BOOK LAUNCH!
Did you play the video? It’s only 3 seconds long :). I made it myself, says the toddler in me.
Please join me on the magical journey into the mind and heart of mid-century Spanish-Mexican painter Remedios Varo. In Hunting the Cosmos, published by Shanti Arts, each poem and tiny story is inspired by the surreal paintings of Varo.
3EGPW9W Mimetismo (Mimicry), 1960 by Remedios Varo ? Spanish-Mexican Surrealist Painting of Woman Blending Into Interior
The story I wrote based on this painting, translated as Mimesis or Mimicry, was originally published in Roi Fainéant Press and is in the new book.
Mimesis or Mimicry
after Remedios Varo’s painting Mimesis
I have become the focus of my tabby cat, Mimesis. She will ignore flies and mice, but rather than being lazy, she is watchful, always napping or hiding near me, as if she can sense clandestine movement and the appalling trajectory of my life. Much like Mimesis, I’ve never been an active person. I like my favorite chair, this week’s sewing next to me, an occasional cup of linden tea, perhaps with a pinch of rose hips. I do sweep and dust, but only when I can’t coax a girl from the village to do it for a coin. I’m also careful, never walking under ladders or putting shoes on the table. I’ve never dropped my scissors. If necessary, I will knock on wood prophylactically. But last time I did that, Mimesis began her surveillance. A girl I had out to clean set my calfskin pumps on a table to sweep underneath. My heart tripped over itself in its haste. I screamed. They will bring bad luck! Take them off the table! Which she did immediately. Then I knocked on both wooden arms of my chair. Imagine my surprise when they knocked back.
Shortly after that event, I noticed that the limbs of furniture seemed sympathetic to my emotions. Mimesis became my mirror reflection, eyeing me always, perhaps afraid to let me out of her sight. This morning, I tried to get out of my chair to put the kettle on and discovered that my legs were wooden, and I could not rise. My hands had become one with the chair.
I was interviewed about the book by Lorette C. Luzajic, founder and EIC of The Ekphrastic Review.
READ INTERVIEW HERE
Lorette asked me why I combined stories and poems:
“Truly, [the format] chose me. I began writing about Varo in the flash fiction form. The two are very well suited. But my own self began to intrude into the project. What I feel about art, about being an artist, about learning from those before us. Some of this evolved into poems found in the collection.”
If you love art, literature, wild excursions into a magical world, pick up a copy of Hunting the Cosmos!
It took me eighteen years from the first story I wrote about my father’s workshop in our basement until publication for Scrap: Salvaging a Family. Some of that time was “down time,” including from the day ELJ Editions accepted the manuscript until it was actually published. So in the meantime I was writing other things, usually poetry, but some micro or flash fiction, too.
