Under the Banner of the One Eyed Monk

from Water to Water

alexmichaelstein — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 01:53:45 +0000

It has rained at least for parts of the last eight days. The attendant celestial phenomena, thunder, lightning, rainbows…have felt something like magical, I suppose, though such phenomena are ordinary enough in the statistical sense. In any event, it was like nothing for me to draw this figure, and the text by which it is attended, though I cannot be sure what it is that is meant by either part in its isolation, or by both parts in their conjoinment.

A collection of Alex Stein’s drawings, “The Life and Art of Josan,” is available at WadeRosenPublishing.com

alexmichaelstein — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:20:01 +0000

A love poem.

alexmichaelstein — Thu, 28 May 2009 14:17:40 +0000

Pictures from the Guru-World.

To purchase a collection of Alex Stein’s drawings, go to WadeRosenPublishing.com

Let Me Tell You, Sparky

alexmichaelstein — Mon, 18 May 2009 21:53:58 +0000

The artist Kenneth Patchen has a drawing in which a lugubrious, gentle, strange, creature-of-some-other-world is looking out from the canvas, saying: “I proclaim this international shut your big fat flapping mouth week.” I can’t top that. No one can.

“The Life and Art of Josan,” a collection of drawings, is available from Wade Rosen Publishing at WadeRosenPublishing.com

Higher Poetic Faculties

alexmichaelstein — Tue, 12 May 2009 13:53:30 +0000

I was thinking of the German metaphysician and educator Rudolph Steiner’s determined, chalkboard diagrams of the “levels of consciousness” which always struck me, first, as hilariously too-earnest and, second, as pure, if entirely inadvertant, art.

Jellyfish

alexmichaelstein — Fri, 08 May 2009 23:21:21 +0000

It is strange pleasure to turn jelly-fish to any account whatever, let alone poetry. Like making art out of soup cans, perhaps. Or a banquet out of stones.

The Flaws

alexmichaelstein — Tue, 05 May 2009 19:04:40 +0000

It is a curious thing how art can make beauty of everything except self-deception.

That Blue Amulet

alexmichaelstein — Fri, 01 May 2009 14:02:46 +0000

There is a nursery rhyme that was passing through my head the whole while I was working out this drawing:

“Old woman, old woman, old woman,” quoth I/”Oh, wither, oh, wither, oh wither, so high?” ”To sweep all the cobwebs right out of the sky/ But I’ll be with you by and by.”

I suppose, like all the best of those, this is from Mother Goose.

A Wagon-Load of Roses

alexmichaelstein — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 02:00:23 +0000

In “The Life and Art of Josan” (Wade Rosen Publishing) there is a drawing in which a dragon is hovering above a makeshift raft and the text reads: “Oh! You thought it was the raft upon which you would be crossing? Ho, no! When the time comes for you to cross, the Dragon will take you himself, upon his back.” In order to change, one must be ready to accept real loss. But, how can one make oneself ready for real loss?

Liberation!

alexmichaelstein — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 00:52:27 +0000

Life is nothing, after all, but that water through which the spirit-fish swims.