Epilog (Sunset, Tuesday, 7 June 2011)

William Van Doren, EPILOG (Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va.) Oil on watercolor block, 13 x 19.

Often not only the skies change, but the titles as well. (This of course can be very aggravating.) At first the murky clouds in the oncoming heat and humidity somehow struck me as a Venusian blanket. Then this resolved into streaks and stripes of yellow and dull violet ... “Planet Waves,” I thought. A few minutes later I happened to look up – it was either “Epilog” or “Bouillabaisse.”

Tweets Illustrated: Espresso-Chocolate Explosion

William Van Doren, 4 shots espresso, 1 T Ghirardelli ground sweet chocolate, 1 T homemade dark chocolate syrup on paper, 2011.

Sunday Morning

When the light’s too bright to write, it’s too bright to write, you’re done, you’re not so much writing as written.

Writer’s Morning Prayer

As the light is parti-colored in patches, and I am parti-conscious in pieces, I ask for the same power that unifies the light to reconcile my patchwork thought.

Anti-Blog

To resist thought, to say no – just say no – to anything spontaneous or creative, to hang your head and half-snooze while wondering, vaguely, if the morning sun will make you sneeze, this way of spending time is time honored.

Incidental Meditation

Clouds are high blurry white against a bluish sky so glaring it’s almost gray. If I look into the pattern long enough it becomes a mandala that cancels thought and opens me to something – something I can’t quite identify. I can’t even tell if it’s coming from within or from outside. It makes me breathe, once, very deeply. Then I see (just after I write “It makes me breathe, once, very deeply”) somehow within and without are meeting, as if at the perimeter of my mind. They’re meeting and merging and I have nothing to say about it. I am merely a convenient venue for the merger.