even*cleveland: 10.08

this weekend

If you are having or attending a Halloween party tonight, this clip features tactics for dealing with party crashers. Otherwise:

meet with pretentious artists
dance with skeletons
dread Birnam wood
enjoy fairytales, traditional and upended
scream at screamtime
watch what happens when a man leaves his wife for the babysitter (scary)

Happy weekend.

gransfors

Gransfors hand-forged axe. For all your wood-cutting needs.

hatchet

Lizzie Borden took an axe,
And gave her mother forty whacks,
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.

Photo: Hatchet found in barn after the 1893 Borden murders, via this site.

imaginary outfit: urban vagabond

When the squirrels start to stockpile nuts, I start to stockpile books. I need a good stack against the long, dark winter. For me, buying books is tinged with a little superstition. I think the books I need to read find me at the right time, so browsing through ramshackle book sales and dusty used-book stores suits me well - I like finding what I didn't know I was looking for.

Today, I am wishing for a bigger city for my bookish peregrinations. I'm dreaming specifically of London, that city of amazing bookstores. I'd stay at Hazlitt's and admire their blue plaque before setting off here to scout first editions and here to look for artist's books. I'd visit Maggs Bros. and wish for more money and shelf space, then wander wherever the wind took me, up and down alleys, in and out of shops looking for hidden treasures until my pack was filled and it was time to head back to my cozy room and the pleasures of the unknown read.

the asteroid known as b-612

My much-loved copy.

star calendars

I hope these get added to her Etsy shop.

saturn

'I see drawing as thinking, as evidence of thinking, evidence of going from one place to another. The image is just sort a sort of armature on which I hang my marks and make my art.

Vija Celmins

Those photos reminded me of Celmins' drawing of Saturn (scanned from my copy of Drawing Modern: Works from the Agnes Gund Collection, page 27).

Drawing: Untitled (Saturn), 1979-1981. Graphite.

Quotation: from an interview with Chuck Close in Vija Celmins, A.R.T. Press, 1992, 14.

enceladus

Photos of Saturn's tiny moon, Enceladus, taken by the Cassini orbiter at The Big Picture. It's worth clicking over.

early abstractions

Harry Smith: Early Abstractions (1946 - 1957) - No. 5: Circular Tensions, Homage to Oskar Fischinger (1950) & No. 7: Color Study (1952). In addition to creating films, he also did this.

saut dans le vide

To paint space, I owe it to myself to go there, to that very space… without illusions or tricks, nor with a plane or a parachute or a rocket ship: [the painter of space] must go there by his own means, with an independent individual force, in a word, he must be capable of levitation.

Yves Klein

Photograph of a performance by Yves Klein at Rue Gentil-Bernard, Fontenay-aux-Roses, October 1960, by Harry Shunk. Le Saut dans le Vide (Leap into the Void).

thrown in

One sticks one’s finger into the soil to tell by the smell in what land one is: I stick my finger in existence — it smells of nothing. Where am I? Who am I? How came I here? What is this thing called the world? What does this world mean? Who is it that has lured me into the world? Why was I not consulted, why not made acquainted with its manners and customs instead of throwing me into the ranks, as if I had been bought by a kidnapper, a dealer in souls? How did I obtain an interest in this big enterprise they call reality? Why should I have an interest in it? Is it not a voluntary concern? And if I am to be compelled to take part in it, where is the director? I should like to make a remark to him. Is there no director? Whither shall I turn with my complaint?

Søren Kierkegaard, Repetition. 1843.

this weekend

I need to find a leaf pile. Once sufficient jumping is accomplished, I might:

Happy weekend.

somewhat polished

Drusy Agate Link earrings by Melissa Joy Manning. Available at Adele.

imaginary outfit: french movies and dinner after

I have a lot of things to do tonight, but if I didn't, I would be headed to the Cinematheque to watch puzzling french films in hard-backed wooden seats. After having our minds sufficiently clouded with thoughts of existentialism and the destructive corroding power of the bourgeoisie, we would gladly retreat to Bar Cento, where we would eat the best fries in the city and drink lots of red wine, trying to make sense of it all. I'd have a cozy sweater against the chill, and a pair of killer boots that would strike admiration and awe into the heart of all that I met.

why i have difficulty

This makes me think of Robert Heinlein.

Photo from Ffffound.

i see my path, but don't know where it leads

I spend a lot of time trying to figure out where I am at. A sextant might come in handy.

Photo: Learning how to determine latitude by using a sextant is Senta Osoling, student at Polytechnic High School, Los Angeles, September 1942. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Alfred Palmer. Via Shorpy.

who are you? what are you?

The thing I remember most vividly about the bear is that it is a dangerous animal for many reasons, but principally because its face is always concealed. Its face is enduringly expressionless. It's not like a dog that will raise its hackles, not like a cat that will sort of narrow its eyes and flatten its ears. It has this huge head and a furry face and very small expressionless eyes that don't change. Its eyesight is very poor so it's always sort of squinting at you (he squints) and its sense of smell and its hearing are very keen, so it always has this expression the most terrifying aspect of which is: "Who are you? What are you?" And the judgment of what you are can suddenly change. Because it doesn't see you clearly. It doesn't know what you are.

John Irving
(He has a thing about bears - check the recurring themes chart.)

captive

Dancing Bear by Julianna Swaney: reminds me of this book, and a million (well, three) John Irving stories.

pounce

Tiger Leaping by Melinda Melmoth.

anointed

The Royal Bengal tiger is solitary and “secretive”—the last attribute regularly appears in the language of even the most sober field manuals. A group of tigers—should one be so fortunate to see one—is called a streak. A male tiger can be as large as ten and a half feet in length and weigh more than five hundred pounds. The tiger’s coat is deep amber, the lines of its characteristic black shadow-stripes abstract and sophisticated. Its claws retract, like those of a domestic cat; it “prusts,” or chuffs, rather than purrs, as well as roars. The iris of the tiger’s eye is amber-yellow. The tiger is one of the few anointed animals commonly referred to as “charismatic”; “Nature’s masterpiece of the creation,” to cite a recent book; or, as Kushal put it, “something to look up to,” both beautiful and powerful ...

Carolyn Alexander, 'Tigerland', The New Yorker, April 21, 2008.

(I would like to heard a tiger chuff ... from a distance.)

fearful symmetry

William Blake (1757–1827): Songs of Innocence and of Experience, 1794/ca.1825.
Plate 42: The Tyger

tigers

Henri Rousseau: Fight between a Tiger and a Buffalo, 1908. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

i listened for lions

I came home and found a lion in my living room
Rushed out on the fire escape screaming Lion! Lion!
Two stenographers pulled their brunette hair and banged the window shut
I hurried home to Patterson and stayed two days

Called up old Reichian analyst
who'd kicked me out of therapy for smoking marijuana
'It's happened' I panted 'There's a Lion in my living room'
'I'm afraid any discussion would have no value' he hung up

Alan Ginsberg, from 'The Lion for Real'.