The Writings of Loren Stell

Happy Ashes

drizzle into Lake Travis waters—Texas’ deepest, as waves of sadness ferry me,
my son Jason and your ashes, Geb. Along with Sophie’s, your Abyssinian playmate.
We sail remembering your Tibetan terrier mop and waggle beaching us for privy needs on Fisher’s Island. Almost stalling our catboat in riptides off Long Island’s race. . .
The wind builds, as your stardust and Sophie’s sink. Waves buck randomly—much
the way you yanked a leash. Reciting Walt Whitman, we add his music to the gusts:
It’s not chaos or death . . . It’s form, union, plan and eternal life. It’s happiness.

An Office Walkabout

Living Batons

His hands were living batons drawing thunder and whisper from 28 voices. Magic wands
blending eight hours a week of concerts and rehearsal. No flailing a la Leonard Bernstein—
no haughty criticisms, no impatient taps on a music stand. Our director was always off-book—
readying us for performance with beats—pausing, speeding-up, teasing, coaxing. But Mr. Plot’s hands danced hardest—sussing out the meaning of the words—squeezing rapture from those
lucky enough to sing in Davidson College’s male chorus. To steep in music’s essence.

An Office Walkabout

Toothsome

On a hippo tooth—roots up—perches a mottled stone. The molar once flashed
by the most dangerous animal in Africa presents a pebble, retrieved off Patmos.
The beach where St. John, pastor and poet, likely walked, welcoming apocalyptic revelations. Face-up, the rock, bears an “S” hieroglyph, a reminder that saintliness
and the satanic are often embedded where land meets the sea.

An Office Walkabout

Doubling Jacqueline

Yellow bonneted American doll, doubled, your plasticity trembles, gracing
matriarchal power, even death, with your glance. According to my artist
friend’s study, you tilt-a-whirled that fateful Dallas day, when a sniper’s
bullet tore John, your Camelot king away from your convertible perch.
Years later, again, air betrayed JohnJohn, your prince, in his small plane stalled
over fogbound sea. Elemental betrayal of wife and mother, yet still you glow.

An Office Walkabout

Nose Left Profile

I stopped sculping after my Everest of a nose. Many wonderings of my ‘Is’ or ‘MEs’ smutch words, not clay. Plying visitors with questions flowing out of prior questions. Fragile explorations of the ball of yarn tangle of fallback thoughts and feelings. Fracking the mind’s wheelhouse patterns before they harden . . .

An Office Walkabout

Nose Right Profile

After an epic retrospective of Giacometti’s work at MOMA, I bought self-hardening clay.
This first—and last—bust mushed thin sixty plus years ago, fixated, like the master sculptor,
on the nose. The shadow dance of green dents record in aged color, the passion and passivity eroding the lava of my years. All first sculptures being self- portraits—it’s said—what was

An Office Walkabout

Pewter Dancers-iMac

graceful and flowing on whatever shelf-stage you fling yourselves, perpetually arcing, perhaps to strains of Appalachian Spring, the dance Aaron Copeland wrote for his friend, Martha Graham. “Many can write a three-minute song like ’tis a gift to be simple,” Copeland said, “but art extends music like a butterfly makes a garden into a symphony—letting it leap from ear to heart.”

An Office Walkabout

Unvoiced Music-iMac

Music is spirit in-chant. Syncopated by silence. Ethers heard by inner ears like Beethoven’s—angelic, intergalactic gamboling. Wese’s lingering melodies bowed on her now cracked violin—
the gaiety she recanted in college to play second fiddle to a dour husband. Appalachian
dulcimer droning may curl down along-side haunting Lakota flute-song. A lyric décor
for never-before-attempted-modulations improvised by heartsick visitors. Guard figurines
of this domain of broken strings, were once pillars on an African Chief’s throne.

An Office Walkabout

Surf-tumbled Torso

Denuded by sandblasts and sun, pockmarked ancient reef with gull-caw memory, sluiced from pre-historic sea. Elkhorn limestone sculpted by undercurrents’ flow—pitched high and dry—you testify life hides and thrives in ink-black hollows from which we arose eons ago.

An Office Walkabout

Seawhirl trochus

from the Indo Pacific, beached near a poetic festival of white daffodils, spiral away our daily hugs of what’s negative. Fan the alabaster purity of inner fire white hot, like
the earth’s belly! Shine one of your leis atop the fragile awareness centers of our spine. Burnish our skin’s historical/alchemical sensors. Twist intentions and actions with pliable white radiance that masks all colors in plain sight and poultices the unknown we fear.