We breathe blue water

Nicole Page-Smith

We breathe blue water

The sky is blue and water evaporates from the rivers. Streams and the sea, creek beds all ascend into the clouds, falling down through rain but also separate into water and air. Plant life of the sea, whale food and the plankton of the ocean provide our breath. We breathe. 

Oceans and oceans apart from the water have us breathe. Breathing fresh air and water we are breathing. Oh, oceanic gods and my maid we need your water. Water has not always equaled the liquid, fluid substance we know and once stars, water is the very liquid substance humans are, too. We are like the ocean. Crawling out of the sea we are stars more star than water. We exist in the stars as with water but are not just rock and surfacing like whales of the sea we are not marine animals although warm blooded mammals like the sea. Breathing living rock like and stars we move about on land more than sea. The seas are rising, the poles are melting but we still frequent land masses more than the sea. The air by the sea seems fresher and we are freer by the sea. Water seems to be the whole point to creation and in twos we are twos or three. We walk in twos with the dove.

Inland we breathe and think of the sea.

Leaves, leaves on the trees and birds. Birds, like being birds. All here. Once the island of the birds used to be only birds with no humans to chase them away. Birds resplendent and not chased, away. When, the people depart from the island of the birds, all the birds will take over and re-inhabit where people used to be. Forests are also, places to breathe, breathing like birds chirping, flittering through, in flocks. People once inhabited the island of the birds and like the breath of the spirit birds fly through air. Birds breathing and only taking up a breath. Flocks flying, glittering, darting about, the colours, bright, blue and gold, appearing like sunlight, hitting leaves, falling, through the air. The air breathing.

Birds flying. Through trees. Breathing. Do they breathe plankton? Birds living by the sea, in forests appear happy and sheltered by the nest. The breath is flight. Flight and breath. Flying. Blue can be flight and birds really appreciate the water, celebrating the rain. The fishes of the sea enjoy the ocean and the abundance of food. You could not imagine the plant-life of the ocean, good for the whales would allow us to breathe. Breathing the ocean as birds fly and the mammals, fish and whales swim, we breathe. We breathe every vaporous drop. Of plankton turned oxygen, we breathe.

Breathing. We breathe and breathing the vaporous air by the sea, we breathe blue water. Water is what we are breathing. Breathing, water we travel through the universe. Universes and water. We are water and breathe. Air is all we need. We are made of stars but need air. On earth we breathe and float in space like stars, a cosmos. Breathing water, we could exist underwater like another species of mammal. Seals are our friend. Other water mammals are like whales, swim in oceans we frequent and we frequent the ocean. Plankton produces the air we breathe as food for the whales, a large percentage of their diet with most of our air. We breathe but blue water is our air. Water is blue. Blue water.

We breathe

Nicole Page-Smith

We breathe

Life is breathing. The breath is the depth, we breathe. Breathing. Rain is like breath and swells in the clouds, then, falls to earth, falling. Falling after rain, water is breathing with the air and evaporates back up to the clouds, again, breathing with the clouds. Our clouds are like the lungs, expanding and contracting. Clouds blow away to thin air.

Clouds, clouds blow and blowing, blow wind and keep shifting, shifting to air and blue sky. The Sun shining through the blue sky of the air on a blue sunny day, shining. We breathe the breath of a blue sunny day and leaves blow along with light wind. Clean cold air is the air we breath on an autumn, winter's day. You walk along dreaming of better times and a way forward. Quietly, thinking, feeling the silence. People once could be heard laughing, children playing, dogs barking and cats were on the street to talk to. Now silence, like the quiet of a forest with only the birds, the sound of birds, only. Seers, mystics, the odd jogger, crazy people wandering, a world of silence like public holidays, everyday or the suburbs in town. Birds, chattering, talking, fantails warning you of the danger, native birds singing their song. We sit and wait like waiting for the rain to stop, to breathe again. Breathing, deep breaths and silence, we breathe. Why did the end of the world have to feel so silent and like a B grade movie? Ends always meant the beginning of something else. The beginning of time started at the end of the world. Couldn't we read the clouds? Spiralling, travelling on an axis, did the world travel its usual course? An elliptical circle, spirals but there is no certainty we move and do not just suffer an illusion. The stars appear to move around the sky at night and constellations move or appear smaller or larger, an illusion of the moon, the mirage or the sunset. You wonder with time if time moves forward. Sometimes time receding would make more sense. If you tried to explain dinosaurs coming sometime after human beings in the general spacetime calendar of the universe, would it make sense at all? One may as well put a stick in the ground and watch the Sun. Sundials and birds seem the same. All we had to do to save the world was plant more trees. Trees blowing in the wind so we can breathe. We breathe and birds sing.

They are the leaves on the trees, we breathe. We breathe the breath for the trees breathe in, what we breathe out. Breathing in and out, we breathe. Air. Air and clouds. Clouds, breathing. Breathing clouds. Billowing the clouds breathe. Breathing. 

Oh, Chloris my flower maid and the wind. Windy days and the sea. Air and billowing, billowing air. Breathing and pollen are some peoples friend. Oh, pollen, oh pollen my maid. Chloris was the friend of flowers. Zephyr and the west wind blow. We called her Flora. The wife of the west wind, blew. Bees agreed and they blow along on a summery west breeze sort of day. Followed by rain, cool breezes blow. The flowers are best picked after summer rain. Rain oh flower oh flower my maid. Zephyr, Zephyr, the west, wind, blow, gentle breezes, to your maid. Bees were forest bees and welcome with honey. Zephyrus, the west wind blew. Sea and the flowers, we breathe.

We are breath and breathe, oxygen. The trees absorb our carbon dioxide, breathing. Breathing inwardly and outwardly, we meditate on our future, breathing. Our future is our breath. Trees know this and breathe. Absorbing carbon dioxide and water, the trees breathe for us and the air is our very oxygen, they release. Birds sing about the air in the trees, using its whistle, the air that is. Oh, fresh air and the breath, breathing. Breathing in and out with the trees, we are still breathing and need the very breath. Oxygen, oh air.

We breathe. 

By Nicole Page-Smith

The sea

Nicole Page-Smith

The sea

The sea and the water,

Pounding the shore,

Moving.

Movement, buoyant. The buoyant, water.

Buoys. An anchorage.

The shore, hounding, pounding, with the sea.

We are taken out with ships,

Thinking.

Ships thinking, thinking boats and the sea.

The sea.

Views, the sea, out the window.

The contemplation of the sky, rain in the rain clouds. 

The cliffs deteriorating into the sea.

The sea, the no longer honoured gods,

Whales, dolphins.

The emotive sea, when you hit the open sea, you think of the other side of the horizon, the sea seems to move with your emotions, you travel in memory. Keep travelling, beyond the horizon. Once ships and buoyant seas had ships land with whirling albatross, thundering, lightening and the sea, storms, churning the ocean, stones and lost treasure. Ships at the bottom of the sea. Rolling with bottles, coins once flung out to sea. Washed on the shore.

Like Venus.

Washed.

Rolling along the bottom of the sea, under the moon.

Washed up, under the moon, one moonlit night, we appeared. Like ancient treasure. We may be the result of the stars. Meteorites created the sea and you feel we may have arrived on earth in a similar way, the result of stardust and bottom of the sea.

We walked the earth, but arrived from earth, almost born of the sea. At the end of the world, the dead started to spring out of their coffins and appeared as though walking but also, we fell apart. The skin and all flesh departed from our bones. The beginning of the world was the same but as skeletons we grew flesh and appeared out of the earth like the dead. Time was in the reversal.

Matter fell apart only to regain matter and the cycles of the universe are the same as seasonal cycles we know on earth. Time is difficult to explain. We are probably completely unaware of our future as the bottom of the sea as the bottom of the sea, has not always been there. Forests now turned to rock. We know of existence but do not exist in existence. Living and dying is a past time of mortals of the earth. Universes, evolutions and the sea would tell the same tale of the universe. You feel as though we float around out there as stardust in a nebular of outer space, in memory. The undefined time of memory. We are given our life as a reminder. The universe is like the sea and is buoyant. We arrived as with water and the sea.

Stars fell to earth.

Stars, stars fell, to earth.

We fell and kept on falling.

To earth.

The sea is the water.

Universes away.

The sky met the sea.

Clouds, water and the sky are where we came from at night.

Stars fell to earth, with shooting stars, meteorites showers, comets and whole universes of what had happened previously on earth.

Stars fell to earth.

Water the sea, the female goddess was Venus.

Shone, shone out at sea and was the watery, moon.

Venus was the water and the sea, but also all spring fountains. The fertile goddess, Venus, is also known for her water. Watery wellsprings of imagination could be on the watery side of the moon or when we see Venus. Planets and Venus are our friend. Shining brightly in the sky, we see her reflecting the watery moon. Universes were born of Venus, our watery maid. Perhaps the water fell from the moon. Venus is known for her water and in reflection of the moon walked from a clam shell. Venus born of the sea provided the watery relationship with the moon. The tides pull at her, at certain times of the year, to be born of the season of the moon. Venus, the watery goddess is almost teary eyed when tides recede and she floats off with the moon. Oh, our watery goddess, Venus and the moon, created all the oceans and the sea. Drifting are the rain clouds out to sea. The rain, Venus and the water, fertilized by water, we are her maid. Oceans will recede with the moon, waxing and waning, we are born of Venus and, the moon. The oceans were born of the relationship with Venus and the moon. The sea.

By Nicole Page-Smith

Leonardo: The sea

Nicole Page-Smith

Leonardo:

The sea

Water was my name. The name of water is the deluge. The flood came after the name of water but water that beautiful liquid substance, is my air. 

Flowing air and water following the rain.

The air and the water. Water follows the deluge like the flood.

Running water and a watery name could be called Leonardo. 

Water runs down rivers and along creeks. Trees soak up water. Roots of another name. 

Leaves blow around but water flows and on blowy days, there is often rain.

Rain.

Water.

Water flowing, tears of deluge, the flood.

The deluge was the flood of information, twisting.

Transforming, water , more oxygen. More air. H2O.

Always flowing.

Rivers, creeks, ideas.

Leonardo, drew water, water drawing from the stream. Streaming, water flowing, circulating in maelstroms like leaves blowing. All trickling, continually in flow, down mountains, through streams, cascading waterfalls, down, down, flowing, running along, moving to the sea.

The sea.

By Nicole Page-Smith

Leonardo

Nicole Page-Smith

Leonardo

We think of the deluge and not the flood. Leonardo was fascinated with water and the destruction of water but most of his painting of water are exquisite. You could imagine the flooding of the Arno and during winter the river is in full flow. Imagining water and destruction is not easy when confronted by Leonardo paintings or drawings, we are taken inside the cave or outside in a Homeric understanding of Hellenism. We may not be taken anywhere close with the deepest comprehension of anything Leonardo may have thought. The Platonic geometric structure of water was something Leonardo seemed interested in but most of Leonardo's note taking appears to be practical information. The writing of books back to front feels as though Leonardo printed the information or wanted someone to print notebooks. The writing in reverse could have had an influence on the painting work. Leonardo paintings do work in reproduction maybe because of the idea of printing and etchings. Book reproduction was a reasonably new phenomenon in the fifteenth century in Europe. Leonardo was a genius so as much as we can try and decipher his work, we may not be able to completely understand and with most artists you feel the information is there for the future even though the view is contemporary. Looking at images of Leonardo paintings is a different experience from looking at them in the flesh. Perhaps the water in the background was all Leonardo wanted to paint. The flow of ideas and water do match the algebraic equation. Leonardo.

The end.

by

Nicole Page-Smith

Water is Leonardo's speciality

Nicole Page-Smith

Water is Leonardo's speciality

Coming up the stairs to visit painting after sculpture is a very different experience. Sculpture somehow lives through the mythology and is life size or in relation to human form, in the round. As autumn leaves fall and the visual images of painting only describe a conceived idea, the imagination. Going from the presence of something into a fantasy, I once again imagine physical trees to grow inside the museum of the Louvre, you walk on wood amongst the paintings and grow with the paintings. Your memory and imagination settle on an also very realistic description of figures, religious themes, mythology and themes of war. Rippling with the water of deluges and not the flood with Leonardo, the surface of the painting is something Leonardo worked on and two dimensions rather than three. Thinking then of the Leonardo painting of "The Virgin of the Rocks", the two figures of the Christ Child and St. John are worked on more than the the rest of the painting so they are far more on the surface of the painting. The way the figures of Christ and St. John are painted gives the two children like most of the babies in Leonardo's painting an almost overworked quality or as though either Leonardo or someone else has painted them. You do notice in a lot of Renaissance, paintings of the Christ Child, the babies are awkward and ugly and are perhaps hard to paint. Maybe finding live models of women with babies was hard to find. The children in Leonardo painting however, although they are more successful, the shadows are strange and overly expressive. One could imagine the use of drawings meant artists drew from artist's work, or simply imagined. Trees and leaves fall in the forest of imaginings, the very pillars of strength. However, nature is something realistic in Leonardo's work. Water is Leonardo's speciality.

  

The grotto not the cave

Nicole Page-Smith

The grotto not the cave

When you venture upstairs to the painting department of the Louvre, you are confronted with rows of old master paintings and several Leonardo da Vinci paintings. Although, the collection changes around from time to time, the memory of the experience settles in your mind differently to viewing books. So, when thinking of the memory of for example, Leonardo, the contrasts of shadow play an important role and in "The Virgin of the Rocks" the grotto not the cave seems to surface. Frontal issues of clothing or embroidery rather than the face and so forth are apparent. Other paintings and the spaces surrounding the artworks do play a part in memory and other people along with the strange smell of the flooring and perhaps decaying paint and canvas. The other people in the museum tend to fade away as though although it is a fairly crowded museum to visit, they were never there. All artworks perhaps are social commentary of their day but the society they keep is not known so, there are huge question marks as to the content with or without the information known about an artwork. Perhaps the time of day is important when you visit a museum, stop for a bite to eat and then have another view. Some centuries are always visited more than others and are always more popular for various reasons. You feel artists are always accomodating taste. Most of the artworks on display are commercial paintings although some were former altarpieces. I enter the grotto not the cave.