Poetry and Painting

I have a copy of Basho's Narrow Road to the Deep North next to my bed in Villandás. I don't so much read it as browse it.  It's chewy reading as you would expect from someone who spends time considering what he is about before committing the words to a defined form.

When I go out to the woods and sit amongst the trees, Basho comes to mind if only because he also used to sit under trees and took his name from the banana tree under which he sat for long periods.  If that is the case then I should call myself Roble instead of Jason because I often sit under an oak tree with my back resting against a vertical rock that emerges from the mountainside.

Recently I have been using text and image together.  I cannot see myself as a Japanese brush painter, though.  When I place a mark on the page I do not see the sword strike of the samurai master but something much more provisional and hesitant.  It started with a sketchbook I painted and wrote for my children and has developed from there, so it is part of a more prosaic diary-writing Romantic tradition.

One part of the benefit of painting to me is the manner in which it allows me to accept myself.  This is a continual struggle.  I place a mark on the page and recognise it as an extension of myself with all the tremor of my unsteady hand.  The image itself is painfully revealing.  The text should do something similar: slapped down breathing on the page.

As a teacher, both of writing and painting, how can I not be aware of the difficulty of this acceptance?  I have seen many children screw up their work, as if horrified at what they have in front of them.  I want to feel that horror.  I don't want to just paint pretty pictures.