[Image: The Beginning of Everything: Remembering Distance
(oil on linen, 90 x 180 cm, 2010), by Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox]
The Kindness of Every Split-Second
[Image: display window of “mini-prints” taken with the Fujifilm Instax camera (originally from the Photojojo store). See note at bottom of post for more.]
From whiskey river:
You know what I believe? I remember in college I was taking this math class, this really great math class taught by this tiny old woman. She was talking about fast Fourier transforms and she stopped midsentence and said, “Sometimes it seems the universe wants to be noticed.”
That’s what I believe. I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is improbably biased toward consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed. And who am I, living in the middle of history, to tell the universe that it — or my observation of it — is temporary?
(John Green [source])
…and (italicized portion):
In the Storm
Some black ducks
were shrugged up
on the shore.
It was snowinghard, from the east,
and the sea
was in disorder.
Then some sanderlings,five inches long
with beaks like wire,
flew in,
snowflakes on their backs,and settled
in a row
behind the ducks—
whose backs were alsocovered with snow—
so close
they were all but touching,
they were all but underthe roof of the ducks’ tails,
so the wind, pretty much,
blew over them.
They stayed that way, motionless,for maybe an hour,
then the sanderlings,
each a handful of feathers,
shifted, and were blown awayout over the water,
which was still raging.
But, somehow,
they came backand again the ducks,
like a feathered hedge,
let them
stoop there, and live.If someone you didn’t know
told you this,
as I am telling you this,
would you believe it?Belief isn’t always easy.
But this much I have learned,
if not enough else—
to live with my eyes open.I know what everyone wants
is a miracle.
This wasn’t a miracle.
Unless, of course, kindness—as now and again
some rare person has suggested—
is a miracle.
As surely it is.
(Mary Oliver [source])
The Absorbing and the Absorbed
[Image: a Menger sponge overgrown with vines, found here. Wikipedia explains how
to construct a real Menger sponge, noting — without elaboration — that the resulting
object “simultaneously exhibits an infinite surface area and encloses zero volume.”*]
From whiskey river:
You know when you see something like a marvelous mountain against the blue sky, the vivid, bright, clear, unpolluted snow, the majesty of it drives all your thoughts, your concerns, your problems away. Have you noticed that? You say, “How beautiful it is,” and for two seconds perhaps, or for even a minute, you are absolutely silent. The grandeur of it drives away, for that second, the pettiness of ourselves. That immensity has taken us over. Like a child occupied with an intricate toy for an hour; he won’t talk, he won’t make any noise, he is completely absorbed in that. The toy has absorbed him. So the mountain absorbs you and therefore for the second, or the minute, you are absolutely quiet, which means there is no self. Now, without being absorbed by something — either a toy, a mountain, a face, or an idea — to be completely without the me in oneself, is the essence of beauty.
(Jiddu Krishnamurti, On Love and Loneliness [source])
…and:
… It’s 1500
in the book of Chinese watercolors: scholar-artist T’ang Yin
is asleep inside his mountain cottage, dreaming that a self of him,
that looks like him, is floating in the air above
the highest peaks, that looks like air we’d have
if lakes of milk gave off a vapor.
… From the Everfloating Void
above our world, a human image slowly drifts back down
and joins its earthly body once again, reenters
days and nights of wine shop, scandal, lawyers
— for such (in part) is the life of T’ang Yin.
He’s been dreaming. And now he’s going to set it down
on a wafer of unrolled rice paper. Writing:
Rain on the river. That’s all. That’s his poem.
He’s writing:Rain on the river.
(Albert Goldbarth [source])
…and:
I’m for mystery, not interpretive answers… The answer is never the answer. What’s really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you’ll always be seeking. I’ve never seen anybody really find the answer, but they think they have. So they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.
(Ken Kesey [source])
“I Carved These Places, This Flower, This Bird”… with Gunpowder
From Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang:
And then there was Black Ceremony, a recent daytime fireworks exhibition in the desert sky over Qatar, kicking off his exhibit at the Arab Museum of Modern Art:
The Chime of the Moment
[Image: night view of House Attack, a 2006 installation by artist Erwin Wurm — a real house, turned upside down and embedded in the roof at Vienna’s Museum Moderner Kunst (MUMOK). See the daytime look here.]
From whiskey river (which, I think, offered an especially rich selection this week):
Everything That Acts Is Actual
From the tawny light
from the rainy nights
from the imagination finding
itself and more than itself
alone and more than alone
at the bottom of the well where the moon lives,
can you pull meinto December? a lowland
of space, perception of space
towering of shadows of clouds blown upon
clouds over
new ground, new made
under heavy December footsteps? the only
way to live?The flawed moon
acts on the truth, and makes
an autumn of tentative
silences.
You lived, but somewhere else,
your presence touched others, ring upon ring,
and changed. Did you think
I would not change?The black moon
turns away, its work done. A tenderness,
unspoken autumn.
We are faithful
only to the imagination. What the
imagination
seizes
as beauty must be truth. What holds you
to what you see of me is
that grasp alone.
(Denise Levertov [source])
…and:
The beginning of being fine is noticing how things really are.
1. Life is uncertain, surprises are likely.
2. If you are alive, that’s good; lower the bar.
3. In a dark place, you still have what really counts.
4. If you are in a predicament, there will be a gate.
5. What you need might be given to you.
6. The true life is in between winning and losing.
7. If you have nothing — give it away.
(John Tarrant [source])
…and:
Time is constantly passing. If you really consider this fact, you will be simultaneously amazed and terrified. Time is passing, even for tiles, walls, and pebbles. This means that every moment dies to itself. As soon as it arises, it is gone. You cannot find any duration. Arising and passing away are simultaneous. That is why there is no seeing nor hearing. That is why we are both sentient beings and insentient beings.
(Norman Fischer)
…and:
I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning.
(J. B. Priestley)
Liquid Assets, Compounded
[Image: “Butterfly Splash,” by Alex Koloskov. For more information, including an “e-videobook” tutorial on creating this sort of effect, see the photographer’s site, which is where I found it.]
From whiskey river (italicized portion):
Poem Holding Its Heart In One Fist
Each pebble in this world keeps
its own counsel.Certain words — these, for instance —
may be keeping a pronoun hidden.
Perhaps the lover’s you
or the solipsist’s I.
Perhaps the philosopher’s willowy it.The concealment plainly delights.
Even a desk will gather
its clutch of secret, half-crumpled papers,
eased slowly, over years,
behind the backs of drawers.Olives adrift in the altering brine-bath
etch onto their innermost pits
a few furrowed salts that will never be found by the tongue.Yet even with so much withheld,
so much unspoken,
potatoes are cooked with butter and parsley,
and buttons affixed to their sweater.
Invited guests arrive, then dutifully leave.And this poem, afterward, washes its breasts
with soap and trembling hands, disguising nothing.
(Jane Hirshfield)
…and:
I had a discussion with a great master in Japan, and we were talking about the various people who are working to translate the Zen books into English, and he said, “That’s a waste of time. If you really understand Zen, you can use any book. You could use the Bible. You could use Alice in Wonderland. You could use the dictionary, because the sound of the rain needs no translation.”
(Alan Watts)
…and:
In the end, writing is like a prison, an island from which you will never be released but which is a kind of paradise: the solitude, the thoughts, the incredible joy of putting into words the essence of what you for the moment understand and with your whole heart want to believe.
(James Salter)
Split and Crazy
[For information about this image (“Mirror Mask”), see the artist’s statement at the foot of this page. Clicking on the image above will enlarge it, if you want to experiment.]
From whiskey river:
This writing stuff saved me. It has become my way of responding to and dealing with things I find too disturbing or distressing or painful to handle in any other way. It’s safe. Writing is my shelter. I don’t hide behind the words; I use them to dig inside my heart to find the truth. I guess I can say, honestly, that writing also offers me a kind of patience I don’t have in my ordinary day-to-day life. It makes me stop. It makes me take note. It affords me a kind of sanctuary that I can’t get in my hurried and full-to-the-brim-with-activity life.
(Terry McMillan)
…and:
Get yourself in that intense state of being next to madness. Keep yourself in, not necessarily a frenzied state, but in a state of great intensity. The kind of state you would be in before going to bed with your partner. That heightened state when you’re in a carnal embrace: time stops and nothing else matters. You should always write with an erection. Even if you’re a woman.
(Tom Robbins)
Waking Up to the Unreal
[Image: promotional still from The Troll Hunter, a 2010 “mockumentary” from
Norway about — well, perhaps you can guess.]
From whiskey river:
Fairy tales were maps formed of blood and hair and bones; they were the knots of the sub-conscious unwound. Every word in every tale was real and as true as apples and stones. They all led to the story inside the story.
(Alice Hoffman [source])
…and:
Sky Burial
This is the way they dispose of the dead
in Tibet. Letting nothing go to waste.
The loose bodies, with their blood still,
are lifted to high roofs, offered to the sky.
In this way everything becomes a temple
and bells ring to catch the carrion birds
in flight. Glorious bells! Unsettling circlers!
They alight like balding mathematicians,
like ancient men huddled over maps.Their steepled wings flap now and again
like a preacher searching a hymnal;
their beaks could be penning red sermons
as the umbral body is unsewn, consumed—
concealed through all avenues of heaven,
borne again aloft in a scream of grace
echoing down the mausoleum of dark.
(Michael Titus [source])
Step by Step, and an Ounce at a Time
[Image: Beast of Burden, a sculpture by Sarah Perry. For more information, see the note at the foot of this post.]
From whiskey river:
Burlap Sack
A person is full of sorrow
the way a burlap sack is full of stones or sand.
We say, “Hand me the sack,”
but we get the weight.
Heavier if left out in the rain.
To think that the stones or sand are the self is an error.
To think that grief is the self is an error.
Self carries grief as a pack mule carries the side bags,
being careful between the trees to leave extra room.
The mule is not the load of ropes and nails and axes.
The self is not the miner nor builder nor driver.
What would it be to take the bride
and leave behind the heavy dowry?
To let the thick ribbed mule browse in tall grasses,
its long ears waggling like the tails of two happy dogs?
(Jane Hirshfield [source])
…and:
I think there is choice possible at any moment to us, as long as we live. But there is no sacrifice. There is a choice, and the rest falls away. Second choice does not exist. Beware of those who talk about sacrifice.
(Muriel Rukeyser)
…and:
I have been a lucky man. To feel the intimacy of brothers is a marvelous thing in life. To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life. But to feel the affection that comes from those whom we do not know, from those unknown to us, who are watching over our sleep and solitude, over our dangers and our weaknesses — that is something still greater and more beautiful because it widens out the boundaries of our being, and unites all living things.
(Pablo Neruda)
Making an Illuminated Manuscript
In the category of “Things Our Ancestors Did to Humble Us,” this mini-documentary [UPDATE: a little over six minutes long] from the J. Paul Getty Museum:
(If you go to the page at the ArtBabble site where I found this, you might also like some of the “related videos” in the right sidebar there.)
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