This gorgeous mermaid, which now hangs on my wall, was cut from a steel drum by the Haitian artist Nanu, who lives in a Muñoz batéy (Haitian refugee village) in the Dominican Republic. In July of 2012, while visiting the DR for two very short weeks, I became fast friends with his daughter Esmaylove, a jewelry designer in the same batéy. Esmaylove - pronounced Is My Love! - runs the Haitian art shop there. Housed in a tiny tin shack with a dirt floor, its walls and a rustic wooden shelf or two covered with Nanu's steels cuts, Esmaylove's bracelets, earrings, and necklaces, a few paintings, and some darling miniature bottle cap and tin chairs by their friends and neighbors, the art shop serves as both a spirited public gathering place, and an austere gallery which provides a small but essential income for the artists of the batéy.

DESIGNS & RAGTAGS OPEN STUDIO
4 Days Only!
For Holiday Giving & Treats for Yourself
Saturday Nov. 10 - Sunday Nov. 11
Saturday Dec. 1 - Sunday Dec. 2
11 AM - 4PM

119 East Harvard Street FoCoCo

❤Trinkets & Treasures❤
$5-$105
Need more details?
email
sarah@sarahfishburn.com

Step right up and get some art...and make a difference while you're at it!

This original artwork of mine, a copy of my book In This Garden, and a copy of Pasticcio Quartz, Issue 12, are among the MANY cool, fun, lovely, and wonderful items being offered in a fundraising auction for Hurricane Sandy relief efforts, hosted by my good friend and art comrade, Seth Apter of The Altered Page. I really hope you will consider making a bid - your ❤❤❤ will grow several sizes, I'm tellin' ya! If the bidding for Bundle #5, including the canvas pictured here, goes above $250, I promise I will include several exciting "extras" for the winner...Please support our efforts, and score some swell treats, for yourself or to pass on to your own lucky recipient. And thank you, from the bottom of my heart and the depths of my soul!

More Trippin' - Sosúa, Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic July 2012

21 in the Forest, on Mount Isabel

Jumping Rope in the Batéy

No Pase - Mount Isabel

Trippin' - Sosúa, Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic July 2012

Street Scene

Playa Sosúa

These two photographs are a sneak peek at a few you will see in an upcoming issue of Pasticcio Quartz.

The Altered Page: Buried Treasure

MY TIME OF DAY

My time of day is the dark time
A couple of deals before dawn
When the street belongs to the cop
And the janitor with the mop
And the grocery clerks are all gone,When the smell of the rainwashed pavement
Comes up clean, and fresh, and cold
And the streetlamp light
Fills the gutter with gold
That's my time of day
My time of day.

1950
Frank Loesser

History is now and England

From Four Quartets: Little Gidding
T.S. Eliot 1942

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England.

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.