After The Drought

Each year, when May approaches the land is parched from seven months of drought. It is astonishing that despite this, bougainvillea bloom, and an assortment of other plants manage to flower and leaf. Yesterday we had a hard rain, and it was blissful. Also unusual. It is the earliest downpour of this sort we have seen at our pueblo outside Oaxaca since we moved here five and a half years ago.

To our delight, we have recently met several Americans, only to discover they live right here in our village. And they are artists! Both about our age. A poet who is also a translator and is dual citizen, and an accomplished musician who has travelled the world, composing and performing. This feels like a small miracle. We recently celebrated with a party at our home. The two had never met, and we had never met the poet. Now, suddenly, our little circle is widening — an artist colony of sorts. Who would have imagined?

Writing is taking almost all my time these days. I am obsessed. After completing my travel memoir, The Weight of Air, (available by donation for download,) I have begun an epic prose poem of my entire life. The first forty-eight years must be drawn from memory, but fortunately, since 2006 I have written weekly posts here on My Fairy-Tale Life. They have become a kind of archive — a well I can return to — where moments already captured can now be distilled into poetry.

I have also chosen to write in two distinct voices: one modern, spare, and direct; the other more biblical in tone, expansive and lyrical. My method has become this: I write first in the modern cadence, then work with Google Gemini to help render it into the more biblical voice. What comes back is often surprisingly beautiful — a kind of echo, but different orchestration— which I then shape further. And it happens almost instantaneously. A remarkable tool.

Here is a sample of the work flow. A section inspired by the time after Naomi died when my youngest daughter Sarah had begun studies at Columbia College in Chicago, majoring in dance:

In Chicago
the younger daughter flourished.
The city of broad shoulders
received her dancing steps.

Her life opened
with courage and joy.
And the father
felt gratitude rise
like music.

For the child who
had endured sorrow
now walked
with lightness
and hope.

Here is the biblical styled verse:

In Chicago, the younger daughter flourished, and her dancing steps were sure;

The city of broad shoulders received her, and her life opened with the courage of the morning.

The father felt gratitude rise as a song, for the child who had endured the valley of shadow

Now walked in the joy of her own soul, a testament to the resilience of the living.

They both work in there own way. 

At this point, over 24,000 words have been set down. And about 11,000 more to come.
An average poem is 300 words.

While the writing continues, my old muse, painting, stands to the side, asking "Please don't forget me!"

Steven Boone Artwork

Loving Light Presence

The beauty of springtime arrives here right on schedule while the world reels from the horrible corona virus pandemic. My wife Amy and I are sequestered at home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, nestled high above sea level in the beautiful Sangre De Cristo mountains. We notice birds singing more often, buds on trees transform to delicate green leaves, flowers unfold their colorful petals and the world slowly unwrapping its winter cloak to breathe in the sun-filled air of renewal.

The worldwide pandemic of coronavirus recently became more personal for me when my 33 year old daughter Sarah fell ill while working with the nursing staff at a convalescent and rehab center in Albuquerque, New Mexico—about an hour drive south of Santa Fe. She had just taken the job. There were cases of covid-19 there and she worked in close proximity to them and others. Sarah has tested positive and is now battling the disease.

I don’t like the word disease. My older daughter Naomi died from cancer. She was diagnosed with terminal illness at the age of seventeen. She battled heroically for two years and passed away, suffocating when her lungs failed after cancer lodged there and she came down with pneumonia. So when I heard my beloved Sarah was “having trouble breathing” it alarmed me.

Yet, Sarah is strong, and she has been in crisis before. In fact, I believe it was the death of her sister and her own giving and sustaining nature that led her to be a healthcare worker.

Naomi, age 10, Sarah age 4

Since Naomi died, on occasion I have had “visitations” from her. Often it is when I am at rest in bed, very relaxed and in limbo between worlds. I can feel cat-like footsteps on the bed. I am not imagining the impressions. I also am aware of a higher consciousness present and the loving personality of Naomi.

Last night, just as sleep was arriving I felt the pressure of something moving around me. Instantly I knew spirit was with me and I ascertained it to be Naomi’s loving light presence. She came with a message. I felt her above me, face to face and the pressure on my chest. A message came first into my heart, then my consciousness—Sarah will be okay!

Unusual And Entrancing Episodes

Sarah and I. We are at a dinner party in Chicago, at the home of her aunt. In the background is a large abstract painting I did in 2007.

"They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night." Edgar Allan Poe,  Eleonora

Paris Street; Rainy Day, by Gustave Caillebotte
French, 1848–1894   Collection of the Art Institute of Chicago

Land meets the sea, Kauai, Hawaii

“The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.”
 William Shakespeare

The past thirty days, THE DREAM delivered unusual and entrancing episodes into the chapters of my life. I am a whirling dervish, with little care for possessions, so it was not hard to move out of the house I had been living in for the past year. After all, I have a studio, and recently started a gallery to show my art. My fiancé took some of my things for safekeeping into her home, and just as the days began to chill and leaves began falling, I went to Santa Barbara, California, where my parents live.

At the beach, Santa Barbara

Rose, growing in my mother's backyard

From there, I arrived in Kauai, Hawaii, an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. After ten days, Heidi Of The Mountains arrived and we married, entwined in love, flowers, and billowing elements where the sea meets the shore.

The newlyweds, Kauai, Hawaii

The endless sea, wild and free.

Monk seals

Halo around the sun, with Palm trees in front.

Chicago!

Ten days later we arrived in Chicago, the “windy city” on Lake Michigan, where sturdy buildings of steel and glass reach high into the air, disappearing into clouds overhead. Everything is available—museums, institutions of higher learning, vast commerce, science and industry, fine dining, entertainment, taxis, trains, busses.

Sarah, on her 25th birthday, 11-11-2011

My daughter, Sarah, lives in Chicago, and on November 11, (11-11-2011) celebrated her birthday with a grand dinner and then a dance party with live band at a local nightclub.

Dancing in a club . . . 

One month of whirlwind sites and sounds, and here I have made a photomontage. As it is said, a picture is worth one thousand words.

Seen at the Shedd Aquatrium

Baha'i Temple, Wilmette, outside Chicago

Chicago

This last week, I flew to Chicago, the place of my birth. My daughter Sarah is finishing her studies in dance at Columbia College, and as part of her senior project, choreographed and performed in a modern dance. Chicago is notorious for its bone chilling winters, and the trees are just beginning to show buds that will become the green leaves of summer, but the weather was surprisingly warm. Chicago is called “the windy city” because it rises from the shores of Lake Michigan where heady breezes blow.

Sarah called her dance Desert Skies, and used one of my paintings of a southwestern sunset as a backdrop. Six dancers performed to elegant music with flute, in flowing burnt-orange pastel dresses that harmonized with the sunset. The dancers entered the stage from both sides, seeming to arrive into the landscape of the setting sun. From there, the bodies often came together only to fly apart in patterned movement, coming together again . . . falling, rising, running, grasping the sky with arms like wings, twirling, spinning and finally becoming one pulsing circle that fell to the ground in ecstatic exhaustion. The evening included six performances, and afterwards, the students, their parents and admirers all gathered together for a social time. I found Sarah in the hall outside the auditorium and she was flushed from exercise and excitement. She said she felt happy to have accomplished her task but a bit sad too that it all was ended.

Big cities have wonderful resources to keep people informed and entertained, and whenever I arrive in Chicago I always visit the Art Institute of Chicago. It holds many masterpieces, and some I never tire of seeing, such as an exquisite small self-portrait by Vincent Van Gogh.
The institution is constantly providing the public with new features, and I was able to see a wonderful special exhibit about the famous Norwegian painter Edvard Munch who is best known for his iconic painting called The Scream.


My stay in Chicago lasted three days and when I boarded the airplane to travel 1125.18 miles (1810 kilometers) back to Santa Fe, New Mexico, I felt like Sarah did after her dance performance—satisfied but a bit sad that this wonderful sojourn had drawn to a close.