A Way to Unwind Before An Art Show or Event, and a Way to Motivate

(photos included of the event)

A quickly snapped self-portrait on the way to the event, and then another…

Lately I’ve been wishing to read poetry, and my Seamus Heaney’s are delayed. Or, in terms of a New York minute, they are delayed.

Earlier, I found a new winter coat I really love, the only one in the store that fit:D today, after my other that came in the mail was not a good fit. And then to the library.

A good way for me to unwind before the art show or any event is to read quietly. I searched the library’s poetry section, found their “world reading section” not yet discovered by me at this particular library, with a sleugh (an English marsh, it means 😂) —(I actually meant slew)—of Kahlil Gibran books on the highest shelves almost out of sight. I said quietly aloud “Gibran.” and looked through them.

One I could pick up and read with a decent feeling within, is his novel, Broken Wings. This book is included in “A Treasury of Kahlil Gibran’s Work” and was acquired by the library in a book sale in April 1979. But Kahlil Gibran published it in 1912. I will probably review Broken Wings, and then compare journals with May.

Emigrating from Lebanon to the United States, Kahlil Gibran is the author and artist author May Ziadeh loved (from Lebanon and Egypt), and he debuted his art in Day’s Gallery in Boston, MA, in the early 1900s as he was starting out, before he moved to NYC.

Out of the slew of Gibran, each and every book was dedicated to Mary E. Haskell in secretive, but easy to decipher initials…She was his art patron whom he’d met in the Boston art show. All’s well. Maybe May has a new ‘Baby.’ 😀 😊

I picked out Faerie Queene II too, a good pick, and I am thrilled to start with it, after I’d read Faerie Queene I, also by Edmund Spenser, and never got up to 2nd just yet.

I spent a good time reading that one in 2021 and nursing that very delicate 100 yr old copy to life with my careful glueing and love; I returned it by hand, and I placed gently on the returns counter, and I may check on it sometimes. 🙂

I was delighted to have found a quote from Edmund Spenser: “A Wing of Youth and Love lifts me up!” in one of May’s poems a few months afterwards, and with a line of hers that included “a sweet flame.” My poetry book, A Little Honey Sweetens The Flame (2021), I published with the same notion in her poem, before I’d known of her.

At the Morini Art Gallery Reception tonight, there were name tags for the artists, a music duo of popular songs played as jazz instrumental, and my husband Dan attended and he really enjoyed the music and time with me as well. There was pocket-sized food, and Italian pastries of which I’d enjoyed many (the lemon pastry custard powdered sugar and powdered jellied strawberry were my favorites), warm, friendly people, and intriguing artwork, and I saw them all closely. My curator at home Peeko 🐱 is so excited that he greeted me at the door, and he has not stopped singing.

photos of the event by the MassArts Center