Inquiry into this folk mind grasps for the unseen paradox that if unknown and unsigned, how art, anonymously more than itself, multiplied by the numberless contradictions is the body, but what is its mind?
Path to the Pond
Say that folk art farmers are minnows in pools of market lakes and ponds, a minnow genera leading the soul that lacks the hubris gene, unknown because it wants to be, that hides in a fellow's home. There we seek the bigger thing, the unconscious brought to light, truest beauty of love, and follow this path to the pond. Among remnants is a voice.
They hide their riches in plain sight. Not everybody calls them riches. Not everybody calls them plain, black suits and dresses, black and white caps. The image is prim if the dresses are not, stored in attics, basements, heads. Late in life old men queue to spend time in attic or basement, but who can decide? The wood stove with the old claw foot table was down with Harvey Mack's white cabinet, a banker who drove an ambulance and worked in reconstruction France, remained a carpenter the rest of his life. Jake's rough brown finished cabinet was down with the wood handled tools. The wood stove’s cookware was in the attic though, along with a childhood rocker in perfect condition, trunks on metal rollers, wardrobes and pottery that wouldn’t fit the above. They weren’t to be handled or named, the doll ensembles, patchwork quilts or the Mennonite dress of a slender girl, even you were an antiquarian. These artifacts collected themselves. One didn’t want to be worldly. Back up the truck with inscribed German books, linens of Pennsylvania folk aesthetic and a way of life.
The Pond
Ancestry in the present looks back and down and squints at facts, motivations, half lights and grays But the elder looks forward and up, is nearly blind, wonders why they just don’t shut up. Looking down is one thing, but from below, reversed, looking up, brightness, clarity, color hurt the folk eye against the blue. It really only matters to the present, the one alive to plumb. That said, from sky down, folk appear reluctant to admit delight, couch desire for beauty and art almost contraire affirming a love they shun. The iron coat removed at night is decorated beneath. Apologies to the free artist pursuing it, doubt is no defense.
Crabs scuttle sideways, fish dart from rocks, loud noises, assumptions, keep the body under, but come up in habits of dress, submission to rigor in the sun. Can deep contain sky? Couldn't they have patched it up / Made compromises like we all must do? It's an old story. Provoked by audacity to doubt the light, from above they hide their glory. A seabed skilled at redirecting light hides in hand painted china, clothes in handmade dressers, canning jars, as though resigned, but these were their struggles to come ashore. This quietude of sea, its undertow, hid the intensity of a child. Wait a half century, you will understand.
Reserve overlays a spontaneity of heart, seeing and not saying, “here’s the tale, you won’t remember it,” survival technique for people who lived in the community of centuries. Mortality was quick, lives sudden. Families lost children, skin cracked and body became a dowage. Beauty walked this way and hid as best she could, but with no aids to forget.
The Pond Is the Sea
Reversal of viewpoints repeats in every genome. Soul comes up from sea to live on land, recedes to origins.
We look at the lives that preceded ours but they are not our own. We too rise from the sea, and sink back down, view ourselves ascend but go into life submerged.
Coming out, hyperbole develops. Lines increase with contexts, then reverse, converge to a focus that generations had a purpose to reveal, which could be named and attitudes repeated, but best not tell. Let details, artifacts, contexts speak. Let each generation name its history. The name is the same.
Each one views the positive, but present and past are opposed. The modern predicated on the past takes freedom and rights for granted, knows nothing else, but forebears struggled, sacrificed to produce this grant.
The debt of gratitude with the present tempts to fault fathers and mothers for not being like themselves.
They are not like us. We would not be us without them.
Path to the Pond
Say that folk art farmers are minnows in pools of market lakes and ponds, a minnow genera leading the soul that lacks the hubris gene, unknown because it wants to be, that hides in a fellow's home. There we seek the bigger thing, the unconscious brought to light, truest beauty of love, and follow this path to the pond. Among remnants is a voice.
They hide their riches in plain sight. Not everybody calls them riches. Not everybody calls them plain, black suits and dresses, black and white caps. The image is prim if the dresses are not, stored in attics, basements, heads. Late in life old men queue to spend time in attic or basement, but who can decide? The wood stove with the old claw foot table was down with Harvey Mack's white cabinet, a banker who drove an ambulance and worked in reconstruction France, remained a carpenter the rest of his life. Jake's rough brown finished cabinet was down with the wood handled tools. The wood stove’s cookware was in the attic though, along with a childhood rocker in perfect condition, trunks on metal rollers, wardrobes and pottery that wouldn’t fit the above. They weren’t to be handled or named, the doll ensembles, patchwork quilts or the Mennonite dress of a slender girl, even you were an antiquarian. These artifacts collected themselves. One didn’t want to be worldly. Back up the truck with inscribed German books, linens of Pennsylvania folk aesthetic and a way of life.
The Pond
Ancestry in the present looks back and down and squints at facts, motivations, half lights and grays But the elder looks forward and up, is nearly blind, wonders why they just don’t shut up. Looking down is one thing, but from below, reversed, looking up, brightness, clarity, color hurt the folk eye against the blue. It really only matters to the present, the one alive to plumb. That said, from sky down, folk appear reluctant to admit delight, couch desire for beauty and art almost contraire affirming a love they shun. The iron coat removed at night is decorated beneath. Apologies to the free artist pursuing it, doubt is no defense.
Crabs scuttle sideways, fish dart from rocks, loud noises, assumptions, keep the body under, but come up in habits of dress, submission to rigor in the sun. Can deep contain sky? Couldn't they have patched it up / Made compromises like we all must do? It's an old story. Provoked by audacity to doubt the light, from above they hide their glory. A seabed skilled at redirecting light hides in hand painted china, clothes in handmade dressers, canning jars, as though resigned, but these were their struggles to come ashore. This quietude of sea, its undertow, hid the intensity of a child. Wait a half century, you will understand.
Reserve overlays a spontaneity of heart, seeing and not saying, “here’s the tale, you won’t remember it,” survival technique for people who lived in the community of centuries. Mortality was quick, lives sudden. Families lost children, skin cracked and body became a dowage. Beauty walked this way and hid as best she could, but with no aids to forget.
The Pond Is the Sea
Reversal of viewpoints repeats in every genome. Soul comes up from sea to live on land, recedes to origins.
We look at the lives that preceded ours but they are not our own. We too rise from the sea, and sink back down, view ourselves ascend but go into life submerged.
Coming out, hyperbole develops. Lines increase with contexts, then reverse, converge to a focus that generations had a purpose to reveal, which could be named and attitudes repeated, but best not tell. Let details, artifacts, contexts speak. Let each generation name its history. The name is the same.
Each one views the positive, but present and past are opposed. The modern predicated on the past takes freedom and rights for granted, knows nothing else, but forebears struggled, sacrificed to produce this grant.
The debt of gratitude with the present tempts to fault fathers and mothers for not being like themselves.
They are not like us. We would not be us without them.
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