because life rarely gets better

(OMG OMG OMG why are germans so funny?!?!)

We are star stuff

Last Tuesday at 7am I sat down at gate 23 in Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and began reading Jerry Spinelli's Stargirl for the first time. Three hours later I finished and wondered how the heck I hadn't heard about this book before.

Because my heart swelled when Leo asked Archie, "Was she really here? Who was she? Was she real?" and Archie responded,

"Real? Oh, yes. As real as we get. Don't ever doubt that. That's the good news." He pointed the pipe stem at me. "And well named. Stargirl. Though I think she had simpler things in mind. Star people are rare. You'll be lucky to meet another."
"Star people?" I said. "You're losing me here."
He chuckled. "That's okay. I lose myself. It's just my oddball way of accounting for someone I don't really understand any more than you do."
"So where do stars come in?"
He pointed the pipe stem. "The perfect question. In the beginning, that's where they come in. They supplied the ingredients that became us, the primordial elements. We are star stuff, yes?
"...And I think every once in a while someone comes along who is a little more primitive than the rest of us, a little closer to our beginnings, a little more in touch with the stuff we're made of."

i kind of wish i was jenny boully

epilogue

instead of begloom, when real happiness, with real bliss, when I point to a sunset and say something about awe. I know the forest creatures are in hiding from some great, unknown terror, a creature which is, in actuality, a mere shadow. I too go into hiding at the suggestion of darkness. (Do you know what happens before arriving here?) The strangeness of animals that know only light and dark, sleeping and waking. The hand that cuts you free from the cloth is not necessarily the hand that sews you back in. I too have a scissors aimed at the sky; I too will slice open the belly of a great heaving.



[she's amazing! her wikipedia entry]

prodigal sketchist

I think it's an amazing thing to be brought out to sea on someone else's ship for a short while. Maybe we feel nervous, maybe it seems that they are captaining all wrong, that the anchor should be placed sooner, that the waves are getting too big, but then we look up and see that we've been taken to a beautiful place, entirely new, we've never seen the sea like this before. We look back and see that we are a long way from shore, with only the hope of trust that our friend will get us back safely. And most likely they will, though perhaps not in the way we would have done it, but they have been doing things this way, maybe all their lives, it is their essence. You love that essence, embrace it, don't seek to mold it into your own, even if you do know a more efficient way home. You do this because next week you will invite them out on your ship, and they may feel just the same way you once did, but you will both be the better for the experience. The sea, with all it's monotony, may be a new place because of the way you saw your friend look upon it.

happy christmas, dearests

i have been listening to this song on loop all month long. i think you'll see why:

i love you all and hope that you are safe and happy wherever you are!
(priscilla ahn "silent night")

from snowy iowa

(because you asked me to, dear thelms)

Funktional Art: Lighting up Thailand

I first met Tor Larp (also known as Hern) three years ago when I stumbled into his little shop off Nimmenhennen road in Chiang Mai. I found him again today randomly, and once again enjoyed a long talk with him about art, life and more. He really believes in "Funktional Art", so there are lamps that are part of paintings, art work imbedded in the most amazing journals, and so fourth. Recently his home which he designed all himself, was featured in a home design magazine in Thailand - and it seems the most creative space I've ever seen. I'm posting a few pictures, but see more here. He is also turning his gallery into an art space for people and a good community spot. My new goal in life is to be best friends with him.

find my way back home

priscilla ahn = hero

the build up

this is maybe my favorite kings of convenience song and i kind of like that this is just feist.

Appreciation for Wild Birds and the Wild West.

My friend Caleb introduced me to the PRI RadioWest podcast and I love listening to it because I feel that it helps keep me connected with the West, the Rockies, and the Utah community. While in Thailand I interact with a lot of foreigners from many places, and though many Thais see everyone in the U.S. as the same, I have found that I fervently proclaim my status of being a Westerner - not a West Coaster - but a Westerner. Texas and Utah, two foregrounds of rugged expedition, yes this is my background. Two states that I often took for granted growing up.

So I listen to these podcasts and one of the recent ones was about the birds of the Great Salt Lake and artist Rosalie Winard whose photographs of America's wild birds she hopes will speak about how each bird is part of a community and how these communities are being threatened.

My brother Carl has spent a great deal of his life caring about wetlands and also the birds in them, a beautiful part of our surroudings often taken for granted. I remember when he went with my Dad to Aransas Pass in Texas, one of the few places in the world endangered whooping cranes make their home.

They are beautiful, no?

sometimes you just need a little cheese

and mr. mraz always helps :)

"if it kills me"

enter cheese (and don't try to suppress that sigh!):
Well all I really wanna do is love you
A kind much closer than friends use
But I still can’t say it after all we’ve been through
And all I really want from you is to feel me
As the feeling inside keeps building
And I will find a way to you if it kills me
If it kills me

If I should be so bold
I’d ask you to hold my heart in your hand
Tell you from the start how I’ve longed to be your man
But I never said a word
I guess I’m gonna miss my chance again

the snowman

this was one of my favorite movies as a kid--flying with a snowman? perfect. and the music is gorgeous.

self portrait

a few of my mother's pieces from grad school. i have had a million different reactions to this, and i feel like i should share it.




(all the work is in ceramic. the face is from a plaster molded dead mask - thus the self-portrait.)

determining aesthetic value

i've been thinking a lot lately on what it means to make art, on whether living for bread (see thelma's post below) or living for roses is more important, or if they somehow mean the same thing. thelma sent out an e-mail the other day that included this quote from li-young lee, and it made me wonder if what i was doing up in my studio alone that night was really as important as bread, if throwing paint and watching it drip could have enough value to merit its appreciation. i don't know, but maybe i really am just a small part of the one great mind - the universal mind - and maybe i am just reaching out to all of you and hoping that really, truly, there is so much import in this.

"The highest thing we can do is practice art. There is only one mind, and so whatever we do in that mind - when we create more beauty there, more opening, more understanding, more light, when we shed more light in our own mind - affects the great mind. So you're creating value when you write a poem. And I mean material value! They've proven that on the physical scale, that when a butterfly flies across Tienanmen Square, it affects the weather in Florida. In minute and inevitable ways, everything is connected. In the invisible realm - which has more reality than the visible realm because the visible is dying and without materiality - when somebody writes a poem, when they open themselves up to the universe mind and the universe mind is suddenly present in the visible world, the poet isn't the only one that gets the benefits. Universe mind comes down and that whole mind is a little more pure, a little more habitable. That's why were the "unacknowledged legislators of the world." I never understood that until recently. We keep the world from falling apart, and they don't even know this! Not priests. Not ministers. Not rabbis. If we stop writing poems, you'll see this world go into such darkness. They won't even know what hit them."

on a related tangent, or at least related to me, i've also been thinking about what it is that makes art important, or how it is that we can create something that won't just wilt, but last, and in lasting, both sustain us and change us. i came across an essay by henry geldzahler called determining aesthetic values -

The work of art must continue to reveal new messages and images on subsequent viewings, and not exhaust itself in what I call the Big Bang, revealing everything to you the first time you see it and then having a lessened impact each time subsequent. The narrative, or the story, is how a picture reveals itself to you through time. The story is in you. It’s an internal story and only you can judge it.

i suppose that in one way this is the key - that just like the bread, which gives us little molecules of nutrient that enter our cells and fuse with our body and become our new core, what we read and hear and see enters into us and becomes us, so that we are living a billion different lives all at once - lives that are really all one life, the one universe mind.

something both beautiful and sad.

Robert Pinsky, on this poem: "those bees, an image of sweetness and of death, of housecleaning and of art, of getting on with it and remembering."

A Story About the Body, by Robert Hass

The young composer, working that summer at an artist’s colony, had watched her for a week. She was Japanese, a painter, almost sixty, and he thought he was in love with her. He loved her work, and her work was like the way she moved her body, used her hands, looked at him directly when she mused and considered answers to his questions. One night, walking back from a concert, they came to her door and she turned to him and said, “I think you would like to have me. I would like that too, but I must tell you that I have had a double mastectomy,” and when he didn’t understand, “I’ve lost both my breasts.” The radiance that he had carried around in his belly and chest cavity-like music-withered quickly, and he made himself look at her when he said, “I’m sorry I don’t think I could.” He walked back to his own cabin through the pines, and in the morning he found a small blue bowl on the porch outside his door. It looked to be full of rose petals, but he found when he picked it up that the rose petals were on top; the rest of the bowl-she must have swept the corners of herstudio-was full of dead bees.

How my little stone teacher's heart grew six sizes:

6. had students write one-line biographies about themselves. cried all the way to my car reading them because they are kind, loyal, trustwrothy, and overall decent people.

The man who was curious, helpful, and respectful.
The man who loved to cook for his family.
The man who cared for others.
The man who was loyal and loved his friends and family.
The man who was thoughtful, compassionate, and loved his family.
The man who treated everyone with respect and dignity.
The man who loved animals.
The woman who loved everything about life.
The woman who loved love, family, friends, art, respect, and trust.
The woman who painted for herself.
The woman who smiled at strangers.
The woman who loved dreaming.

the thing that stuck me the most was how kind and generous they were to themselves. i think that is a very hard thing to do but when it does happen, it displays a sort of larger trust in humanity and the ability of people to be kind and good. what is your one line biography?