chalk evaporation up to the mischief of angels

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

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

more for you here.

on inventors

"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

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."

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