Visionary Vibes: A Blog by Aberjhani

Marking a Savannah Milestone

1/13/2022

Editors at Time Magazine in July 2021 reached the same conclusion as editors of the Literary Savannah travel anthology in 1998. They decided the city of Savannah, Georgia (USA) was one of the “world’s greatest places” and listed it alongside such frequently-visited locales as: Cannes, France; Seattle, Washington; Arouca, Portugal; KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa; Nuuk, Greenland; and North Goa, India.

Among the distinctions noted by Time Magazine for placing Savannah on its list of “100 extraordinary destinations to explore” was its impressive revitalized riverfront. Hill Street Press, 24 years ago as of 2022, included the city on its roster of “Travel Literature” titles following the phenomenal success of author John Berendt’s “nonfiction novel,” Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

Surviving to Tell Our Stories

With my poem “Return to Savannah” concluding the volume, I was one of eight living writers (out of thirty-seven total and not counting editor Patrick Allen) included in the Literary Savannah travel anthology published by Hill Street Press in 1998 (and by Trinity University Press in 2011). Of the other authors living at the time, James Alan McPherson and I were the only ones actually born in the city. (Long-time resident, and Savannah State University professor, Ja A. Jahannes, 1942-2015, was a native of Baltimore, Maryland).

As of this writing, I am one of four of the anthology’s remaining living authors and the only native. The others are John Berendt, Rosemary Daniell, and Ben Greer. Publication of the compilation is something I celebrated in Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah, and, an event I commemorate now because too many noteworthy literary voices become targets of historical erasure prompted by commercial indifference or literary genocide.

A Cultural Arts Milestone

The publication of Literary Savannah represented a major cultural arts milestone because it was the first to showcase a comprehensive diverse selection of living and historic authors associated with the city. As writer Lynn Hamilton put it:

“…What will attract buyers to Literary Savannah will probably be the rich collection of stories and bon mots by the cream of Savannah’s local and living (kicking and screaming) literati. The wry, slightly wicked, Tom Coffey is not omitted from these pages... poet and story teller Aberjhani is a presence with his contribution… Though there’s little subversion present in the pages of Literary Savannah, Ja A. Jahannes does provide a surprisingly pointed comment on the exploitation and subsequent historical revisionism of the Yamacraw Indians which is not just good protest, but also beautiful and powerful poetry.” (Savannah Creative Loafing, Vol 5, No. 40, Dec 29, 1998)

Just like the city itself, now 24 years after the book was first published, Literary Savannah continues to demonstrate why so many still find America’s 13th colony such an exciting and intriguing travel destination.

Aberjhani
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
& Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
Creator of Authentic Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

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Unexpected Encounters of the Angelic Kind

10/31/2021

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INTRO: Unexpected encounters with manifestations of the angelic kind tend to be recurring themes in some of my creative productions because of their repeated occurrences in my actual life. The following example is taken from the texts of two recent posts of artwork at Pixels.com and Fine Art America:

Portrait of the Artist at Work

An interesting funny thing happened after I delivered 3 pieces of artwork to the Savannah/Hilton Head Airport Art Gallery for an exhibition curated by the Savannah Art Association in early October (now on exhibit until January 7, 2022). I was crossing the busy terminal street where drivers dropped off and picked up travelers, then waiting for my own ride, when I noticed something for the first time.

Further ahead, some yards away from the taxi stand waiting area, was a giant round planter filled with colorful flowers and, at its center, a gushing fountain with an angel on top. Above its head, the angel held a globe with small airplanes circling it. I was approaching the fountain from the back so did not experience the full impact of its beauty until slowly circling around to its front.

(Detail from mixed media digital photograph and painting by Aberjhani titled "Angel with the Blue Wings." Click to purchase at Fine Art America or to check out other visual creations by the artist-author-poet-historian.)

That I had been unaware of this structure until that moment seemed impossible. But it was true, so I took as many photographs as I could before my transportation arrived.

As they do in cities like Rome, Paris, and Singapore, beautifully-designed fountains make up an important part of the appeal of Savannah (Georgia, USA). Different styles and sizes can be found in various squares and major public parks. The most famous is the Forsyth Park Fountain (images of which can be found in my FAA Savannah Collection). The angel on top of this one caught my attention in particular because angels inspired an entire book of my poetry (The River of Winged Dreams) and several pieces of my visual art as well.

Kudos for an Unknown Sculptor

Not knowing the official name of the fountain, I gave it several: Airport Angel, Angel of the Airport, Flight Fountain, and Angel with the Blue Wings. Its basic color was distorted by shadows because it was not yet noon.

I did not see a plaque describing the fountain, information about who created the angel, or when it was placed there. So far, none of the basic information regarding it has been made available to me, but I’m happy to commend the unknown sculptor for the flight angel fountain’s creation and the Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport for installing it.

(To see this artwork in its entirety at the artist's website on Pixels.com please click the above image.)

What viewers see in my visual reimaginings of the structure is a mixed media rendering of the fountain using digital photography and digital painting. The goal was to combine a sense of classical style with modern aesthetics to evoke an atmosphere of inspired spiritual surrealism. In real physical life, the actual fountain is framed by the architecture of the airport itself, which stands as a modern classic creation in its own right. It may also be considered as symbolic of the airport’s growth and development over the past few decades, much like the city of Savannah’s.

For more on the art exhibit referenced in this blog please click here.

Aberjhani
Author of The River of Winged Dreams
and Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
Harlem Renaissance Centennial 2021©

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The Art of Reversing Climate Change Denial (part 1 of 2)

10/12/2021

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On September 20, 2021, I was still trying to decide which artwork, representative of a visual “narrative,” I should submit for the latest Savannah Art Association airport exhibit when something occurred which would force the final decision for me. It started with a single drop of rain.

For only the second or third time this year, I congratulated myself, on the date noted, for having been wise enough to use my last government stimulus check to get repairs done on my 90-year-old roof. That was something I had not been able to do after surviving the butt-kickings delivered by: Hurricane Matthew in 2016, Hurricane Irma in 2017, Hurricane Michael in 2018, and Hurricane Dorian in 2019.

Rain had been pounding the tin going on two days straight. It sounded more like a herd of mustangs racing nonstop across an open plain than a typical southeastern Georgia late-summer downpour. I felt secure enough in my reinforced shelter to start watching a movie on Netflix. Then, I heard something I was certain did not come from the streaming comic relief. I hit the mute button.

Incredibly, the distinct horrible noise of a drop of water echoed just a few inches away from the flat screen sitting atop an antique display cabinet. It was painfully more than I wanted to believe as I slowly stood, examined the polished wood beside the TV, and yelled “No!” There forming on the wood was a tiny shiny pool of terror.

I looked up and discovered on the ceiling a short thin hairline fracture through which water was squeezing. The spot was one which had not leaked previously. My stimulus check, it appeared, had allowed me to invest in an illusion of safety without providing a true solution to the problem at hand. A glass bowl to catch the drip would have to do for the time being.

Flashback to a Global Warming Warning

The water invading my personal living room space immediately reminded me of standing in the kitchen of an elderly friend’s home during Hurricane Matthew and staring horrified as the sagging ceiling while drops fell faster and faster. As described in the story “Trees Down Everywhere” (published in Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah) I had convinced my friend to let me look after her century-old two-story Victorian house until the storm passed. The ceiling held, barely, and the next day I walked through Savannah’s historic district with camera in hand photographing Matthew’s blunt message to the city.

Nothing made a stronger impact on me than dozens of giant palm and oak trees fallen across the landscape. While I had once described the area’s palm trees as shaggy-headed gods, they now appeared more like victims of mass shootings. Or some senseless war.

Until that moment, the increasing ravages of global warming had only prompted me to write a poem or two expressing outrage on the Earth’s behalf, or dismay over human beings’ lack of compassion when it came to our living breathing planet. It was obvious, as I captured images of a green giant fallen next to the Confederate Monument (itself undamaged) in Forsyth Park, and others toppled lifeless across streets and downtown squares, I needed to do a lot more to counter not just the culture of climate change denial. I needed to help heal the collective blind spot which enabled too many to automatically dismiss the realities of the climate crisis as nothing more than science fiction. Or a “hoax.” They could not be wakened to acceptance until coaxed into serious reflections on the issue. My words, I reasoned, could accomplish that best when partnered with persuasive creative visual evidence.

Making an Important Connection

It was not difficult to understand how or why some segments of different populations continued to insist accountability for climate change had nothing to do with them. Why hold themselves responsible for something believed to be nonexistent in the first place? But even if it did: They assumed the most lethal possible consequences would occur in someone else’s lifetime.

Deniers had yet to make the connection between such realities as air pollution and premature births occurring in this decade, or what that could mean to someone they loved. Climate change and the throngs of migrants caught between the rocks and hard places of immigration policies worldwide was viewed, for most, from a comfortable televised distance. Fires voraciously consuming the U.S. west coast and glaciers dissolving daily appear to have nothing to do with the sustainability of their immediate existence.

Hurricane Matthew had already altered my own disposition completely but what occurred in my native region in September was not the same as what residents on the Gulf Coast and in the Northeast experienced during the rampage of Hurricane Ida. Nor was it anything like the severe drought frying California at the same time. Those distinctions, however, did not make my experience feel any less traumatic.

NEXT: The Art of Reversing Climate Change Denial Part 2

Aberjhani
Creator of Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Contributing Poet for Suzanne Jackson: Five Decades

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Seeker with the Inkhorn Number 2: Compassionate Comic Relief

7/11/2021

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"Seeker With the Inkhorn No. 2" art graphic by Aberjhani for Bright Skylark Literary Productions)

On May 1, 2017, late-night comic and celebrity influencer Jimmy Kimmel tearfully announced to the world that his son William John Kimmel had been born on April 21 with a pre-existing condition in the form of two life-threatening heart defects requiring immediate surgery. His newly-born son survived the three-hour procedure.

(To read Seeker with the Inkhorn Number 1 Please Click Here)

Kimmel used the traumatic incident as a teachable moment to help Americans ' better understand the potential consequences of failing to adopt an adequate national health care program. Being a wealthy man with a published net worth (in 2017) of $35 million, Kimmel could afford the best care available for his son and might easily have kept silent about the matter. But compassion convinced him to avoid apathy and consider the plight of those in similar situations who do not possess his wealth:

“We need to take care of each other. I saw a lot of families there [at the hospital] and no parent should ever have to decide if they can afford to save their child's life. It just shouldn't happen.”

Think of Kimmel’s words (spoken in 2017 but so applicable in 2021) in the context of: the global immigration crisis, the unhinged assassins whose supposed religious radicalization is often traced back to documented mental disorders, the feverishly-toiling single parent attempting to hold down two or three jobs to earn the equivalent of a living wage, or the child-turned-killer-soldier who one day will look back on his life and wonder why he was never allowed to be a child and how can he now reconcile himself with the blood that haunts his sleep. In such contexts, Kimmel’s words hit home with ferociously bitter truth in many different cultures and languages.

Moreover, compassion was not only something he extended to others. It was a grace many through social media in turn extended to his family in the form of prayers (regardless of religious affiliation), emotional support (demographic classification notwithstanding), and simple hopes for the best possible outcome pending future surgeries for his newborn.

Unlike Kimmel, most people do not have millions of dollars at their disposal to guarantee the best healthcare for those they love. Still, the comedian’s candor reminded us of a truism too often forgotten: Just as the richest, most powerful and famous among us can be humbled by painful mortal circumstances, so too can the poorest among us harness the powers of collective will and wisdom to impact patterns of history and human behavior for the better.

Compassion as a Birthright

Back now to that 91-degree Fahrenheit day in July when I entered the world: Had someone cared enough that my mahogany-hued mother could not afford a doctor's attention or a hospital's clean cool room at the time of my birth, they might have been compassionate enough to somehow make facilities available anyway. Perhaps they might have done the same for any number of women along with the babies--Black, White, Brown, Red or Yellow-- they were ushering into the world.

It would have been a kind of good karma for her because she had maintained a home which helped make it possible for numerous extended family members to relocate from the more virulently racist rural areas of Georgia at that time to a somewhat less-aggressively-racist urban center.

"Summertime Blossoms of Mindful Compassion No. 2” art & quote by Aberjhani.

Compassion on every side of any given fence, wall, or border can provide a route to mutual understanding capable of voiding the source of destructive conflicts within a community or between nations. But what we call compassion does not weave itself out of particles of nonexistence and then ooze through veils of reality to reshape our consciousness. It is something to which we have to assign concrete value and then invest in the same in such a way that it is not diminished by: threats of war, xenophobia, hate, or the unavoidable demands of change created by history.

We may then, throughout various stages of our lives, proclaim compassion as a kind of birthright, or as an essential tool capable of correcting an onslaught of modern-day wrongs: be they the kidnapping of 300 schoolgirls in Nigeria, the displacement of populations seeking refuge from war and starvation, or the unresolved questions and decisions spinning like lost comets within the universe of our collective soul.

Aberjhani
Co-Author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Author of Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
Creator of Original Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

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Celebrating the PEN Centennial Part 2: The Pattern of Dynamics

5/1/2021

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INTRO: This installment of Celebrating the PEN Centennial was first published in May 2012. What it addresses in regard to writers’ relationships with language as well as such issues as immigration and genocide are as irrefutably relevant now as then. Possibly even more so. To read part 1 of this series please click here. Part 2 begins now:

Intoxicaing Melodies

Whether language is shyly uttered, fiercely written, or fearfully thought, it creates an inherent rhythm which invites the soul to dance to such intoxicating melodies as truth, anger, inspiration, fear, and love.

Human beings most often accept that invitation to dance in many different ways. Sometimes we do so by following the lead of an initial small or large realization until it whirls voluptuously into an unyielding idea that persuades us to take a certain action or cautions us against another.

Sometimes other pronouncements, spoken or un-, follow the first. But in languages of different kinds. They spring back and forth between diverse grammars and revelations of universal symbols or archetypes, as strangely enthralling formulations and poetic constructions creating what many might recognize as: a song of some kind.

The music is not always beautiful and the dance it inspires may appear more macabre than graceful. As much as we might prefer to choreograph our lives to hip-hop ballads of genuine democracy, various populations throughout the world community endure their existence instead to the soundtrack of something closer to a nonfiction nightmare dystopia.

Ours is an age in which thousands are driven daily from their homelands by the unforgiving brutalities of war, terrorism, political oppression, starvation, disease, economic piracy, and the relentless suffocation of that singular breath which makes human beings individuals. In the United States, Latinos once secure in their identities as Americans discover they are in fact something referred to as “illegal aliens.” They then have to make their way south across the Mexican border and reestablish their lives to the tune of conditions and customs which previously had been little more than the subject of tales shared by grandparents and other interesting relatives.

Leaving Somalia, refugees struggle to reach neighboring countries like Kenya and Ethiopia or, increasingly, to cross the Atlantic to the United States to escape rape, mutilation, and genocide. People indigenously at home in rain forests and other native locales find themselves driven out by the encroaching demands of commercialism [and climate change].

In each of these scenarios human beings have to adapt to choices made by someone other than themselves and dance frantically, as it were, to a beat not their own. The forced nature of these cultural migrations burden language with a vocabulary of tears steeped in grief and desperation. And they challenge writers to retrieve out of these everyday tragedies any beauty worth singing–– without glamorizing the horrors involved or betraying the lives so despicably at risk.

The Pattern of Dynamics

An author accepting language’s invitation to dance steps onto the floor of his or her sensibility-charged consciousness and begins to move instinctively––even if with much dread––in ways which synchronize images, ideas, emotions, sounds, smells, ignorance, and knowledge. Subtle energies crackle insistently along intersecting horizontal and vertical lines to occupy each other repeatedly and compose a vision which at some point may be called a story, a poem, an essay, or a play.

The pattern of dynamics might alter where different authors are concerned but the nature of this paradigm dancing remains essentially the same. Such is the culture, if you will, of the dance shared between vernacular and writers that others––passionate readers, curious friends, fellow authors, tribes on the run––are always encouraged to join them. Many, in fact, will say the dance is not a true one until they do.

NEXT UP: Celebrating the PEN Centennial Part 2: The Pattern of Dynamics

Aberjhani
Author of The River of Winged Dreams
and Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind

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<<Previous

Marking a Savannah Milestone

Surviving to Tell Our Stories

A Cultural Arts Milestone

Aberjhani
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
& Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
Creator of Authentic Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Contact Author-Artist Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Unexpected Encounters of the Angelic Kind

Portrait of the Artist at Work

Kudos for an Unknown Sculptor

Contact Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

The Art of Reversing Climate Change Denial (part 1 of 2)

Flashback to a Global Warming Warning

Making an Important Connection

Aberjhani
Creator of Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Contributing Poet for Suzanne Jackson: Five Decades

Seeker with the Inkhorn Number 2: Compassionate Comic Relief

Compassion as a Birthright

Aberjhani
Co-Author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Author of Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
Creator of Original Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Contact the Author

Celebrating the PEN Centennial Part 2: The Pattern of Dynamics

Intoxicaing Melodies

The Pattern of Dynamics

Aberjhani
Author of The River of Winged Dreams
and Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind

Contact Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Aberjhani

Archives

Categories

Marking a Savannah Milestone

Surviving to Tell Our Stories

A Cultural Arts Milestone

AberjhaniAuthor of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah& Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My MindCreator of Authentic Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Contact Author-Artist Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Unexpected Encounters of the Angelic Kind

Portrait of the Artist at Work

​Kudos for an Unknown Sculptor

Contact Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

The Art of Reversing Climate Change Denial (part 1 of 2)

​Flashback to a Global Warming Warning

Making an Important Connection

Aberjhani Creator of Silk-Featherbrush ArtstyleAuthor of Dreams of the Immortal City SavannahContributing Poet for Suzanne Jackson: Five Decades

Seeker with the Inkhorn Number 2: Compassionate Comic Relief

Compassion as a Birthright

AberjhaniCo-Author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem RenaissanceAuthor of Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My MindCreator of Original Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Contact the Author

Celebrating the PEN Centennial Part 2: The Pattern of Dynamics

Intoxicaing Melodies

The Pattern of Dynamics

AberjhaniAuthor of The River of Winged Dreamsand Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind

Contact Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Aberjhani

Archives

Categories

Aberjhani
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
& Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
Creator of Authentic Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Kudos for an Unknown Sculptor

Flashback to a Global Warming Warning

Aberjhani
Creator of Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Contributing Poet for Suzanne Jackson: Five Decades

Aberjhani
Co-Author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Author of Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
Creator of Original Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Aberjhani
Author of The River of Winged Dreams
and Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind