October 13, 2008
October 12, 2008
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.
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:
October 10, 2008
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."
"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."
October 9, 2008
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:
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.
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.
October 8, 2008
October 7, 2008
October 6, 2008
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.
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."
October 5, 2008
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)
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)
October 3, 2008
October 2, 2008
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.
October 1, 2008
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:
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