The Most Astounding Fact

Peep this beautiful little astro-video replete with wisdom bombs from that big, badass astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. We are, all of us, made of stardust and guts, sewn up with the double-twined, shining umbilical threads of the universe. 

Be Like a Bird

So, I have been working on various art projects lately... I hadn't specifically drawn for a while, and was surprised how good it felt to pick up a pencil the other day. You wouldn't know because there is no color here, but this is a violet-green swallow. They always remind me of my friend Robert Michael Pyle. He and Thea know spring has arrived in Gray's River when the violet-greens return, swooping in to reclaim their nest under the eaves of the front porch. How magical it would be to be the harbinger who everyone looks for in the afternoon. But it is much, much too early to think of spring here, even as my dark hyacinths grow long and leggy across the kitchen table. No, for now it is better to think of the chickadees flickering through the winter wood, tittering over hidden seeds between thin branches. And if still, the blue begins to creep, think too of this little verse a friend passed along to me last year...

Thachycinta thalassina

Be like a bird, who, halting in her flight,

On a limb to slight, feels it give way beneath her;

Yet sings, sings, knowing she has wings;

Yet sings, sings, knowing she has wings.

How To Be Alone

This sweet little video came out over a year ago, but I still enjoy watching it every now and again for all the good reminders. Between traveling and hiking alone so much this past year, I've learned a lot doing everything she mentions here... cafes, dinners, movies, exploring cities, county walks, dancing... Spending time with yourself can be a beautiful gift.

Dogs and Cats, Living Together!

I used to have this poster hanging on my kitchen wall, in all its full pastel glory. Imagine my surprise and delight to find it in sticker-form, plastered to the back of a traffic sign on Belmont.

Look how well we can all get along if we try!

Speaking of evolution and love... check out the sweetest little song ever:
Baby, It All Led to You by song-a-day dude, Jonathan Mann.

Sometime in the ocean of goop and fire and heat
Little one celled organisms learned a new way to eat
They started reproducing
They started doing their thing
And baby, it all led to you...

The Micronaut

A Kiwi in Venice

Today I am thinking of the Kiwi artist Graham Percy (1938-2008) who I first stumbled upon in Wellington's City Gallery museum. On that particular day, I was wandering around the museum, and could see that a new exhibit was about to go in. I saw a few pieces outside of the gated main room, and they were enough to get me hooked. Loitering in front of the gate like an arty creeper, I peered around it from various angles, crouching, and craning my neck, trying to get a better view inside. I went back the next day, when The Imaginative Life and Times exhibit opened for real.

Then I really fell in love.

His art and illustrations are the embodiment of creative whimsy, of imagination, wit, humor, and wonder. All qualities I continually strive for. Looking through my New Zealand journal the other day, I found a quote from the exhibit, written in red ink and an enthusiastic script:

"Percy's approach remained very much that of a wonder-struck child, whom the educationalist Fredrich Froebel once characterized as the archetypal "micronaut"--an explorer of the small things, the textures and borders of the everyday and the immediate."

I would consider my life well lived indeed, if this was in part how I was described at the end of it.

The Trojan Moa

These are all imagined histories about famous composers. (Sorry about the poor picture quality.)

His titles are half of the fun. The following match the above illustrations, clockwise, starting at the top right:

- Franz Schubert emerges from a stream near to Crear with a trout he has caught. This, along with the five watching rabbits, has given him the idea for a quintet. (1891).

- Dvorak, Dohnanyi and Schumann discuss a concert of their works with local residents at Crear.

- Within a Rachel Whiteread installation Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy is reminded of Fingal's Cave.

- Cuckoo with hunting horn. Crear - early evening.

Papa's Got a Brand New Bag

So I am hanging out for a spell with Annie, Lee, and the Notorious R.O.Y (baby Ellis) in the frosty midwest. You know that Chicago got hammered with snow this winter, like the rest of the free world . . . and you city-dwellers know what happens when the big snow melts. A minefield of soggy fliers, garbage, and dog excrement is left behind. Oh, and plastic bags. Lots of bags. In the gutters, under your car, caught up in bare tree branches, hissing in the wind. Annie abhors those Bags In Trees, and would curse them through the window, slowly shaking her fist. She called her alderman to have them removed. I find this to be hilarious. Mostly because she is under 65. But, it actually worked. No more bags. But why am getting into all of this random B.I.T talk?

Yesterday I came across this beautiful video of a dust devil peeling off rows of plastic from a field of strawberries.

It made me think of a pair of waltzing albino octopi, or a slow train of birds. The footage catches a short flash of time, of grace, between function and trash, when something as simple as a sheet of plastic has a chance to be something beautiful. I've seen dust devils whip up leaves and dirt and tumbleweeds, and I've seen ravens gyre up and up on such thermals. . . but this is different. 

Its like fingerprinting the wind.

And it is pretty mesmerizing. Check it out below. 

I recommend listening to it without sound. Or picking your own soundtrack.

(And yes, of course I have seen that iconic bag-in-the-wind scene  in American Beauty, which is also great.)

And yes, I also loved Ramin Bahrani's esoteric Werner Herzog-narrated short film about a plastic bag's search for meaning in the face of its own immortality. Brilliant. Years ago some friends and I dreamed of making a mockumentary about feral urban bags in California. And so my extreme enjoyment in watching the film was only slightly dampened by the fact that he did it before we could. And better. And secured that crazy German.

Did you know that various  sources estimate that the world uses over 500 billion plastic bags each year? Some think that the amount is closer to 1 trillion, a number so ridiculous it becomes abstract. And that doesn't even address all the stuff we are putting into those bags.

But I digress, yet again.

So, how about that original clip. . .

Stan the Man

"The fiercest hearts are in love with a wild perfection." —Stanley Kunitz

Stanley was such a poetry god.
He also lived to be 100 years old, which is pretty impressive.
His lines often wiggle their way out of my memory, into my forebrain at unexpected times.
I have always loved this one.

Foxy Lady

Speaking of wild perfection and things to love. . .
I am in love with Rick Allen's giclees, like the one above.
Check them out at The Kenspeckle Letter Press.
If you are like me, you may start panting.

CocoRosie - Animals

The Real Tuesday Weld - Last Time In Clerkenwell

The Lovely Sparrows - Year of the Dog

Say Hello to My Little Friends...

And check out their maker while you're at it... Berkley Illustration