I see the moon, the moon sees me. Climbing up your apple tree. Kirk Jordan or "not quite all there"

On the occasion of my forthcoming death

Note: I am part of a group that hangs out on G-Plus (Google +) called "Selfie Sunday" -- On every other week or so, we post a self portrait of ourselves, and in turn look at, and comment on each other's self portraits.  This week was a Halloween theme.  As is, I am not too fond of Halloween's obsession with darkness, though in an abstract way, I think reflection on death can be a good thing.  So here is my photo contribution to the day, with a reflection - beyond the grave.

Recently I had occasion to go to the memorial service of a truly outstanding young man, Cris -- “The Romanian” – a pre-med student at the University of Central Arkansas. Cris was a special light. At 22 he loved life, blushed loudly, took in knowledge with unbridled curiosity, and otherwise lived with a intensity in before God and man that is simply rare. (Someone said they now understood -- Cris had to fit 70 years into 22.)

That, in combination with the death or declining health of others near to me, has led to on a odd stream of introspection. (For whatever reasons, my mom often thought about death, even to the point of giving instruction for her “Coming home” celebration. So --- as part of a family tradition, here is a list of things I would like to see at my funeral. Which of course, assumes that I might be permitted to look in on such things. I don’t know. Perhaps I will have no interest.




The major songs.



Be Thou My Vision.

Immortal Invisible

Like a River Glorious (my favorite hymn as a kid.)

And He will Purify (From Handle’s Messiah)

Going up Yonder (the latter two sung by Marvin or the Philander Smith Gospel Choir)

the Amazing Cloud Tsunami! (order Print)

To see the cloud in motion:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6EouhO6E0o



Apparently a lot of folks in AR like the middle picture.  Some would even like to buy it.  If you would like to help a soul, without an entrepenurial bone in his body, please do so.


First.   My gift.  Feel free to download to you computer for a backdrop.  But if you need a real print, please pay.


signed 8x12 = 12 dollars (in person delivery) or $15 mailed.
signed 12x18 = 24 dollars, or $28 mailed.


Check or Money order to Kirk Jordan
3 Manchester Drive, Conway AR 72034.   (I'll see if I cannot get Paypal up an going)

email, if needed  kirkwood2020 (at)  yahoo.com.


feedback

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150335211858554&set=a.88702903553.101952.68455493553&type=1&comments&cmntid=10150335230763554

http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2011/08/10/clouds-over-capitol

Is it me, or do you see it too?

Is it me, or do you see it too?, a photo by Jordan's Storm on Flickr.

Hard and Soft. (Okra and Japanese Magnolia)

How many are your works Oh Lord.  In wisdom you have made them all.  The whole world is full of your possessions.


(Psalm 104)

Q: Why do I take pictures?

A: Cause I can't play the music I hear in my head!

AR365 Day 117. Theme: Music

Today's audio track, from a pretty good band with a limited but dedicated following, playing from the 3rd finest album in the history of the world. ((A Sigh For You by DA (aka Daniel Amos) from their 1986 album Fearful Symmetry))

To follow my 365 on Flickr, check in HERE

the Shinners

AR365 Day 116: Theme: Music.

(okay, were stretching this to illustrate settings that beget music.)

for more images of Ozell and Derick, or to follow my 365 project

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kirkjordan/

Ozell and his nephew Derick inside the Wright Shoe-Shine Parlor, a business which has been quietly in operation for some 30 years, in a warehouse looking-space in Downtown Little Rock, AR (USA)


For your listening enjoyment:


The Soul of a Man (Blind Willie Johnson Version)

or my favorite modern rendition:

The Soul of a Man (Bruce Cockburn Version)

Quercus Borealis

An old but iconic Kirk poem


A Stained Glass Spider Web Cathedral  (3/91)

When funnel clouds clip rainbows

in our world, where the vestiges of Eden whirl

in a mash of mangled parrot wings

or Iris, smithereened to make

makeup,

We can see why rainbows flinch;

They don’t make it very long.

Banshee decibels defign, the decimating means:

Locomotive grinding wheel , cone of writhen hate,

vicious biting vapors, Hell-

icopter blades.

Each bashing is a moment-ary

Torque

Of glass,

disbanding shock,

Indigo

From icon wrenched

reched red,                   shrapnel  butterflies

Violet, 

         Violently constr ue d,             arch

From Arch etype

divorced.

(The sky is reeling odd tonight!)

I’ve read about those pristine days when rainbow shard was rare.

Lions still ate lily-pads, and rattlesnakes were raging fads

As playmates for the nursery.

Prisma-ash is pollen now,

Coursing through our breath,

Twisted beauty permeates, and I like eating meat.

The eyes of flies are pigment parks in geodesic dome,

Black radiance with chandelier, stuffed in honeycomb.

Oil on the parking lot, mimics Northern lights:

Borealis flares in beaded rain, on surfaces like night.

Death implied is banking, pivoting on air

A bloodied stink is calling to a colored thoroughfare.

Gliding white as whisper, missiles cruise the dark

Pilot fish are dental floss for shearing shard of shark.

The cacti in the desert, wear a brutal fringe,

Prickle pear, with rain, explode into a floral binge.

Snow flakes falling virgin white, in the tilted world

Would we know that dance at all, if sin were not unfurled?

Now I share my paradox:

I believe in paradise, with us once and yet to come:

"World without End…"

I believe in beauty too:

"Meadows from His garden here."

But these strange shattered-glories, fallen-splendors reign

Carving raging channels, deep within my brain

Of a convoluted beauty,

Heaven would exclude.

Note: This early poem totally baffled the class to which I presented it. Several praised the images, but it met with an almost universal “hungh”. One kid said that it said “nothing” well, then added that he liked it till it mentioned God. Now I don’t know if I missed on a communication level because the poem really is too abstract, or if I was simply working with alien themes. I wanted to press a religious question with out sounding like a bible.

To be honest, the title threw them. Folks were looking for the cathedral in the poem. But it wasn’t there. I was mixing metaphors and playing with a personal symbol. We tried not to explain our poems too much –“Bad form”; But I'll help you with the title at least.

Somewhere in the nineties a tornado hit our small college town of Stillwater Oklahoma. And not just one, but four separate cones descending like teats from an angry udder. It wasn’t a national story but it did leave a lot of broken glass and shingles and a flipped car or two in our apartment complex. Later, in typical space-head thinking, I imagined shattered glass tossed and lodged in spider webs … really ….like the bits of broken glass in church windows. The rest is yours.

Splay

Gnarly

And If you find it here, I never mind a Flickr vote

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kirkjordan/