Haiga Christmas Card and New Year's Greeting

New Year's Tanka

we turn to year's end
remember droplets of life
waves moving from pebbles tossed
time circles once again
seeking the center

-VCW
December 2008

Sleeping in Chinese Boxes

This is a poem that tells in a few lines an experience that is told in more detail in my book Patchwork Faces of the Moon. The image above is one of the few paintings that I have done; it was destroyed in a fire when my cabin in Bastrop County burned down in 2001. This painting and poem can also be found on my website "Through My Window," although the poem here has been revised. I will get around to changing it on that site eventually.


Sleeping in Chinese Boxes

Darkness covers my eyes
A soft quilt covers my thighs
Sleep uncovers lucid dreams
Where nothing is quite what it seems

A kiss turns into a shout
The sound I feel sharp as pain
Moods alter ... Colors washout
Things change faces ... I can't explain

A place I know ... but not true
Somewhere I've been ... somehow new
I shrink, fly, sink, and then grow
In and out of the rabbit hole

I wake in a foggy maze
Tell my dream while still dreaming
Many times I wake up ... dazed ...
Explain this Chinese boxes theme

Growing longer each time told
New verse added to the old
I rant like a lunatic
About dream-ripples concentric

I lose solid thought and freak
Falling through scene after scene
Lost in the mirrors of sleep
My life chases shadows of dream

-VCW

My Art For IASD 2008

I had a nice time visiting the International Association of the Study of Dreams in their cyber conference which ended the 5th of October. There was wonderful art and lots of great workshops and informative papers and lively conversation on the threads. I entered five pieces of art, each with a dream verse-- dreamku or series. I decided that I should display a couple of them here since they all have to do with dreaming and may subsequently be included in Patchwork Faces of the Moon or one of the sequels that I plan.

Piercing Eyes

Piercing Eyes is a good example of how creating art can help you focus on your dreamwork. After I started manipulating photos of myself in Photoshop's Image/Adjust/Curves ... It didn't look much like me anymore. I thought ... I know that face though ... it looks Native American ... I have seen it in my dreams. It is the face of a man, and in my dreams he is dressed rather like anyone might be, so I don't know exactly how I know that he is American Indian. He does seem to be wearing long hair in a pony tail. He is never a main player in my dreams, but a reoccurring extra ... so to speak. I started remembering him only after I saw his face in my art. Then I recalled him lingering around in the peripheral of my dreamscape. I hardy ever notice him in my dreams ... but remember him on awakening. I think he is a good guy. Maybe an ancestor trying to get my attention and guide me. He does look a little like me ... in a strange-colored dream-altered kind of way.

piercing eyes
quiet mixed blood holds
proud Cherokee traits

I should mention that I am part Cherokee, albeit only about an eighth.

Tree Watcher

Tree Watcher is a reflection of many dreams I experience where everything seems more real than reality. Things are clearer, poignant, alive -- rather like Alice in Wonderland meets Bilbo Baggins.

The message is a Dreamku series. Dreamku is a form of verse akin to Haiku. Most rules apply, but being dream-based verse, these phrases try to capture a moment in a dream. As a series, the verse may encapsulate several moments, but each separate three-line stanza should stand on it’s on. Many of you will remember Patricia Kelly from her workshop last year. I have worked with her all year by email and in her Yahoo group, Dreamjin, learning the art of Dreamku. It is an excellent tool for dream exploration an often cuts to the core of the dream when you are searching for that perfect word.

past and future
beneath your sentinel gaze
collisions abound

like heat waves
our lives mere shimmers
ancient eyes blink

human echoes trace
heat rising fast to heaven
you frozen between

Check out my VCW Original Art Message Cards at YouPublish.com

Dreamku Haiga - Ink Blots #4

This is the last 'Ink Blots' image variation that will be put up. If you are so inclined, please comment on which one you like the best. Remember ... I am working on enlarging the text size of the Dreamku in #1 and #2. My friend Patricia Kelly mentioned that the word 'beyond' kept replacing the word 'behind' as she read the dreamku. After rolling it around in my mind for a few minutes, I decided that it did have a more etheric sound in this verse, so I went with it.

NOTE: If you do not have a g-blogger ID, please sign your comments, so that I will know some one stopped by besides anonymous.

Thanks -VCW

Dreamku Haiga - Ink Blots #3

This is my favorite and closest to the dream vision from which the dreamku came.

Dreamku Haiga - Ink Blots #2

This is the same image as below with color add from Photoshops image-mode-duotone. I chose a tritone.

Dreamku Haiga - Ink Blots #1

Three ink blot doors
Each one closer to me
A man passes behind

I created this art to go with the dreamku that is with it. I didn't get the exact image that was my dream, but I gave it a try since it was something that I could reproduce with photography fairly easy. I may experiment more with these images and add a few variations. -VCW

Nobody saw vivid connections?

In reference to the previous post Precognition and Dreamku?... It seems as if no one else saw all the connections that I did. I guess that I will have to write a story in more detail that shows all that happened and my feelings about it as it unfolded... through my character Cheyenne's eyes.

May 2, 2008

I put this essay/journal entry, below, on this blog because it has to do with a little incident concerning some dreams, and it has some of the strange connections that I have written about in my book "Patchwork Faces of the Moon." I don't know if it would be considered precognition or if my déjà vu was in overdrive at the time. Either way it is likely to show up in the book in some form. Straight up or morphed a bit to fit.

-VCW

Precognition and Dreamku?

May 1, 2008

Yesterday, I took my grandson, who just turned five on April first, to an after-school library program. The presentation was a couple of old projector reel movies. The first was called "Stanley and the Dinosaurs," the second reel was called "A Picture for Harold's Room." Both were very cute films, but while watching each, I kept getting those hair raising déjà vu feelings and remembering my dreamku from nights before.

"Stanley and the Dinosaurs" staring Corey Burton, Will Ryan and Directed by John Clark Matthews was one of the first, if not 'the' first clay character animations. In my mind it was well done--better than any recent attempts where digital components are added. It was funny and the messages were clear. To me. Use your head, don't always go along with the crowd so that you are accepted, learn to have fun and last but not least--become a vegetarian. I am just being funny with that last message, but it did seem a real message--to me.

Stanley was always using his mind to improve things and make his life easier and more fun. He invented singing by copying the wolves, and later making he own tunes, and then finally adding words. He was eventually kicked out of the cave for being inventive just as he was going to suggest that they all move beyond the cave to somewhere less dark, damp and insect infested. He also shared his food with the dinosaurs instead of making them his food, much to the disgust of the other cavemen. Stanley eventually saved those cavemen because he had made the dinosaurs his friends.

My first jarring déjà vu came when the dinosaur, a T-Rex, that was telling the story began talking to one of his friend dinosaurs. It was a simple statement that was a prankish wish, but yet an omen of what the dinosaurs would evolve into--according to most modern scientist. He took a few heavy pounding steps, and then he said something like "I wish I knew what it was like to be small and light and even fly like a bird." I am not sure on this last mention of the word 'bird', but the connection was clear--again--to me.

When Ms. Elizabeth, the youth organizer for the library, introduced this film, she made it clear that it was not a true story. "People did not walk the earth the same time as dinosaurs," she had said. "Stanley discovers many things in a short time, and it probably didn't really happen like that. I don't believe that dinosaurs talked or told stories either, but this is just make-believe, as are most movies."

It would seem logical if this dream had come after I attended this program, and even now I would scratch it off as coincidence, but... there is the next movie and dreamku for me to consider.

Here is the dreamku that I had written about a dream several nights before.


Prehistoric Flash
April 20, 2008


I shrink to bird size
lizards and fowls small as fleas
beneath cypress roots

dinosaurs were huge
compared to us now
we were larger then

now we are to birds
as then we were to dinosaurs
largest predators

calcium layers
lie as man's prehistoric bones
earth strata

our skeletons
mix with our banquet of prey
proof too big to see


*****


The second reel, "A Picture for Harold's Room," stars the famous Harold with the purple Crayola from Crockett Johnson's collection of youth books. I say famous, because by the way others acted, I should have remembered him. I didn't. It seems he has been around a long time. In this film, I was at first reminded of the dinosaur dream again when Harold began drawing the winding road on his wall and then he stepped into it. He was giant-- bigger than the village that he drew and taller than the mountains. Then my mind was flashing on the snow topped volcano in the other dream, the perspective all thrown off. I will insert my second dreamku series here, and draw a few inferences after.


April 29, 2008


sunset clouds
point to a dormant volcano
photographic art

a road winds through hills
I'm awed by colors on snow
joy catches my breath

I drive too near
to get a better photo
bending over backwards

I can't focus
too close for the big picture
mountain or sky


*****


Harold draws on and on, more hills, birds, snow caped mountain, an airplane, a boat and then he finds place in between mountains that looks like a good spot for a railroad track. He draws the train tracks closer and closer to the viewer with flowers and birds along side. It gets wider and the flowers get bigger until he is standing beneath a flower and a bird is towering over him. He realizes that he has gone from being very big to being very small. Harold decides he has to get things into perspective, so he draws his bedroom door which has a mirror on it. He draws his reflection smiling back at himself, and goes on to draw a small framed picture for his wall. It ends showing the crayon on the floor.

The dreams happening in advance of me seeing these short cartoons seem to be a message that I should pay attention to the movies. I have yet to figure out the reason or meaning. But... I am sure that it is so big and so 'in my face' that it is out of focus, and maybe it is going to be very hard to believe. Again my dreams and the intuition in my daily life have joined forces to get a message across to me. I guess I should be preparing myself for a big revelation, and I should also be prepared to draw my way out of it, putting my 'self' back into perspective.


-VCW


Additional Information and Photos:

I found the cartoon on u tube while I was trying to find an image of the Harold by the tracks as he drew the flower and bird that were taller than him. I couldn't manage to find that image except in the video form, and couldn't get the image that I wanted. No right clicking on a paused video. I finally took actual photos of my screen with my camera so that folks like me that are very visual could see how the images could really relate to my dreams.

Harold's many adventures with his purple Crayola, and "Stanley and the Dinosaurs" can be checked out from the library or purchased at book stores or online

Some pictures from the cartoon "A Picture for Harold's Room" can be viewed below.

To see the cartoon click on the link below.
A Picture for Harold's Room

A Picture for Harold's Room

Unmasked

Moonlit Memories

Study of a Red Bird Through My Window

This series of photographic art with verse is an experiment. I know of someone who makes a living selling greeting cards that she designs. I just thought that I would try my hand, since I love making photographic art and writing poetry. I am new at these short verse styles, but I love them. I hope to get better before I even think of marketing some version of these cards. These are some of my new haiku, senryu and tanka.(Maybe I should say haiku-like, senryu-like and tanka-like.) Critiques welcome. Keep in mind that the verse was written for the image.

Mesmerized and Peeping Nervously

Swooping In

Seasons Fly

Christen Your Wings

Corner of an Old Photograph

Twist of Fire and Feathers Flaming

Flight into the Unknown

UnMasked

This art was my first posting. I added the dreamku below on April 23, 2008, turning it into a Haiga-like image that I put up for viewing once again.

asleep and unmasked
I fly through layers of dreams
shadows of the moon

I may use it in the Haiga form as my front page from time to time, because I like to greet my viewers with an image--not just a lot of text. The image is a composite that started from a photograph that I took of half a mask and the shadow of me holding that mask ... all one image. Then I added an old photo of myself highly morphed. It was fun and is very symbolic for me. It looks rather like a moonlit image and a bit patchy also, so I thought it fit right into this blog theme. It might make a good cover for a dreamku chapbook.

Thanks for taking a look.