even*cleveland

jabberwocky

2012-01-28T07:07:00.001-05:00

From 1971.

this weekend

2012-01-27T09:04:00.000-05:00

Trips home + away:

Happy weekend.

Pictured: Doll house replica of Vanderbilt´s mansion at 660, 5th Avenue, made by Paul Cumbie in 1883, via Abbey.

a miniature obsession

2012-01-26T08:24:00.002-05:00

In the children’s books of Rumer Godden, the dollhouse stands as a benchmark of childhood. The Doll’s House, her 1947 meditation on imagination (and, yes, story of a dollhouse) concerns two sisters who inherit an heirloom outfitted with a doll family. The younger is firmly convinced that the dolls have lives and feelings and that they, the girls, function as arbitrary gods; the elder sister dismisses the notion as a childish fantasy. Which possibility is more exciting—or alarming—remains an open question. But the regularity with which Godden approached the subject in her fiction is no accident; as she saw it, dollhouses were something of the human predicament, in miniature, writing, “It is an anxious, sometimes a dangerous thing to be a doll. Dolls cannot choose; they can only be chosen; they cannot ‘do’; they can only be done by.”

Sadie Stein, writing on The Paris Review's blog.

Photograph of the art gallery of Carrie Stettheimer's doll house, with miniature works by Marcel Duchamp and Gaston Lachaise. Image by Helga Photo Studio. More here.

the museum of drawers

2012-01-26T07:34:00.000-05:00

Herbert Distel:

Museums, especially museums of fine art, are places where we become conscious of time. Like a preserving jar, they have the task of conserving and presenting a subject curdled with time - the artwork. But through and behind these works the artists appear, falling out of the screen of time, as it were, and become immortal.

Object artist Herbert Distel, born in Berne in 1942, had the idea of using a former cabinet for reels of sewing silk from an old haberdasher’s shop containing several hundred equally sized compartments (4.3 x 5.7 x 4.8 cm), each of which he allotted to an artist who could place a work of art in it. The wooden chest of drawers has 500 small "rooms" (which are housed in 20 drawers, each with 25 compartments). Every small room contains an original work of art, primarily by artists from the 1960s and 1970s – among others John Baldessari, Lucio Fontana, Duane Hanson, Andy Warhol and Richard Pettibone. The object itself stands on the 501st work of art, a metal base by Ed Kienholz.

More here + here.

things magazine:

Distel is pre-empting all sorts of esoteric modern projects ... Everything condensed and portable, squashed into as small a space as possible, still legible, yet also lost in transition.

for a stone, when it is examined, will be found a mountain in miniature

2012-01-25T07:24:00.003-05:00

Reproduction of the world in miniature is a recurring theme in Chinese art. Representations of mountains in particular signified escape from China's highly ordered, bureaucratic society to the natural world. In Daoist thought, the mountains were also the home of the immortals, and so symbolized paradise and the attainment of everlasting life.

Such objects would be placed on a scholar's desk or in a cabinet, as objects of contemplation.

J. Rawson (ed.), The British Museum book of Chi. London, The British Museum Press, 1992.

Post title: John Ruskin, Modern Painters, 1860.

1. Four examples of miniature mountain scenes.

2. Beryl and emerald miniature mountains. Qing Dynasty, 18th century.

lover's eyes

2012-01-24T08:17:00.000-05:00

The secret history of 'lover's eyes':

In the 18th and 19th centuries, wealthy British and European lovers exchanged “eye miniatures” — love tokens so clandestine that even now, in the majority of cases, it is impossible to identify their recipients or the people they depict.

Experts believe that there are fewer than 1,000 “lover’s eyes” in existence today.

Apparently, they were meant to be worn inside the lapel, near the heart. Damn romantic.

I discovered these just a few weeks ago in The Met's Gallery 754 (one of my favorite parts of the new American Wing - all portrait miniatures). I'd love to see the show in Birmingham.

More at Salon + a fascinating slideshow.

Lover's Eyes locket. Watercolor on ivory with gold case, ca. 1840.

small cathedrals

2012-01-23T17:42:00.001-05:00

The Petrified Music of Architecture:

This must be how it feels to be a god. The 28 tiny, stunningly detailed and impossible fragile models of European cathedrals sit in glass domes on shelves ... looking so lifelike that a deity watching from above might, depending on his mood, applaud the effort made in his name, or smash them to smithereens without a second thought... The models ... were made by William Gorringe between 1840 and 1850 for Sir Herbert Oakeley, a composer of church music ... Gorringe's cathedrals ... are made of cardboard and glue. A fine knife has been used to score the roofs to lend them the texture of lead or slate. Slivers of mica have been used to represent glazed windows. Edifices bristle with tiny statues, often just millimetres high. You need to crouch and push your face close to the glass case to fully appreciate the extraordinary detail.

The bulk of the models are of English cathedrals - including St Paul's, York Minster, Lincoln, Canterbury, Westminster Abbey and Durham - with five European cathedrals chosen for comparative significance. Gorringe almost produced these exquisite European miniatures without seeing the originals, instead making careful study of Oakeley's paintings and engravings to ensure he captured the craggy Gothic adornments of Strasbourg and Cologne.

Peter Watts, 'Small Miracles', The New Statesman, 5/12/2011.

Gorringe was known to have made other models, but they have disappeared to time. The cathedral models were built at a scale of 60 feet to 1 inch. They were later used to illustrate Sir Bannister Fletcher's A History of Architecture.

I would love to see these one day. In the meantime, I have my eye on the exhibition catalog.

William Gorringe model of Salisbury cathedral, photographed for World of Interiors. More here + here.

little great houses

2012-01-23T10:37:00.000-05:00

1. Doll's house by Roger Fry for the Omega Workshops, 1913. Modeled on Fry's own home in Surrey.
2. Wooden doll's house made in England, ca. 1750-1800.
3. Wooden dolls' house made in Nuremberg, Germany, 1673. Inside the doors, there is a unicorn, signifying that the house's owner was an apothecary or chemist, and a picture of Martin Luther.

More to look at here.

sunday tune: jens lekman - your arms around me

2012-01-22T10:00:00.003-05:00

sunday tune: allo darlin' - heartbeat chili

2012-01-22T09:57:00.000-05:00

'it's over quick, so have a good time'

2012-01-21T07:58:00.001-05:00

this weekend

2012-01-20T10:46:00.001-05:00

Friday!

Unrelated sidebar: I think I need to add these to my button collection. Happy weekend.

Mr. Button by John Caswell. Found via Bird & Banner and jokemijn.

a book and a chair

2012-01-19T10:50:00.001-05:00

1. Exchanging Hats.
2. Illum Wikkelso rocker at Sit and Read.

green + blue

2012-01-19T07:45:00.000-05:00

Dresses at COS.

radio silence

2012-01-18T10:11:00.001-05:00

'We should hope we don't live in a world where the first recourse of someone who wants to censor someone is to claim copyright infringement.'

More: 1, 2, 3.

gunshot ornithology

2012-01-17T13:11:00.002-05:00

My angst in seeing the Evans photo was realizing that the swam could have been the last Trumpeter in North Dakota [collected in 1891]. Early naturalists, including John James Audubon in his 1843 sojourn to Fort Union, saw swans in large numbers during summer. Valued for their meat, skin, and feathers, Trumpeters were gone from North Dakota and Minnesota by 1900. Until rediscovery in the 1930s in Red Rock Lakes, Montana, and later in Alaska, Trumpeter Swans were widely believed to be extinct. Since 1960, Trumpeters have spread from introductions into Minnesota and South Dakota ... Ironically, in the same year the North Dakota Museum of Art acquired the Terry Evans photo for its permanant collection, a pair has come to nest. Once again, the trumpeting call of the largest of all waterfowl, snow white feathers, contrasting with the black bill, facial sking, eyes, legs and feet, can be heard in North Dakota.

Dr. David Lambeth

Terry Evans: Trumpeter Swan, North Dakota, collected 1891, photographed 2001. Cuygnus Buccinator, Iris print. ©Terry Evans.

(Thanks, Martha.)

imaginary outfit: winter-colored

2012-01-16T15:20:00.001-05:00

This winter has been all greys, blues, browns, greens and blacks. Other than a few faint-hearted flurries, there's been no snow. I miss the way it softens and sharpens the world.

I am craving a change of surface. Every part of my world feels irritating and raw, from my clothes to my thoughts. A little polish is needed. A whirl around some kind of psychic rock-tumbler might do it, or maybe I could put myself in expert hands and get chiseled and reset into something better.

*

Swans came to mind last week in a roundabout way after I visited the Elizabeth Bishop exhibit at Tibor de Nagy. Among many other treasures, there was a small landscape on display by George Hutchinson. Seeing it was a peculiar and delightful shock - it is the painting described in 'Poem', and I know it well. I never imagined I'd see it, so it was a rare sort of pleasure to recognize how precisely and beautifully Bishop had captured it, to see the dovetail between poetry and reality.

A while back, the Met had an exhibition called 'Italy Observed', curios and souvenirs of the Grand Tour in the years before photography. I thought about the travelers and their expectations. What a radically different way to experience the world - to dream of places based solely on watercolors or etchings or passages in books or pieces of music, to recognize a place from a piece of art instead of a snapshot or newscast.

Seeing the Hutchinson painting gave me a little glimpse of how a thing purely imagined shifts to align with a thing seen. It felt like waking up and dreaming at the same time. Even though I saw the painting, I'm not sure it took - the poem is the object my mind keeps, the painting an addendum.

For me, swans follow the same pattern. I have little actual experience of swans, but I have vast imaginings of them - fragments of poems and paintings and fairy tales. A clatter of feathers more beautiful than any bird on the water.

*

A few odds and ends:

sunday tune: swans - (she's a) universal emptiness

2012-01-15T07:16:00.001-05:00

the dying swan

2012-01-14T07:05:00.001-05:00

Arms folded, on tiptoe, she dreamily and slowly circles the stage. By even, gliding motions of the hands, returning to the background from whence she emerged, she seems to strive toward the horizon, as though a moment more and she will fly—exploring the confines of space with her soul. The tension gradually relaxes and she sinks to earth, arms waving faintly as in pain. Then faltering with irregular steps toward the edge of the stage—leg bones aquiver like the strings of a harp—by one swift forward-gliding motion of the right foot to earth, she sinks on the left knee—the aerial creature struggling against earthly bonds; and there, transfixed by pain, she dies.

André Levinson

this weekend

2012-01-13T09:04:00.001-05:00

Looking out:

Photo found here. Happy weekend.

brilliant creatures

2012-01-12T08:21:00.000-05:00

Félix Vallotton: The Swans. 1892. Woodcut.

the wild swans at coole

2012-01-12T07:09:00.000-05:00

THE trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty Swans.
The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.
I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.
Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.
But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

William Butler Yeats

starred

2012-01-11T10:38:00.001-05:00

Cygnus: Miniature of the Swan. From Francesco Buzzacarini's 1460-1470 transcription of De sideribus tractatus, a 1st century astronomical treatise generally credited to Gaius Julius Hyginus.

Image from the NYPL Digital Archive. More details at BibliOdyssey.

patterned

2012-01-11T08:10:00.000-05:00

1. Walter Crane wallpaper design: Swan, Rush and Iris. 1875. At the V & A, via Erie Basin.

2. Jin dynasty textile fragment: Swan Hunt. 1115-1234. Plain weave silk with metallic thread. At The Met.

handle

2012-01-10T08:31:00.000-05:00

Late 19th/early 20th century ivory mounted 'swan' parasol, white painted shaft with carved and polychromed swan head finial. Via Hovey Design.

fragment

2012-01-10T08:04:00.000-05:00

Fragment of a Roman statuette, 1000 B.C. - A.D. 1.

the clatter of their feathers

2012-01-09T08:16:00.003-05:00

Out on the lake the coupled swans were drunk;
my handclap made them plunge; out there a head,
drinking the sacred, sobering water, sank.
A sunk
body kept tossing on its bed
of mud. This world, my world -
Oh sick of heart! I felt the winter freeze
the sunshine into ice. The seasoned shades
of fruit-trees in the autumn sunset fled.
The roses had departed on the wind,
the roses had parted to despair -
swans plunging through my mind,
the clatter of their feathers in the wind.

Robert Lowell, from 'The Seasons'.

Photo: Francesca Woodman, via.

sunday tune: wild flag - romance

2012-01-08T07:24:00.003-05:00

sunday tune: eleanor friedberger - my mistakes

2012-01-08T07:20:00.001-05:00

walking in an exaggerated manner around the perimeter of a square

2012-01-07T07:33:00.001-05:00

this weekend

2012-01-06T08:56:00.005-05:00

All the time in the world:

And on Monday night, book club. Happy weekend.

Carlo Zinelli: Horlages sur fond de 'petits prêtres', 1962, from Carlo Zinelli, Somogy Editions d'Art, Paris, 2003. Via stopping off place.

imaginary outfit: fresh starts

2012-01-05T08:04:00.017-05:00

2012, five days in. We are tentatively getting acquainted.

I began this week with the image of an open blank book. New year, fresh starts, etc. Wrinkled printed pages and messy sheets followed. We are not pristine and blank. We are crumpled pages, but this is the time of year we smooth ourselves out and try to find a new leaf, or at least space in the margins. The sense of beginning again in the middle. Making do and trying to do better. Carrying on with whatever we carry, with a pause to adjust the load.

It's a nice feeling.

*

Some resolutions: stay in New York; save money; be generous; keep healthy; get outside every day; go new places; read more; listen carefully; look closely; work harder; keep in touch; be grateful; make the dog happy; aim for kindness.

foredoomed tasks

2012-01-04T07:10:00.000-05:00

Found at ro / lu, one of my favorite places on the internet.

wrinkles

2012-01-03T07:46:00.001-05:00

1. Cara Barer: Body of Desires, 2004.
2. Louis H. Draper: Bed Sheets, 1958

an open book

2012-01-02T07:40:00.003-05:00

R. H. Quaytman: Spine, Chapter 20. 2011. Oil, silkscreen ink, gesso on wood. 82.2 x 82.2 cm.

Via the white hotel.

resolutions

2012-01-01T07:04:00.000-05:00

Woody Guthrie's resolutions, 1942. Via.

shut up and deal

2011-12-31T07:06:00.001-05:00

this weekend

2011-12-30T10:26:00.003-05:00

Ends and beginnings.

In other places: a new year's outfit. Happy weekend.

Drawing of a calendar by Philip Guston, from Yale Digital Content via 1+ 2.

in case you are interested

2011-12-28T14:04:00.000-05:00

red hook: december

2011-12-25T07:30:00.004-05:00

We had not expected it, the whole street
Lit with the red, blue, green
And yellow of the Christmas lights
In the windows shining and blinking
Into distance down the cross streets.
The children are almost awed in the street
Putting out the trash paper
In the winking light. A man works
Patiently in his overcoat
With the little bulbs
Because the window is open
In December. The bells ring,

Ring electronically the New Year
Among the roofs
And one can be at peace
In this city on a shore
For the moment now
With wealth, the shining wealth.

George Oppen

silent night

2011-12-24T19:01:00.000-05:00

fire up the yule log

2011-12-24T08:41:00.011-05:00

A few distractions in case you happen to be stuck at a desk today:

Merry Christmas.

See also: 2008, 2009 + 2010 even*cleveland yule logs.

this weekend

2011-12-23T10:39:00.005-05:00

Excitement. Happy weekend.

Photo from Square America.

imaginary outfit: home for christmas

2011-12-22T08:06:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow: a short trip up the west side of an island. A bridge to cross and then New Jersey, the state of frustration. Pennsylvania is a straight grey line, hills and forests and lonesome houses, an irregular parade of cement-colored rest stops with clammy bathrooms and boiled coffee. Finally, Ohio, and an exit north. The feeling of home creeps in with every mile, and we are there before we know it: a white house by a brown river with the porchlight on and family waiting.

The Christmas we keep together is a little like Robert P. Tristam Coffin's:

The whole nation of you in the house will go from one thing to another. The secret of the best Christmases is everybody doing the same things all at the same time. You will all fall to and string cranberries and popcorn for the tree, and the bright lines each of you has a hold on will radiate from the tree like ribbons on a maypole. Everybody will have needles and thread in the mouth, you will all get in each other's way, but that is the art of doing Christmas right.

I can't wait.

skaters

2011-12-21T17:00:00.000-05:00

Agnes Tait (1894-1981): Skating in Central Park, 1934. Oil on canvas, 33 3/4 x 48 in. In the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

*

Unrelated but wonderful: the taste of peppermints.

Tonight: winter parades, bells + angels.

aren't we fools

2011-12-20T07:14:00.001-05:00

'What Josephine said,' explained Robert, 'was simply that it would be pretty to put candles on one of the growing trees, instead of having a Christmas-tree indoors'....

Soon they were busy round a prickly fir-tree at the end of the lawn. Jim stood in the background vaguely staring. The bicycle lamp sent a beam of strong white light deep into the uncanny foliage, heads clustered and hands worked. The night above was silent, dim. There was no wind. In the near distance they could hear the panting of some engine at the colliery.

'Shall we light them as we fix them,' asked Robert, 'or save them for one grand rocket at the end?'

'Oh, as we do them,' said Cyril Scott, who had lacerated his fingers and wanted to see some reward.

A match spluttered. One naked little flame sprang alight among the dark foliage. The candle burned tremulously, naked. They all were silent.

'We ought to do a ritual dance! We ought to worship the tree,' sang Julia, in her high voice.

'Hold on a minute. We'll have a little more illumination,' said Robert.

'Why yes. We want more than one candle,' said Josephine.

But Julia had dropped the cloak in which she was huddled, and with arms slung asunder was sliding, waving, crouching in a pas seul before the tree, looking like an animated bough herself.

Jim, who was hugging his pipe in the background, broke into a short, harsh, cackling laugh.
'Aren't we fools! he cried. 'What? Oh, God's love, aren't we fools!'

D.H. Lawrence, Aaron's Rod.

branches and wire

2011-12-19T07:52:00.000-05:00

Photos of kids in Berlin with Christmas tree branches, 1961. Taken by Paul Schutzer for LIFE.

sunday tune: an 1899 stella grand console music box plays 'silent night' and 'o tanennbaum'

2011-12-18T07:08:00.000-05:00

an early present

2011-12-17T07:08:00.001-05:00

Brain Cox teaches Hamlet to a small child. Found at The Missouri Review, via Lapham's Quarterly.

this weekend

2011-12-16T10:30:00.006-05:00

Busy hands. Also:

Happy weekend.

Andrea Feininger for LIFE, 1956.

warm mittens

2011-12-15T08:21:00.001-05:00

Hand knit mittens made for E.I. Chline in 1837.

soft shoes

2011-12-14T07:16:00.000-05:00

Deerskin slippers by Manitobah. I love the wheat motif.

Related: mukluks.

st. lucy's day

2011-12-13T07:27:00.009-05:00

Happy St. Lucy's Day.

It's not quite the year's midnight - under the Julian calendar, December 13th was the shortest day - but candles and wreaths are welcome ways to gladden the dark.

Photo found at quiet time.

In other places: a few things I love.

imaginary outfit: book club

2011-12-12T09:14:00.004-05:00

Tiny pearls, red shoes + striped cardigans are nice, but talking over a good book is even better.

Book club tonight - see you there.

sunday tune: jónsi - tornado

2011-12-11T07:04:00.000-05:00

Normally, this time of year I start posting Christmas music, but I'm feeling like Schroeder. Instead of Beethoven Christmas music, I'm listening to Jónsi Christmas music.

The red sweater is very holiday.

polkagris

2011-12-10T07:15:00.004-05:00

this weekend

2011-12-09T10:18:00.026-05:00

Holiday stuff:

Happy weekend.

Ralph Morse: Santa Claus School.

imaginary outfit: genius burns

2011-12-08T08:32:00.003-05:00

I want to do something splendid ... something heroic, or wonderful—that won’t be forgotten after I’m dead. I don’t know what, but I’m on the watch for it, and mean to astonish you all, some day. I think I shall write books, and get rich and famous; that would suit me ...

Jo March, Little Women

*

I'm shakin' the dust of this crummy little town off my feet and I'm gonna see the world. Italy, Greece, the Parthenon, the Colosseum. Then, I'm comin' back here to go to college and see what they know. And then I'm gonna build things. I'm gonna build airfields, I'm gonna build skyscrapers a hundred stories high, I'm gonna build bridges a mile long...

George Bailey, It's A Wonderful Life

*

I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.

Helen Keller

*

Little Women is the first book I remember reading on my own. I was eight years old, and it took me the better part of a year to work through it, puzzling through the mysteries of Pickwicks and pilgrims, tarlatans and tin kitchens. As soon as I finished it, I began it again. I read it over and over - at least once a year until I went to college. It pointed me to other books - Pilgrim's Progress, The Vicar of Wakefield, endless volumes of Dickens, and the collected works of Louisa May Alcott. Along the way, it wound through the foundation of my childhood, bending and shaping the way I understood the world and what it means to grow up.

Like many before and since, Jo March was my favorite. Smart and impulsive, funny and flawed. I loved picturing her in the attic, writing furiously and telling her family that 'genius burns', or reading on the sofa, eating apples in the company of a pet rat. (Rats were a theme with my childhood heroines - Jo had Scrabbles, Sara Crewe had Melchisedec.) I never expected her to marry Laurie- he was a brother and a friend, and my eight-year-old self didn't see any reason Jo had to marry anyone - but I was crushed to read about her grown-up life. Amy went off to Europe and became the lady fair, Meg got married and had babies, but Jo's dreams never got a full field of play. Instead of the world bending to her will, she bent herself to the rigid shape the world offered. Daughter, sister. Wife, mother. Teacher, authoress. Her family needed money, so she wrote what sold. Her sister needed a nurse, so she put everything aside and devoted herself to the job. In the end, she marries an older, impoverished professor and starts a family and a school for boys (Alcott got so many letters pleading for Jo to end up with Laurie after the publication of the first volume that she decided against it, creating a 'funny match' for her instead. She later said that Jo should have been a literary spinster. Simone de Beauvoir recalled that Jo's refusal of Laurie made her realize marriage was not the only choice.) Eventually, she gets a measure of literary success, but it is of a humbler, homier flavor than what she (and I) hoped for. Duty rules, but she finds happiness.

I can never decide if this was a good thing or a tragic thing for my eight-year-old self to discover.

*

Around this time of year, I re-watch It's A Wonderful Life. I love the story of George Bailey, irritable and idealistic, stubborn and moral. His successes are the humblest and homiest - a loving wife, happy children, necessary work. Like Jo March, he never gets what he wants - to go to college, travel the world, leave Bedford Falls behind. Instead, he gets little victories and a restless heart - and of course, a visit from an angel to show him it was all worthwhile and teach him to love what he has.

Since we don't all get angels, we have to take it on faith that our sacrifices matter. Little Women and It's A Wonderful Life idealize something that is often hard and sad and lonely - unselfish choices made by imperfect people. They fill a hungry space in the heart - the space that wants meaning and matter equal to the most epic stories.

Most people have lives of ordinary greatness, placed in a small circle of love and importance. Extraordinary greatness requires a degree of selfishness, a certain ruthlessness of purpose in addition to ambition and talent. If we can't have that extra part - that part that makes us put ourselves first, first and always, that part that believes that whatever we want most is worth the cost - why have the heart that wants more? Why can't we fit comfortably to the life we have?

Last month, I posted a quote about the pull of instinct - a description of barnyard ducks called to flight by the migrating patterns of wild birds. It's a romantic idea - that hidden deep in domesticated blood, there is something untamed and essential. That we can feel the call to something more is a mixed gift. Without the ability or opportunity to answer, it is a torment to master. Jo March and George Bailey fight this fight. Their stories are reminders that we have to live the life we have, and all we can do is make the best of what we are even if it is not all we can be.

My favorite passage in any book is the ending of Middlemarch. It's never far from my thoughts:

Certainly those determining acts of her life were not ideally beautiful. They were the mixed result of a young and noble impulse struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion. For there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it. A new Theresa will hardly have the opportunity of reforming a conventual life, any more than a new Antigone will spend her heroic piety in daring all for the sake of a brother's burial: the medium in which their ardent deeds took shape is for ever gone. But we insignificant people with our daily words and acts are preparing the lives of many Dorotheas, some of which may present a far sadder sacrifice than that of the Dorothea whose story we know.

Her finely-touched spirit still had its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you or me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

memoirs of a dutiful daughter

2011-12-07T18:24:00.000-05:00

I identified myself passionately with Jo, the intellectual. Brusque and bony, Jo clambered up into trees when she wanted to read; she was much more tomboyish and daring than I was, but I shared her horror of sewing and housekeeping and her love of books. She wrote: in order to imitate her more completely, I composed two or three short stories ... But the thing that delighted me most of all was the marked partiality which Louisa Alcott manifested for Jo. As I have said, I detested the sort of grown-up condescension which lumped all children under the same heading. The defects and qualities which authors gave their young heroines usually seemed to be inconsequential accidents; when they grew up they would all be as good as gold: moreover it was only their personal morality that distinguished one from another, never their intelligence; it was almost as if from this point of view their age had made them all equal. But in Little Women Jo was superior to her sisters, who were either more virtuous or more beautiful than she, because of her passion for knowledge and the vigour of her thinking; her superiority was as outstanding as that of certain adults and guaranteed that she would have an unusual life: she was marked by fate. I, too, felt I was entitled to consider my taste in reading and my scholastic successes as tokens of a personal superiority which would be borne out by the future. I became in my own eyes a character out of a novel.

Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

postcards from orchard house

2011-12-07T09:38:00.001-05:00

Found here.

the author's apology for his book

2011-12-06T15:30:00.000-05:00

When at the first I took my pen in hand
Thus for to write, I did not understand
That I at all should make a little book
In such a mode; nay, I had undertook
To make another; which, when almost done,
Before I was aware, I this begun.

And thus it was: I, writing of the way
And race of saints, in this our gospel day,
Fell suddenly into an allegory
About their journey, and the way to glory,
In more than twenty things which I set down.

This done, I twenty more had in my crown;
And they again began to multiply,
Like sparks that from the coals of fire do fly.
Nay, then, thought I, if that you breed so fast,
I'll put you by yourselves, lest you at last
Should prove ad infinitum, and eat out
The book that I already am about.

Well, so I did; but yet I did not think
To shew to all the world my pen and ink
In such a mode; I only thought to make
I knew not what; nor did I undertake
Thereby to please my neighbour: no, not I;
I did it my own self to gratify.

Neither did I but vacant seasons spend
In this my scribble; nor did I intend
But to divert myself in doing this
From worser thoughts which make me do amiss.

Thus, I set pen to paper with delight,
And quickly had my thoughts in black and white.
For, having now my method by the end,
Still as I pulled, it came; and so I penned
It down: until it came at last to be,
For length and breadth, the bigness which you see.

John Bunyan, from the beginning of The Pilgrim's Progress

'we are utterly weary of stories about precocious little girls'

2011-12-06T08:57:00.002-05:00

The heroine of "Moods" is a fitful, wayward, and withal most amiable young person, named Sylvia. We regret to say that Miss Alcott takes her up in her childhood. We are utterly weary of stories about precocious little girls. In the first place, they are in themselves disagreeable and unprofitable objects of study; and in the second, they are always the precursors of a not less unprofitable middle-aged lover.

From Henry James' review of Louisa May Alcott's first novel, Moods.

More here + here. Via Maud Newton.

Photo of Louisa May Alcott from the NYPL digital archive.

i am angry nearly every day of my life

2011-12-05T10:52:00.000-05:00

'It's my dreadful temper! I try to cure it; I think I have, and then it breaks out worse than ever. O mother, what shall I do? what shall I do?' cried poor Jo, in despair.

'Watch and pray, dear; never get tired of trying, and never think it is impossible to conquer your fault,' said Mrs. March, drawing the blowzy head to her shoulder, and kissing the wet cheek so tenderly that Jo cried harder than ever.

'You don't know; you can't guess how bad it is! It seems as if I could do anything when I'm in a passion; I get so savage, I could hurt any one, and enjoy it. I'm afraid I shall do something dreadful some day, and spoil my life, and make everyone hate me. O mother, help me, do help me!'

'I will, my child, I will. Don't cry so bitterly, but remember this day, and resolve, with all your soul, that you will never know another like it. Jo, dear, we all have our temptations, some far greater than yours, and it often takes us all our lives to conquer them. You think your temper is the worst in the world; but mine used to be just like it.'

'Yours, mother? Why, you are never angry!' and, for the moment, Jo forgot remorse in surprise.

'I've been trying to cure it for forty years, and have only succeeded in controlling it. I am angry nearly every day of my life, Jo; but I have learned not to show it; and I still hope to learn not to feel it, though it may take me another forty years to do so.'

Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

poor little sinner

2011-12-05T09:51:00.000-05:00

I was cross today, and I cried when I went to bed. I made good resolutions, and felt better in my heart. If I only kept all I make, I should be the best girl in the world. But I don't, and so am very bad.

From an entry in Louisa May Alcott's journal dated September 1843. She was eleven years old. Forty years later, she made the following note in the margin: 'Poor little sinner! She says the same at fifty. - L.M.A.'

'uncommon activity and force of mind'

2011-12-05T09:37:00.000-05:00

From a page in Bronson Alcott's journals: a tracing of Louisa May Alcott's hand made just before her second birthday. He noted that she 'manifests uncommon activity and force of mind at present.'

Found in John Matteson's article, 'Little Women: The Devilish, Dutiful Daughter, Louisa May Alcott.' HUMANITIES, November/December 2009, Volume 30, Number 6.

sunday tune: andré laplante - franz liszt's en rêve: nocturne, s. 207

2011-12-04T07:15:00.001-05:00

Brought to mind thanks to theue.

ice

2011-12-03T07:04:00.001-05:00

this weekend

2011-12-02T10:08:00.001-05:00

Wintery activities:

In other places: things to get, things to give.

Happy weekend.

Image via yum & yuk.

things

2011-12-01T09:53:00.002-05:00

My cane, my pocket change, this ring of keys.
The obedient lock, the belated notes
The few days left to me will not find time
To read, the deck of cards, the tabletop,
A book and crushed in its pages the withered
Violet, monument to an afternoon
Undoubtedly unforgettable, now forgotten,
The mirror in the west where a red sunrise
Blazes its illusion. How many things,
Files, doorsills, atlases, wine glasses, nails,
Serve us like slaves who never say a word,
Blind and so mysteriously reserved.
They will endure beyond our vanishing;
And they will never know that we have gone.

Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Stephen Kessler.

Set of keys with group of assorted gold and metal charms from the Estate of Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Found via Mary Caple.

2011-12-01T07:07:00.000-05:00

Adolf Hårdh (Finland 1807-1855): Panorama af Stockholm. Lithograph, possibly 1840s. L/S 9.4 x 419.5 cm. Printed on separate sheets, and mounted together (linen-backed) in scroll.

Via the white hotel.

2011-11-30T09:19:00.002-05:00

... In That Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.

Suárez Miranda, Viajes De Varones Prudentes, Libro IV, Cap. XLV, Lérida, 1658

Jorge Luis Borges, 'On Exactitude in Science'. Translated by Andrew Hurley.

2011-11-30T08:17:00.001-05:00

“What a useful thing a pocket-map is!” I remarked.

“That’s another thing we’ve learned from your Nation,” said Mein Herr, “map-making. But we’ve carried it much further than you. What do you consider the largest map that would be really useful?”

“About six inches to the mile.”

“Only six inches!” exclaimed Mein Herr. “We very soon got to six yards to the mile. Then we tried a hundred yards to the mile. And then came the grandest idea of all! We actually made a map of the country, on the scale of a mile to the mile!”

“Have you used it much?” I enquired.

“It has never been spread out, yet,” said Mein Herr: “the farmers objected: they said it would cover the whole country, and shut out the sunlight! So we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well ..."

Lewis Carroll, Bruno and Sylvie Concluded

2011-11-30T07:13:00.000-05:00

Fold-out illustration of Copt Hall, Essex, in Farmer's "History of ...Waltham...", 1735.

Discovered via things magazine.

2011-11-29T09:03:00.001-05:00

Delainey Barclay: Into the fold, 2010-11.

Via the white hotel.

2011-11-29T07:58:00.002-05:00

Richard Serra: To Encircle Base Plate Hexagram, Right Angles Inverted (1970).

Via Wary Myers Decorative Arts.

in case you are interested

2011-11-28T09:06:00.003-05:00

*
The very first meeting, open to any and all. Topics of discussion will include Transcendentalism, Pilgrim's Progress, potboilers, moral pap, burned breadths, pickled limes, and the difficulties of balancing necessary work with personal ambition. Stop by and have a cookie - I'm baking them myself.

(If you like to plan ahead, January's book is The Light Princess.)

2011-11-28T08:15:00.000-05:00

Kathryn Bentley: rings at Vivier and Bentley via Jeana Sohn; meditation hands.

sunday tune: beach fossils - golden age

2011-11-27T07:04:00.003-05:00

vigorous exercise

2011-11-26T07:12:00.006-05:00

Ate too much on Thursday. Time to hit the gym.

this weekend

2011-11-25T10:48:00.007-05:00

Taking it easy:

Happy weekend.

Leafy motto found here.

le dindon

2011-11-24T08:52:00.009-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving.

Pablo Picasso: Le Dindon, Plate XIX for Eaux-fortes orginales pour les textes de Buffon, 1936.

imaginary outfit: giving thanks

2011-11-23T09:18:00.029-05:00

Things that will happen tomorrow:

too-early alarm clocks
hot apple cider dosed with applejack
Irish oatmeal
giant balloons
roasting, kneading, cooking, baking
long distance phone calls
grace
feasting
afternoon walks
flannel pajamas
old movies
naps
seconds
Scrabble
desserts
sleeping dogs

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.

G.K. Chesterton

Wishing you a day of happiness doubled by wonder.

2011-11-22T07:27:00.004-05:00

When the wild ducks or the wild geese migrate in their season, a strange tide rises in the territories over which they sweep. As if magnetized by the great triangular flight, the barnyard fowl leap a foot or two in the air and try to fly. The call of the wild strikes them with the force of a harpoon and a vestige of savagery quickens their blood. All the ducks on the farm are transformed for an instant into migrant birds, and into those hard little heads, till now filled with humble images of pools and worms and barnyards, there swims a sense of continental expanse, of the breadth of the seas and the salt taste of ocean wind. The duck totters to right and left in its wire enclosure, gripped by a sudden passion to perform the impossible and a sudden love whose object is mystery.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars

Photo found here.

*

Worth a listen: Marketa Irglova & Sean Rowe cover Neil Young's 'Birds'.

forced

2011-11-21T07:08:00.002-05:00

Photos of magnetism by Ling Meng, via but does it float.

sunday tune: nina simone - i wish i knew how it feels to be free (live)

2011-11-20T07:36:00.004-05:00

2011-11-19T07:41:00.003-05:00

this weekend

2011-11-18T10:08:00.002-05:00

Too much moonlight.

Diversions:

Happy weekend.

Vintage Russian book covers found at Words & Eggs.

1971

2011-11-17T07:18:00.001-05:00

Two men walked on the surface of the moon.
Others will, later. What are words to do?
And what of the dreams and fashionings of art
before this real, almost unreal, event?
Heady with daring and with holy dread,
those sons of Whitman now have left their print
on the moon's wasteland, the unviolated
prehuman sphere, changing and permanent.
The love of Endymion in his mountain vigil,
the hippogriff, the curious sphere of Wells,
which in my memory is real and true,
now all take substance. Triumph belongs to all.
Today there is not a single man on earth
who does not feel more confident, more sure.
The unforgettable day thrills with new force
from the single rightness of the odyssey
of those benign magicians. The moon,
which earthly love still seeks out in the sky
with sorrowing face and still-unslaked desire,
will be its monument, everlasting, one.

Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Alastair Reid.

predictions

2011-11-16T08:13:00.001-05:00

Timetable predicting future space travel from Mechanics Illustrated 'Space Satellites' special edition, 1958.

Via dreams of space.

lopsided

2011-11-16T07:04:00.001-05:00

Once upon a time, the sky above Earth may have held two moons — until they smashed into each other to create the lunar body we know today. Such a collision early in the solar system's history could explain why the moon is lopsided, and why its far side looks so different from the face we can see...

LA Times, 8/4/2011. More here.

silver + gold

2011-11-15T07:23:00.003-05:00

DAGUERREOTYPES OF THE MOON. (from The Schoolmate, January 1854, p. 75):

Probably most of our readers will like to hear of this remarkable experiment in daguerreotyping. This wonderful invention has been used for years to amuse the public, and minister to our affections, by presenting faithful portraits of the absent or lost ones. It has now been fairly pressed into the service of the science of astronomy, and has been eminently successful.

A lunar daguerreotype was taken by Mr. S. D. Humphrey, of Canandaigua, N. Y. At a meeting of the Cambridge Scientific Association, in 1849, five of Mr. Humphrey's pictures were exhibited by Mr. Wells. Since that time Mr. Whipple, the daguerreotypist of Boston, has been very successful in daguerreotyping the moon, using the great reflecting telescope at Cambridge for that purpose. But lately he has quite popularized these lunar transcripts by the newly-discovered art of daguerreotyping on glass. This art, which is called crystalotyping, has never yielded more beautiful results. Mr. Whipple's crystalotype of the moon ranks among the wonders of the age, and, by its easy reproduction, enables every person, whose cultivated taste leads them to care for such things, to possess a picture of the moon, actually drawn by herself. The picture, let us observe, is a faithful copy of the lunar features--as faithful as an ordinary daguerreotype of a friend's face. Nothing more curious has ever fallen under our notice.

More here + here.

John Adams Whipple:

View of the Moon, February 26, 1852.

First daguerreotype of the Moon, 1851.

crescents

2011-11-14T10:59:00.000-05:00

Earrings by Rah and Rah. I also like these.

Semi-related: a moon phase puzzle.

2011-11-14T07:19:00.001-05:00

Via Cold Splinters.

sunday tune: bert jansch - moonshine

2011-11-13T07:31:00.004-05:00

Brought to mind via Nickel Cobalt.

a trip to the moon

2011-11-12T07:24:00.010-05:00

this weekend

2011-11-11T10:30:00.010-05:00

Longer nights. Diversions:

Happy weekend.

Page of constellations found here.

2011-11-10T15:16:00.000-05:00

I had a task, did not do it, and now the failure is wrecking my life. I ought to have done something positive with my life, to have become a star in the sky. Instead of which I remained stuck on earth, and now I am gradually fading out. My life has really become meaningless and so it consists only in futile episodes. The people around me do not notice this and would not understand; but I know that I have a fundamental deficiency. Be glad of it, if you don’t understand what I am writing here.

Wittgenstein, writing in a letter to Engelmann, 1921.

Via time immemorial.

2011-11-10T07:55:00.001-05:00

Paul and Prosper Henry:

Astronomers at the Paris Observatory, the brothers Paul and Prosper Henry inherited in 1872 a project begun twenty years earlier--the mapping of the heavens by means of painstaking observation, calculation, and notation. In a dozen years they charted nearly fifty thousand stars. When, in 1884, their survey approached the Milky Way, the Henry brothers found that the cluster of stars proved far too dense and complex to chart by eye, and they constructed a photographic telescope to produce an exact, objective record of the sky. That photography might serve astronomy was evident from the very beginning. Daguerre's standard-bearer François Arago, director of the Paris Observatory, declared in July 1839 that the daguerreotype would eventually accomplish with ease the most delicate and difficult astronomical tasks, such as mapping the surface of the moon. Indeed, before the Henry brothers' first use of the medium, other photographers had successfully charted lunar geology, solar and lunar eclipses, the transit of Venus, sunspots, the surface of Mars, the rings of Saturn, and the relative position of the brightest stars. No one, however, had yet recorded stars so distant and faint that they were not visible to the eye. This the Henry brothers achieved in 1885 by constructing a still more powerful photographic telescope, with an extraordinarily precise mechanism for tracking the stars across the night sky during exposures as long as one hour. The resulting photographs, each seemingly infinite expanse showing but a three-degree section of the firmament, remain among the most sublime conceptions of scientific photography.

Nebuleuse de la Lyre, ca. 1885
A Section of the Constellation Cygnus, August 13, 1885

2011-11-09T09:41:00.000-05:00

William Langenheim (American, born Germany, 1807–1874): Eclipse of the Sun, 1854. Daguerreotype.

One of the many things I wish was in my collection instead of the Met's.

this is the myth in which we transcribe the most obscure and real powers of language

2011-11-09T09:05:00.000-05:00

Leandro Katz: Lunar Sentence II, 1980. Created using an 'invented alphabet made with photographs of the faces of the moon.'

It reads:

WHEN WE PULVERIZE WORDS, WHAT IS LEFT IS NEITHER MERE NOISE NOR ARBITRARY, PURE ELEMENTS, BUT STILL OTHER WORDS, REFLECTION OF AN INVISIBLE AND YET INDELIBLE REPRESENTATION: THIS IS THE MYTH IN WHICH WE NOW TRANSCRIBE THE MOST OBSCURE AND REAL POWERS OF LANGUAGE.