[Image: photograph (by Marc Wilmot) of an “architectural sculpture” installation by British artist Alex Chinneck. Most of Chinneck’s large-scale works are temporary makeovers of abandoned buildings; this particular project was done for the Milan Design Show in 2014. The artist revels in rendering familiarly solid materials as flexible (if not outright liquid) ones. He seems reluctant to ascribe meaning to his art, but it’s hard for me to see no metaphor at all in his upending of visual expectations and physical principles. I learned about Chennick via this YouTube video — you can probably guess how I stumbled on that.]

From whiskey river:

Things to Think

Think in ways you’ve never thought before
If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message
Larger than anything you’ve ever heard,
Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.

Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,
Maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose
Has risen out of the lake, and he’s carrying on his antlers
A child of your own whom you’ve never seen.

When someone knocks on the door, think that he’s about
To give you something large: tell you you’re forgiven,
Or that it’s not necessary to work all the time, or that it’s
Been decided that if you lie down no one will die.

(Robert Bly [source])

Not from whiskey river:

1. This is where you are supposed to be. You should not be anywhere else. You are moving the right speed. You slept the right amount, woke up at the right time, ate the right things, and made the right choices for today. You are in the right place.
2. Everyone else in the room is nervous. They’re worried no one wants to talk to them. Approaching someone wouldn’t be an imposition — maybe you would rescue them from awkwardness. Talking to them is kind, not overbearing. They will be glad to meet you.
3. No one else knows the dance. They don’t know what you were supposed to do. If you fell out of sequence or missed a step — they won’t know unless you tell them. So don’t apologize, to them or to yourself. Just make it part of the dance; this is how the steps go now. Sell it.

(Corey Mahoney [source (note: may require subscription)])

…and (Oscar and Anat, here, are “brother” and “sister” in an imaginative tale — inspired by Hansel & Gretel — with the exact feel of a story which spilled forth, almost unbidden, from the author’s head):

Oscar called them Handmaids because they have so many fingers, so many ways of grasping and holding and petting and sorting and killing. Once a vampire frightened Anat, when she was younger. It came too close. She began to cry, and then the Handmaids were there, soothing Anat with their gentle stroking, touching her here and there to make sure that the vampire had not injured her, embracing her while they briskly tore the shrieking vampire to pieces. That was not long after Oscar had come back from Home with the Handmaids. Vampires and Handmaids reached a kind of understanding after that. The vampires, encountering a Handmaid, sing propitiatory songs. Sometimes they bow their heads on their long white necks very low, and dance. The Handmaids do not tear them into pieces…

The Handmaids will do whatever Anat asks of them, but they are built to inspire not love but fear. They are made for speed, for combat, for unwavering obedience. When they have no task, nothing better to do, they take one another to pieces, swap parts, remake themselves into more and more ridiculous weapons. They look at Anat as if one day they will do the same to her, if only she will ask…

Something is wrong with Oscar. Well, more wrong than is usual these days. Down in the warehouse, he keeps getting underfoot. Underhand, in the case of the Handmaids. When Anat extends all sixteen of her senses, she can feel worry and love, anger and hopelessness and hope running through him like electrical currents. He watches her—anxiously, almost hungrily—as if he were a vampire.

(Kelly Link [source])