Uvi Poznansky's Blog, page 260

Now Look What You've Done (part I)

And I wish to thank you, all of you!By getting Apart From Love, you brought it up to #3 in the Family Saga Amazon category! 



Last day to get my Thanksgiving gift!Get the Kindle editions of Home and Apart From Love FREE  Last day Saturday November 24, 2012
(No Kindle? No Problem! Get a FREE Kindle app for your computer from Amazon) Home: US & India, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain. Apart From Love:US & India, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain.

A Celebration: Amidst the Glow

"Then, all of the sudden, amidst the glow, he finds himself standing at the banks of a lake with his daddy. He lets go of his daddy’s hand, flings a stone and at once he can spot—right there, in the middle of the lake—a ripple taking shape. One circle rises magically inside another, widening, riding out farther and farther until at long last it fades out. White lilies can be seen floating all around. One of them is right here, at arms reach. Only a thin line, the line of illusion, separates the petal from its white reflection. And underneath it, schools of golden fish scurry in one direction, then take a sharp turn and flow elsewhere."
An excerpt from Home.

More and more guests from around the world are already here, at Our Family Tree.
My Thanksgiving gift to you:Get the Kindle editions of Home and Apart From Love FREE Thursday November 22-Saturday November 24, 2012
Home: US & India, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain. Apart From Love:US & India, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain.

How Our Bonds Do Make Us Free

This is now, just for ThanksgivingTake my gifts of love, forgivingTake them Home and I will sweep youTo a different place, a different viewOf how our bonds do make us freeApart From Love we cannot be
    
My Thanksgiving gift to you:Get the Kindle editions of Home and Apart From Love FREE Thursday November 22-Saturday November 24, 2012
Home: US & India, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain. Apart From Love:US & India, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain.

What's On Your Desk?

Woke up to a nice surprise: my interview on Digital Books Today is up! asked to describe what you I when I look at my desk, I said: 

Since I am an artist, poet and writer, the best way to show you the surface is my painting. As a creator, I see myself this way: I paint with a pen, write with a paintbrush. My art strives to tell a story, and my stories strive to bring you into the scene being painted, letting you sense everything my characters touch, see, or hear.

To read the interview, click here. 



This is an oil painting of my work surface seen from above. My tools are traveling across the surface as if they have some target in mind... I like the reflection of my rag in the painting knife, and the black spill on the floor, which is like a 'thought bubble' coming out of the turpentine jar.

About to Fly Away

Am I a leaf about to drift About to fly away, to chanceThe cold, the heat, the drop, the liftUpon the wing of wind, to dance?Or else, nestled in this treeAm I to stay, and thus be free?Here I am, Apart From LoveFlying Home just like a dove
    
My Thanksgiving gift to you:Get the Kindle editions of Home and Apart From Love FREE Thursday November 22-Saturday November 24, 2012
Home: US & India, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain. Apart From Love:US & India, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain.

X’s and O’s for Kisses and Hugs

"She locked herself in and started writing letters, some of which were never sent, for fear of revealing too much of her loneliness. Other letters she embellished along the margins, with a hand heavy with years but with the manner of a schoolgirl: She embellished them with pink flowers and long sequences of X’s and O’s for kisses and hugs, and then she sent them to that foreign sounding address, so that her grandchildren, who rarely came to visit, would know she loved them.How would a doorknob feel to be barely touched, its latch rarely released, the lock always bolted shut? How would it feel to be in the grip of rust? She glanced at the doorknob. Would it retain a memory of her touch, even when she is gone? Would it keep, in its own transparent ways and despite all that polishing, the layers upon layers of all their fingerprints?"
This is an excerpt from a short story which I titled Even One Mark. The inspiration for it came from what I heard on a phone call from the other end of an ocean, from Israel: it came on my birthday, so for a moment I thought that congratulations and good wishes would be the topic of the conversation--only to learn that unfortunately, my mother-in-law had just passed away. In the early days of my marriage I perceived her, as most young brides do, as a formidable force, and it took me many years to look past the power game. To my surprise I found out not only that I appreciated her strength and her knack for survival, but that I loved her dearly. And so, I wrote this story to reveal the softer, most volunrable side of her character. 

This is how the story ends:

"The wind whipped the pages out of her lap. They flew around her, some settling to the ground, some flipping higher, flapping into a big clutter in the air, then floating dreamily away across the landscape. In years past she would get up, catch them one by one and stack them back, with a strict attention to order; but now she didn’t care anymore. For a moment she thought she could see that page, the one she had marked X with a trembling hand. There it was, a white glimmer soaring out of reach above her in the wind. And then, in one puff, it was over. Somewhere inside, a doorknob broke. A door flew open."
This short story is included in my poetry book, Home.

I drew this charcoal sketch a couple of weeks ago with a similar feeling of  loss.

The Nature of Motherhood

“What matters is only what’s here. I touch my skin right under my breasts, which is where the little one’s curled, and where he kicks, ‘cause he has to. Like, he don’t feel so cosy no more. Here, can you feel it? I reckon he wants me to talk to him. He can hear me inside, for sure. He can hear every note of this silvery music. 
It ripples all around him, wave after wave. I can tell that it’s starting to sooth him. It’s so full of joy, of delight, even if to him, it’s coming across somewhat muffled. Like a dream in a dream, it’s floating inside, into his soft, tender ear. 
I close my eyes and hold myself, wrapping my arms real soft—around me around him—and I rock ever so gently, back and forth, back and forth, with every note of this silvery marvel. You can barely hear me—but here I am, singing along. I’m whispering words into myself, into him.”

This is in the voice of Anita, my character in Apart From Love.




And what she is envisioning is motherhood, which is the subject of my sculture by the same name. It is hard to imagine this is actually bronze, because the patina is made to look like marble. I polished the piece until it became completely smooth to the touch, as if nature--by gusts of wind and the flow of water--has buffed this rock over time, the way pebbles come to be. 

But in the back, I 'carved' into the piece, so as to make it look as if it has broken. This makes for an interesting balance, as if you try to make a rock stand on edge. But more importantly, it is symbolic, for self-sacrifice is the nature of motherhood.

A Thin Border to Hold Your Sanity

I dreamt a dream that I'm still a child,Here's home.In a minute the door will openLetting in my parents, my sister.I'm foolishly beguiled!They were all swept off by a gust, into the wild
I'm aloneNo longer a child.

When my father wrote these words, which to me are profoundly heart wrenching, he knew the difference between dream and reality. The door, he realized, would never open, and it remains there as a poetic symbol of hope, of yearning for something that can never happen, not only because of his advanced age--but also because his parents and his sister perished during the holocaust.   But during the last year of his life, that border between what is real and what is a dream, a poetic symbol, became thinner and thinner, and thus more illusive to him. and he would crouch by that door, banging his fist upon it and begging his mommy to open that door. Then, as a mercy to his sanity, he passed away at the age of ninety four.
This was, and still is, quite painful to me, and having witnessed it, I wrote several pieces--some poems, some short stories--about the thinning of the border in his mind. These pieces are all inspired by my vision of his life, as I saw it in retrospect when I came to mourn for him. This vision also inspired my oil painting which became the cover of the book, Home. Here is a detail of it, showing the door and his armchair, ascending in the air above the turmoil, the grief...

So here is an excerpt from one of the poems in Home, which highlights the vision of the door as a thinning border:
That door sealed him off, away from all danger
Except from the depth of the danger withinNo one could intrude here, except for the strangerWho would carry him off to where his end would begin—
The poet, who’d mourned the loss of his motherWould then, somehow, be reduced to a childHe would crouch at the threshold, and call, call, call, call herKnock, knock, knock at the door; no more held back, but wild
And here, another excerpt, this time from a short story about my father:

"And then, trying to ignore the ticking, the loud, insistent ticking of the clock from the adjacent kitchen, you too would, perhaps, start sensing a presence. Voices would be coming from a different place, a place within. A faint footfall… A soft laughter... Who is there? He glances nervously at the entrance door. Is it locked? Can a stranger get in? Then—quite unexpectedly—the fear subsides and for the first time, gives way to something else. Something wells up in his throat. Why, why is the door locked? He feels a sudden urge to crawl down, get to that threshold, and cry. Mommy! Open the door! Let me in, mommy! Let me come home! But for now, he can still hold it in. He forces himself to turn away from that door. Somehow it feels lighter in the dark. The bareness of this space, which was once adorned with rich Persian rugs, colorful oil paintings and fine furnishings, is more bearable this way. So is the weight of loneliness."

Guest Post on Michelle Bellon's Blog

Michelle Bellon is a young yet prolific author. I have read two of her recent books, Embracing Me, Embracing You and her newest work, Rogue Alliance, both of which were thrilling to read. She writes as easily in one genre as another and her love for the music of language is ever present. This week she graciously invited to to post on her blog, and added this wonderful lead-in:

"Today I welcome Uvi Poznansky as a guest. She is an author and artist whom I have the utmost respect for. Her work has inspired me over the last year. I'm thrilled to have her do a guest post. Enjoy!"

To read what I whipped up this time, click here. It starts with the words, "Enamored with paper, I love folding it, rolling it, cutting it, spilling ink and paint on it, and studying the reflections it gives off."

Our Family Tree

Ready for our next fun activity? But first, join Our Family Tree, where we will celebrate this theme in my books Home and Apart From Love.

I am asking you to post images on the event page, images that depict you and your mom, you and your dad. I will bring your images together into this scene, a scene of a garden party happening around this tree, which stands for the name of this event: Our Family Tree. In this place, which I hope will embrace all of us, we touch each other. We celebrate and give thanks.

The images can be your painting, your sketch, or an old photograph from your family album. They can depict your father wagging a finger at you while you are pulling a cat's tail; or you and your mom planting flowers in the back yard; hugging or having a discussion on a recent visit. Anything goes. The best pictures would be not just the heads but the entire figure, preferably (but not necessarily) in an animated pose. 

I will post the final version of Our Family Tree on Wednesday the 21st of November, so you can share it with your family on Thanksgiving.





Images Contributed by
Richard Lane (I am a Caregiver, now residing in Bowley's Quarters, MD)