Catamaran Summer Issue Launch

 

A lovely launch last week, at San Francisco's Mechanics' Institute Library (and chess club), with readers from far-flung places joined for a few hours in heady words.

More soon . . .

Writing Spaces: Liber Floridus

 

Liber Floridus ("Book of Flowers") was one of the earliest and most famous medieval encyclopedias, compiled between 1090 and 1120 by Lambert, Canon of Saint-Omer.  Lambert wrote Liber Floridus in Latin, originally, and it was later translated into French as Le Livre fleurissant en fleurs.

 

image:  Leviathan, Liber Floridus

 

Writing Spaces: Writing Letters

 

“The act of writing itself is like an act of love.  There is contact.  There is exchange too.  We no longer know whether the words come out of the ink onto the page, or whether they emerge from the page itself where they were sleeping, the ink merely giving them colour.”
(Georges Rodenbach, The Bells of Bruges)

 

 

image:  E. Phillips Fox, The Letter

Writing Spaces

 

Coming soon!

Writing Spaces

 

What might I not be drawn to write at this window?

image:  photographer unknown

Writing Spaces: Sit Now Very Quietly

 

Sit now

very quietly

in some lovely wild place,

and listen

to the silence.

 

And I say that this, too,

is a poem.

 

(Mary Oliver)

image:  artist unknown

Writing Spaces: Sudden Realizations

 

Writing Spaces

 

image:  Christie Cochrell

             Collage pages with daguerreotype 
             digitized by Michael Shanks

Writing Spaces

I could surely write something sunny and heartfelt in this room today . . .
 

image:  Dome, Slatki dome

Writing Spaces: Days Written in Flowers

 

Days written in flowers—

optimism, fragility,

constancy, consolation,

bashfulness,

wisdom and even hope—

fingers stained 

with the bright-colored ink

of all they want to say

before it is too late,

the urgent messages

hands cup, consult, 

the oracles 

of filament, stamen, petal

flaring like Pythia's flame

in far Delphi.  Visited 

once, and ever held within.

 

 

(I liked to learn that those seeking the counsel of Apollo would offer laurel branches, money, and a black ram.)

 

 

 

image:  Old-fashioned Ladies and Gentlemen Too

Writing Spaces

 

image:  Christie Cochrell, Tassajara collage

Writing Spaces

 

image:  Christie Cochrell, Santa Fe

Writing Spaces: Reading

 

Reading, like tracing

fossils, ancient marine life

in white chalk cliffs,

remains or impressions

of thoughts and dreams

cast into immutable form.

Like stone maybe, but

always giving, carrying

forwards and back.

Fluent in voice and time.

 

 

image:  Blanche-Augustine Camus, woman reading

Writing Spaces: Glastonbury Tor

 

image:  Christie Cochrell

Writing Spaces: July Jottings

 

image:  V.E. Jenkins

Writing Spaces: Spring Work

 

“Spring work is going on with joyful enthusiasm.”
― John Muir

image:  Christie Cochrell, Filoli

 

Writing Spaces

 

Writing Spaces

 

image:  Liber Floridus, Leviathan

Writing Spaces

 

image:  Edward Gorey, The Interesting List

Writing Spaces

 

image:  Franklin Booth, Giving Wings to Words