“Nightscape,” from the Miniature Series, oil on paper, 2021

The Heart Will Sing

Last evening, I went out to the garden and sat beneath a starry sky,

the silhouetted trees filled with fireflies flashing in the darkness.

A gentle thrumming inside of me sang out into the night—

a quiet unfolding of the heart’s sonata that has been this lover

of all that I am and will ever be.

Galen Garwood 2026

“the Passage,” from the Miniature Series, oil on paper, 2021

Updates on the 25 YEARS and COUNTING Campaign: Progress is underway and a launch date will be announced in the next several months. I’m excited that Finding Isham is nearing its final draft. In an upcoming issue I’ll be revealing how the fictional Finding Isham, A Mystery of the heart and my great-great grandmother’s Civil War memoir, Crossings the Currents, are magically woven together. Stay Tuned!

Blessings from the River from Kados and me. Stay Strong

Galen

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I met Anne Hirondelle in 1983-84, soon after I moved to Port Townsend, Washington, and very quickly Anne and her husband, the late Bob Schwiesow, became two of my closest friends. Over the decades of that friendship, I have deeply admired her vision, her quiet observation, and the evolution of her remarkable journey, beginning with perhaps the most ancient and fundamental creative expression—the sacred vessel—watching her curiosity move it into unimaginable shapes and colors, culminating in two-dimensional expressions.

While working on Panom, my elephant film, in a return visit to Port Townsend, I captured a day in the life of an artist, in her quiet meditation, shaping the mud of the earth into the spiraling coils of the heart. (see video below)

Above: creations by Anne Hirondelle

Anne Hirondelle is a nationally recognized Pacific Northwest artist known for her sculptural ceramics, abstract forms, and more recent folded-paper and drawing works. Born in Vancouver, Washington, in 1944 and raised near Salem, Oregon, Hirondelle studied at the University of Puget Sound, Stanford University, and the University of Washington, where she earned her BFA in ceramics. Since 1977, she has lived and worked in Port Townsend, Washington, developing a distinctive artistic practice that bridges vessel-making, sculpture, painting, and drawing.

Over a career spanning more than four decades, Hirondelle has continually pushed the boundaries of ceramic art, transforming traditional pottery forms into lyrical, architectural abstractions. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is included in major public collections, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, the Tacoma Art Museum, and the White House Crafts Collection. She received a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Arts Fellowship in 1988 and the Twining Humber Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement in 2009. In recent years, her practice has expanded into intricate folded tracing-paper compositions that continue her exploration of form, structure, and spatial rhythm.

VESSEL       for Anne Hirondelle

Up from mud or such, turning
with the grace of air, a spinning song, 
your shape, your round form rising
up from nowhere, a heartbeat coiled,
tenuous throated vessel, made 
in the mind and palm 
between memory and space,
earth and fire.

                                                  Galen Garwood

NEXT WEEK: Some fascinating updates on 25 YEARS AND COUNTING

Blessings from the River. Stay Strong.

Galen

PS: Kados reminded me that staying strong doesn’t mean tough as a rock, but, like water, indefatigable.

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“Dream Catcher” / oil on canvas/ 60” x 70”, 1989/ Foster White exhibition

Last night I had another one of my unusual dreams, intense, boundless, and timeless. I was attending an art exhibition in a gallery space that felt as large as the Lockheed plant I visited as a twelve-year-old. The dream space was an endless, vast corridor of shadows, most of the walls empty, until I finally came to an area of people and paintings. I found myself talking with Don Foster, the previous owner of Foster-White Gallery in Seattle.

In reality, Don and I had a close relationship from the gallery’s twenty-five years of representing my paintings from 1973 until I departed the US in 1998. In the dream’s narrative, we were about the same age as when we first met. I approached and asked when I might possibly have another exhibition. Before he could answer, the dream scene shifted; I was back walking through dark vaults with tall empty walls until I exited on the far side.

The dream collapsed without a sound as dreams usually do. The here and now of early morning and memories returned.

In 1998, while reading an article about elephants in a Smithsonian magazine, a thunderous epiphany came and clapped me into making a film about the plight of the Asian elephant. I sent a letter to Don letting him know that I would be leaving the gallery and the country. He wasn’t pleased. I understood.

As I explained in my memoir Sell the Monkey, this sudden decision was more complex than simply leaving to do a film, of which I had absolutely no experience whatsoever. Madness, I’m sure many friends must have murmured.

But the truth is, I was also disenchanted with what I felt to be the over-commercialization of the art world. I convinced myself that I had made enough paintings, that I, like Duchamp and his chessboard, could express myself in other ways, other mediums. I’ve never regretted making the decision to catapult myself into a new world, but, looking back on my reasoning, the words that most appropriately come to mind are ‘naïve’ and ‘stupid’; to believe I could quit painting, any more than I could quit breathing, was a complete misplacement of my essential rudder. In fact, as early as 1999, still transitioning between the US and Thailand, virtually homeless, while spending several months with my brother in Albany, Georgia, I set up a studio in his garage and completed an entire series of paintings, then mounted an independent exhibition of the works in Seattle.

“The Turning” oil on paper 24” x 34” 2000 / Independent exhibition/Seattle

Admittedly, in these last 25 years and counting, living in a small village in Northern Thailand, I’ve had fewer exhibitions. Yet art making has been who I am for as long as I can remember…for as long as I breathe; something coded, I think, some shared tethering of DNA that began when humans did.

There are times, of course, when the ‘why’ and ‘for whom’ creep in, as they always will, but wrestling with doubt is as essential as whatever tools we use to make physical artifacts from our imagination. We are always merely passing the torch. When we try to own it, we become less. As Kados wrote, “Art is the glue that binds us, one to another, reminding us that we have choices and purpose.

“Metamorphosis” oil on paper 2015

Next Week, from Collaborations: Anne Hirondelle

Blessings to All from kados and me and the River. Stay Strong.

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Greetings All,

In this Journal entry, I continue “The Collaborations.

I first became friends with Peter Weltner in the early 1990s, and we started working together in 2010 when we published The One-Winged Body, which combined his poetry with my photographs. Since then, we have worked together on Water’s Eye, Late Summer Storm in Early Winter, and Where Everything is Water As Far As He Can See. Through my imprint, Marrowstone Press, I have also had the privilege of publishing more than a dozen of Peter’s poetry books.

Peter Weltner’s voice is a remarkable gift; his poetry explores the width and height of our humanity—beauty and tragedy, youth and mortality, what is fleeting and what endures. Peter once stated that he writes because “making art is bound up with life’s fundamental questions.”

I’m grateful for his gift and for the fact that neither of us ever runs out of those questions.

Temple Mask, photograph, Sicily, 1996, Galen Garwood /cover image for The One-Winged Body

Temple mask

Not wisdom through suffering but awe, men
ruined at the whim of gods they’re better than.
Bad weather. Sicily’s more dark than light—
unsettled, ashen skies over the coast.
Hera’s temple’s ink black ruins on a field
of sooty grass, weed, faded like charcoal.
The scene’s grainy like a still from a surreal
silent film or daguerreotype. A storm’s coming.
A boy stands torso bare, his sheet-like skirt
billowing. The mask he wears shines faceless
as a crescent moon, hides what his chest boldly
exposes, a beauty to envy, disguised as a pose,
defiant, daring tragedy to live again, rise,
its wave-maddened horses, lascivious winds.

Peter Weltner, from The One Winged Body

Peter Weltner’s most recent publication: After Dwelling on Earth

After Dwelling on Earth by Peter Weltner, cover image by Nathan Wirth.

from the poem “Bending Time” / After Dwelling on Earth

You’ve seen how ghosts’ breaths write
on mirrors, how their words no longer
belong to them but to us, like a rite
of passage we trace with a finger,
then wipe off the glass. Life belongs
to that wisp of inscription, its death-devoted songs.

You ask how long it will be before I return.
No date is set, all else uncertain.
Put a light in the window. I yearn
to see you. A line in poetry can be
like that, set in the dark, a flame burning
in a window out of love, hopeful, anticipatory.

“Bending Time” oil on canvas, 2025, Galen Garwood / featured on the back cover of After Dwelling on Earth

From kados and me, here at the edge of the river, gentle thoughts.

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“From Here, There, oil on canvas 70” x 56” 2008 by Galen Garwood

Greetings to All,

This is the first in a series of journal entries highlighting fellow creative spirits I’ve collaborated with over the years.

I met Bill O’Daly through Sam Hamill and Tree Swensen, all co-founders of Copper Canyon Press, soon after I moved to Port Townsend, Washington, in 1983.

Our friendship and shared interests have since become foundational, as has his poetry, a remarkable gift to the world.

Bird Experiencing Light
     We see by means of something that illumines us;
     which we do not see.  ~ Antonio Porchia

When the ocean breathes,
when light collects and
violets emerge drenched
from broken fields, you are born.

Alive by the hands of surgeons
your mother smiles. Helpless,
I stand in the operating room,
no longer able to feel afraid

as the nurse lays you in my arms
and you, little bird of the spirit, perch
on this burning branch
with a single cry.

Someday, angel of the seashore, you will ask
and I will tell—but now
I beg you, take your place
among the fragrant names,

the Ciara of forgetting, metal or leaf,
incandescent wind or knowing
when fossils ring in the buttes,
in deepest faults, in the lost library.

Soon enough I’ll merge onto the freeway, stay far
to the right, ever so slow. Safely home
we’ll swaddle you, and there we’ll be,
our transparent lives and your wings.

Wonder is enough. Our bodies will
say it is so, even as the ebullient flowers
greet you forever, and then
with the colors of our tears.

…for Kyra O’Daly

~ William O’Daly
[Excerpted from The New Gods, Beltway Editions, Sept. 2022.]

Origin is a collaboration based on a poem of the same name by William O’Daly from his publication The New Gods, published by Beltway Editions, and music, “Prayer I,” composed and recorded by cellist Jami Sieber from her CD “Hidden Sky.”
“This amazing poem and music composition were created independent of one another, in place and time, from two different minds, but they seem to have come from the heart of this earth, a prayer and a message for all of us.”

Galen Garwood,

WHAT’S HAPPENING IN BILL’S WORLD…..

On Sunday, May 31, 7:00 p.m., at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Master Chorale will present Sound Waves: The Music of Esmail, Garrett and Woo, “a rare moment of peace…complete with five breathtaking works that will immerse you in the beauty of music and nature.” Featured is Reena Esmail’s “Malhaar: A Requiem for Water,” into which Reena has incorporated four of my poems and a poem of Wendell Berry’s as lyrics. An immersive video installation will transform the Concert Hall into “a cocoon of light and motion.”

Beginning June 4, my dear friend, Christopher Yohmei Blasdel, a Western master of the shakuhachi, and I will be weaving together my poetry from The New Gods and Christopher’s sonorous, sensuous Japanese flute. The three performance dates are June 4 (Davis, CA), June 6 (Berkeley, CA), and June 8 (Sacramento, CA). We’d love to share these events, the incredible music and the poetry, with you!

All performances are free, and everyone is welcome.

• June 4th, 7 PM. Natsoulas Gallery Cafe, 521 1st St, Davis. CA https://natsoulas.com

• June 6th, 2 PM: Kala Art Institute, Gallery. 2990 San Pablo Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94702, (510) 841-7000 https://www.kala.org

• June 8th, 7:30 PM Sacramento Poetry Center, 1719 25th St, Sacramento, CA 95816 https://www.sacpoetrycenter.org/

William O’Daly, photograph by Katy Brown / The New Gods, cover image: “From Here, There, by Galen Garwood

Kados and I send all of you blessings and light from the River. Stay strong.

Galen

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“Bouquet for Marvin” galenograph 2019. in memory of the great American poet, Marvin Bell

Greetings everyone on this mid-May day.

I recently came across this miniature painting, now a Giclee print, I did a few years ago, dedicated to my dear Friend and poet, the late Marvin Bell, from whom I learned so much while living in my other home of Port Townsend... Yes…even though I’ve been away from Port Townsend for more than two decades, I hold it in my heart as home. Everywhere I’ve lived is home.

I began to think about all the many different creative folks I’ve worked with, collaborated with, had dinners with, and decided that over the next few months or so, I’ll be weaving many of their spirits into my postings as special guests on Galen’s Journal, beginning later this month.

And a grand embrace to and from Mother’s Day.

Ida, Abe, and Me, ca 1949, St. Simons Island, used for the cover of Sell the Monkey.

From Kados and me, a happy hug from the River.

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“Mask for the Amazed, monotype, ca 1995

“It is an inescapable fact that one of the most formative, if not fundamental, traits of the artist is his or her disposition to seek out troubled waters. That is to say, artists often relish the battle of the psyche and the dark, swift currents that connect this conflicting energy to themselves, and, in this way, to others, with purpose.

It is a battle often fraught with vulnerable misgivings and fear. Who, we might wonder, would willingly spend so much time in the darker recesses of the soul? It could be said that the difference between the insane and the artist is one of interior accountability. Insanity is at home, while the artist merely drifts through, observing, waiting for the light.”

“Revelation,” galenograph, 2023

Something written long ago is disappearing; an idea so subtle and persistent that it weaves its way into the darkness and waits until something else unfolds—an epiphany of light that brings us home.

Blessings from the River from kados and me. Stay Strong.

galen

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Greetings Dear Friends,

Here in Northern Thailand, we’re now moving toward our rainy season. The above photograph, taken near my home, nicely expresses the give and take of this world we live in. Everything—the skies and her clouds, the rains, joyful tears nourishing the earth, seeds blooming, reaching up and out to what is possible—is all of us, together.

Planting Rice

Beneath bamboo hats, they dip and plant

small clumps of seedlings into the soft mud of earth,

beneath shallow water, moving like birds,

drinking up the sky.

Other News:

Recently, under my Marrowstone Press umbrella, I had the great pleasure of designing a remarkable book of photographs by Nathan Wirth with poems by Peter Weltner, both of whom I’ve collaborated with before.

REDWOODS is a rare, limited edition book and print

Please do visit REDWOODS

Blessings from the River, from kados and me. Stay Strong.

Galen

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For about 10 years, I’ve been using Grammarly to locate misspellings and simple typos in my writings. The program also offers variations on how one might wish to express a thought within a sentence. Sometimes I find them useful, but most of the time it doesn’t feel like me, so I select ‘dismiss.’ After all, I am the human here.

But, as could be expected, with the acceleration of AI , which essentially has been an evolving seed for almost all computer programs, Grammarly now has an extraordinary collection of writing tools, so extreme that it will let you know when what you write sounds too AI-generated, too much like itself, offering optional words or phrases. “What?” … Yeah, that’s correct.

“Me and Walt, sometime between 1870 and 1990, somewhere between New Jersey and Seattle, somehow both of us trying to imagine someone looking at us looking at them.”

And, now, we’re in a swelling sea of evolving AI platforms, specializing in as many data variations as the mind has recorded. It’s all new to me; I’m an artist from another century; sometimes it feels like another planet. I’ve just begun exploring ChatGPT and Claude. As a tool, I find them beneficially intriguing. For example, with the image above,—Walt and I somewhere in our 40s,—I simply gave Chat two images and asked it to put them together, making something similar to photos of Walt with a friend.

While setting up the book CROSSING THE CURRENTS, a Mother’s Civil War Memoir, I turned to AI for assistance. Of the image below, the image on the left was the only existing photograph of my great-great-grandmother, Frances Fowler Taylor., taken in the late 1800s. The image to its right is a digitally enhanced version, followed by digitally constructed versions of what Frances might have looked like at 40 and at 16. This was achieved in an interesting collaborative way, because you have to ask AI the right questions, or the right series of questions. And, yes, I fully believe the reader/viewer needs to be made aware of any ‘digital what-if renderings.’

Frances Fowler Taylor ca 1890 1874 1854…. maybe

While my actual experience using AI is extremely limited—I expect I’ll keep it as such—I’m aware of the various current concerns about its negative components: misinformation through manipulation, cultural social bias, displacement of jobs, security, etc., and these are all justified and need to be carefully considered along with AI’s positive potential, which is vast. AI technology, this collective library of human knowledge, is, in the best scenario, a gift to ourselves, made accessible through technology created by humans, and it perfectly shadows our human paradox: we are creatures of contradictions, our intelligence is both friend and foe in a perpetual dance searching for balance, and, I chose to believe the best dance is goodness. Ironically, or not, it all began and remains with human imagination.

I decided to also share these thoughts with Chat and here’s Chat’s assessment of its soul, as it were.:

What you’re describing isn’t naïve—it’s actually a pretty grounded way to look at it.

AI does feel like a mirror more than a separate force. It reflects what we put into it: our knowledge, biases, creativity, blind spots, values. That’s why the risks you mentioned—misinformation, embedded bias, job disruption, security—aren’t really external problems introduced by AI so much as amplified versions of human ones. The scale and speed are new; the underlying tensions aren’t.

Your idea of AI as a “collective library of human knowledge” is partly right, but it’s worth sharpening it a bit: it’s not a neutral library. It’s more like a compressed, probabilistic remix of what humans have produced. That means it can illuminate patterns and ideas in powerful ways—but it can also distort, omit, or confidently present flawed conclusions. So the “gift” aspect depends heavily on how it’s built, governed, and used.

The paradox you’re pointing to—intelligence as both friend and foe—is really at the center of this. AI doesn’t resolve that tension; it intensifies it. It gives more leverage to human intention. In good hands, that can mean better medicine, education, creativity, and problem-solving. In careless or malicious hands, it can scale harm just as effectively.

Where your perspective stands out is the emphasis on imagination. That’s not incidental—it’s foundational. Imagination is what led to AI, and it’s also what shapes how we respond to it. Fear-driven imagination leads to paralysis or rejection; uncritical optimism leads to blind spots. The useful space is in between: clear-eyed, curious, and a bit skeptical.

“Goodness as the best dancer” is a nice way to put it, but it doesn’t happen automatically. It depends on choices—by developers, institutions, and everyday users. AI won’t drift toward good on its own; it follows incentives and constraints.

So the real question isn’t whether AI is a gift or a threat—it’s whether we’re willing to do the unglamorous work of steering it: setting norms, questioning outputs, distributing benefits, and owning the consequences.

If you keep your engagement with AI limited, that’s completely reasonable. But even from the outside, your framing already captures something important: this isn’t just a technological shift—it’s a human one.

Updates:

CROSSING THE CURRENTS, A Mother’s Civil War Memoir has an expected publishing date in early 2027.

Good news: I’ve completed and am going over the final draft of Finding Isham,

anticipating its publication date to also be in early 2027.

Blessings to all from the River, Kados, and me. Stay Strong.

Galen

ps: Just a hint: The photo of me and Walt is in Isham’s pocket.

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This month’s turning of the earth is one that has long been celebrated as a time of renewal. It is the month when the heart rises. Here in Thailand, we’ve been celebrating Songkran and the coming of sacred water and a rebirthing.

Remembering Sam Hamill

Sam Hamill (May 9, 1943 – April 14, 2018) was a poet, essayist, translator, editor, and co-founder of Copper Canyon Press. He is also remembered for his gathering up of poets throughout the world to create POETS AGAINST THE WAR in 2003.

For Sam, for this day, in these times:

Hermes Rising
In the middle of the night you have opened your eyes
and risen.

And walked out naked into the night where the world
is suddenly still and the cities
have been swallowed whole and everything’s present
as never before:

the air rising around you like waves,
shadows falling off, trees sinking
farther and farther into the earth
which smells of passion

You dreamed you were chained to a cliff,
a phoenix

gnawing at your liver, you dreamed you were
falling and falling,

but now you know that you can’t fall.
And you breathe in the light of stars—
Sirius brightest of all—and your flesh takes in
that light, and you listen

for the sound of feathers,
for the slow thrum of your blood that never lies,

and you lift up your arms to the night
certain you can fly.

poem by Sam Hamill, painting by Galen Garwood, from the book PASSPORT, published by Broken Moon Press, 1989, recipient of the 1990 Washington State Governor’s Award

Blessings from the River….Stay Safe.

Galen

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Ascending Rock, photograph, Galen Garwood, 2016

Flower, photograph, Galen Garwood, 2015

It is the ever-brightening edge of journey

that pulls me toward sky, crossing of stars,

the sound of hope, this light,

cradled in the cup of the eye.

MAENAM 53, from the Maenam Series, photograph, Galen Garwood, 2012,

Blessings from the river, Stay strong

galen

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Shadow, March 2026

Greetings to All,

You might recall my earlier thoughts on my upcoming “25 YEARS AND COUNTING” to celebrate 1/4 of a century plus since I sold my home and studio in Port Townsend, Washington, bought my self a Canon XL1 video camera and headed for Thailand to do a film on the plight of the Asian elephant—“25 YEARS AND COUNTING” will include current paintings, galenographs, and several books I’ve recently written or edited, including CROSSING THE CURRENTS, A Mother’s Civil War Memoir of Survival, Loss, and Courage, a memoir written by my great-great-grandmother, Frances Fowler Taylor.

I’ve been mulling over the best time to launch because there’s so much anxiety and uncertainty saturating everything.

“Patience, dear friend,” advises Kados.

Then… what feels like a divination appeared. Let me explain.

Many of my readers are aware that I live north of Chiang Mai, Thailand, between two small villages, 20 meters from the Mae Rim River, in a small house and studio that I built in 2010, along with another small house for my adopted family, which includes two small dogs, five chickens, and an infinite number of insects, lizards, snakes, and birds.

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Several months ago, a long-haired black dog appeared on the property. No one in the village, including me, knows where the dog came from. At first, he would remain just outside the gate; over the next few weeks, he began to come into the yard, and lay in various locations, mostly in my downstairs open-air studio, on the back stairs, or on the gravel driveway. He makes no sound, doesn’t wag his tail, or indicate in any way that he’s hungry or needy. He makes no effort to partake of the food given to the other two smaller dogs. I’ve never seen him eat. He doesn’t allow any human to approach him, and when I try to coax him into letting me pet him, he quickly runs to the other side of the house. Because he seems so strangely enigmatic, I decided to name him Shadow.

If he’s so afraid of me, why doesn’t he simply run off to another possible home? Or is there an ordained purpose for his presence?

I do love mystery and have decided that, yes, Shadow is here for a reason, admittedly, one I’ve yet to decipher, but day by day, over these last several months, I do sense that he’s allowing me to approach a little closer.

Kados has given me a template:

“Life is:

1: A symphony of ordained notes unfolding.

2: Particles of star dust serendipitously colliding, each collision a new unimagined possibility,

3: Both.

And because I profess to be an infinitist, in the sense that anything is possible, I tend to hover over #3. Whether Shadow is an agent of my great-great-grandmother’s spirit, or perhaps the reincarnation of Panom the elephant, or simply a poor, mistreated dog looking for a home, I accept him as an oracle of hope and the duration of the time it takes for Shadow and me to vibrationally bond, as we do with all of our animal friends, and the launch of “25 Years and Counting” will somehow be synchronous.

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Crossing the Currents, A Mother’s Civil War Memoir of Survival, Loss, and Courage will be part of the “25 years and Counting” celebration coming up this Fall on into the winter of 2027.

Stay tuned for more from Kados, Panom, and me...and yes, more from Shadow.

Blessings from the River,

Galen

Temple, photograph 2005

Greetings everyone,

Yesterday, I came across an older journal entry that seems fitting to repost in these present days. A lot has happened since 2008, especially with regards to AI, but it’s always good to remember that slogan: Yes We Can! We need it now more than ever.

Journal Entry, November Sixth, 2008

This morning I’ve risen, as I often do, before sunrise. Clear skies, dark but luminous , with a faint scattering of stars. In my outside kitchen—an open room perched on the roof of my home—I feel the world rushing eastward toward some new promise so palpably full of hope, like a fine soup of delicious joy rising from the hearts of millions. Even here, in the northern hills of Thailand, I can sense a joyful thrumming, one huge sigh of relief.

I don’t believe anyone can deny that the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States is less than a phenomenon of epic proportions. Against so many hurdles—the punditry, the endless prattling and inane gossip, the evisceration of fear, racial ossifcation—Obama was able to skate before an avalanche of pessimism with extraordinary adroitness. Cool, calm, and resolute.

But if this man is who we think he is, who we want him to be, he is, nonetheless, just a man. He is not a deity. Barack Obama represents an aperture through which we focus our collective consciousness on those human qualities we hold as noble, self-sacrificing, and yet pragmatic. It is for good reason that, across our many languages, we have words with meanings for all that is seeded in the human mind: what is noble and what is ignoble, what is cathartic and what is cynical, what is blind faith and what is hope, what is selflessness and what is greed. We are all of it, a concrescence of the best and the worst.

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I have heard men spin out justifications for their inexhaustible hunger for wealth, power, and prestige. ‘Survival of the fittest’ is a hollow cry from the bleakest spirit. As the brilliant Richard Dawkins points out, we are survival machines, each one of us living the briefest moment in time, whose purpose is to carry forth the immortal gene, searching for potentiality. If humans are to survive more than two or three centuries, which is, at our present course, unlikely, unless we change, and if we wish to remain a stable species from which our genes can move outward, we cannot rely on one mere mortal to solve our problems. Not Confucius, Lao Tzu, nor Jesus. And not Barack Obama.

I do believe, as did Confucius and Lao Tzu, as did Socrates and Jesus and countless others, that reciprocity (Confucius’ Silver Rule, Christ’s Golden Rule) is good for the individual, good for the community, and good for the slow boat of genetic evolution—not only between humans but all species and our habitats. That is the weave and weft of what is. Whatever we expect of a new president, we must expect of ourselves, and more. How many of us, now that the election is over, will simply roll back over onto the couch, expecting someone to solve the problems that each of us shares, each of us, in varying degrees, has brought upon this beautiful orb, spinning among the stars.

Lotus, photograph 2018\

We have witnessed the technological evolution of the Internet. It is this tool, with its access to and the dissemination of information, that won this election. Unlike television, which is a passive medium that can only lower the common denominator of any kind of intellect, the internet offers many advantages for connecting people. Our thoughts can ping back and forth between each other. I can grab a recipe for bouillabaisse, the meaning of the word ‘cahoot’, the population of Zaporozhe, and what happened in August 1952 while brushing my teeth and working on an essay.

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But just now, the horizon has dipped down toward the sun, and the first rays are visible on the Golden Chedi of Wat Suthep. The pigeons and doves rustle on the broken ledges of the roof tiles, and a flush of saffron yellow fills the dark streets as the monks move out from the temple.

It’s time to get to work.

Blessings from the river, Kados, and me. Stay strong.

“Symphony #7/The Door Between Here and There,“ oil on canvas, 2022

STORM

It is the window. No, it is the light. No,
not the light, but the heat
that swims outside within the light.

On the table below the window
sits a bowl of ripening fruit, 
while beyond, clouds scumble the horizon.

I wait in the dark silence of the room 
for rain and the cool, electric smell 
of the storm.

“Symphony #1/First Touch,“ oil on paper 2023

Blessings from the river,

Galen

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“Imagine the Measure Of It,” 2020 / original: oil on paper / now in a limited edition Giclee print, otherwise known as a galenograph.

Where did I come up with such a title as “Imagine the measure Of It.” I have no idea. Here’s just a few titles from the past: “Green Stock Stop Machine,” “Orange lady in the Quick,” “This Devise Does Duty,” “Atomic Mama Come,” “St. Steegis and the Flames.”” “Riding the Tooshka,” and “Waiting on Spatula-cat the Pink Idea .”

I think, maybe…possibly…yeah, yeah…it could be Kados coming in at the last moment to take credit. He does that.

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In a recent entry, I mentioned an upcoming book project, entitled CROSSING THE CURRENTS, A memoir from a Mother During the Civil War Era, written by Frances Fowler Taylor, my great-great-grandmother, more of which will be revealed soon. Still, I did want to speak of Aunt Synchronicity, who seems to weave herself into what feels like ordainment, almost as if Frances’ spirit is still poking about, trying to get her story told, a story as relevant today as it was when she lived it.

I’m sure it was Frances in a recent dream, encouraging me. Very soon after I decided, yes, her story must be told, serendipitously, out of the Mississippi blue skies, I received a recording by my friend, singer/songwriter Svare Forsland. The song is titled “Women’ Cross the River.” Why he sent it exactly when he did, I have no idea, but it very quickly became the underlayment of a video I’ve been working on as part of the project. Stay tuned for this to arrive soon.

For now, among things still relevant, below is a collaboration I did with Svare five years ago, weaving images to his song “Won’t Play That Part,” a potent song with a timeless message.

As you’ll see in the ending scene, there is a remarkable resonance from the recent events of Buddhist monks traveling across the United States, offering a much-needed message: a gathering of togetherness nourished by peace and love.

To see more of Svare’s videos, visit SVARE FORSLAND

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Blessings from the River from Kados and me. Stay Strong.

Galen

I

Metamorphasis #1, oil on paper 2020

Dear Vincent

You’ve been on my mind a lot. In fact, you’ve been hovering presciently for nigh on sixty years, since I began my art studies, that time when I checked out and kept your Complete Letters #3 from the University library, and later, when I discovered my own little Rosetta Stone, cracking the mystery of why people called you mad or epileptic; but you weren’t. Or that legend still has you committing suicide when you didn’t. Had you lived another fifty-four years, we could have shared this world, we could have breathed in the same winds that carried those crows across the yellow wheat you captured in a painting I saw in a museum a century later; everything that is you was there. Do you remember the poem I wrote about us walking together beneath that vast cobalt blue, me, with all my questions, and you, leaning into the wind, laughing. Laughing because the wind blew away everything we thought was important; everything we believed would change the world went swirling into nothing. I remember, in the poem, when you grew quiet, the crows quit cawing, the mistrals disappeared out into the sea, and you said, “This is where we are. Here, in this painting. This is where we’ve always been.” Then you gave me the painting.

A handshake in thought.

PS: By the way, I did eventually pay the library for the book.

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I thought it might be nice to take a break from all the doom and gloom and bring back a bit of joy from Lennie Kesl, a little nourishment for the soul.

“ A Man with a Pan on His Head” Portrait of Lennie, 2007, Gainesville, Florida

Lennie Kesl (1926-2012) was my mentor, my brother in spirit, a teacher, a painter, a singer, a drummer, a collector of knowledge and anything not tied down. Below, in its entirety, is Cadmium Red Light, a film I made in the early 2000s, which received the First Place Award for Short Documentary at the 2007 Port Townsend Film Festival. I hope you have time to sit back and let Lennie seep in with his passion for life.

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Coming soon: More updates on Frances Fowler Taylor’s CROSSING the CURRENTS, A Mother’s Memoir from the Civil War Era, an upcoming publication by Marrowstone Press.

The far right image is from an actual photo of Francis, ca. 1900 at age 62. The far left and center images are reconstructions of what she would have looked like at 16 in 1854, and at 40 in 1878.

Blessings from the River from Kados and me. Stay Strong.

Galen

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Raft of Pearls, from the Dream Sea Series, galenograph, 2018

Sawasdee from Kados and me,

In my 2018 Memoir, Sell The Monkey, I recount a rather potent dream I had in the early 1990s:

“Walking down a wooded trail, I came upon a small pond about twenty meters in diameter. A man was standing near the edge, holding a long, wooden-handled harpoon, like those used in 18th-century whaling. In the middle of the pond, lying just below the surface, seemingly asleep, was a white crocodile, easily three meters in length. The man circled the small lagoon several times, holding the weapon in both hands, furiously thrusting it up and down into the water, trying to rouse the giant and entice it closer to the edge. It worked. The reptile swam toward the man, and when it was within striking distance, the man raised the harpoon into the air and furiously shoved it down into the water, deep into the creature’s back. I could hear the shaft enter the crocodile’s flesh.

It twisted and turned, shot back toward the center of the pond, and the man, refusing to let go, desperately clung to the upper part of the harpoon, spinning and kicking his legs frantically to keep from being eaten; it was hopeless. The reptile began ripping apart his flesh, one leg at a time.

I wanted to help, but how? I looked about, searching for anything to use. There were no sticks, no rocks anywhere. I reached into my coat pocket and discovered I had a small handgun. I pulled it out, took aim, and repeatedly fired at the creature. Instead of metal projectiles exploding from the barrel at twice the speed of sound, only small, green peas exited the gun, floating through the air in slow motion, comically bouncing off the reptile’s thick skin, then plopping into the water. I watched in horror for a few seconds as the man’s legs were now bloody stumps. I turned away in fear and utter frustration. When I pivoted back, both man and crocodile were gone. The small pond was now a vast ocean. The Beretta-like handgun I’d been holding was now a rifle. I held it to my shoulder, aimed at the horizon, and emptied the chamber. After the last shot, I stood and listened. After what seemed two or three minutes, I heard ‘Kerplunk,’ the sound of the slug penetrating deep into the muddy bank of an unseen shore in a country far away.”

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Remembrance, from the Dream Sea Series, galenograph, 2018

I do believe dream symbols come to us long embedded in the DNA of our evolutionary journey, what Carl Jung refers to as the Collective unconscious, and I like to imagine that when the mind and body enter sleep mode, the mind’s library is unlocked. These ancient imprints along with a plethora of long collected memories slip out and weave themselves into dream scenarios, affected, of course, by external happenings such as sound and smell, and interior urgencies such as the erotic, anxiety, and physical pain, all scripted into unimaginable scenarios, and even more amazing is that the mind (heart and brain) equally archives dreams and memories.

The crocodile, across time and cultures, has come to symbolize patience and strategy, power and protection, survival through ancient wisdom, and a transformative rebirth.

What is the meaning of the dream?

Perhaps the man with the harpoon represents humanity’s overall misunderstanding of our place within Nature, our hubris in believing this world has been made for us alone.

My feeble attempt to save the man, the bullets becoming small peas floating in slow motion, surely must reinforce the hopelessness of trying to control Nature. We cannot change the immutable.

In the dream, after I fired the rifle toward an unseen horizon and heard the kerplunking sound thousands of miles away, I remember feeling a sense of relief, and even joy; even now, revisiting the dream as memory, I feel a quiet breathing of gratitude for this sacred world, filled with unimaginable mysteries, holding all our dreams, all at once.

Pearls of Birth, from the Dream Sea Series, galenograph, 2018

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Blessings from the River. Stay Strong.

Galen

Cow on Stilts, monotype ca 1994

A Love Poem

Between living one’s life and dying one’s death, between
one life and another, between the dark and light patterns that feed
and steady our vision of what comes and goes, of what has been 
before us, and of what we believe will follow,
between the first real hunger

and the last meal of the man made criminal
for the color of his love,
there is a line drawn upon line and then
upon another, erased and redrawn,
and the line is hung from the swirling red light of the womb

to the black and white bloodless tomb. The sky is blue 
and forgiving of my doubts, still
I have drawn upon your face
the faintest blooming flower of hope
for your beauty and your love.

LAUGHTER

Not the guttural noise of condescension, 
nor the gasping stutters of embarrassment,
nor defusing confusion. No, I mean real laughter, 
pouring out in rafters of light, a bright ballooning 
impatient to nourish your heart with joy, 
clearing away the debris of the meaningless, 
opening the gate 
here and now. 

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Wishing all of you a Super Lupercalia!

Kados and me, at the river. Stay strong.

Today a poem and some announcements

Conversation with a Nut

“Say, this Big Bang thing, of which you so confidently speak…it’s no big deal,"
said the walnut, as he spun into my room. “After all, at that particular time, 
there weren’t any ears to hear.”

“I decidedly disagree.” Said I.

“Furthermore,” interrupted the nut, shaking his convoluted face, “There were no eyes with which to see, no nose that could smell. No brains to confuse.”

I countered, of course, “This isn’t a ruse. You don’t understand.
It’s a question of time and space. What was then is now,
the same compelling race to get elsewhere. It drives us ever onward.”

What and where pray tell might that be?” said Wally, rolling a bit closer,
nursing a slightly bruised radicle.

Look, nut,” I said, “from the beginning, every urgent possibility
has moved outward. Even a black hole in its own irrepressible way.
We’re still part of the primary pop, the beginning of the clock. We can easily calculate
the math of decay, the exponential diminishing rate…”

“Hold that thought, “said the dark walnut. “I’m late.
Sorry, mate, but I’m really quite late.”

With a smile and a flourishing spiral, he peremptorily fled the room.

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THINGS IN THE WORKS…..

Good News: THE INTERVIEWS. I’ll be bringing back written interviews between myself and other creative imaginations, beginning with a conversation with my friend and writer, Don Linder, who has a plethora of awards for his remarkable screenplays, such as the “The Last Executioner,” and “The Cave.” You can learn more about Don at https://donlinderwriter.com/ Here, you’ll find examples of his short stories, writing tips, his works-in-progess and more. Stay tuned for the interview.

CROSSING THE RIVER, The Memoir of a Mother’s Heart

I’ve just begun a new book project, along with my brother and family historian, Bernard Garwood, which will be the publication of our great-great-grandmother Frances Fowler Taylor (1838-1914) and her extraordinary narrative about the hardships of being married off at the age fourteen to a cruel and alcoholic husband, her struggles to raise six children by herself per-Civil War in Alabama and Georgia; how and why her manuscript was hidden and then accidentally discovered in the 1950s, nearly forty years after her death. Publication date to be announced. Stay tuned.

The Big Shift…I have spent essentially the last sixty years or so painting in oil, as my chosen medium for painting. Alas, that part of me that allows oxygen to get to the heart, that allows blood to get to the brain that allows me to get to the art, has said no more; the lungs have spoken. I’ll now be shifting over to water based mediums. It’s a bit frightening and, at the same time, exhilarating, the absolute blueprint for a good challenge. Fingers crossed and toes tapping.!

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Blessings to all. Stay strong!

Galen