“Put high walls around the part of you that dreams . . . ” ~ Fernando Pessoa, from “Advice” (trans. Edwin Honig and Susan M. Brown)

If it’s Friday, it must mean leftovers . . .

Friday evening, misty and milder, 52 degrees.

Yesterday’s post took more out of me than I had anticipated, so today, I’m falling back on one of my favorite kinds of posts. I don’t have too  many in my collection yet, obviously, but I like these. Enjoy.

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I will never not love “The West Wing,” and CJ most of all:

Irony in light of the recent movie:

Love this:

Music by Mansionair, “Easier”

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“Without promotion something terrible happens . . . Nothing!” ~ P. T. Barnum

Friday night, cloudy, dropping temperatures, 40 degrees.

As I’m becoming reacquainted with my blog and updating and deleting links, I’ve come upon some really wonderful sites. I thought that I’d share a few new ones that I’d like to add to my blogrolls. The first is the award-winning site Colossal, which I found on the blog promotion site Bloglovin’. Colossal is described in the About section as follows:

Colossal is one of the largest visual art, design, and culture blogs on the web. We pride ourselves in celebrating the work of both established and emerging artists across a vast field of creative endeavors, featuring 5,000+ articles on fine art, crafts, design, animation, photography, street art, illustration, and architecture. We also explore the beauty of the natural world at the intersection of art and science.

Established in 2010 by writer and curator Christopher Jobson, Colossal has won awards from the NEA, TED, PBS Art21, as well as a UTNE Media Award for Arts Coverage in 2013.

Below are some images from the article The Art of Japanese Funeral Floral Arrangements, which I knew nothing about. It’s unbelievably beautiful:

Images from an online catalog for the company Ito Sogi

Articles on the site focus on art, design,photography, craft, illustration, and more. Give them a visit.

More later. Peace.

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Music by UB40, “One in Ten”

Lyrics in honor of the invading caravan that apparently no longer exists . . .

I am a one in ten a number on a list
I am a one in ten even though i don’t exist
Nobody knows me, but im always there
A statistical reminder of a world that doesn’t care

My arms enfold the dole queue
Malnutrition dulls my hair
My eyes are black and lifeless
With an underprivileged stare
I’m the beggar on the corner
Will no-one spare a dime
I’m the child that never learns to read
Because no one spared the time

I am a one in ten a number on a list
I am a one in ten even though i don’t exist
Nobody knows me, but im always there
A statistical reminder of a world that doesn’t care

I’m the murderer and the victim
The licence with the gun
I’m a sad and bruised old lady
In an ally in a slum
I’m a middle aged businessman
With chronic heart disease
I’m another teenage suicide
In a street that has no trees

I am a one in ten a number on a list
I am a one in ten even though i don’t exist
Nobody knows me, but im always there
A statistical reminder of a world that doesn’t care

I’m a starving third world mother
A refugee without a home
I’m a house wife hooked on Valium
I’m a Pensioner alone
I’m a cancer ridden spectre
Covering the earth
I’m another hungry baby
I’m an accident of birth

I am a one in ten a number on a list
I am a one in ten even though i don’t exist
Nobody knows me, but im always there
A statistical reminder of a world that doesn’t care

“Is all that we see or seem | But a dream within a dream?” ~ Edgar Allan Poe, from “A Dream within a Dream”

 

Edmund Dulac’s “The Haunted Palace” (1912, pencil and watercolor) from The Bells and Other Poems, by E. A. Poe

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“They wave:— from out their fragrant tops
Eternal dews come down in drops.
They weep:— from off their delicate stems
Perennial tears descend in gems.” ~ Edgar Allan Poe, from “The Valley of Unrest”

Wednesday afternoon. Sunny and cold, 40 degrees.

Edmund Dulac’s “Alone” (1912, pencil and watercolor) from The Bells and Other Poems, by E. A. Poe

We have Olivia today, but she has a cold. You can really tell when she isn’t feeling well. It shows on her whole body.

Anyway, this post contains some works by French artist Edmund Dulac (1882-1953), who created a series of illustrations as a companion to Poe’s The Bells and Other Poems (1912). Click here to see the rest.

I came across the Kin Fables video below, created by Seb and Ben McKinnon, and it reminded me of both Poe and Dulac, so I have paired the video with a few Dulac illustrations, a few selections from Poe,  and the Margaret Atwood poem, “Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing.” By the way, Atwood turned 75 yesterday.

It’s a veritable cornucopia of things.

More later. Peace.

                   

Edmund Dulac’s “The Valley of Unrest” (1912, pencil and watercolor)from The Bells and Other Poems, by E. A. Poe

 

Kin Fables:

                   

Edmund Dulac’s “To — — (Mrs. Marie Louise Shew” (1912, pencil and watercolor) from The Bells and Other Poems, by E. A. Poe

Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing

The world is full of women
who’d tell me I should be ashamed of myself
if they had the chance. Quit dancing.
Get some self-respect
and a day job.
Right. And minimum wage,
and varicose veins, just standing
in one place for eight hours
behind a glass counter
bundled up to the neck, instead of
naked as a meat sandwich.
Selling gloves, or something.
Instead of what I do sell.
You have to have talent
to peddle a thing so nebulous
and without material form.
Exploited, they’d say. Yes, any way
you cut it, but I’ve a choice
of how, and I’ll take the money.

I do give value.
Like preachers, I sell vision,
like perfume ads, desire
or its facsimile. Like jokes
or war, it’s all in the timing.
I sell men back their worse suspicions:
that everything’s for sale,
and piecemeal. They gaze at me and see
a chain-saw murder just before it happens,
when thigh, ass, inkblot, crevice, tit, and nipple
are still connected.
Such hatred leaps in them,
my beery worshippers! That, or a bleary
hopeless love. Seeing the rows of heads
and upturned eyes, imploring
but ready to snap at my ankles,
I understand floods and earthquakes, and the urge
to step on ants. I keep the beat,
and dance for them because
they can’t. The music smells like foxes,
crisp as heated metal
searing the nostrils
or humid as August, hazy and languorous
as a looted city the day after,
when all the rape’s been done
already, and the killing,
and the survivors wander around
looking for garbage
to eat, and there’s only a bleak exhaustion.
Speaking of which, it’s the smiling
tires me out the most.
This, and the pretence
that I can’t hear them.
And I can’t, because I’m after all
a foreigner to them.
The speech here is all warty gutturals,
obvious as a slab of ham,
but I come from the province of the gods
where meanings are lilting and oblique.
I don’t let on to everyone,
but lean close, and I’ll whisper:
My mother was raped by a holy swan.
You believe that? You can take me out to dinner.
That’s what we tell all the husbands.
There sure are a lot of dangerous birds around.

Not that anyone here
but you would understand.
The rest of them would like to watch me
and feel nothing. Reduce me to components
as in a clock factory or abattoir.
Crush out the mystery.
Wall me up alive
in my own body.
They’d like to see through me,
but nothing is more opaque
than absolute transparency.
Look–my feet don’t hit the marble!
Like breath or a balloon, I’m rising,
I hover six inches in the air
in my blazing swan-egg of light.
You think I’m not a goddess?
Try me.
This is a torch song.
Touch me and you’ll burn.

~ Margaret Atwood