Synchronized Chaos Magazine wishes you a wonderful Cinco de Mayo, May Day, Mother’s Day, Pentecost, Green Day, and whatever other occasions you may celebrate. Our theme is New Treasures from an Old Chest, as our contributors mine old forms of expression for new and different insights.

Russian artist Ruben Monakhov creates still life paintings, in the long tradition of Van Gogh and Vermeer and other European masters. Yet, he isolates and examines the element of perspective through its absence, illustrating how much a sense of depth and proportion helps make life understandable.

Monakhov’s artistic concept functions as a decent metaphor for life, as Patsy Ledbetter shows through her reflection, “Easter Lilies.” Life contains both thorns and flowers, frustration and beauty, and we may persevere through the hard times through keeping them in perspective, holding to our faith in something more redemptive and ultimately beautiful.

Cecilia Woloch also acknowledges both the sorrow of loss and the joy of intimacy through her poetry collection, Carpathia. She admonishes us to fill our lives with experience and awareness so that we are always late somewhere, always on the go to somewhere interesting. And everything can become an occasion for observation, a place to learn and find beauty, whether it’s an ecstatic evening with a lover, bridge over the Seine River, a photograph of former Soviet poverty, the last visions of her dying father, or an old truck near her Kentucky childhood home.

Sarah Abbett, like Cecilia Woloch, reveals psychological truth imperceptibly through describing a specific experience and location. In Abbett’s work, the speaker encounters rushing water, first touching it, then finally taking a small sip. Only a small hint at the end expresses how the water represents new spiritual life, and she trusts that we can grasp bits of psychological insight by looking at how our bodies and minds respond to common physical experiences.

Dave Douglas’ work, although more consciously abstract, still grounds itself in a steady rhythm of concrete images. His “Impossible Poem” celebrates the power of the imagination and expresses openness to the possibilities of an unknown future. Plenty of other poets – Lewis Carroll and John Keats, for example – use clever language to provide a fanciful look at the unknown, but Douglas’ work is uniquely concise and presents the choice between hope and fear.

Romanian collage artist Teseleanu George also plays with the concept of facing an uncertain future. He acknowledges the Dadaist movement as an influence, when leading artists consciously chose after the destruction of two world wars to throw aside traditional ideas of beauty and proportion and give meaning to random and commonplace objects. He creates surrealist art by looking within, observing his dreams and taking notes, rendering dreams and works of the imagination as objects for thought and study in themselves. Where he lives, collage is a lesser-known, experimental form of art, fitting for psychological experimentation – and using collage allows him to identify with older movements in art history, but in his own personal way.

Floyd Logan, poet and author of the small-town Americana meditation “Masonville,” also works within a large and long tradition of pastoral writing describing small villages, ordinary people, and the countryside. In recent years many people have looked to explore and uncover possible, hidden and darker sides of suburban and small-town life, so currently a simple reflection on hardworking families caring for each other stands out as a unique counterpoint. Logan’s work looks at what we do to psychologically protect and comfort ourselves in light of unpredictable natural and external forces – and it is poignant to read this with the understanding that many of the people within the manufacturing towns he describes and celebrates are now out of work due to the economy.

And, finally, California poet Carolyn Havenhill honors both personal and cultural past and present through her memorial tributes to her mother and to the United States’ Native heritage. Her rhythmical, rhetorical style allows her to communicate with the audience by addressing them directly, and through her mentions of past and present losses, she poses questions about what we accept and reject in life, what we choose to keep and throw away. Havenhill will not leave the gift of this existence unopened, and through her writing and educational pursuits will reclaim both her own dignity and that of the murdered Native population she honors.

Thank you very much for taking part in May’s issue of Synchronized Chaos Magazine! We hope and trust this issue will inspire you to look within your own artistic and cultural traditions, or whichever traditions resonate with you, to rediscover and reinterpret the heritage and techniques to discover new forms of meaning and beauty.