eluvium:

a little time

2008-04-17T13:12:00.000-07:00

...away is what i've decided upon for now. i hope this won't cause too much disappointment for the wonderful people who read my blog and find it inspiring. if anyone finds themselves at a loss for inspiration, he or she can link up to any of the wonderful blogs and sites in my sidebar. i imagine i will find myself back here at some later date--maybe with a blog in a different incarnation. best to everyone, and do stay inspired.

(forgive me, i do not know where i found this image...)

hmmm.

2008-04-14T16:13:00.000-07:00

thank you for your kind thoughts and comments. i'll have to do a bit more considering.

i think there are many blogs out there that narrate lives, and maybe if what i did was go whole hog narrating my life, then what would come out of it would be interesting, but the thought of it makes me blush, seeming too audacious. then again, if what i really want to do is write an autobiography, maybe a blog would be the best place to begin. so maybe a blog in a different format is the next thing. maybe i'll call it "surreal hawaii childhood" and tell its strange, dark stories one by one.

the more absent i am from here,

2008-04-11T11:25:00.000-07:00

the more present i am in daily life. this makes me wonder that if i discontinued tending this blog, would i finish more of my tangible projects? perhaps if i stopped for a time, just to see what would happen with my daily patterns. how does this strike you?

maybe it's related to spring, and wanting to be outside, digging in the dirt and ferreting out hiking trails with the dog, and wanting to be drawing and writing a book and making pots on the wheel, and baking cupcakes and relearning to cook.

but i have also grown to love this blog universe and feel quite a bit of resistance to the idea of leaving it.

any thoughts?

art and ghosts

2008-04-11T11:08:00.000-07:00

1. Into the Wallpaper 1, 2. Penny Farthing, 3. The Writer

the inner workings of animals

2008-04-11T10:58:00.000-07:00

ghost patrol on flickr

i ordered this book for its title alone

2008-04-04T10:32:00.000-07:00

get it also.

watch walmart spread like a cancer across america over a forty-five year time period

2008-04-02T22:32:00.000-07:00

walmart growth video.

also by notcot.

porcelain paper plates

2008-04-02T22:19:00.000-07:00

nice enough to eat off of everyday. brought to us by the passionately curious virginia sin. check out her nude book project too.

link via notcot.

eastern european matchbox labels

2008-03-31T22:16:00.001-07:00

how i love the saturation of colors on these. i especially love the one of laika, the first russian dog sent up in space...
1. polish matchbox label, 2. polish matchbox label, 3. hungarian matchbox label, 4. russian animal matchbox label, 5. german matchbox label, 6. russian matchbox label

and hundreds more where these came from.

via the drawn blog also.

abecedarians will get a rise out of this

2008-03-31T18:24:00.000-07:00

pop-up alphabet book

via drawn.

colors that strike one as sumptuous

2008-03-31T17:47:00.000-07:00

jean boccacino.

"a poem may be devoted to giving clear meaning to one word." ~george oppen

2008-03-31T01:15:00.000-07:00

then there's the safety in numbers...

1. apple apple., 2. night flys

a different kind of personalized dinnerware

2008-03-30T17:17:00.000-07:00

from trixie delicious, via stripes and dots.

soft and found

2008-03-27T13:26:00.000-07:00

thursdays, music, secrets, glimpses, blackboards, subtitles, elegance...

clarke_henry_1954_dior_fb.jpg, 2. Untitled, 3. noted, 4. a random scene....

my first pots

2008-03-25T18:46:00.000-07:00

after a month of ceramics classes, i finally have something that i can show you. pottery takes patience. this is a good medium for me to be working in, as i have always been one of those people who hurries things along. in these classes, i'm getting a lot of practice in letting things take as long as they should take. when i throw the wet clay on the wheel, i have to be very patient while i get the clay centered, and then work step by step forming it into a shape, without trying to hard to control it. it's almost as if i have to get completely out of the way of the clay in order to allow its shape to emerge. something along the lines of what michaelangelo said. but i can't just sit there doing nothing either. it requires a kind of keen focus and a very specific posture. i really love the potter's posture of straddling the wheel with elbows on my knees, my face only inches away from the clay.

after the pot is thrown comes the waiting for it to be leather hard for trimming. then you turn the pot upside down and anchor it with three pieces of clay so you can shape the pot's bottom or make for it a little "foot". this is the time when you also carve your name into your piece.

then, more waiting, for your piece to be "bisque" fired. then it's hard enough to paint with glaze. with each step i could indulge in great deliberation. the process is delicious, and allowed me to worry less about the end result.

after glazing, my pieces could be fired. when i arrived at the I street clay studio on saturday morning, my teacher jane had already put the pieces into the kiln. she gave me a long pair of thick gloves to put on and a long grabbing tool for removing the pots. i waved them around in the air for a minute before putting them into little cans lined with newspaper, which caught fire as soon as i put the pots in. when i took them out and sponged the soot off, they looked like this. i was very proud of them, but i am even more excited about how making them has changed me, slightly.

for comfort

2008-03-25T16:17:00.000-07:00

erica shires, photographer.

may you not trip and spill your hatboxes and other spring mishaps

2008-03-21T14:35:00.000-07:00

happy spring.

for a short time only let it be known that i was here

2008-03-19T14:11:00.000-07:00

A SIMPLE GESTURE, A JOURNEY, A MEETING PLACE. ~by david horvitz

PLEASE MAIL ME AN EMPTY ENVELOPE.

PLEASE WRITE YOUR NAME ON THE BACK OF THE ENVELOPE AND THE PLACE IT IS BEING MAILED FROM.

THIS IS ABOUT A CONVERGENCE.

THIS IS ABOUT A MEETING PLACE.

THIS IS ABOUT A DISTANCE.

I WANT YOU TO SEND ME NOTHING BECAUSE I THINK THAT WOULD BE POETIC. AND, IF YOU SEND ME NOTHING IT DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING EXCEPT A DISTANCE. ALL IT IS IS THE GAP FROM YOU TO ME, AND THE BRIDGING OF THAT GAP. THE ENVELOPE WILL HAVE CONNECTED TWO POINTS. AT ITS POINT OF ARRIVAL IT WILL HAVE ARRIVED WITH OTHERS WHO HAVE JOURNEYED TO THE SAME DESTINATION FROM DIFFERENT POINTS OF DEPARTURE. THAT IS WHY THIS IS ALSO A MEETING PLACE.

DAVID HORVITZ
99 VERNON AVE #1
BROOKLYN, NY 11206

IDEALLY, I WISH TO BUY A REALLY BIG PO BOX AT A POST OFFICE IN NEW YORK. I WOULD NEVER TAKE THE ENVELOPES OUT. I WOULD LEAVE THEM IN THERE. THEY WOULD PILE UP AND STAY AT THEIR MEETING PLACE FOR YEARS AND YEARS. I WOULD LET PEOPLE BORROW THE KEY SO THEY COULD LOOK AT THEM. BIG PO BOXES COST $326 FOR 6 MONTHS. I CAN'T AFFORD THAT RIGHT NOW. SO, FOR NOW, THEY WILL JUST MEET AT MY HOUSE AND I WILL KEEP THEM IN A SHOE BOX. WHEN I GET THE MONEY, I WILL FIND A PERMANENT MEETING PLACE. ONCE THAT HAPPENS, YOU WILL HAVE TO SEND ANOTHER ENVELOPE TO THERE! SO PLEASE COME BACK TO THIS PAGE, ONCE I FIND THE FUNDS THE PO BOX WILL BE BOUGHT RIGHT AWAY AND THE ADDRESS WILL BE POSTED HERE.

i found out about david horvitz through raul at heading east. his "things for sale that i will mail you" project asks readers to send specific amounts of money so that he can spend it doing specific and rather fleeting tasks. such as this one:

"If you give me $75 I will go see a psychic and ask them for advice on my life. I will send you a write up of what happened and documentary photographs. If you give me $1,689 I will go see a psychic, ask them where in the whole world I should go to, and then I will go there. I will mail you documentation of this from where ever it is I go to. If you give me $9,999 I will go see a psychic and ask them where I SHOULD NOT go to in the whole world. I will then go there and mail you documentation of it from there. (note: I took out the tape recording part because I have found that some don't like to have their sessions recorded)

For each purchase I will go to different psychics."

a landing

2008-03-18T22:03:00.000-07:00

yamamoto masao.

ear

2008-03-15T08:49:00.000-07:00

kay and sean found this giant stone ear in france and photographed it. both of them report looking up to see where it might have fallen from. an ear is a very contemplative object, particularly as a thing on its own. an underwater ear studded with wish pennies is even more provocative. it is an ear that you feel perfectly reasonable telling your secrets to, and just sitting there so quietly, it seems to carry and divulge deep and ancient secrets of its own. from the photograph it makes me think of an open faced oyster. and of all the objects that fit into ear openings. i remember that irresistable urge as a child to put small things into my ears. the invitation to instigate a snug fit of any kind is almost impossible to resist. i thought of pouring warm clay into my ear and making a reverse mold of the narrow, twisting hallway and its acoustics. i compromised with silly putty. when adam was little he put a popcorn kernel in his ear and then promptly forgot about it. a cockroach once crawled into my father's ear when he was asleep. a cashew makes a handy earplug, in a pinch.

for pi day

2008-03-14T15:14:00.001-07:00

Pi
by Wislawa Szymborska

The admirable number pi:
three point one four one.
All the following digits are also initial,
five nine two because it never ends.
It can’t be comprehended six five three five at a glance.
eight nine by calculation,
seven nine or imagination,
not even three two three eight by wit, that is, by comparison
four six to anything else
two six four three in the world.
The longest snake on earth calls it quits at about forty feet.
Likewise, snakes of myth and legend, though they may hold out a bit longer.
The pageant of digits comprising the number pi
doesn’t stop at the page’s edge.
It goes on across the table, through the air,
over a wall, a leaf, a bird’s nest, clouds, straight into the sky,
through all the bottomless, bloated heavens.
Oh how brief—a mouse tail, a pigtail—is the tail of a comet!
How feeble the star’s ray, bent by bumping up against space!
While here we have two three fifteen three hundred nineteen
my phone number your shirt size the year
nineteen hundred and seventy-three the sixth floor
the number of inhabitants sixty-five cents
hip measurement two fingers a charade, a code,
in which we find hail to thee, blithe spirit, bird thou never wert
alongside ladies and gentlemen, no cause for alarm,
as well as heaven and earth shall pass away,
but not the number pi, oh no, nothing doing,
it keeps right on with its rather remarkable five,
its uncommonly fine eight,
its far from final seven,
nudging, always nudging a sluggish eternity
to continue.

one-minute-videos-of-dance-blog

2008-03-14T11:36:00.000-07:00

dance minute.

thanks to hula seventy.

neither/both

2008-03-13T13:40:00.000-07:00

jeanne quinn.

pure inspiration

2008-03-13T01:03:00.001-07:00

nests and bowls and bowls and nests. ephemera and alliteration. repetition of shapes, of colors. the safety of numbers, the consolation of patterns.
1. Cowboy Sheetmusic, 2. Vintage Wallpaper, 3. watchfacescan, 4. Eggs, 5. Very Old Hankie Box, 6. candy

looking for truth with a pin

2008-03-07T10:27:00.000-08:00

"All the words that I use are just a vehicle like radio waves, a message from my unconscious to the unconscious of the listener. I don't know what I have communicated, and the listener doesn't know what is being communicated, but I am constantly being told by people 'I don't understand what you have just said, but I do feel I have been communicated with." ~ivor cutler

at the end of this link lies a little story of ivor's that you are sure to love.

true

2008-03-06T14:36:00.000-08:00

get more here.

thanks to the new me for the link.

detective work

2008-03-06T14:21:00.000-08:00

crime club

"no butler, no second maid, no blood upon the stair.
no eccentric aunt, no gardener, no family friend
smiling among the bric a brac and murder.
only a suburban house with the front door open
and a dog barking at a squirrel, and the cars
passing. the corpse quite dead. the wife in florida.

consider the clues: the potato masher in a vase,
the torn photograph of a weseyan basketball team,
scattered with checks in the hall;
the unsent fan letter to shirley temple,
the hoover button on the lapel of the deceased,
the note: "to be killed this way is quite all right with me."

small wonder that the case remains unsolved,
or that the sleuth, le roux, is now incurably insane,
and sits alone in a white room in a white gown,
screaming that all the world is mad, that clues
lead nowhere, or to walls so high their tops cannot be seen;
screaming all day of war, screaming that nothing can be solved."

~weldon kees

sheet music from here.

sometimes i want nothing

2008-03-05T19:18:00.001-08:00

more than to go from one city
to the next
live in temporary rooms always
the sound of bumping above
be absolutely contented
and never idle
in endless hotels of fleeting noises and
situations
amidst madly carpeted
madly lit hallways
eat continental breakfast
in my one aqua
dress

perform gentle
handstands in trains
headed north

to everyday duluth

at a lutefisk picnic
i would collect fish bones and fruit seeds
and signs that said ‘slow’

anchovies love school

2008-03-04T10:33:00.000-08:00

mechanical fortune tellers sometimes see right through you

2008-03-03T17:45:00.000-08:00

"the world's first metaphysical poll on the democratic contenders"

2008-02-29T10:59:00.000-08:00

personally, i've nevver had a dream starring either hillary or barack, but apparently a lot of other people have. sheila heti has put them all in one place, or to be exact, two places. going here will get you to both.

here's a sample:

"I was at a campground. There was a large building, but when I went inside, it was remarkably small. There were bleachers like you would see at a child’s outdoor baseball game. I sat among the small crowd of people there. Then I noticed that Barack Obama and Hillary were near -- close enough that I could talk to them. In the dream, there had been a couple of state primaries and Barack had taken the lead. I began telling Hillary that it would all be okay, it would work out. It felt very normal and matter-of-fact to be speaking with her. Next thing I knew, I was wandering around outside, carrying the biggest Obama for President sign ever."

thanks to moonlight ambulette for the link. go there for a visit.

instructions in mustard

2008-02-29T10:29:00.000-08:00

sophie brought home this bookmark from school. it makes both reading and eating corn dogs strike one as tasty.

my first ceramics class

2008-02-29T00:41:00.001-08:00

first of all i was up to my wrists in clay, and wrestling with the wet ball in the middle of the wheel to try to make it do my bidding. mistake number one. wrestling with the clay will not make it do your bidding. rather a firm, steady encircling of hands and the clay just follows the shape without fighting. there is a lesson here, the first of many to be sure. i did manage to make two proud little pots, not at all perfect, i must confess i wanted them to be perfect even though i knew they wouldn't be. the insight i gained while i was struggling through the process had a depth and a width i wish i could show you. hence the image quilt.
1. 365 Day 12, 2. Untitled, 3. The practice dress, 4. Six Edges and Six Vertices, 5. nesting, 6. _DSC0886

it's the little things

2008-02-24T20:53:00.000-08:00

1. wooden bird trio, 2. a persimmon, 3. *ice cream*, 4. Italian tea cups from the 50s, 5. in the kitchen, 6. swan B1

cardio workout for wordlovers

2008-02-23T21:48:00.000-08:00

delightful ads and articles from old popular science magazines at the modern mechanix blog.
thanks bb.

lullabye

2008-02-23T18:02:00.000-08:00

david ray washes the car

2008-02-23T16:57:00.000-08:00

Find more videos like this on www.truveo.com.

"the united states does not start fights" (war made easy clip)

2008-02-22T14:16:00.000-08:00

includes, among other contradictory utterances made by u.s. presidents, this excerpt from a conversation between richard nixon and henry kissinger in 1972:
president nixon: i still think we ought to take the dikes out now--will that drown people?
henry kissinger: that would drown about 200,000 people.
president nixon: well, no, no, no. i'd rather use the nuclear bomb.
henry kissinger: that, i think, would just be too much.
president nixon: the nuclear bomb? does that bother you?
henry kissinger: [inaudible]
president nixon: i just want you to think big, henry, for christ's sakes.
war made easy- the movie

see the horizon over there?

2008-02-21T10:03:00.001-08:00

"Charlie Brown: What can you do when you don't fit in? What can you do when life seems to be passing you by?
Lucy: Follow me. I want to show you something. See the horizon over there? See how big this world is? See how much room there is for everybody? Have you ever seen any other worlds?
Charlie Brown: No.
Lucy: As far as you know, this is the only world there is, right?
Charlie Brown: Right.
Lucy: There are no other worlds for you to live in, right?
Charlie Brown: Right.
Lucy: You were born to live in this world, right?
Charlie Brown: Right.
Lucy: WELL LIVE IN IT THEN! Five cents please."
— Charles Schultz

discouraging

2008-02-21T00:20:00.000-08:00

as of late my posts are inspiring mostly just comments from spammers sending me links to porn sites. i think the spam robots can smell words like "sucker" and "without underwear" from very far off. looks like i will have to clean up my act or else it'll keep encouraging this inappropriate robot behavior.

this evening i walked across the street to the library, where they were holding a book sale. i arrived about five minutes before they opened the door and there was a line of about thirty people. it gave me a warm feeling of excitement that so many people would arrive early for a book sale. sometimes you feel very alone, and then something happens to contradict it. until the doors opened and the people in line streamed into the room snatching books from the tables and dropping them into their shopping bags, eagle-eyed only for first editions or anything of monetary worth. before i realized what they were doing, their greedy certainty unsettled me, made me insecure that they could somehow smell the best books and would buy them all up before i'd even gotten my bearings. but their idea of the best books were very different than mine. one man went around scanning the isbn numbers of books with an electronic contraption that no doubt calculated their true worth. i didn't like the frenetic energy with which these people jerked around the room and peered over my shoulders as i searched for and chose the books i would adopt as my own. they indifferently tossed the books they didn't want back onto the tables like fish they didn't want. back into the sea. i tried not to notice them, and slowly accumulated a small pile of books which i took to the counter where three white haired ladies with rulers and a cash box were waiting. they measured the spines of my books stacked atop eachother and charged me a dollar an inch. eight dollars. i got a beautiful hardcover copy of umberto eco's 'the name of the rose', a new thesaurus, a book of poems by peter gizzi, a jerzy kosinski novel i haven't read, a book of wild bird food recipes, a book by e.b. white titled "the points of my compass," two books for sophie, and a little italian cookbook with striking linoleum cut illustrations which i will scan maybe tomorrow or the next day and put some of them up here with a recipe or two. i walked home with my books in one arm. it had gotten almost dark. later, sophie and i sat on the back porch and watched the moon's eclipse while our hot wings cooked.

the kind of thing i am such a sucker for

2008-02-20T22:44:00.000-08:00

cb perfumes

conceptual dress

2008-02-20T11:43:00.000-08:00

image quilt

2008-02-19T22:46:00.000-08:00

colors that depict the past in photographs have always had time to soften, and in turn give the impression that the past was much softer and more beautiful than the present. i would like to climb into each of these separately and inhale its fragrance. i would like a city which had a mural of the 'brown bird singing' sheet music painted on an entire side of a building. i would have liked for max ernst to play chess with me, to photograph and paint me in a striped bathing suit reclined, twirling a compass from the time of copernicus.

1. traveling troupe, 2. Sign: Fermé, 3. Public Domain - Vintage Postcard Images, 4. max_ernst_schach.jpg, 5. emmy hennings, 6. Music Sheet, Copyright 1922, A Brown Bird Singing

instructions

2008-02-18T22:46:00.000-08:00

in honor of sophie's pending initiation into the world of babysitting employment, a few do's and don'ts.
visit nonblog to get the full effect. i was laughing pretty hard.

sewing without underwear

2008-02-17T14:06:00.001-08:00

i feel a real affinity with this photo today.

below

2008-02-16T19:00:00.000-08:00

beautiful and sweet music video of alessandra celletti's "hundred points." thanks to chris who's always expanding my musical horizons.

2008-02-16T18:59:00.003-08:00

"birds and people are not all that different"

2008-02-16T18:10:00.001-08:00

"says Kevin McGraw, a biologist at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. In crowded, expensive cities (New York, San Francisco, Boston), women want men who can provide financial stability, he found. In smaller cities (Kansas City, Pittsburgh), women look for men with positive emotional traits such as honesty, compassion and good listening skills rather than money. In crowded places with scarce resources, female birds prefer males that build nests and find food, while in less crowded settings, females are content with singing a duet or foraging for food with a mate."

1. HEAD WITH OVER HEELS, 2. Scots Fancy Canary - #11
1. free to use in your artwork, 2. White Yorkshire Canary - #5

sustainable humor

2008-02-16T16:55:00.000-08:00

"i only have diamonds, clubs, and spades," said tom heartlessly.

2008-02-14T11:44:00.000-08:00

400 more tom swifties here.

pipe dream

2008-02-14T11:25:00.000-08:00

leather valentine's day postcard circa 1905 courtesy of nyctreeman.

happy valentine's day

2008-02-14T10:49:00.000-08:00

courtesy of kay and sean, who are curently valentining in nice. smooch, smooch. and poulet.

i heart engrish

2008-02-13T10:46:00.000-08:00

grammatically incorrect english, deliberate and/or accidental, it pleases me so. here's a whole lot more. my exploration of this subject this morning has led me to an even stranger discovery that apparently is very big in japan. crush fetishism, a form of paraphilia, the desire to see small creatures crushed beneath the shoes, boots, or feet of large ones. i'd never thought of godzilla as possibly an erotic film until now.

please associate with me. i love you stuart.

2008-02-13T01:48:00.000-08:00

more japanese-english translations here.

purely delightful (touch of sad)

2008-02-12T12:35:00.000-08:00

thanks, tummy-ache, also purely delightful.

really appeals to me today

2008-02-11T22:32:00.000-08:00

fantastic diptych from here

just let me off right here

2008-02-10T11:37:00.000-08:00

the spider's sideyard

2008-02-10T00:52:00.000-08:00

YOU ARE BIDDING ON a vintage photo of CAtalina Island and people are looking a little unusual.

2008-02-09T01:26:00.000-08:00

from my new favorite: disturbing ebay auctions.

it's not every morning that a flock of turkeys just lands in the dog park.

2008-02-08T12:08:00.000-08:00

perhaps it's their size that makes them unseemly for the air,
or else the fact that the only time we ever hold them in our arms
is when they're frozen solid.

down they came from somewhere out of the left, (capsizing moment)
and alighted into the field of my vision
like a family claiming a spot of shady green for their picnic.

until the dogs noticed.
and took berzerk after those hapless parachutists, surprised out of their minds
up into the bare oaks just in time. while catching their breath they took count of eachother by
overwrought yelps that we interpreted as
"are you alright?"
"yeah, i'm alright. what the hell just happened?"
"i don't know. goddamned mapquest."

amy earles' paper dolls

2008-02-07T12:06:00.000-08:00

today, some amy earles. i have ordered the one with the bear.
go here to see the entire set on flickr.

"it is better to fall from your dream clouds than from a third story window."

2008-02-06T16:38:00.000-08:00

this book was great for this week's lassitude; it's wicked and wily and very hard to put down.

love and sleep

2008-02-06T10:33:00.000-08:00

"We long for an affection altogether ignorant of our faults. Heaven has accorded this to us in the uncritical canine attachment." ~George Eliot

thrift store window

2008-02-05T11:57:00.001-08:00

"i vacillate between two styles, two worlds, two attitudes toward life..."

2008-02-05T10:56:00.001-08:00

"... if i could succeed in analyzing them, i think i would be able to shake off all these doubts.
characteristics of the first type are: discipline, ruggedness, reserve, restraint, exclusivity, profundity. the effect does not lie on the surface; a first look leaves one cold, but gradually something is revealed to the beholder, by delayed action, as it were. these are probably the essential characteristics of ancient greek and roman art.
the characteristics of the other type, then, are diametrically opposed... anything supernatural, gigantic, dionysian, intoxicated, enraptured, dynamic. the effect is direct, abrupt, casting an immediate spell, imprisoning one, "bedazzling the senses," overwhelming...
given my strong propensity in painting as in life for the rococo, wouldn't the best antidote be to impose the most rigid discipline on myself? but the result would be stylized, sacral art, that other pitfall...
everything should merge into one great current. mysticism, the primitive, the most recent, greece, gothic-all the elements must be drawn upon." ~from oskar schlemmer's diary, september 1915

oh my cavalier

2008-02-04T11:14:00.000-08:00

more beauties here.

pushy valentines

2008-02-04T10:42:00.000-08:00

a gorgeous hotel, in a grand city

2008-02-03T11:28:00.000-08:00

'i had walked across the carpeted lobby and down a long marble corridor,
passing glassed-in phonebooths and rows of tall potted plants, and
staggered into the men's room.

my eyes were stinging. everything had grown blurry as i'd made my way
through the lobby. i moved toward the sinks and the mirrors. i could no
longer see my own hands, but in the brightness i sensed the expanse of tile
and brushed metals and knew at once that i was alone.

i was squinting, i guess. i contracted every muscle in my face. as i did
this a series of droplets came out of both eyes and stayed close to my
cheeks, traveling down them, each droplet leaving a kind of track. streaks,
i suppose. for a few brief moments i could see again. the tiles and the
metals. then again the room grew blurry.

it was then i heard a faucet running. someone was there. a man was
suggesting i was crying. crying! i doubted this–told him i seriously
doubted this. i slumped down onto my knees, holding my head in both
hands. more droplets. my head felt just like a trophy, so i held it as such."

~michael earl craig

wanting it

2008-02-02T12:10:00.000-08:00

a usb microscope/camera/ gadget. to zoom in on the world with.

novels: extended works of prose fiction that are subject to censorship by anyone who is offended by them.

2008-02-02T01:22:00.000-08:00

from the handy glossary of Euphemisms and Obfuscations.

february

2008-02-01T10:44:00.000-08:00

i must admit. as soon as it is safely february, i begin thinking that spring is really right around the corner. the result of this yearly delusion is that i often leave the house quite underdressed, with bare toes and shoulders gathering frost, teeth chattering like a toy clacker, seed packets in my thin cotton pockets. i know i should also treasure winter's gifts, but the truth is that they leave me cold. i can never achieve a homeostasis in winter, in which i am not aware of the outside temperature being wildly afar from my interior one. as i spent my youth in hawaii, where the temperature always hovers somewhere around 75 degrees, the feeling of being cold or hot drives me to distraction. by february 1st i'm already longing to leave the windows open and sleep in my sundress. states of undress without goosebumps, and warm air teasing out the trees' summer frocks.
1. Bored with the Weather, 2. the afterthought, 3. birthday-shades, 4. ventana, 5. Untitled, 6. Hades

strangely addicting

2008-01-31T00:05:00.000-08:00

so, bb has revealed to me the magic of disturbingauctions.com, a place where strange ebay biddings go to be together, and i'm just hooked. i even bid on the 20 "grammerphones and little dog," my first ebay bid of my entire life. featured here, we have the "vintage photo of white sheet with heads of eight women," a bonafide "twotle," (no longer alive, but it was!), and a "bizarre civil war era photo of gentleman with clown."
you'll definitely be hearing more about this.

look away

2008-01-30T22:19:00.000-08:00

1. Ms. D and the JF, 2. Untitled, 3. crossing - lomo, 4. tch, 5. To the sea of winter, 6. Untitled

news

2008-01-30T11:23:00.000-08:00

935 false statements made by the bush administration over a period of two years.
engineers create new adhesive that mimics gecko toe hairs (thanks, helen).

Typeface made at the beach of Zandvoort aan Zee in The Netherlands.

2008-01-29T11:29:00.000-08:00

backbreaker alphabet from hijack your life. thanks to camilla. i especially love the b.

remember my seaweed alphabet from last year?

"if you are sufficiently tenacious and interested, you can accomplish what you want to accomplish in this world." ~alice neel

2008-01-28T11:50:00.000-08:00

you can see the trailer here to get a taste.

oological kleptomania

2008-01-26T11:41:00.000-08:00

"Some eggers' mania for collecting extends to drawers of seashells or boxes of toy soldiers. Most of those jailed have speeded their own journey to the cells thanks to the evidence of their own index cards or coded computer files carefully detailing every clutch and theft. An obsessive-compulsive attention to detail can obscure reality. On one police raid, officers were amazed to find an egger reminding them to wipe their feet and not spoil his carpet.

Others seem addicted, gripped by an obsession they can no longer master. When the knock finally comes on some collectors' doors "there's this dawning realisation of what they've been doing for 20 years or more," says Thomas. "We've had some break down and cry and say, 'I'm so glad you've finally come, this has been controlling me for years. The breeding season comes and I can't stop going out and collecting eggs.'"

excerpt from here.
via the kircher society.

you can imagine my joy

2008-01-23T21:50:00.000-08:00

at finding this gloriously color coordinated set of cigarette cards on flickr. the official definition of a cigarette card, courtesy of wikipedia, is "a trade card issued by tobacco manufacturers to stiffen cigarette packaging and advertise cigarette brands." i love the contradiction of pictures of exercisers advertising cigarettes. and for youse who know me, i'm a sucker for little compartmentalized pictures of people in various states of bending.

sonnet out of a hundred thousand

2008-01-22T11:39:00.000-08:00

For acid marble's but a friandise

consuming tea and nibbling cream gateaux

the chosen fruit is hued a bright cerise

so stink the rotting skins from long ago

I styll can call to mind those hours of ease

those greedy mice leave nothing for the crow

we chill like nudists put on ice to freeze

most people like to read the words they know

The brave man cries I do not care a jot

the shark is smoked on beds of bergamot

while coming home we find the wind turned mean

You'll come to miss the peasant in his smock

I quite forgive you when you run amok

at least the metro's one place where you've been

from the online interactive version of queneau's cent mille milliards de poemes

great collection of photos from the library of congress on flickr

2008-01-22T00:19:00.001-08:00

1. M. Le Blanc (LOC), 2. Maggie Jones of Cleveland [baseball] (LOC), 3. Burman (LOC), 4. Eva Morrison (LOC), 5. Blind stenographer using dictaphone (LOC), 6. C.Y. Smith [boxing] (LOC)

and hundreds more where they came from.

i do not like it, sam i am

2008-01-21T21:29:00.000-08:00

green eggs AND green ham

spelling bee jewelry

2008-01-18T10:52:00.000-08:00

find more great spelling bee pendants here.

sortsolsum

2008-01-17T14:43:00.000-08:00

fiona has taught me this word: sortsolsum. the danish word for the swarming of starlings. (you can see it happening in the fifth photograph.)

i love the synesthetic and sensuous quality of these six photographs. how they borrow sugar from each other. i also prefer these six ingredients: snow, paper, string, sticks, cloth, and ether.
1. Turfed Ducks in flight 鳳頭潛鴨, 2. myrtle, 3. un coin de ciel bleu, 4. 30810014, 5. sortsolsum, 6. natural history

save the date

2008-01-17T11:00:00.000-08:00

the million little pictures show is going to be in san francisco.

out of all the adventures displayed there that night, mine will be among them.

"The magic that transforms stone into poetry nobody can explain. Even when you get there, the way remains mysterious..." ~Fernanda Gomez

2008-01-17T00:01:00.000-08:00

"...This is not important, except that it is possible to continue. Writing about art seems to me more and more dangerous. There are too many words troubling the wonderful silence of the visual."

much more of this insightful interview between gomez and ernesto neto here.

chandelier made from things that washed up on the beach

2008-01-11T22:56:00.001-08:00

stuart haygarth calls it his "tide chandelier".

early rollerskates

2008-01-10T10:16:00.001-08:00

i want a pair. i want to stroll through the aisles of the grocery store in them. i would wear them waitressing, gliding through the restaurant with martinis on a tray, gracefully dodging the footwaiters and sommelier. i would juggle the wide white plates for sidework and no one would ever go hungry.

wonderful photo found on flickr here.

"birds don't pay the rent"

2008-01-09T09:57:00.000-08:00

designer martín azúa (out of barcelona) on the concept behind his Nest House:

"The life in the city is complicated when thinking of the most basic necessity and sometimes absurd obligations. Freedom is reduced in what you have or need. Birds don’t pay the rent. They settle into a place and use the closest resources. Their nests form a part of nature. Learning form them, we came up with the idea to build the nest house of simple metal structure and some rope which are completed with natural materials like leaves, branches etc… It doesn’t take any space as it is hung on a tree with a thick tape not to damage it. Once installed it can serve as point of observation or an essential habitat in which you can spend a night. The nest house allows us a perception of the natural space of animal, plant and human life."

the rest of his inventions are equally whimsically beautiful. thanks to labour of heart for the link.

chalk evaporation up to the mischief of angels

2008-01-07T13:12:00.000-08:00

when the pictures came back
the last three i had taken in my dream
were all overlaid with the same
laundry-slung background
of a backyard in the nineteen thirties,
wih the foreground subjects all differing:

me on a field trip poking washed up jellyfish with a lacquered chopstick
me in a burning restaurant just as an owl snatches the white rabbit out of my arms
me tying three bells to a cat's collar so as to warn birds of its whereabouts

all clarified with the soft muddiness
of moments safely past any chance of correcting.

is this not nostalgia:
to live in the gone moment at last?

[i found this image [found on ffffound] very compelling, and so used it as a visual kind of scaffold for a poetic state.]

instrument

2008-01-07T00:08:00.000-08:00

i think when the note is pressed, something pokes the corresponding cat at the tail end. my cat does this when i put my foot under him in bed, to try to warm it.

image from ffffound.

matt stuart's impeccable sense of timing

2008-01-06T23:33:00.001-08:00

more for you here.

on inventors

2008-01-05T11:13:00.000-08:00

"Montague: Your father was an inventor. What were some of his inventions?

Cage: He invented a submarine that held the world's record in 1913 for staying underwater. But it ran by means of a gas engine, so it left bubbles on the surface, and you could tell where it was. It never occurred to him that it would be important to hide. When he saw that people wanted to travel underwater secretly, he then invented a way to discover them. It was used in World War I in the English Channel to detect German submarines. When he died he was working on space travel without the use of fuel. In other words, the release from or acceptance of gravity.

Montague: Where did he do his training?

Cage: Out of the blue. He never graduated from high school.

Montague: My grandfather was also an inventor and had a similar background with no real formal training. He was the inventor of the snap clothes pin, double-ended toothpick, hard-surface paper plate, book matches, and other such things, but never graduated from high school.

Cage: Right, inventors don't have to."

from a 1985 interview with john cage by stephen montague.
via ubuweb.

"the rustle of language forms a utopia...that is a music of meaning; in its utopic state, language would be enlarged." ~roland barthes

2008-01-03T13:41:00.000-08:00

a pattern of favorites to form a bouquet. their relationships to each other hold up to however rigorous of a study we might subject them to. images gathered that lie flat beside each other and yet instigate further alliances and betray secret tensions. i like to steep them and drink the tea after it's cooled slightly. 1. MY MOLSKINES, 2. Sasha by Daniel Jackson for i-D Sept 2006, 3. happy new year!, 4. From New High School Algebra, Wells and Hart, Copyright 1912, 5. 010804035.jpg, 6. Wren 1-2-08

"...that the uncertainty principle is a manifestation of the observer effect."

2008-01-03T12:04:00.000-08:00

maira kalman's book "the principles of uncertainty" is a visual treasure. it is deeply satisfying in the way only illustrated books can be, the way illustrated books are satisfying to children, this is the way that 'the principles of uncertainty' is satisfying to me, as it must be to other childlike adults.

it makes you feel a certain wild permission to write a book this instant and start painting the world as it pours through your retinas.

famous bearded men on stamps

2008-01-02T13:28:00.000-08:00

stranger than fixion: an impermanent record of transient events

2007-12-30T19:20:00.000-08:00

a mosaic of favorites to ring in the new year.
why not pay them a visits:
1. Sunday. In the city of Love., 2. wild, 3. Birds, 4. the 3, 5. Packard Proving Grounds, 6. 10/13/06 Vintage Freebie 13

i know it's not spring yet, but this is too good not to share

2007-12-30T18:52:00.000-08:00

SOR JUANA WORKS IN THE GARDEN

Time for gardening again; for poetry; for arms
up to the elbows in leftover
deluge, hands in the dirt, groping around
among the rootlets, bulbs, lost marbles, blind
snouts of worms, cat droppings, your own future
bones, whatever's down there
supercharged, a dim glint in the darkness.
When you stand on bare earth in your bare feet
and the lightning whips through you, two ways
at once, they say you are grounded,
and that's what poetry is: a hot wire.
You might as well stick a fork
in a wall socket. So don't think it's just about flowers.
Though it is, in a way.
You spent this morning among the bloodsucking
perennials, the billowing peonies,
the lilies building to outburst,
the leaves of the foxgloves gleaming like hammered
copper, the static crackling among the spiny columbines.
Scissors, portentous trowel, the wheelbarrow
yellow and inert, the grassblades
whispering like ions. You think it wasn't all working
up to something? You ought to have worn rubber
gloves. Thunder budding in the spires of lupins,
their clamps and updrafts, pollen and resurrection
unfolding from each restless nest
of petals. Your arms hum, the hair
stands up on them; just one touch and you're struck.
It's too late now, the earth splits open,
the dead rise, purblind and stumbling
in the clashing of last-day daily
sunlight, furred angels crawl
all over you like swarming bees, the maple
trees above you shed their deafening keys
to heaven, your exploding
syllables litter the lawn.

from margaret atwood's "the door."

thanks to raoul.

similarity of the subject

2007-12-30T18:45:00.000-08:00

this is mesmerizing. and apparently quite large.
thanks, scott.

the architecture of paperbacks

2007-12-29T13:25:00.000-08:00

thomas allen.
via a cup of jo.

what is a library book

2007-12-28T10:39:00.000-08:00

"tendentially, the book you want is never there, while another book is offered to you...the library is the space of substitutes for desire..." ~roland barthes

i was just thinking this the other day (though not in so many words, it was a thought that hovered over this idea but never landed into this articulate of a statement), walking home from the library with sophie. neither of the books we had gone looking for were there. at first, sophie wasn't interested in looking any further, but i coaxed her a little to just browse the shelves to see if she could find something interesting. some part of me has always been grateful not to find what i was looking for, for in this position i am most open to suggestion. what may start out as the substitute for something i wanted may become, mysteriously, the book i most needed to read. in it i might find the lost mate to a sock or the church key to a forgotten memory.

taking it from the shelf i see into it like a house lit up. i can peer through the living room window and glimpse the life that is lived there. i don't even have to knock to be allowed in. all of the possessions and combinations of objects come as pure surprise. the book is a place i may yearn to go to, yet i am its destination, according to barthes. without me its world stays folded and quiet. i have come across many of these books in the library which have not been opened in years. some not even once, the pages still uncut. desire to acquire a certain book is driven by the potential pleasure we sense that it will be capable of giving. it has promised something, some possible deep and intimate knowledge or else a validation of something you have long held dear. but without the possibility of having the object that holds so much promise, you find after all that you are here, in the veritable cathedral of promising objects, the library.

in my search i found a book i just had a sense that sophie would like. i noted its position and kept looking. when she joined me, i pointed it out to her. she read the jacket and decided to check it out. after we got home, while we were eating lunch, she said 'i really like stories that take place on ships.' she also likes vampires, had gone to the library in search of a vampire book they didn't have. later, after she's read some of the book, she said 'i love this book. and it takes place on a ship and it has vampires in it..'