Day 34 #MakeArt365

Positive Semidefinite, mixed media, 2015

I had a weird dream last night (about rummaging through abandoned weaponry in a wrecked convenience store in the desert that had been a battleground and seemed likely to be one again) but was unsuccessful in drawing it. Then read this poem in the comments on Terri Windling's blog http://windling.typepad.com/ and it hit me between the eye's. I have to say it in no way resembles my father, who (possibly for the worse) wink emoticon has never told a lie in his life, and would likely be quite at home in Oz. I think there's something there though about the inherent tension in art between innocent fantasy and destructive self deception. Chewing on that.

If there is a place south of Oz,
my compass will find it.
If it is the true north,
that lies past Shangri-La,
I have sought that way
since childhood, fairytale needle
always spinning toward strangeness.
My father, whose life was built
on careful lies, always wondered
at the cardinal points of my longing,
declaring them unreal, as if his make-believe
was more natural than my compass rose.
I am aligned to the magnetic field
of the human heart and his was always a gyro,
spinning rapidly to keep up with a world
rotating solely on solipsistic lies.
There was never adventure for him,
no Shangri-La, no Oz, only a cold trail,
trackless plain, and a meal of salty regret.

South of Oz, -Jane Yolen