[Pictures, Shkreth, rubber block prints with digital manipulation;
The Facilitator, pen on paper by AEGNydam from Bittersweetness & Light, 2025 (See NydamPrints.com).]
[Pictures, Shkreth, rubber block prints with digital manipulation;
The Facilitator, pen on paper by AEGNydam from Bittersweetness & Light, 2025 (See NydamPrints.com).]
What’s the most outrageous thing you’ve ever done to catch the eye of a love interest (or to promote a book)?
[Picture: Love Potion, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2021;
Ineffable Feathersquid, digital illustration by AEGNydam (Images from Bittersweetness & Light, but originals of Love Potion are still available at NydamPrints.com).]
My kitchen window now and then looks out
Into another world. Late afternoon,
I rinse the lettuce, watching distant dragons
Twine their gleaming tails in spiraling flight
Above a golden city which no street
I know can reach. Sometimes at night
That strange sky holds a different moon.
Today a glowing scarlet bird
Sang opals in the fragrant, dark-leafed trees
That do not grow in my back yard.
Small people clad in glittering beetle shells
Were beating copper drums in revelry
While I was scrubbing dinner’s dirty pans.
Is there a window in that golden town
Where some small person, copper-clad, looks out
Onto the otherworldly mystery
That is my un-mown dandelion lawn?
[Pictures: Window digital collage by AEGNydam from Bittersweetness & Light, 2025 (See NydamPrints.com).]
[Picture: Symbiote City (Venusian Medusae), rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2020 (Image from Bittersweetness & Light, but originals are still available at NydamPrints.com).]
[Pictures: Mushroom world digital collages by AEGNydam from Bittersweetness & Light, 2025 (See NydamPrints.com).]
[Picture: Cockroaches, faux block print by AEGNydam from Bittersweetness & Light, 2025 (See NydamPrints.com).]
[Pictures: LUFTSLOTT Step 1 and Step 2, pen plus digital illustrations by AEGNydam from Bittersweetness & Light, 2025 (See NydamPrints.com).]
[Pictures: Raindrop Cottage, pencil drawing by AEGNydam, ca. 1982;
Raindrop Cities, photograph by AEGNydam, 2021;
After Rain, rubber block print by AEGNydam from Bittersweetness & Light, 2025 (See NydamPrints.com).]
In Bittersweetness & Light, however, “The Conduits” is a story set in a Quaker meeting.
[Pictures: The Conduits, digital art by AEGNydam;
Magic Wands and Warm Wishes, rubber block prints by AEGNydam, 2023, 2024 (Image from Bittersweetness & Light, but originals are still available at NydamPrints.com).]
Enclosed in opalescent heavens,
Do you dance in the lucent twilight
In delight?
Do you raise your arms in gratitude
For the seed of sand at the heart,
And lay your palms on the lustrous earth,
Caressing the miracle of coming to be?
Do you lie on your back in the fields
Of silvery sheen,
Looking up at the smoky-violet aurora,
Wondering how there could possibly be
Such generosity of beauty?
Do you feel in the iridescent embrace
Of your universe
That love cannot be impossible?
Dance, then,
And wonder.
There are oceans beyond worlds
Within oceans
Beyond worlds,
And they are all children
Of mother-of-pearl –
Grains of sand
Grown into miracles.
[Picture: Pearl World, rubber block print with watercolor by AEGNydam from Bittersweetness & Light, 2025 (See NydamPrints.com).]