tonight... bookmeat...!

for those of you in los angeles, tonight is the night of a wonderful silent auction to benefit side street projects. while i don't tend to publicize events on the blog too much, i thought the idea of the auction was a great one. instead of asking artists to donate artwork, the organizers invited artists to donate a book that was somehow meaningful to them, to inscribe the book, and to include a letter or some "surprise", adding some secret insight to the buyer. they encouraged artists to donate their own copy of the book, perhaps dog eared and notated... tickets are very reasonable!

i had a pretty difficult time selecting a single book, but there is one that i have used numerous times towards my own work, and since i had 3 copies between home and the studio, it seemed a good fit. (i believe the books will be auctioned without the artist being known, so i won't reveal the title of mine!).

as i was holding the book in my hand to inscribe, i decided to add one extra path for the next owner, underlining a word or phrase on each page, suggesting a poem of stepping stones through the text... here's a short bit of it...

... and my eye sadly leaves the roof,
i am going to carry it with me over the mountains.

wind drifts across me, beyond me blue.
listen, from the hives and blossoms
rocks gently as a dream in the night
together in the moist flight of clouds.

blue lakes, and listening
with hundreds of nuances. my yearning
softly once again.

wandering without any special direction,
we lightly scatter:
the pasture, birds, and butterflies.

luminously
around me, a magic circle glows.

the land, it had trumpets.
the bridge sang in me, and echoed
what the sky said
in the moonlight curving gently away.

tenderly with inward, beloved things
ringing the bell
in my tongue, on the souls of my feet.

info here