Ber Himwich: Nothing to Photograph Here

The Song of Songs

He thought of her as if she were with him, but the truth was that she was gone and she was not coming back. The last time they spoke on the phone, she had told him. And that was that. Still, he thought he could hear her voice, singing the song she had written for him, her father, though as it turned out, she had been, on that early autumn day, more in need of the song than he. It had been a song of farewell, though it seemed now, as he searched through the light falling around him, a lullaby, like the one his own father had sung for him when he was a child and if that mockingbird don’t sing, his daughter’s words now restless and unsettled like living with and without regret. He thought if he could just remember the words of her song or snatch their meaning out of the call of birds that had never abandoned him or feel their rhythm in the outflow of his heart or see the flash of her eyes in the flickering of the candle on his desk, she, the singer of the song, would be there for him now. Without knowing where the words were coming from, he began to sing. He sang of all he loved and all that he would be leaving behind when his own time came. Mostly, though, he sang of the sea, the song becoming the gentle rock and slap of the boat, following now only the river’s stream taking him out. He too was not coming back.

The Art of Michaela Romero

Graphite Pencil

Medium: black charcoal, white charcoal, and graphite pencil

Acrylic Paint and Ink

Digital Art

White and Black Charcoal

Michaela Romero

My Brick at Albuquerque Academy

Photograph by Ber Himwich (Translaton: "Don't follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek out new paths to truth."

A Street in the Lexicon District

Drawn by a student of mine circa 1999

Hypnos and Thanatos

Though sleep be not death,
it is a gentleness
upon which the head
may fall.

Sleep makes death
bearable, even
possible.

Cum carmine in meo corde

For my students

As a child, he had always felt close to birds. It was as if the birds revealed to him some other way of being in the world, what he would now call, as an adult, another reality. As a 6-year-old and then a teenager and later as a father and a teacher, he never stopped hoping that the birds would not fly off when he came near or, more secretly, that the birds would actually come to him. They didn’t, and he blamed himself, thinking if he had been a better person or more at peace with himself and others, the birds would naturally perch on his shoulders or nest in his beard. He scolded himself for such foolish thoughts. Then one day, while on a long solitary walk in the mountains, a bird did come to him but only to drive him off from its nest. It made him incredibly sad. When he returned home from his long walk, he slept the sleep of the dead but woke in the morning with a birdlike song in his heart. To the birds, however, nothing had changed. Yet, to this day, he still sings with the birds. Sometimes they do not fly away at once but seem to listen and join their song with his. He knew he was yet again being foolish, but now, at last, he felt strangely at peace.

The dead don't talk

I know why

the dead don't talk

to the living:

it hurts

to remember

and we stopped

listening

What does real even mean?

Trying to understand it
We search out pain

Or maybe it’s different in Chicago
Where Janes and Johns play craps on the L

Or in the fields beyond
Where farm girls and boys give their bodies first to the sun
And then to each other and finally to the earth they love.

We make it up as we go along. What's true remains.
Let's make it rain.

Scarecrow

Photo by Ber Himwich

The Scarecrow

Some say I am wise.
O what a joke!
Nothing like So-crates,
Not even a pose.
Silence is golden
Or so the rhyme goes,
Yet I do nothing
But sing with the crows.

Hold True

No one knows winter

If all they know is snow

The wind that chills the bone

The branches bereft of leaves

Winter is where we begin again

And touch the fire in our hearts.

We hold true, gather round

The flame and pray for life.

N. Scott Momday

"N. Scott Momaday has walked on."

The first of the many times I heard Momaday read was at the University of Oklahoma in the 1970's. The last time was three years ago at St. John's College. I only chronicle these occasions to invoke the memory of the courage his living voice gave me to believe in the power of poetry. I urge you to listen to Momaday's reading of "Colors of the Night" and "The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee." There is a voice in those words that is ancient and wise and calls us to know who we truly are when we hear the thunder or the chatter of a stream -- we shiver with delight as we recognize our own voice and our own words.

"The Colors of the Night" / "The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee"

Pauline Eaton's Credo as an Artist

Pauline’s Credo from “CRAWLING TO THE LIGHT”

Only one who has a personal religion, a unique view of the universe,
can be a true artist. -- Friedrich Schlegel

The purpose of life is spiritual growth.
We are evolving souls.
We participate in the on-goingness of creation.
We participate for the purpose of extending opportunities
        for growth in each other.
We MUST participate, because this is when we are most in
        God's image--that of creator--that this I why we, in turn,
         were created.
Life is being born again and again.
We are meant to evolve into pure love, that love is the
       attractiveness and inter-relationship of all.
We are the indwelling of God in matter.
We are made up of energy participles and soul stuff in the
        same patterns built in all that exists from the atom's core
to solar/stellar systems and beyond.
Joy is experienced in the creative act of birthing being,
        meaning and order out of non-being, meaningless, and
        chaos.

In this sense, we are all artists or called to be such.
As an artist, I believe my role is to continue making connections
and 'real'-izing my place in the FΑΒRIC OF ALL THAT IS.
I attempt to paint this.

Autumn's Child

I see you now, child, wrapped in vines and visions,

happy to find a place to hide, laughing hoping someone will find you.

Don't call out. No one will come.

Let the wind be your voice, just as you hear mine now.

It's autumn and the leaves rustle alive for one last song before winter.

Someone will hear the wind laughing in the trees.

They will see you in all your glory.

Ber and Dad One

Revised Edition, 8/5/21: Download Ber Dad One

In winter the geese
follow the sun. Don't we all?
Time to write haiku.

In winter the geese follow the sun. Don't we all? Time to write haiku.

So strange the new moon,
its beginning a shadow
summoning a song.

So strange the new moon, its beginning a shadow summoning a song.

Branches bare of leaves,
the moon hangs in the balance.
A lone night bird sings.

Branches bare of leaves, the moon hangs in the balance. A lone night bird sings.

Uva uvam vivendo varia fit (explained)

Uva uvam vivendo varia fit.

This Latin phrase from Lonesome Dove is neither nonsense nor bad Latin. It means "A grape becomes mottled by being a grape," with the sense: it is the nature of a grape to become "mottled" as it ripens. In the context of the novel, this means, "Character is destiny" -- the truth of which is illustrated time and again in the novel. The repetition of the 'v' strengthens the point. It is lovely Latin.

vivendo here is a gerund of vivo, in the ablative (instrumental). uvam is a cognate or internal accusative (a play on vitam vivendo), a not uncommon feature of ancient Latin. Most often in Classical Latin the gerund and its object are rendered into the same case and gender, but the usage here is also well attested. The grammatical formation of the gerund and its object are too involved to discuss here, but for a Latinist it would present no problem. I have seen elsewhere the claim that vivendo is a "false gerund." That's absurd on the face of it (the gerund form of vivo is actually quite common, e.g. modus vivendi), unless the author of the post meant that vivendo was simply thrown in without any regard for its grammar or meaning. In either case, the claim is unfounded. The effort to derive this superb Latin sentence as a corruption of a line from Juvenal is likewise misguided and is likely responsible for the "false gerund" claim. At best, Juvenal's line is a red herring. Clearly, an accomplished Latinist, perhaps an acquaintance of the author if not McMurtry himself, is responsible for Uva uvam vivendo varia fit.

Just as a grape or a man can become nothing other than what each is, pigs remain true to themselves. "We don't rent pigs. . . Goats and donkeys are neither bought nor sold," only cattle and horses whose character man has fundamentally changed.

Tags: HH Latin

Don’t you feel sometimes

There’s no point

to any of this

And want nothing more

than to curl up with the grass

and just listen

The earth breathing life

into you the music that never stops

And you become

What you’ve always been

but somehow forgot

every time you were afraid

Which is most of the time

except now softly curling with the grass

you know there is no point

To any of this

The Table Setting

for Charles and Pauline

There is no waiting,

No answers to our questions,

There’s nothing we must do.

What comes is ours forever.

We may forget to breathe

yet know the rest is true,

The heart our only rule.

So praise the rising of the sun

And the fullness of the moon.

The table’s set for two.

Alec Himwich Photography, 8

Cereus

Alec Himwich Photography

It is enough that the leaves

are green all summer long.

Fall will come and the wind
Will carry them all away.

The same wind holds me.
It is more than enough.

Rosary

Now and in the hour of our final breath
The birds arrive as they always have on Ithaca
That we might have good sailing upon the sea.

We launch under cover of a new moon
And sail into morning, forgetting
The stars that will guide us home.

"Scars and Bars" by Pauline Eaton

Hail Mortal

ALL COBWEB
SEES IS

AN ASS
IS AN ASS

IS A MAN
AT BOTTOM

PLAYS ALL
THE PARTS

A FOOL
LIKE

A LIFE WORTH
DYING

— it took but moments
to write / not quite
a lifetime

We must breathe to live

We must breathe to live

Until we weave ourselves

Into wind and breathe no more,

A grace we did not know we

Were living for — or think of

Rain and weep no more.

I sit and knit and smile

ΠΑΝΤΩΝ ΧΡΗΜΑΤΩΝ ΜΕΤΡΟΝ

I sit and knit and smile
They think me dim

I cut and weave each thread
They merely measure

Theirs by mine.

"Now I Understand" - Linda Gregg

Three words
A lifetime
Who can speak them?
I cannot
this morning's night.
Can you?

Stoned

Medusa was butch

but wore sunshine

as if it were hair.

Where did the snakes come from?

From men who stared.

(In the earliest descriptions and images of Medusa, there were no snakes. She was just stone-cold beautiful!)

"In My Dreams I Danced With Picasso": Sculpture by Pauline Eaton

"This sort of self-portrait shows how an artist feels in the presence of genius.
In my gnarled feet and knobby knees I felt clumsy,
but in my head, dancing with Picasso's freedom,
I felt I could do anything!" -- PE

In My Dreams I Danced With Picasso - By Pauline Eaton, 1982

4' foam-core, rice papers, and acrylic paint

In 1980 MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) in New York City held a show of Picasso's work that I knew I could not miss. They emptied all four floors of the museum to host the giant exhibition. You entered from 53rd Street instead of 52nd into the basement where you began with his youthful work and continued up through all four floors, ending up with his work at age 92. Pablo's father was so awestruck by his teenage son's work that he quit his career as an artist. His son had already surpassed him. The young works were like Old Masters. Picasso said that it took him a lifetime to learn to paint like a child.

I went to New York with Charles's sister, Beth. We had tickets for three days, but after two, my eyeballs were just spinning in my head. I was totally overwhelmed and felt I could not take in any more. We sold our tickets to happy hopefuls outside the museum.

I went home to San Diego with a deep need to digest all I had seen and the hope that I could do something to express the experience. Picasso said with his art that there are no boundaries and "You can do Anything!"

I saw our Eric making his custom surfboards and became interested in the slabs of foam-core that he could easily carve yet would harden when exposed to the air. I went with him to his supply shop and acquired the foam-core and some of the finishing materials. At first, I made paper maquettes and then did a few pieces that are around the house of Shadow People and the Shopping Bag Lady. Then, in aluminum, I did a maquette of this piece. When I was ready (almost two years after the MOMA show)

I cut, carved, and coated this piece with rice papers and acrylic medium as glue. I knew I had to paint the figure. Picasso was a painter. But I held back until one night, in the middle of the night, I could not sleep. I felt ready to tackle the piece.

I took the pure white figure to the garage and dove into the painting. About 3:30 a.m. Charles realized I wasn't in bed and came to check on me. When he saw the intensity with which I was working, he backed off, and I must have worked to past five.

This sort of self-portrait shows how an artist feels in the presence of genius. In my gnarled feet and knobby knees I felt clumsy, but in my head, dancing with Picasso's freedom, I felt I could do anything! The style of painting is relational to a middle period of his work when he was painting Girl Before a Mirror, etc. -- Pauline

A Note from Charles:

"I suddenly and definitively realized that "In My Dreams…" is precisely what she says that it is: it is a revelation of the person and feelings of the artist, her very Self made visible––a Self portrait. Not only that, but a significant portion of Pauline's art consists first of an inner searching, and then an attempt to extract the results of this exploration by using a medium more immediate, direct and indirect, profoundly subtle, and flexible than language. Finally, having given it to her framer (me), she sent them out into the world to be witnessed and experienced.

Some, on viewing a piece of art, will reflect on how it should be interpreted––which consists often of an attempt to distill experience into language. In Pauline's case, it is as if the artwork has been invested with some of the resonance/vibration/insight that she was feeling and experiencing in the act of its creation–and that the viewer can pick up as strong or distant reverberation. As you viewed the photograph, you said: "I feel myself almost riveted to the floor. I feel such gratitude to have known Pauline". Of course your response, as a long-time dear friend, must be stronger than that of a person passing by on the way to urgent business. My claim is that you, and even those who have never met Pauline, may all feel heavy-in-the-legs and clumsy––but at times capable of feeling a lightness and élan that almost approaches ecstasy.

One thing is clear about Pauline: she had a rich, dynamic inner life. I often smile when people remark on the remarkable energy of Pauline's art. It does, of course, look indeed like energy––which it is. But more than that, it is a passion––a dynamic, forward driving passion; emotion not recollected in tranquility but splashed, brushed, and scraped from the cauldron of her creativity. Can you imagine what was churning internally while she was reflecting on Picasso, carving the foam-core, turning over possible approaches in design, waiting for the genii of art to drive her to pick up brushes and paint? Our reactions as viewers must be a pale, thin gruel compared to whatever constitutes her feast: the banquet she prepares, at which she feasts, and then shares with us––for her delight at the reception of others was part of her appetite for artistic expression. And yet… we are strangely and powerfully moved by the mere act of viewing her creations.

Charles 12/18/2021

P.S. Pauline regularly painted at night. She wanted to be interrupted by nothing, to have a deep quietness, to paint without a break for as long as she was physically able. It amazed me. I always take any excuse to take a break and then come back to take a look at my work from a different place in time. C.E.

This photograph emphasizes the sculpture's three-dimensional aspect:

In Memoriam: Pauline Eaton

"That's the face of a man who has seen it all."

Photograph by Ber Himwich

“That’s the face of a man who has seen it all.”

Not so. There’s more to come
And it’s not all suffering loss
The mind shedding all

That is not nailed down
Eyes vacant still
Focused on what no one else can see
A sky so blue the light so full

That you can speak only
In single syllables silently
To the coming darkness
As though it were a friend

Passing onto another life
Where there is no sky
But the sky we have become
When at last we have seen it all.

Sea Birds

for Josh 51

It’s just not true

That birthdays come just once a year

Or that your true birth-day is once and done.

As a father

You know better.

Your birthday runs

Like a river to the sea. There

The ever present ever rising

Tides of love teach us

All to sing.

Leonora's Photography 154-158

© Leonora; all rights reserved

The lone surfer

youtu.be/ZkdoeDqBvj0 (The Swingin' Hi-Tones -The Lone Surfer-)

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Peruvian lily

(Alstroemeria hybrida)

It's magic! (Hong-Kong's 36th film awards ceremony)

Classe d'autrefois

Pervenche perlée de pluie

Catharanthus roseus

Leonora's Photography on flickr

Pauline Eaton: artist / dear friend

Pauline Eaton, American artist, educator. License instructor California. Recipient award, Hollywood (California) Form Arts, 1986, Grumbacker award, Conference 96 Hill Country Art Center, 2d award, Texas Friends and Neighbors, Irving, 2000, award of excellence, Arizona Aqueous, 2002, Originals award, New Mexico Women in Arts, Albuquerque Museum, 2003, Water United States award, 2008.

Goat Song

I wrote this poem as a much younger man. It is more relevant now that I am considerably older. I have included
D.H. Lawrence's 'forbidden painting' that served as inspiration.

Goat Song

The old goat sighed, lifting first one hoof then another over the remains of the seasons. He had tried
to invoke a world, embody his words.

And yes, spring summer fall winter took form, wheeled in cycles and everywhere the plants and little
animals rejoiced, colors and music floated through the leaves, browns, and greens became a medley of
sound in the half-light, became wind and in the midst of all stood a man and a woman, opening
themselves like flowers to each other, and his words made mountains and streams, the whurling bark
of trees traced vowels and consonants, roots plunged deep into pure sound.

Then a scream shattered the scene.

And what remained?

An old goat and his song.

The leaves of autumn light the ground.

For James Wright

“ . . . They love each other.

There is no loneliness like theirs.”

There is, of course, the love of life

To go on living after one has lived

In that place that is no place

But like the wind finds itself at home

Touching all things like skin that shivers

And brings forth all we have loved and lost.

Ducks have found our 'pond'

Day One

Day Two

Day Three (photograph by Ber Himwich)

Day Four

GONE

What movesmoves

What movesmoves us

Like distant thunder

Before the lightning strikes

And we run for cover

Leonora's Photography 138-143

Nénuphar solitaire

(Luciano Berio: 6 Encores - Nº 3 :youtu.be/rm7K-8eai1Y)

La complexité du monde
(own work)

« Toutes choses étant causées et causantes, aidées et aidantes, médiates et immédiates, et toutes s’entretenant par un lien naturel et insensible qui lie les plus éloignées et les plus diverses, je tiens pour impossible de connaître les parties sans connaître le tout, non plus de connaître le tout sans connaître particulièrement les parties».

Blaise Pascal, philosophe français (1623-1662) in "Les pensées"

Passent les jours et passent les semaines, les jours s'en vont je demeure

High-rise living

Kaléidoscope

..(..) "somehow, we must all learn to live together as brothers.. or we're all going to perish together as fools "(..)

Speech by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.; Grosse Pointe High School - March 14, 1968

La sortie - The way out

(Sam Myers - I Got The Blues: youtu.be/N-KluFB9A8M)

Leonora's Photography

PoetryMatters 82: "Decomposition" by Ukrainian Poet Lyuba Yakimchuk

Ber Himwich Photography: 360-366

Alec Himwich Photography: 1-7

Alec Himwich Photography

My Name is Charles: A Memoir

Photo by Ber Himwich

It is with great pleasure that I share this poetic memoir from my friend Charles Eaton, who is now entering upon his eighty-seventh year. It is a precious gift to those who already know and love the man and his dear wife Pauline. Those who will here discover our Charles for the first time will recognize, as do his friends, that Charles' story is also our own.

Download MY NAME IS CHARLES