I start Wednesday on a movie in pre-production in Santa Fe. It will be my first show since moving to NM. I’ll be helping to make Las Vegas, New Mexico look like Jaurez, Mexico. Not too big a stretch, actually. Don’t have many other details. The reason I bring it up here is because for the short while one is on the show, a movie tends to take over one’s life. I don’t know if I’ll be able to post people’s work as often as I have been doing.
So I’m thinking to continue the Thursday prompt but to save the entries and then post them all at once, say on the following Tuesday? You can still post links in the comments. This just concerns my getting it together to offer them all in one location as I have been doing.
And then there is the little unknown one, and when she – or maybe he – will show up. We are at two weeks and counting… send up some prayers for us and we’ll do the same for you, hold the whole bunch of you in the Light. Thanks, everyone, this has been fun.
( new arrivals posted here )
Woohoo, it’s all happening. Good luck with everything. I’m not real good with prayers but I will be sending great waves of positive thought force energy rushing through the ethereosphere to you and yours. Rage on, Mobbsy (and co.)!
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Prayer is almost the only thing I am good at, and in these busy, exciting, somewhat unnerving times, I send my prayers with you, and the growing family. Hope everything works out on our professional front, and you are blessed with a healthy baby :).
Keep us updated!
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Good on you, Rick….you deserve all the artistic breaks possible! I have been working with and reworking several of your pieces on my site, FFTR. Here is the latest:
Image from MINE ENEMY GROWS OLDER: Dougals-Cushion.
Prose by Rick Mobbs.
Gently rearranged by Glenn Buttkus
Rick Mobbs wrote a long and wonderful piece of narrative prose, “tapestry fragments” a few weeks ago. I extracted the end of it, and morphed it into poetry. Returning to the Mobbsian well of creativity, I took out the middle of the piece, the beating heart; which somehow stands on its own, out of the chest of the prose, throbbing on its own, a wholeness to itself:
Tapestry Fragments: Another Thread
And yet
in the tapestry
there was much
that was wayward
and unpredictable;
for along with everyday cruelty,
everyday kindness acted,
and observed.
My attention was drawn
to a strangely highlighted
moment.
In the texture
of the time,
Christ
the fulcrum emerges.
Merciless onlookers
grow quiet.
Little by little,
does the world move
toward the good?
Or do we simply
turn our faces,
now to light,
now to insanity
and darkness?
Are the shifting half-lights
misunderstood?
Crowds gather,
crows, prophets, martyrs wheel
together.
I felt electrified
and numb,
frozen and burned,
rushing between grief,
shame, and exhaustion.
Another pass
over the tapestry
warms my hands
momentarily.
I read again
how that solitary signal fire
burns.
At the edge of the picture,
where the leaves
of the trees
stretch skyward
with fat fingers,
a river quietly runs.
On a sandy beach
the twilight darkens
into night
and suddenly I remember
that place.
I remember
love under starlight.
How much can
a person know
and still call himself
sane?
She has woven a dolphin
into the river,
and his laugh
carries to me
into this lifetime.
Perhaps his charge
is to remember.
He brings loaves,
and fishes.
He is fire
in the water,
life in the ether,
laughter that startles
a company of mourners.
He is the candle
that breaks open
the darkness.
He is music
and dance,
celebration and enjoyment,
the libation before
and after
the storm.
The dolphin laughs
as the moon rises
over the mountains
through the last patch
of twilight.
The moon brings us
passion and wistfulness,
power and hunger.
She nods to the dolphin
and laughs at the rose
of our compass,
laughs at the way
we set our courses,
laughs at our belief
that iron will save us
and guide us.
She knots us
with longing
and restlessness.
How easily she calls us out
and betrays us!
She feeds us,
enlarges us,
and slays us.
Yet without her
our souls would be
threaded with grass,
our roots thin
and threadbare,
easily broken carpet
of awareness.
And the woman
who knew this
and stitched it,
rides to her fate
quietly
in a runaway carriage.
Today her dust mingles
in sunlight
with the dust
of my hardness.
I read
with my fingertips
the evidence
of her passing.
I feel constantly
the light
of her presence.
We scrawl notes
to each other
on the pages
of the centuries
and set
our signal fires
blazing for each other
in tapestries.
I know her by her hands
and her umbers and ochers,
her side lighted grays,
silk threads,
her spun precious metals,
her bloody burgundies
and a few other color choices.
She knows me
by the path of destruction
I have left
in the wake
of my frustration,
as she knows me
by my kindness,
my love
and devotion.
This weaving means more
than all of the others.
Of course
it is she
in the carriage
and I
bleeding beside her.
I am the watchful man
tending our child
in the forest.
I am our blindness.
I hold the stone
and I design
the tortures.
Rick Mobbs May 2008
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New Mexico is a great state. My inlaws have a place in the mountains high above White Sands, up in Cloudcroft, perched there over a mile high above the Apache Rez. With my asthma, I can barely breath there, but it is drop dead beautiful in the forests. As a new comer to the World of Mobbs, I was not aware of you living in NM.
How wonderful that you get a job and are expecting your next child all in the same month, the same moment on the cosmic scale. Thank you for the blessing of white light. We can all use it. The whole damned world can use it, and you sir, with your painter and poet’s heart are bathed in it. It shimmers on your words, and drenches into your paintings. Even this blog site is saturated with it; good vibes, controversial thoughts, challenging imagery, fellowship. You have quite the fan base out here already.
Glenn
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Good luck you, don’t worry about prompts, you’ve got enough on your plate. Don’t forget to let me know about the new arrival and tell Naomi I have my fingers crossed for a nice easy labour.
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Holy shit! Fuckin cool dude!!!
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Tho cramping, my fingers are still crossed for you and yours and your soon to be arriving latest blessing. Family first, Art second – always. Our words will still be here when you’re ready to collate them all.
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Wow, a movie, a baby…. no worries on links, okay? My husband used to work in the film business– 17-hour days were the norm. Is it still the same?
I have plenty of paintings backlogged here to keep me busy for a while. Each one inspires something true for me.
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as i worked for years out of wilmington nc, and often with atlanta people there is a god chance we worked together on some things, or at least have friends in common. what is his name? email me!
17 hr days no longer the norm, thank goodness.
thank you for your post on the death penalty. i just put up a reply to marlow44
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