Read this beautiful thing by Billy Collins

Japan

Today I pass the time reading
a favorite haiku,
saying the few words over and over.

It feels like eating
the same small, perfect grape
again and again.

I walk through the house reciting it
and leave its letters falling
through the air of every room.

I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it.
I say it in front of a painting of the sea.
I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf.

I listen to myself saying it,
then I say it without listening,
then I hear it without saying it.

And when the dog looks up at me,
I kneel down on the floor
and whisper it into each of his long white ears.

It’s the one about the one-ton temple bell
with the moth sleeping on its surface,

and every time I say it, I feel the excruciating
pressure of the moth
on the surface of the iron bell.

When I say it at the window,
the bell is the world
and I am the moth resting there.

When I say it at the mirror,
I am the heavy bell
and the moth is life with its papery wings.

And later, when I say it to you in the dark,
you are the bell,
and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,

and the moth has flown
from its line
and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed.

Billy Collins

VS

Viviane Sassen: a true artist

I believe she makes pictures she is meant to make

www.vivianesassen.com

Beyond

I love Keith Carter’s work.

And I love his words.

When describing how he found his direction in photography he said he was looking for:

the inside of things, the symbolism that registers not so much in the intellect, but rather resonates in those deeper and more authentic chambers of the subconscious.

Isn’t that truth.

The Three Oddest Words

When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.

When I pronounce the word Nothing,
I make something no non-being can hold.

- Wislawa Szymborska

The voice

Phillip Toledano: http://www.dayswithmyfather.com/

note

Hit twice

Beautiful cover image. Beautiful writing.

For the new year

My mom sent this poem to me a while ago and I wanted to share on a day like to today.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

-Mary Oliver

so true. so so true

Robert Nishihira’s book called halftones. See here

The incredible

http://www.paoloroversi.com/

Interview Magazine- Aug o9

George Saunders: Why art? Why write stories, make movies? What is the purpose of making art, in your view?

July: I’m just gonna go for broke on this one and say that we do it because life is so ridiculously gorgeous, strange, heartbreaking, horrific, etc., that we are compelled to describe it to ourselves, but we can’t! We cannot do it! And so we make art.

House on fire

That is the title of Sarah Anne Johnson’s exhibition at the Julie Saul Gallery in NY.

Read here:

In the 1950s as part of the CIA project “MK-ULTRA”, patients in the care of Dr. Ewen Cameron at MacGill University were subjected to a series of mind-control experiments including shock and drug therapies and medically-induced prolonged sleep. Johnson’s maternal grandmother Velma Orlikow sought the doctor’s treatment for post-partum depression and unwittingly took part in the experiments. In 1979 a class action suit was initiated by a group of 9 of the patients, and it was settled out of court in 1988. It is a disturbing and fascinating body of work which moves Johnson forward in her multimedia narrative approach.

Johnson spoke a bit about her grandmother and what the experience was like for her and her family before the reception tonight.  I was really taken by her story and her vision.

Shel

I used to be obsessed with Shel Silverstein when I was a little.

Even now his verses will stream through my head on any given day at any given time.

Yesterday, I had a steady stream of this….

Nobody
by Shel Silverstein

Nobody loves me,
Nobody cares,
Nobody picks me peaches and pears.

Nobody offers me candy and Cokes,
Nobody listens and laughs at my jokes.

Nobody helps when I get in a fight,
Nobody does all my homework at night.

Nobody misses me,
Nobody cries,
Nobody thinks I’m a wonderful guy.

So if you ask me who’s my best friend, in a whiz,
I’ll stand up and tell you Nobody is.

But yesterday night I got quite a scare,
I woke up and Nobody just wasn’t there.

I called out and reached out for Nobody’s hand,
In the darkness where Nobody usually stands.

Then I poked through the house, in each cranny and nook,
But I found somebody each place that I looked.

I searched till I’m tired, and now with the dawn,
There’s no doubt about it-
Nobody’s gone.

digging: www.birthepiontek.com/

digging: http://speechbubbledesigns.com.au/blog/?cat=8

Imagination is king

Destined

My destiny is to someday own a Ryan Wallace painting.

1 + 1 + 1

Camera by my heart
Pen in hand

I’m thinking of taking a photo trip
Maybe South America ? Ecuador?
November?

I’d like to stretch my imagination brain…extend it onwards and outwards.
to somewhere I’ve never been

Thoughts anyone…

det sista ljuset/the last light

LARS LERIN –

The clarity swept over me in waves upon waves

My years I cant stop them from coming
they fall silently on my lap
I cry for every person
me myself, the battles I have
been in the questions I have asked

amma petal

If you weren’t able to see Amma this 6th 7th 8th of July in NYC, try to come next year for darshan. It’s an amazing thing.

My mom sends me important things. Today she sent me this…

…I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903
in Letters to a Young Poet