bard Shakefang--
Ki-yoot rather than ki-oat or ki-oatee,
The false lingo of our American tribe).
My homestead's in lovely Qu'Apelle,
Swell for echoing coyote wails.
Well, I'm scoop-backed, arthritic, limpy,
And my fur is mangy; in short, I'm full of years.
Still I try my best to rustle for the kids,
With enough over for my ribs and Dinah's,
My helpmate, whom I fell for permanently
When she (such gentleness) licked me better
After a thirty-thirty slug boiled along my back,
The price of carelessness among the chickens.
In spite of that I can't resist a chicken,
So here I am serenading circle moon,
And heading for the farm I know so well,
The guy who plugged me ages ago, ages,
Who's fed us sometimes since, unknowingly;
I pad warily taught by that near-death,
And observe the fellow through a window,
Bowed, balding like me, dreaming in his chair
All alone, so I surmise his Dinah's gone;
I know his boys and girls have departed,
For it's long since I drew their target practice.
But what's all that to me; I'm famished,
And snout my way into the chicken coop,
Stuff my jaws with a brace of fine, fat hens,
An escape of cackles brings him to the door,
I wonder if the bullet will go through this time,
He stares round with odd, indifferent eyes,
And the fire that throws slugs is not in his hand,
So I bustle on home, mind deep with Dinah,
And I would feel much better, much,
If he had flung yells and curses after me,
Instead of turning back in silently.


(Originally published in Western People)

The Last Hellos

The Last Hellos
By Les Murray



Don’t die, Dad —
but they die.

This last year he was wandery:
took off a new chainsaw blade
and cobbled a spare from bits.
Perhaps if I lay down
my head’ll come better again.
His left shoulder kept rising
higher in his cardigan.

He could see death in a face.
Family used to call him in
to look at sick ones and say.
At his own time, he was told.

The knob found in his head
was duck-egg size. Never hurt.
Two to six months, Cecil.  

I'll be right, he boomed
to his poor sister on the phone.
I’ll do that when I finish dyin.


Don’t die, Cecil.
But they do.

Going for last drives
in the bush, odd massive

board-slotted stumps bony white
in whipstick second growth.
I could chop all day. 

I could always cash
a cheque, in Sydney or anywhere.
Any of the shops.

Eating, still at the head
of the table, he now missed
food on his knife side.

Sorry, Dad, but like
have you forgiven your enemies?
Your father and all them?
All his lifetime of hurt.

I must have (grin). I don’t
think about that now.


People can’t say goodbye
any more. They say last hellos.

Going fast, over Christmas,
he’d still stumble out
of his room, where his photos
hang over the other furniture,
and play host to his mourners.

The courage of his bluster,
firm big voice of his confusion.

Two days in the hospital:
his long forearms were still
red mahogany. His hands
gripped steel frame. I’m dyin.

On the second day:
You’re bustin to talk
but I’m too busy dyin.

Grief ended when he died,
the widower like soldiers who
won’t live life their mates missed.

Good boy, Cecil! No more Bluey dog.
No more cowtime. No more stories.
We’re still using your imagination,
it was stronger than ours.

Your grave’s got littler
somehow, in the three months.
More pointy as the clay’s shrivelled,
like a stuck zip in a coat.

Your cricket boots are in
the State Museum! Odd letters
still come. Two more’s died since you:
Annie, and Stewart. Old Stewart.

On your day there was a good crowd,
family, and people from away.
But of course a lot had gone
to their own funerals first.

Snobs mind us off religion
nowadays, if they can.
Fuck them. I wish you God.

Hi-koo

Dry maple leaves play
woods' gold edge, busking on boughs.
Birches throw their coins.

Medium: Pencils B and H

Max Monday

Max Beckmann made some sculptures, which Quappi cast in bronze after he died (click to enlarge):

Female Dancer, 1935

Back Bend, 1950

Man in the Dark, 1934

Crouching Woman, 1935

Adam and Eve, 1936

Snake Charmer, 1950




Image source

Arvo's the man

Mein Weg hat Gipfel und Wellentäler:





Another organist playing the same, "My path has its peaks and its valleys...":






Dopo la Vittoria (After the Victory):






Trivium: