Author Archives: jendyckart@gmail.com

Strategies For Success

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Strategies For Success

A trip through Purgatory can take time according to the experts and it’s an idea to prepare.  I’ve brought together a number of strategies that will allow you to navigate your way without too much difficulty.  And…BONUS, help grow your business at the same time!

1.  Research

2.  Network

3.  Have a clear vision

4. Be adaptable

Consider Purgatory. I don’t know how seriously to take it seeing as I’m not Catholic. That said, not even the Catholics know how to take it, having canceled it as a doctrine on quite a number of occasions. Still, it has its appeal as a place, a location in which unfinished business might be attended to. Loose ends tied up. A deal finalized. Conclusions reached. Amends made.

If I check around, I find little to suggest that Purgatory is a place. Rather and disappointingly, it’s most often defined as a process. Happily, Dante is inclusionary in his approach. Describes it as a place. A place of beauty and colour. An island, in fact. And, as a process. Of suffering, but only as a matter of course. It goes without saying that attending to unfinished business involves a certain amount of suffering. Suffering with an end in sight. Hope in the air.

I suspect I’m in a Purgatory of sorts. The task, tidying up the loose ends of this project. In time, the cold season. Place, mine. No Virgil or Beatrice here. Just my dog and a two-bar phrase of low incessant humming. One two three (on D) four one two three four (on C). My partner hates it when I hum. Says it indicates unfinished business. Maybe. Probably. Do you suppose this business of unfinished business ever ends?

Frozen In August

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Frozen In August

I loved her, you see.  Truly loved her.  But she was frozen in August.  No thaw, you see.  Remember that story?  The one about the woman who froze in 1980.  December.  Minus 30.  Frozen for 6 hours and stiff as a board the man said.  You could tell she was alive by the tiny bubbles coming out of her nose.  The man tried to load her up in his truck but couldn’t on account of her stiffness, you see.  Borrowed a car with a big trunk and drove to the nearest hospital where she was warmed with heating pads and prayers.  Thawed.  

Being frozen in August is a different sort of thing, you see.   As far as I can tell there’s no help for it. 

Preparing for Winter

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Preparing for Winter

Being a rather mild sort, I still like making a scene.  Every artist does, I suppose, and often this involves taking the preliminary step of discarding or disagreeing with the thing already in place before moving toward the new.  That thing in place?  Leonard Cohen calls it a slogan.  Others use the term cliche.  It’s taken a lot of abuse over the years but even if somewhat embattled, it’s still around.  Consider the nude, for example.  In fact, three nudes.  All young, attractive, idealized in Vivian Lindoe’s reproduction Three Seated. I wouldn’t necessarily discard them.  They exist, after all.  But the years have gone by and winter has arrived.   A new scene is in order.  Certainly, warm clothes.  

This new scene is played out in a cardboard box and undertaken in response to Vivian Lindoe’s serigraph Three-Seated.

Pink and Green Room

Three-Seated

The Problem With Orange

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The Problem With Orange

Almost before I can begin thinking about Orange, I come across a problem. A discussion as to whether or not Orange exists. I understand there are problems associated with most things, but as far as I can tell Orange does exist. It’s a smashing dress for instance which Anne Carson wants to wear to Will’s birthday party, but as usual, it’s too cold. This is a frequent complaint of hers after which she complains further that there are so many things she doesn’t understand. (Life) I’m with her but can’t for a moment think her lack has anything to do with the dress. With Orange.

Gertrude Stein writes a poem and calls it Orange In. Third in a short list sits Orange. Cocoa, clear soup, Orange, oatmeal. Stein begins to make problems but not for Orange. Just for the soup. Questions its nature. Changes it. Opts for pain over clarity. Suggests it might really be a question, might really be butter. But whatever else is going on here, there’s no resolution. No punch line to hang onto except for a puzzle concerning Real which by now is a verb: ‘real is only, only excreate’. Can that be?

Someone ought to say something about Real the verb. About Stein’s hooking it up with ‘excreate’. How does any of this make sense? To suggest Real really means to spit out. To discharge from the throat. But… if a person were to repeat the last words of her poem over and over: ‘a no since, a no, a no since a no since, a no since, a no since’. If they were, an ending of sorts. And again, if they would, I could happily discharge any worries regarding Orange. Out. Along with the soup and all the rest.