um...no words only: amazing

i almost died watching this, it is so awesome:

He nice, the Jesus

So I tried explaining Halloween to a Thai friend and she looked very confused and all I could think of was this David Sedaris story when in his French in France a group of international students try to explain Easter. To read the full story I found it here.

"The Italian nanny was attempting to answer the teacher's latest question when the Moroccan student interrupted, shouting, "Excuse me, but what's an Easter?"

It would seem that despite having grown up in a Muslim country, she would have heard it mentioned once or twice, but no. "I mean it," she said. "I have no idea what you people are talking about."

The teacher called on the rest of us to explain.

The Poles led the charge to the best of their ability. "It is," said one, "a party for the little boy of God who call his self Jesus...oh shit." She faltered and her fellow country-man came to her aid.

"He call his self Jesus and then he be die one day on two...morsels of...lumber."

The rest of the class jumped in, offering bits of information that would have given the pope an aneurysm.

"He die one day and then he go above of my head to live with your father."

"He weared of himself the long hair and after he die, the first day he come back here for to say hello to the peoples."

"He nice, the Jesus."

"He make the good things, and on the Easter we be sad because somebody makes him dead today."

Part of the problem had to do with vocabulary. Simple nouns such as cross and resurrection were beyond our grasp, let alone such a complicated refexive phrases as "to give of yourself your only begotten son." Faced with the challenge of explaining the cornerstone of Christianity, we did what any self-respecting group of people might do. We talked about food instead.

"Easter is a party for to eat of the lamb," the Italian nanny explained. "One too may eat of the chocolate."

"And who brings the chocolate?" the teacher asked.

I knew the word, so I raised my hand, saying, "The rabbit of Easter. He bring of the chocolate."

"A rabbit?" The teacher, assuming I'd used the wrong word, positioned her index fingers on top of her head, wriggling them as though they were ears. "You mean one of these? A rabbit rabbit?"

"Well, sure," I said. "He come in the night when one sleep on bed. Which a hand he have a basket and foods."

The teacher sighed and shook her head. As far as she was concerned, I had just explained everything wrong with my country. "No, no," she said. "Here in France the chocolate is brought by a a big bell that flies in from Rome."

I called for a time-out. "But how do the bell know where you live?"

"Well," she said, "how does a rabbit?"

It was a decent point, but at least a rabbit has eyes. That's a start...."

gene kelly + rollerskates = genius

this is one of the happiest things i have seen lately:

russian monkey & grocer

my friend dan just sent me the most amazing cartoon that i had to share with you all:

baby animals again

remember that series of posts with animals and how they made our lives a lot better? trish and i just spent the last ten minutes dying with cuteness overload because we saw things like:

Cinderella, a British piglet, won't walk through mud unless she is wearing her specially adapted Wellington boots. The little piggy lives with owners and pig farmers Debbie and Andrew Keeble.

(thanks megan!)

Thank You, Jon Ogden

for writing these poems and for letting Inscape publish them.

Creationism: Five Theories

Brain Damage

Sterile

Absurdity

You know those days where you reflect on the often overlooked absurd - and you say to yourself "Why is the Cuban embargo still in place?" then you say "What is the deal with Japanese street fashion?!" and then "why aren't we living in Berlin?". Then it culminates when you view the latest fashion collections coming down the runways in Madrid.

you must walk like a camel

i am reading thoreau and listening to "always be my baby" and for some reason nothing has seemed more perfect or more real. and as mariah sings "and we'll linger on" i'm reading thoreau, who says this about walking: "sauntering: which word is beautifully derived 'from idle people who roved about the country and asked charity, under pretence of going a la Sainte Terre,' to the Holy Land"--there goes a saunterer! and i am thinking about sauntering, what a swaggered, jaunty word, full of robust energy. thoreau goes on (mariah: "no way you're never gonna shake me"):

Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering.

and i think that we know and bear this secret. we have to, to spread ourselves so distantly from each other, from our families, our physical homes, our dear friends, our pasts. for me, this being "equally at home everywhere" is the beauty of living. and it is a scary, anxiety-filled thing (our nomadism) but how necessary!

"We are but faint-hearted crusaders," he continues.

so we "must walk like a camel," which is to say, "to be the only beast which ruminates when walking."

i think this blog is like our community camel. and i love that.

Friends and Clouds.

Dear fellow transpacificists,

 I tried desperately to upload a video of Lia and I on our adventures of the lovely state fair that Lia talked about. But I must have forgotten, in the excitement of posting, that I am technologically illiterate, and I couldn't get it to post on this blessed blog. It did, however, consent to being posted on another. Do not ask me why. So, if you want a little Lia and Patricia love, you can check it out here. 

XOXO (that's for you, Amy),

Patricia

n. why?

it's amazing how less than a week in new york city can produce so many moments of absolute artistic awakening. though i'm convinced i can have similar moments of enlightenment at home as well, there's something about holidays away which force more exploration: we have an expiry date on our time at a particular space and so purposefully seek out what treasures are around us, while at home we fall too easily into the traps of taking everything for granted. why is human nature so predictable in this way?

in any case, i have many things i want to say after visiting some glorious art spaces in the last few days, so may need to string them out into multiple posts... to start out, the Met had a large exhibition of giorgio morandi, an italian modernist painter whose personality couldn't be more opposite of marinetti, modigliani, or the other more renown and infamous fellow countrymen and artists of his generation... mordani didn't seek after an explosive reputation, but lived and painted quietly - teaching printmaking at the local art school in bologna for his whole life. his paintings are relatively "simple" and downright banal compared to the overly charged works of boccioni or carrà. he painted a great deal of still lifes, concentrating on blocks of shapes arranged in various ways and in various lights. he'd paint series of the same set-up of tall, thin vases and jars at different times of the day. this makes up the bulk of his work. about this "restriction" of subject matter and his quiet, understated life, he said the following:

"I have always concentrated on a far narrower field of subject matter than most other painters, so that the danger of repeating myself has been far greater. I think I have avoided this danger by devoting more time and thought to planning each one of my paintings as a variation on one or the other of these few themes. Besides, I have always led a very quiet and retiring life and never felt much urge to compete with other contemporary painters. My only ambition is to enjoy the peace and quiet that I require in order to work."

oh that last bit is so beautiful! isn't it wonderful to think of an artist actually creating art for the sake and enjoyment of its creation, of the process and delivery... not to draw undue attention or lavishly self-aggrandize, but instead to work peacefully and quietly. gorgeous and moving and powerful and wondrous....

Contemporary Burmese Artists

It seems that most of my friends here in Thailand in their life have been torn between political actions and the arts. And a discussion on arts and politics can be for another day here on the blog, but I started researching contemporary Burmese art to see if I could find some calls of revolution in them, and soon I realized that it didn't need to have scenes of protest in order for it to be revolutionary, just the act of creating something beautiful out of a national space governed by fear and tyranny - that quest for beauty is revolution in and of itself.

Artist: Myat Kyawt

Spring Trees

Lovers Under Trees

Monk At Platform

Artist: Mg Aw
(I love this painting of a woman adjusting her sarong, I saw it at a gallery in DC once, and it was so stunning then)

Camera Scavenger Hunt!

I am in the middle of putting together a camera scavenger hunt and I thought it would be fun to do one with all of us. Just so we get the feeling of everyone's various places. So, dear Transpacificists, get your cameras ready and post your findings when you get them (or as you go--you don't have to put all five up at once)!

1. Your space (where you've been spending most of your time lately)
2. Favorite color found where you are
3. Favorite person/place/or thing found where you are
4. Self portrait
5. Most beautiful part of your daily routine

for laughs

un dernier verre (pour la route)

perhaps the most magical of all moments is the possibility of flying across the nation to spend a saturday floating in the atlantic (and tasting the saltiest of waves and rubbing gritty sand across your skin and face and frolicking about the state fairgrounds) with a dear, dear friend. here's to a transpacificist reunion, at long last! - and if only we could all be together for a moment again.

Hall of Images

At Wat Umong on the edge of Chiang Mai there is a series of tunnels built into the side of the hills that the king of the area built 700 years ago in order to keep the crazy head monk away from the city. There are also little signs tacked onto trees with different sayings of the Buddha on it.
But one of my favorite things about this unique temple is the hall of images, with its assortment of beautiful paintings depicting scenes from different religion's mythologies.

vitreous fragility

when amy talked about the ability of loss to create space, she mentioned nicole krauss's the history of love, a book which has saved my life multiple times. tonight, for better or for worse, i decided to read it again. and i came to a part called the age of glass in which people imagine that parts of them are made of glass. and though the world moved on, sometimes there are some that find that they, too, are made of glass. 

one man, caught between the battle of this frailty and the desire to hold a woman he loves, walks delicately this tightrope string between chasms: "he ran his fingers down her spine over her thin blouse, and for a moment he forgot the danger he was in, grateful for the world which purposefully puts divisions in place so that we can overcome them, feeling the joys of getting closer, even if deep down we can never forget the sadness of our insurmountable differences."

i think we are strong. and we can find beauty and share it with each other to overcome things that seem ugly and unfair and unholy. we are resilient. we are brave. we are fearless. but often, i think, there are parts of us that are made of glass. and tenderly reaching to another being requires so much risk of hurt and sadness. but those moments of touch come so close to being holy. 

thelma and i were talking tonight about how i think people are both lonely and irreplaceable, and how she always asks people how their parents met, and how it makes her both happy and sad. mine met in a high school drama production. my mom played my dad's pregnant wife. 

and i am still not quite sure how any of these things go together or why i feel such desperation to communicate my fragility right now, but this i know: loneliness is a crime. because though we are made of glass, or i think more because we are made of glass, we owe each other a deep-rooted sense of compassion. and understanding. so that when one of us pulls away too quickly. or when someone disappears from a room suddenly. or when there is someone sitting on a bench with splintering limbs. we can know, and love, anyway.

grizzly bears at the sea

in honor of trish & lia's romp in the florida sea:

and, oh, how i'd like to be here.

I haven't got the blues yet, but I do love this poem

Did we ever mention Li Young Lee during the month we discussed our crushes? Or was it understood that we all love him?

Immigrant Blues

People have been trying to kill me since I was born,
a man tells his son, trying to explain
the wisdom of learning a second tongue.

It's the same old story from the previous century
about my father and me.

The same old story from yesterday morning
about me and my son.

It's called "Survival Strategies
and the Melancholy of Racial Assimilation."

It's called "Psychological Paradigms of Displaced Persons,"

called "The Child Who'd Rather Play than Study."

Practice until you feel
the language inside you, says the man.

But what does he know about inside and outside,
my father who was spared nothing
in spite of the languages he used?

And me, confused about the flesh and soul,
who asked once into a telephone,
Am I inside you?

You're always inside me, a woman answered,
at peace with the body's finitude,
at peace with the soul's disregard
of space and time.

Am I inside you? I asked once
lying between her legs, confused
about the body and the heart.

If you don't believe you're inside me, you're not,
she answered, at peace with the body's greed,
at peace with the heart's bewilderment.

It's an ancient story from yesterday evening

called "Patterns of Love in Peoples of Diaspora,"

called "Loss of the Homeplace
and the Defilement of the Beloved,"

called "I Want to Sing but I Don’t Know Any Songs."

i discovered this in niger of all places

a bit of self promotion. shameless, of course.

this is a repeat post from a new joint blog of mine exploring contemporary asian art. love the art, love the blog:

i'm sort of feverishly excited about the art21 website in general, but this documentary and these images are a breathtaking look into the work of chinese contemporary artist cai quo-qiang.

on chaos as a material in art:

With time you start to get to know the material. You actually develop a way to know how it will behave, to a certain degree. First, you have to accept that it’s uncontrollable and that there is an accidental element. You have to accept it and then work with it. I’ve worked with the material for so long that I’ve gained an understanding of how it works. Sometimes I can control it better than I realize, better than I expect. Then at that point it becomes stagnant. So it’s very important that there is always this uncontrollability that’s a part of the work. My way of doing it is just to flow with the material, go with the material and let it take me where it wants me to go. So I continuously want it to give me problems and obstacles to overcome.

i found this post i meant to publish a month ago.

a friend (that we all know, named carl hoiland) showed me this video and it awoke such lovely memories of watching sesame street in the morning as a child, actually believing that the two-dimensionally illustrated man dancing about the kitchen amidst the salt and pepper shakers was just as real as his environment.
what a wondrous way to imagine life and movement and art into the art and color of our every day environment.
(and what a lovely way for me to put off my physiology homework at 2:50 in the morning)


MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

If you have a quiet moment -

Click and be filled.

"I see the poem as a musical score for human speech."

- Li-Young Lee

THELMS BE SAFE WE LOVE YOU!!!!!!!

xoxoxxoxoxxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

why i love iowa, reason #24093

new favorite song

the maccabees "toothpaste kisses"

(the video is not so shabby, either :)

Inspired

Inspired by Lia, I propose that on Wednesday at 8:00 MST we hold a 3.38 dance party to DePeche Mode. It's time for our scattered souls to reunite kinetically. I am open to other days; I just wanted to get this ball rolling.

Do Ho Suh | Cause & Effect | Artkrush image gallery

Do Ho Suh | Cause & Effect | Artkrush image gallery

korean contemporary art!

artkrush (a magazine we should all probably get subscriptions to immediately) just released its new issue focusing on korean contemporary art! (cue strings of nationalistic pride and fervor). when you get a chance, look it up, particularly the works and interviews of do ho suh and osang gwon:

Sojourner

On the plane home to Texas today I got so near finishing Annie Dillard's "Teaching a Stone to Talk" and since then the word sojourner has been continually tripping through my head.

"I alternate between thinking of the planet as home - dear and familiar stone hearth and garden - and as a hard land of exile in which we are all sojourners. Today I favor the latter view. The word "sojourner" occurs often in the English Old Testament. It invokes a nomadic people's sense of vagrancy, a praying people's knowledge of estrangement, a thinking people's intuition of sharp loss: "For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding."

and then the next page, the part where Annie brings together all the illusions throughout the chapter, so I will loan it to you if you want to learn more about mangroves.

" The planet is less like an enclosed spaceship - spaceship earth - than it is like an exposed mangrove island beautiful and loose. We the people started small and have since accumulated a great and solacing muck of soil, of human culture. We are rooted in it we are bearing it with us across nowhere. The word "nowhere" is our cue: the consort of musicians strikes up, and we in the chorus stir and move and start twirling our hats. A mangrove island turns drift to dance. It creates its own soil as it goes, rocking over the salt sea at random, rocking day and night round the sun, rocking round the sun and out toward east of Hercules."

Goodbye National Gallery

The only bit of nostalgia I have had about leaving DC was today at the National Gallery. In between errands I stopped in to say goodbye to the columns, paintings, and statues that have been my refuge during this past year and a half. Because it is free I would often go whenever I could and explore new exhibits or just sit for long periods under favorites and write.

Here are a few of my dearest friends:

Saint Sebastian - Tanzio da Varallo

Repentent Magdelene - Georges de la Tour

Matteo Olivieri - Anonymous, Florentine 15th century

Nonchaloir - John Singer Sargent

And indeed there will be time to wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”


Excerpted from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot.

hearting

andrew bird. lone violin. montmartre: perfection realized.

I'm pretty sure this kid just saved the world:

WITH CUTENESS

Roumain

I am reading Masters of the Dew by Roumain, and though it's mostly a communist tale of uniting workers together, at a certain point, before uniting a community, hearts have to be willing to let each other in. Even if it is painful at first to thaw walls. It's necessary to realize that we are people and we need each other.

Anna after talking to Manuel for the first time: "I'm not the same anymore. What's happened to me? It's a sweetness that almost hurts, a warmth that burns like ice."

Manuel on trust: "Trust is almost a mystery. It can't be bought and it has no price. You can't say, 'Sell me so much and so much.' It's more like a plot between one heart and another heart." 

Let this be my last word, that I trust in thy love

"This "I" of mine toils hard, day and night, for a home which it knows as its own. Alas, there will be no end of its sufferings so long as it is not able to call this home thine. Till then it will struggle on, and its heart will ever cry, "Ferryman, lead me across." When this home of mine is made thine, that very moment is it taken across, even while its old walls enclose it. This "I" is restless. It is working for a gain which can never be assimilated with its spirit, which it never can hold and retain. In its efforts to clasp in its own arms that which is for all, it hurts others and is hurt in its turn, and cries, "Lead me across". But as soon as it is able to say, "All my work is thine," everything remains the same, only it is taken across.
Where can I meet thee unless in this mine home made thine? Where can I join thee unless in this my work transformed into thy work? If I leave my home I shall not reach thy home; if I cease my work I can never join thee in thy work. For thou dwellest in me and I in thee. Thou without me or I without thee are nothing."
- Rabindranath Tagore : Sādhanā : The Realisation of Life (1916)

because fall is here 2.0

A. A. Milne's A Word for Autumn

because fall is here

i just finished watching (no surprise) some wonder years episodes. and i realized that they use the intro riff to this song a whole lot in it. it's beautiful.

dang, django

i love django reinhardt. and i had this sudden, beautiful vision of listening to this song while picking song of september apples and baking a little apple tart: