Midori Snyder's Blog, page 5

In Anticipation of My Birth: A Day At The Beach

This is a Sunday in 1953 in Santa Monica, my parents and brother in the parking lot of Veteran's Housing where we lived when I was first born and while my parents were still graduate students. I will be born January 1, 1954. We are all in transition. My father wearing his Harvard t-shirt despite now being a Californian and at UCLA, my mother with her new folkloric look which she will keep for the next ten years, and my brother, in transition too -- a little French suit, then stripped down to the barest essentials like any California baby on the beach. I love these photos -- my parents so relaxed even as they are expectant, so married, so in love, and before every thing else that would come later. I like too that I am here, a baby bump -- but already part of the family. (Click on for larger images....ok, that's my indulgence! haha)

 

ORAN TRILOGY ART BY JENNIFER BRUCE

I am in awe of Jennifer Bruce and the fabulous cover art e has created for the ORAN trilogy. It is a wonder that for the first time, the novels will have really amazing covers instead of a bunch of hack work that was done to the covers in the past. I am also working hard to give the novels another round of editing with my favorite editor and proofreader Lisl Frank, after which (a lightly trimmed version) will then be finalized and proofed.

It is still going to take a bit of time to get through the whole trilogy, cleaned up and without mistakes! But I think the results will be worth it. And then finally, I will upload both the paperback and the Kindle editions. 

 

 

 

ALL ARTWORK BY JENNIFER BRUCE IS COPYWRITED AND MAY NOT BE USED OR REPRODUCED WITHOUT THE WRITTEN AND EXPRESSED PERMISSION OF THE ARTIST, JENNIFER BRUCE: FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THE ARTIST GO HERE: https://www.jenniferbruceart.com/

THE ORAN TRILOGY ART BY JENNIFER BRUCE

 

I am in awe of Jennifer Bruce and the fabulous cover art she has created for the ORAN trilogy. It is wonder that for the first time the novels will have really amazing covers instead of a bunch of hack work that was done to the covers in the past. I am also working hard to give the novels another round of editing with my favorite editor and proof reader Lisl Frank, after which (a lightly trimmed version) will then be finalized and proofed.

It is still going to take a bit of time to get through the whole trilogy, cleaned up and without mistakes! But I think the results will be worth it. And then finally, I will upload both the paper back and the kindle editions. 

 

 NEW MOON

 

              

 

 SADAR'S KEEP 

 

              

 

BELDAN'S FIRE

 

ALL ARTWORK BY JENNIFER BRUCE IS COPYWRITED AND MAY NOT BE USED OR REPRODUCED WITHOUT THE WRITTEN AND EXPRESSED PERMISSION OF THE ARTIST, JENNIFER BRUCE: FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THE ARTIST GO HERE: https://www.jenniferbruceart.com/

Working on This...

Adrienne von Speyr on the Feast of the Assumption

"Thus, the Assumption, the distance and difference between heaven and earth are as bridged over and obliterated for the Mother. For she who who is now received by the Son into heaven is none other than she who received him on earth from heaven; and as her way expanded more and more, starting with the Son's conception and going all the way to her present reception into heaven by the Son, so this reception also expandsto its highpoint in the Son's conception by her. The two high points intensify one another and neither direction can be designated as the definitive one: from earth to heaven or from heaven to earth. It is an eternal circuit between God and man, heaven and earth, spiritual world and material world: a circulation also between Mother and Son. For, as the Mother had once said Yes to the Son and everything to do with him, so today the Son speaks his great assent to the Mother. This assent is divine and immeasurable and gives the Mother's assent its whole heavenly limitessness. As long as the Mother was in the world, she was as limited as any human being, and she had to bear those limits in mind whe she tried to work the Son's cause. From the moment of the Assumption on, she receives the power to be able to do what the Son's wills, without limits. She knows no boundaries except those we on earth set against her work. Only our No can hold back her eternal Yes. "  (Handmaid of the Lord, Adrienne Von Speyr,  translated by E. A. Nelson, Ignatius Press, 1985)

And this  lovely fragment from G. K. Chesterton's "A Little Litany": 

"���Star of his morning; that unfallen star
In that strange starry overturn of space
When earth and sky changed places for an hour
And heaven looked upwards in a human face."

 Art: The Assumption by Guido Reni in 1617.

The Dreamer as Architect by Marly Youmans:

I was surprised and very grateful to my longtime friend Marly Youmas for dedicating this wonderful poem to me. (Stop by her blog for a visit -- and check out some of her new published works. )

 

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Last night in dreams, she lived a thousand years
And was the architect who made a house
That wandered from the mountains to the sea.

And in its rooms the strange and marvelous
Began to stir with songs and images
And words of radiance by those who knew

That every stone and changing face and tree
Was singing forth a name, a fullness���word
Of self that joins with music of the spheres.

And how that potent work of loveliness
Could fall away, she hardly grasped, though knew
The grief aimed arrows at her flesh, her soul.

She kept one room intact and hidden safe,
One jeweled image on the plaster wall,
One melody that curled inside her ear,

One archway onto mountainside and sea,
One spell, one tale that murmured: Everything
That dies���for all must die���will be renewed.

���Marly Youmans

Icleandanic Sagas, The Role of the Dead and the Life of the Landscape

Periodically, I love looking back at many of the articles I have posted on this blog. I am delighted to find this excellent article by Kirsi Kenerva on the fantastic in Iceland again. The video is pretty amazing. 

 

Here are two fascinating and remarkable takes on the traditions of the Icelandic Sagas. The first is a short documentary film created by (then graduate student, now a professor) Emily Lethbridge at Cambridge University, revealing the relationship between the landscape, as the context and texture of the ��slendingas��gur, the sagas of Iceland. It's a beautiful and chilly film, but it demonstrates how people living in those locations of the tales," still talk about the events as if they occurred yesterday. And those stunning, stark views of the land -- just remarkable. 

 

 

 

 And for another take on the Medieval sagas, here is a terrific paper I came across that I enjoyed reading: The Role of the Dead in Medieval Iceland: A Case Study of the Erybyggja Saga, by Kirsi Kenerva. It's an exciting study on the presence of the undead who appear with the seeming purpose of committing violence against the living-- but whose acts function to uncover social wrongs in the community that must be corrected. The restless dead take various shapes, including a creepy disembodied seal head that rises from the floorboards and devours the cache of dried fish in the storeroom. The hero is at the center of the social upset -- a bastard son with no father -- he can only move through a rite of passage to adulthood, f he can confront the dead and use the law ( and what a strange trial it is) to address the grievances. I was unaware of the connections between the Icelanders and the Irish -- who also figure in this tale���a reminder to me of all the traveling between these sea-going people -- bound together by the Vikings. 

 ,"     

Here's the abstract: 

"The article concerns the ghost story of the Eyrbyggja saga, the so-called ���wonders of Fr��������� (Fr������rundr), and examines the symbolic meanings of this episode as they were interpreted in medieval Iceland. The analysis presupposes that, although the restless dead could be understood as ���real��� by medieval readers and as part of their social reality, the heterogenic nature of the audience and the learning of the writers of the sagas made various possible interpretations of the ghost scene, both literal and symbolic. It is argued that the living dead in the Eyrbyggja saga act as agents of the order whose restlessness is connected to past deeds of those still living that have caused social disequilibrium. In Fr������rundr, these actions involve expressions of disapproved sexuality and offspring birth with indeterminate social status. For the ghost-banisher, the hauntings represent an opportunity to improve his indeterminate status."

 

 

 

Fighting Woman News:

Still one of my favorite images. I'm working on getting all healed up -- just so I can eventually go back to being a fighting woman! In the meantime, I am hoping to embroider this image on the back of a jacket. Maybe over this next year I will create a series of them and have an entire wardrobe of fighting women. Awesome. 

 

How They Drank in the 40s

 

Here's another one of those mysterious family photographs -- this one of my maternal grandmother (the one in the back-left squinting from the smoke of her cigarette) sitting at a small table in an even smaller kitchen with a group of really elegant women friends and a whole lot of bottles of Cutty Sark and Rexnor. It is impossible to tell what time of day it is -- but I always imagined for some perverse reason that it is in the afternoon -- and the shade is down to keep out the bright California sun. And then there are the vegetables incongruously sitting on the edge of the table -- as though someone any moment might actually get up and make dinner?

There is a long story behind the photograph -- my grandmother Jeanette Westegaard worked in Hollywood as a script writer. The other women all worked in costuming and especially elegant hats. They were good friends -- even at a time when segregation might have made it difficult for them to gather.  

And of course, I wonder about the woman who took the picture -- and the fact that none of her friends are looking at her, or posing for it. One of the group just stood up (and where has she been sitting? on a counter? there's no extra chair) and snapped it.

And what happened immediately after the photo was taken? Did they all look up from their intense conversations, put down their cigarettes and glasses, and laugh at being caught unawares by the camera?

Today Be Like....

I have always loved this weird and wonderful piece of mediaeval marginal art. She is cranky, fisty, ready to pull out hearts and saw off legs. I know, I shouldn't like her so much, but on frustrating days (like paying the taxes) I feel a kindred spirit of don't mess with me if you know what's good for you. I want to embroider her on the back of a jacket.