Human Under Construction

One of my finer crushes.

2012-02-01T22:20:00.000-06:00

And Baryshnikov isn't bad, either.

2012-02-01T21:14:00.000-06:00

Paul Gustave Doré was a French engraver, painter, illustrator, and sculptor. He was first published when he was 15. His illustrations appeared in works such as Poe’s The Raven, Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Tennyson’s The Idylls of the King, and The Divine Comedy. After a major exhibition of his work in London, Doré also produced engravings for a book called London: A Pilgrimage, which was published in 1872. It was a success, but critics disliked it because of the fact that “Doré appeared to focus on the poverty that existed in parts of London.” Bummer for you, snobby critics! The Westminster Review claimed that “Doré gives us sketches in which the commonest, the vulgarest external features are set down.” So, to review, he was insanely talented, wasn’t afraid to speak the truth, and was a good-looking man to boot.

from fuckyeahhistorycrushes

2012-02-01T21:08:00.000-06:00

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

2012-01-31T20:30:00.000-06:00

"Are you up? You awake? You up? Huh?"

2012-01-31T14:04:00.000-06:00

Let’s get one thing out of the way: Mexican immigration is an oxymoron. Mexicans are indigenous. So, in a strange way, I’m pleased that the racist folks of Arizona have officially declared, in banning me alongside Urrea, Baca, and Castillo, that their anti-immigration laws are also anti-Indian. I’m also strangely pleased that the folks of Arizona have officially announced their fear of an educated underclass. You give those brown kids some books about brown folks and what happens? Those brown kids change the world. In the effort to vanish our books, Arizona has actually given them enormous power. Arizona has made our books sacred documents now.

Sherman Alexie is a poet, short story writer, novelist, and filmmaker. His book “The Lone Ranger and Tonto’s Fist Fight in Heaven,” was on the banned curriculum of the Mexican American Studies Program.

I've seen this man speak twice and consider both times to be incredibly illuminating, heart wrenching and hilarious.

2012-01-30T03:47:00.000-06:00

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

2012-01-30T01:30:00.000-06:00

"I've repeatedly said that for people as little in common as Joanne and myself, we have an uncommonly good marriage. We are actors. We make pictures and that's about all we have in common. Maybe that's enough. Wives shouldn`t feel obligated to accompany their husbands to a ball game, husbands do look a bit silly attending morning coffee breaks with the neighborhood wives when most men are out at work. Husbands and wives should have separate interests, cultivate different sets of friends and not impose on the other…You can't spend a lifetime breathing down each other's necks."

Paul Newman

2012-01-29T21:06:00.004-06:00

"Seat thyself sultanically among the moons of Saturn, and take high abstracted man alone; and he seems a wonder, a grandeur, and a woe."

— Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, chapter 107

2012-01-28T10:52:00.001-06:00

Mr E wrote a lovely, sad, wonderful book about his life that, if you like this song, you may well want to read. THINGS THE GRANDCHILDREN SHOULD KNOW - by Mark Oliver Everett (there is another tome but Jen doesn't have the shekels yet)

Tea is drunk to forget the din of the world. ~T'ien Yiheng

2012-01-27T22:42:00.000-06:00

Fucking Tea. Do not attempt to keep us apart.*

Tea...is a religion of the art of life. ~Okakura

It is not a new or cool thing, my obsession with tea. An entire cupboard is dedicated to various kinds, many bought by the ounce (oh, green metal tea, I adore you).

It goes beyond plopping a bag into a mug. But I am not quite as obsessed as to have a ceremony dictated by all tea repasts past.

Any tea lover can tell you there are many different kinds one can have with mood and purpose in mind.

For pure flavor, sure, stick to the Earl Grey or Oolong (monkey picked?), Pekoe, Ceylon, chai (which means, simply, tea) or black tea.

Go ahead, smother it with sugar or honey or milk. It's malleable and welcomes variety. Though once a you find your fix, that's it. Tori Amos was pressed to drop an ardent suitor because a boy should remember what a girl takes in her tea.

"So, I had to get this song together in about 2 hours. And this boy really pissed me off, because I had a crush on him, right...and he'd been making tea for me for nine months. And so, the whole thing is...he would sit there and ask me... Now if you're making tea for a girl, right, for 9 months don't you think, guys. I mean help me out here. Your noodle, it can hold a lot of information, right? But don't you think, you can remember how many sugars a girl takes in her tea after 9 months!" [Tori Amos, US Hey Jupiter single, intro to song]

Green tea for those of a healthy bend leads one to make a choice from a plethora of greens. It would be easy to grab a box of Lipton. But tea whores like me like their greens in a bag with a number self inscribed, weighed and top rolled.

Greens are so popular that their flavors are infused into chocolate, cake, soups, Kit Kat bars, Pepsi, ice cream and Starbucks frappes.

The smell is heavenly and is often played against jasmine or sandalwood in scents for the earthy girl.

But then we dip into teas for health. For stamina (usually with ginseng, in which case herbs and fruits are aided so you don't have to taste that awful bitterness on its own), dieting (questionable ingredients I often can't pronounce), sleeping (chamomile is a classic ingredient as is Valerian, another stinky, awful tasting herb in need of peppermint to make it palatable), detoxing (the Yogi Detox tea is actually incredibly tasty - as for it's claims, not the bittiest clue), teas for pregnancy, teas for an upset tummy (peppermint will always do you right), etc.

My taste buds, ocular needs and odoriferous love is most often met with TAZO tea's Passion blend.
The hibiscus flowers, passion fruit, mango, orange peel, licorice root, cinnamon, rose hips (a touch tart), and lemongrass make this tea gorgeous on every level. Just the tiniest addition of honey make it sublime. Um, I really like it.

Each cup of tea represents an imaginary voyage. ~Catherine Douzel

Most grocery stores and mega-stores end up with a shelf devoted to Celestial Seasonings tea. It is well deserved. They have straight forward teas like green, cranberry, red zinger, and peppermint (which I mix with many other kinds that need a gentle nudge toward tasting good) but their herbal mixes are well known. They have echinancea and vitamin c laden wellness tea, a detox blend, the classic Sleepytime tea and my favorite, Tension Tamer.

This has been a main stay in my household since I was in high school. The promise made by the art on the box was enough for a first buy. The taste and the fact that, by gosh and by golly, I really do feel like a could ride a dragon after a cup (a small dragon - a bug cup) keeps it in constant rotation in the tea cupboard.

The Republic of Tea makes my all time favorite brand. For those who don't partake in alcohol, Rainforest Tea has been imbibed with great effect sans the complete lose of control. Pau D'arco is a tremendous mood enhancer but the addition of allspice, star anise, vanilla bean, rooibos, and cinnamon with exotic spices makes it taste like your on vacation.

They make a fantastic mate, a lovely and subtle rose petal black tea, so many kinds of oolongs that I haven't been able to try them all, a classic chai, as well as some wonderful wellness teas.

We haven't even gotten into the joys of buying bulk teas! Or flowering teas! Or the teapots themselves. But this is a fine start.

And certainly a great insight into some of the contents of my kitchen.

* you can get the Fucking Tea mug here.

2012-01-27T20:36:00.000-06:00

This is not my beautiful house.

This is not my beautiful wife.

2012-01-27T19:57:00.002-06:00

2012-01-27T18:36:00.000-06:00

Man On The Verge

2012-01-27T17:17:00.001-06:00


M. and Mme. Édouard Manet, 1869. By Edgar Degas

"So, I was thinking we could stop by the Snodwell's. She'll soon have the baby and Gretchen says that..."

"Yes, dear."

Wikipaintings

Jen Readies Herself For Actual Thought

2012-01-27T14:14:00.002-06:00

I've been moved to praise some books of late. And move to "throw one against the wall." But the worst kind of book is one I lay aside after reading it with a shrug. I shall expound on this further as thoughts flood my brain. And I will share the books I loved. Maybe even share the book I read that had me thinking, "All this writer wanted to do was get this book sold as a movie." If you want to write a screenplay, prose still with covers on either side with the word "thriller" assigned to it by your publisher is certain one way of doing it.

More to come...

Because...

This is what happens when brain is engaged before engines are revved.

2012-01-27T02:12:00.000-06:00

“I have scars on my hands from touching certain people…Certain heads, certain colours and textures of human hair leave permanent marks on me.”
― J.D. Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction

2012-01-27T01:10:00.000-06:00

2012-01-27T00:33:00.000-06:00

If I had my way we’d sleep every night all wrapped around each other like hibernating rattlesnakes.

— William S. Burroughs

2012-01-27T00:16:00.000-06:00

Her Beasts - Christer Karlstad

2012-01-26T23:54:00.000-06:00

he Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch

Because skating always has been, and always will be, serious business.

by

Henry Raeburn

2012-01-26T22:52:00.002-06:00

“And she danced; she danced with the music and with the rhythm of earth’s circles; she turned with the earth turning, like a disk, turning all faces to light and to darkness evenly, dancing towards daylight.”

—Anaïs Nin.

2012-01-26T22:43:00.000-06:00

Head of a Walrus ~ Albrecht Dürer, 1521

Most mundane

2012-01-26T21:46:00.001-06:00

A fence post

2012-01-26T21:44:00.001-06:00

2012-01-26T21:42:00.000-06:00

2012-01-26T21:40:00.000-06:00

2012-01-26T21:37:00.000-06:00

2012-01-26T21:36:00.000-06:00

2012-01-26T21:34:00.000-06:00

My current wallpaper.

2012-01-26T19:24:00.000-06:00

Enthralled with the silky texture of the smoke. No idea who took the photo.

By any other name...

2012-01-26T00:16:00.001-06:00

"I saw this outside a house near where my girlfriend used to live, I had to take a picture of it! 20 minutes later, having saw me take the photo, the owner of the house came out and stomped all the weeds/plants flat. Some people can't see beauty even if its growing on their property."

Emmet Dwyer (he has a good eye and a fantastic photostream at Flickr)

From Above

2012-01-25T22:13:00.000-06:00

What you see from space...

Meanwhile...

2012-01-25T21:06:00.000-06:00

...an Indian man waits patiently for his pants.

NYT, Pictures of the Day

From a two-pint pot

2012-01-25T20:35:00.003-06:00

A mind for ever
Voyaging through strange seas of Thought,

alone.

-William Wordsworth describing Sir Isaac Newton

Many of our greatest men and women began two steps back and kept sliding until force of will took over for fate. From his own memoirs Newton was said to be so small that he could fit into a two-pint pot. His father died four months before his birth and his step-father was as wicked as any fairy tale could provide despite being a Reverend. He hated the man and resented his mother. "Threatening my father and mother Smith to burn them and the house over them."

Sent to his grandmother's (Margery Ayscough) to live, he lived instead in his own world. A world that revolved around invention and experiment. It was said that all he wanted to do was study. His way. His love of Descartes, Copernicus and Galileo was outside of Trinity College, Cambridge's curriculum. It is amazing to think he, on his own, discovered the laws of gravity and motion. If he'd been a sociable man, this may never have happened. If his mother had had her way, the world would have been gifted with another farmer instead of a scientific genius

Newton made strides in mechanics, mathematics, thermodynamics, astronomy, optics and acoustics that changed the world.

Principia Mathematica (1687) is thought to be the single most important book in the history of science.

His quarrel with German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz regarding calculus is renowned. Newton accused Leibniz of plagiarism*. This was no small charge. At the time, Leibniz was was a political adviser to the Duke of Hanover, was consider the first true geologist and was both a logician and a metaphysician. The Royal Society was called in to moderate. Strangely, they never called on Leibniz to give his side of the story. They eventually reported that, indeed, Leibniz was a fraud and Newton was the true inventor of the Calculus. That Newton wrote the report himself may have had something to do with the outcome.

He was an unparalleled genius, had a bad temper, and was an introvert. Some think introverted to the point of his having autism. Towards the end of his life, his studies in alchemy and mysticism had his contemporaries think he may have been mad. Perhaps he still knew more than they, or we, do.

"I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people."

- Isaac Newton

My reading of him began with the QI Book of the Dead. And will expand to James Gleick's book called, simply, Isaac Newton. A fascinating and complex man. And more is being discovered about him every day.

Hideous shoe named after him.

Kalmakoff: A Russian in Paris

2012-01-25T18:48:00.000-06:00

Angel of the Abyss

Narcissus

Astarte

And the artist died alone and poor with a vivid body of work left behind him. Disturbing and steeped deeply in mythology, the most beautiful are self portraits (#1 and #2 here).

2012-01-25T18:26:00.000-06:00

From Susannah Blaxil

but does it float

2012-01-24T16:39:00.000-06:00

o small children watching a circus performer practicing on a tightrope. Photograph by Nina Leen. Sarasota, Florida, USA, March 1949.

via Days Gone By

2012-01-24T11:30:00.000-06:00

Massive Attack promo film raising awareness of Reprieve's zero dB - against music torture campaign. To support the cause visit http://zerodb.org/ or www.reprieve.org.uk
Directed by Adam And Olly and filmed in Cambridge University's anechoic chamber.

2012-01-24T01:51:00.000-06:00

2012-01-24T01:16:00.000-06:00

2012-01-24T00:40:00.003-06:00

Mastication.

2012-01-23T23:53:00.000-06:00

“You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book… or you take a trip… and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death. Some never awaken.”

- Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

2012-01-23T22:30:00.002-06:00

Scott and Zelda posing for Hearst’s International Magazine, May 1923. Zelda called it her “Elizabeth Arden face” and pasted it in her scrapbook.

Nobody knew whose party it was. It had been going on for weeks. When you felt you couldn’t survive another night, you went home and slept and when you got back, a new set of people had consecrated themselves to keeping it alive. Zelda Fitzgerald, Save Me The Waltz

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Dyed Siberian Horse” (And Twelve Other Descriptions of Things and Atmosphere) by Biblioklept

143. Days of this February were white and magical, the nights were starry and crystalline. The town lay under a cold glory.

144. Dyed Siberian horse.

145. As thin as a repeated dream.

146. The sea was coming up in little intimidating rushes.

147. The island floated, a boat becalmed, upon the almost perceptible curve of the world.

148. Lost in the immensity of surfaceless blue sky like air piled on air.

151. On the great swell of the Blue Danube, the summer ball rocked into motion.

152. A circus ring for ponies in country houses.

153. The tense, sunny room seemed romantic to Becky, with its odor of esoteric gases, the faint perfumes of future knowledge, the low electric sizz in the glass cells.

154. A rambling frame structure that had been a residence in the 80’s, the country poorhouse in the 1900’s, and now was a residence again.

155. The groans of moribund plumbing.

156. The silvery “Hey!” of a telephone.

161. Whining, tinkling hoochie-coochie show.

From the angels wanna wear my red shoes and Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald

2012-01-08T20:27:00.001-06:00

Windows, #21 Enlisted men's barracks, The Badlands

"I often see through things right to the apparition itself."

~ Grace Paley (December 11, 1922 - )

2012-01-08T20:24:00.000-06:00

2012-01-07T18:39:00.000-06:00

"You can spend minutes, hours, days, weeks, or even months over-analyzing a situation; trying to put the pieces together, justifying what could’ve, would’ve happened… or you can just leave the pieces on the floor and move the fuck on."
— Tupac Shakur

2012-01-07T18:27:00.000-06:00

"I gobbled up the mountains, ate the sky, and drank the sea. Until I was the Universe the Universe was me."
— MacPhisto (Candy, 1968)

2012-01-07T18:23:00.000-06:00

"I do not believe making money in order to consume goods is

mankind’s sole purpose on this planet. If you’re wondering

what I believe our purpose on this planet is, I’ll give you

a hint…it has to do with creating and sharing."

— Bill Hicks

2012-01-07T17:25:00.000-06:00

Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe Hands, 1919

from in silent agony

2012-01-07T17:20:00.000-06:00

Imagine being out in the middle of a newly frozen lake. Any step you take could put you through the ice and into the water. There are people at the shore. But they aren't watching. They have their own things to deal with. Knowing you have to make a move, you make that first step. And you go through. And no one knows. There is no Superman. No fairy tale prince to save you. You have to get out and make it to shore on your own. So you start to swim. You're scared but determined. And you are very angry.

Me, yesterday.

2012-01-07T17:06:00.000-06:00

In my head, the operator is passed out on the board.

2012-01-07T16:59:00.002-06:00

From Katharine Hepburn’s 1981 interview with Barbara Walters:

Hepburn: “I have not lived as a woman. I have lived as a man…I’ve just done what I damn well wanted to and I made enough money to support myself. And I ain’t afraid of being alone.”

Walters: “Is that why also you wear pants?”

Hepburn: “No, I just wore pants because they’re comfortable.”

Walters: “Do you ever wear a skirt, by the way?”

Hepburn: “I have one.”

Walters: “You have one.”

Hepburn: “I’ll wear it to your funeral.”

From Old Hollywood

A Page Turned

2012-01-06T01:52:00.000-06:00

from heart-shaped-apple

2012-01-06T01:38:00.000-06:00

“We leave the bed where your fingers
are a wide surprise, where your tongue
tells me slow stories. I watch you,
in the daylight, bring your hand
to your face, to your mouth. I tuck
pieces of myself behind
in the tangle of our bodies.”

Kim Ports

2012-01-06T01:16:00.000-06:00

“We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say — and to feel — ”Yes, that’s the way it is, or at least that’s the way I feel it. You’re not as alone as you thought.”

John Steinbeck, from “In Awe of Words,” The Exonian, 75th anniversary edition, Exeter University (1930)

2012-01-06T00:27:00.000-06:00

Kristeenyoung

2012-01-05T23:47:00.000-06:00

Go to Gotye

2012-01-05T22:43:00.000-06:00

Hawk Perched on Gauntlet of a Falconer

Unknown Artist, British

Metro Museum of Art

2012-01-05T21:09:00.000-06:00

The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way, and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theatre.

Frank Zappa

from Mid Thought

2012-01-05T18:40:00.000-06:00

2012-01-04T19:16:00.000-06:00

I like to watch this with my iTunes cranked when I am in a foul mood. Current fave song to listen to as she falls? Al Green - Take Me To The River

From No You Shut Up

2012-01-04T16:47:00.000-06:00

At every moment of our lives, we have one foot in a fairy tale and the other in the abyss. —

Paulo Coelho

2012-01-02T08:59:00.000-06:00

David: How 'bout if you help me? See, I've got this little problem. I've got a stalker.
Sofía: It doesn't sound life threatening.
David: But I need a cover. I need for you to pretend we're having a scintillating conversation, and you are wildly entertained. [Both laugh] I know it's tough.
Sofía: I'll improvise.
David: She's across the room and burning a hole in my back now, isn't she?
Sofia: Red dress, strappy shoes? [David nods] Wow. She's really staring at you.
David: Shit.
Sofia: And she seems to be crying. I think she's the saddest girl to ever hold a martini.

quote from Vanilla Sky

2011-12-29T15:33:00.000-06:00

"Dress suitably in short skirts and strong boots, leave your jewels in the bank, and buy a revolver."

Countess Markievicz, 19th century Irish revolutionary.

Look Away

2011-12-28T21:14:00.000-06:00

From The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the Unconscious
W. M. Hunt

The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the Unconscious presents a wonderfully idiosyncratic and compelling collection of photographs assembled around a particular theme: in each image, the gaze of the subject is averted, the face obscured or the eyes firmly closed. The pictures present a catalog of anti-portraiture, characterized at first glance by what its subjects conceal, not by what the camera reveals.

2011-12-28T02:21:00.000-06:00

And it's time, time, time that you lost...

And it's Time Time

Time

And it's Time Time

Time

And it's Time Time Time

That you love

And it's

Time Time Time

And it's

Time

Time Time that you love.

Well, the smart money's on Harlow,
And the moon is in the street.
The shadow boys are breaking all the laws.
And you're east of East St. Louis,
And the wind is making speeches,
And the rain sounds like a round of applause.

Napoleon is weeping in the Carnival saloon,
His invisible fiance is in the mirror.
The band is going home,
It's raining hammers, it's raining nails.
Yes, it's true, there's nothing left for him down here.

Chorus:

And it's Time Time Time
And it's Time Time Time
And it's Time Time Time
That you love
And it's Time Time Time

And they all pretend they're Orphans,
And their memory's like a train.
You can see it getting smaller as it pulls away.
And the things you can't remember,
Tell the things you can't forget. That
History puts a saint in every dream.

                     Well she said she'd steak around
                                    Until the bandages came off.
But these mamas boys just don't know when to quit.
And Matilda asks the sailors "are those dreams
Or are those prayers?
So just close your eyes, son
And this won't hurt a bit."

Chorus

Well, things are pretty lousy for a calendar girl.
The boys just dive right off the cars
And splash into the street.

And when she's on a roll she pulls a razor
From her boot and a thousand
Pigeons fall around her feet.

So put a candle in the window
And a kiss upon his lips,
Till the dish outside the window fills with rain
Just like a stranger with the weeds in your heart           And play the fiddler off till i come back again.

Well it's time, time, time.

             And it's Time Time Time

                              And it's Time Time Time
                                                  That

You                    Love

And it's Time Time Time



                                             And it's Time
                                                                Time                                                Time

                            That you love

And it's time, time, time.

2011-12-28T01:23:00.001-06:00

Retake the falling snow: each drifting flake
Shapeless and slow, unsteady and opaque,
A dull dark white against the day’s pale white
And abstract larches in the neutral light.
And then the gradual and dark blue
As night unites the viewer and the view,
And in the morning diamonds of frost
Express amazement: Whose spurred feet have crossed
From left to right the blank page of the road?

2011-12-20T16:48:00.000-06:00

For most of us, there is only the unattended

Moment, the moment in and out of time,

The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,

The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning

Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply

That it is not heard at all, but you are the music

While the music lasts.

T. S. Eliot, from “The Dry Salvages”

2011-12-20T15:10:00.000-06:00

"You’re an interesting species. An interesting mix. You’re capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you’re not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we’ve found that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other."
- Carl Sagan

Business as usual

2011-12-05T22:49:00.000-06:00

Undaunted by a night of German air raids in which his store front was blasted, a shopkeeper opens up the morning after for "business as usual" in London.

From The Atlantic

What If Everyone Saw This Facebook Status?

2011-12-04T22:20:00.000-06:00

What If Everyone Saw This Facebook Status?

2011-12-04T14:59:00.000-06:00


1922 Girls’ Rifle Team, University of Maryland

From Uncertain Times

Ali Farka Toure & Toumani Diabate - Kala Djula

2011-12-01T20:31:00.002-06:00

2011-12-01T17:58:00.003-06:00

From Justice League Animated

Bad Lands

2011-11-30T14:56:00.002-06:00

Me, today.

2011-11-23T14:45:00.000-06:00

Ideas are Bulletproof

Wov

2011-11-21T22:32:00.000-06:00

2011-11-21T16:33:00.001-06:00

“Hände” (1928) - Miklos Bandy

imagination brigade

Brought down to earth.

2011-11-20T17:46:00.001-06:00

When Doris showed up at the Mood Party wearing a balloon dress (she claimed it was uplifting), Jake quickly went after her with a pin (he said he was a stickler for details).

From hot balloon blog

Miss This

2011-11-20T13:25:00.000-06:00

From GIF Movie

Maxence Cyrin - Where Is My Mind (The Pixies Piano Cover)

2011-11-09T08:55:00.000-06:00

2011-10-30T14:02:00.001-05:00


	Click for larger.

Feel I lead a charmed life after being spared the early snow that has buried the east coast. Treated to a light rain and upper 50 degree temps, the outside experience can be done sans coat, gloves and winter boots - for now. May all who have snow see it melt before the next winter dumpery.

2011-10-30T01:37:00.000-05:00

Eric Rondepierre - the Moires collection

Found at Mossbone

2011-10-30T01:07:00.000-05:00

James Rhodes - captured my soul with his playing.

2011-10-29T22:31:00.000-05:00

Excessive Cuteness Alert!

2011-10-29T20:34:00.000-05:00

2011-10-29T04:02:00.000-05:00

"There are suspect places

I must live in my lantern"

— T. S. Eliot, from “Love Songs” in The Waste Land and Other Poems

Karen and the Bird

2011-10-29T03:51:00.000-05:00

I live here when the desert freezes.

2011-10-29T03:47:00.000-05:00

My Meds

2011-10-29T03:44:00.000-05:00

2011-10-29T03:21:00.000-05:00

Harvest Heart

2011-10-29T03:01:00.000-05:00

Paul Gauguin at the harmonium in Alphonse Mucha’s Studio, Paris 1893

me

2011-10-29T02:52:00.000-05:00

2011-10-29T02:50:00.000-05:00

2011-10-29T02:43:00.000-05:00

A Pygmy Marmoset (Callithrix pygmaea) among of the hairs of a keeper at a primate rescue and rehabilitation center near Santiago, Chile on August 3, 2010. The Pygmy Marmoset, known as the world’s smallest monkeys and under danger of extinction, was confiscated after being found inside the clothes of a Peruvian citizen during a highway police check at the northern city of Antofagasta. (REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado)

In Praise of Daze

2011-10-29T02:29:00.001-05:00

I once spent a lovely spring day traipsing through the woods with a dear soul friend who had saved my life by existing.

Fellow survivors look as each other and wink - they too have been to hell and back. Hells built and filled with hot hate of others dark realities the world offers on paper plates that can't hold the weight or those silent, dark hells we create for ourselves. The silent ones; the ones with the hidden crevices, the veiled river of memories, the places we go to sulk or scream but only inside for outside is gray order. NOTHING out of place.

We had met there, on the edge of the gray. That day was to take us from there to the life, the colors, feelings dug up on sandy bottoms of deep lakes and brought up for a view of the sun held in a perfect sky. We hid in the woods for weeks, at first, bonding with conifers, sleeping on their discarded foliage. Mornings were brutally bright but full of promise. Escaping to the beach one day, we saw our next refuge.

The lake had hauled great branches from distant shores and strewn them about the soft white sand in cavalier piles. To us they were the remains of great, majestic beasts that were no more. Creeping among them, caressing their worn limbs, we could see stories of lives longer our mere craniums could conceive of. The wooden bones of once vertical wonders were our kin. And we honored their passing.

As we walked along the beach so soft and so white we had no choice but to be swept up in full daylight and being alive. A parade of green grass called to us and we ran like children.

Green.

All greens.

Every green.

On each blade of grass within this cloistered lawn was revealed the pageantry lady nature presents to those who bend low and look through lysergic eyes. Every blade was it's own shade of green. The color of life. The color of wellness. The color of my eyes. As we lay with our backs crushing the soft blades, the sun danced above us and the trees sang, each it's own voice but in harmony. Their voices soft whispers that could rend a soul sane.

The sanity was more than I could take.

On the edge of our glade, a sculpture had been erected. A crude thing. No art to it. No song. Metal jutting out of the earth at painful angles as chains hung in ordered rows. The chains had their own burdens. Burdens I happily placed my ass on and my angel and I began to swing.

The trees thrummed a new song, the sun did a jig and we swang until we grew up. But as we now walk the land among you, know that our bones are made of stories. We still pull the occasional resinous needle from our hair. We hear the trees wondrous songs play ever on. And the gray silent hell can not call us back anymore.

2011-10-29T01:45:00.000-05:00

What my dreams have been doing with me of late.

2011-10-29T01:42:00.000-05:00

2011-10-29T01:39:00.000-05:00

"You, too, seeping memories, as we spin in place. An epiphyte: a love nest. Inextricable, shadow for shadow, rhyme for rhyme."

— Aaron Shurin, from “Steeped”

2011-10-29T00:29:00.000-05:00

"Sooner or later in life everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealizable, but there are few who pause to consider the antithesis: that perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable. The obstacles preventing the realization of both these extreme states are of the same nature: they derive from our human condition which is opposed to everything infinite."
— Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz

Human Under Construction

One of my finer crushes.

Tea is drunk to forget the din of the world. ~T'ien Yiheng

Man On The Verge

Jen Readies Herself For Actual Thought

Henry Raeburn

Most mundane

A fence post

My current wallpaper.

By any other name...

From Above

Meanwhile...

From a two-pint pot

The Ten Brightest Stars

Kalmakoff: A Russian in Paris

A Page Turned

Look Away

Business as usual

What If Everyone Saw This Facebook Status?

Ali Farka Toure & Toumani Diabate - Kala Djula

Bad Lands

Me, today.

Wov

Brought down to earth.

Miss This

Maxence Cyrin - Where Is My Mind (The Pixies Piano Cover)

Excessive Cuteness Alert!

Karen and the Bird

I live here when the desert freezes.

My Meds

me

In Praise of Daze

What my dreams have been doing with me of late.