Author: miguel

A Girl With Six Names, Maybe Seven – Watercolor – 21 x 29 inches.

A little girl is growing up. We can’t see where she might be going. She’s not certain either. But she, precocious child, is beginning to imagine there is more than one of her.

One of her selves knows that her bike will soon become a motorcycle, then a fishing boat and eventually a helicopter. Another self will resentfully nurse a dying man. Yet another will sing and play the piano poorly. A fourth will emigrate to Copenhagen. All her selves except one will love animals, especially dogs.

She’ll discover that in her heart there are many rooms, one for each of her names. None of the rooms have walls or ceilings. Her selves will enchant many men and women but not need them to feel complete. Three selves will shine as a muses for a painter. Another will inspire a politician, but not one of them would ever dream of marrying one.

She’s old enough to have felt the sharp edges of envy and hatred, but we can’t help that. In a moment she and her selves will disappear around the corner, riding into worlds they, and we, are just beginning to imagine.

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More images and reflections on my website: johnmichaelkeating.com

Requiem: A Sketch – watercolor and ink – 8 x 10 inches.

Winter loosened its grip here in the foothills a few weeks ago and now Spring is quickly passing into Summer. These days radiate greens and blues like a kaleidoscope. Choirs of robins, finches, sparrows and blue jays, grosbeaks, towhees and mourning doves sing everywhere. Often they all sing at the same time, and Life seems to burst out everywhere.

As we all know, wherever Life is present, her twin sister is close at hand. I don’t know what the song of this little creature — scarcely bigger than my thumb — sounded like when it was alive and I wasn’t skillful enough to capture its beauty when it flew and sang. Still . . . .

“Sunt lacrimae rerum,” says Virgil, “et mentem mortalia tangunt.”

“There are tears in things and what is fated to die touches the heart.”

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More images and reflections on my website: johnmichaelkeating.com

Duelo a Garrotazos – Prado Museum, Madrid

 

Francisco Goya painted this image on a wall in his house around 1820, but it could have been painted yesterday, or today, or tomorrow. Two men beat each other senseless while sinking to their own doom in a bog of quicksand. You can choose your antagonists from a list that remains endless: British and French, Israelis and Palestinians, Protestants and Catholics, Conservatives and Liberals, Sunnis and Shiites, Democrats and Republicans, etcetera.

Marina Tsvetaeva wrote this poem in 1915, in the second year of the First World War, but it could have been written yesterday, today, or tomorrow about an endless list of anywheres: Syria, Korea, Yemen, Columbia, Iran, China, Afghanistan, Venezuela, the USA, etcetera — forever.

I know the truth.
Forget all other truths.
No need for people
anywhere on this earth
to struggle.
For what? Poets?
Lovers? Generals?

Look: it is evening,
Look: it is nearly night.
The wind is level now,
the air is wet with dew.
Soon all of us will sleep
Beneath the earth,
We, who never let each other
Sleep above it.

More images and reflections on my website: johnmichaelkeating.com