"a song without end" Journal Prompt # 23

5 x 8 journal page

So the prompt this week was a "do-over".

Pick a prompt from the 22 weeks before and do something different with it.  

So I picked "What Do you Know for Sure?"

.

Gosh couldn't you just use that EVERY week?

But I like this poem that came in Garrison Keillor's daily blog this week so much that I wanted to save it.

It is hand written on my page but also I typed it and put it in the little envelope on the page as it's a lot easier to read that way.  

Here it is:

a song with no end

by Charles Bukowski

when Whitman wrote, "I sing the body electric"

I know what he

meant

I know what he 

wanted:

to be completely alive every moment

in spite of the inevitable.

we can't cheat death but we can make it 

work so hard

that when it does take 

us

it will have known a victory just as

perfect as

ours.

So there you are.  I like that the author speaks of the inevitable because in our western culture we often avoid mentioning that.  But many cultures are more in tune with that idea.  

The poem celebrates our brief lives here by wanting us to live so fully and so well that even death has to work hard to find us and take us home.  I find that a good reminder.  I covered the page with gesso and let that dry (as one blogger said that gesso is underwear for you journal page). 
Then I used a foam roller in gold paint to put on the stenciled pattern.  Something simple and in an elegant color.  Just gold and black and white.  No color needed here.  And because the author called his poem a "song", I picked sheet music for the little envelope I hand folded to hold it. 

I can hardly express all the thoughts that went through my head while I put this together and then quietly had my lunch looking out over the forest and lake here in WI.  The sun glinting down into the incredible green of early spring here…nuthatches and chickadees at the bird feeder.  But all that thinking is for another blog another day.

The calendars was fun…I found that I need a lot more concentration for Rio than I at first thought!  Whoa.
I ended up with flat acrylic magenta background as I love how well acrylic pops and also takes the shading. I used a jellyroll white pen for that also. Next to Rio, All Boxed Up is my next best favorite one.