Month: September 2024

If I wrote well enough to write a poem, I would write a poem about Playing. On summer afternoons in the south of France, the Mediterranean hardly a breath away, our poem would be about playing pétanque. The object of the game is to toss a steel ball, a boule, so that it gets closest to the target, the cochonnet, than the boules of whomever we are playing against. Or rather, playing with. Because the real object of our game is not to win, but to have fun with friends, and strangers, and with each other.

In the painting, the man in the white shirt has just launched his boule into space. The object of his aim, the cochonnet, is the small, reddish ball in the foreground. As an artist, I was less interested in his accuracy than in the scene itself: the intense attention of the other players, the sunlight and shadows, the summer heat of Provence. And of course, a fascination with summer afternoons, with playing, and with you, wherever you may happen to be.

Those summer days in France happened years ago. Now I’m in a Mediterranean port in Spain, drawing and painting dreams. Summer is ending. October just peeked out from under the skirts of September. Leaves fall, the nights grow longer. On the other side of the world, my country seems to be drowning in waves of mistrust, spite, lies, fear and hatred of other people. Fear and hatred of women too, especially women like you.

From one heart to another, here’s an image of a memory for you, to play with you again, now, wherever you may be. Even if it may not be summer anymore.

Many men, especially American men, don’t realize that we Italian women love to be looked at. This is true in Rome, true in the Trastevere neighborhood in Rome, true on this little street in Trastevere, and especially true under this umbrella on this little street. Where I sit, content as a cat, especially when I’m looked at.

Like many women, I wasn’t always as attractive as I am now. Like many women, I feel less so as months and years pass. Do you men understand what we have to go through to appear to you as we appear? I chose a blue dress this evening because the cool color contrasts with my hair and the warm shadows of the umbrella. Why small pearl earrings instead of golden hoops? Do I love red wine? Of course, but for more reasons than the color.

Women don’t need to be admired, although that would feel wonderful. Adored? Oh my, yes. Noticed? Well, not quite sufficient, but sufficient for the moment. So thank you for noticing me, for your momentary attention. Forgive me for only one glass of wine on the table and for not glancing back at you.

In my last post I wrote about the Kalevala, Finland’s national epic and about Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865-1931), one of the poem’s most famous illustrators. I mentioned the tale’s major themes: battles, magical adventures, a virgin birth, a miraculous child, and so on, but I didn’t include vengeance, incest, betrayals, jealousy, shamans, murder, blood feuds, suicide, child abuse, shape-shifting, fratricide, magic spells, kidnapping, theft, heroes, incantations, “nameless diseases,” sacred groves, death and resurrection, thwarted loves. And the Sampo.

In this image, Gallen-Kallela has painted Väinämöinen, a godlike shaman, and his crew, defending the Sampo from Louhi, an evil witch from Pohjola, the dark, cold, and dreaded North. (Of course, Pohjola also happens to be the home of beautiful, inaccessible women.) Louhi has changed herself into a predatory bird and, like everyone else in the story, she wants to possess the Sampo.

Why? It’s not a ring like that in Tolkien’s epic, but it is a magical artifact, a talisman, a vessel that confers nourishment, wealth and power on whoever has it. It was forged by a human blacksmith, but it always remains enigmatic. It’s never illustrated because it’s never clear exactly what it is, or looks like.

As you might imagine, not even its magical powers and magnetic attractions for humans can save it from destruction: In the battle painted here, it breaks apart and the fragments sink below the waves, lost forever, like thwarted loves, and other human dreams.