This is a site to peruse, particularly the window frame artwork in the gallery. Jónsi (of Sigur Rós fame) and Alex make the pieces together, and they are hauntingly lovely. Screen shot of the gallery:
They have an instrumental album called Riceboy Sleeps that sounds great, too. And don’t forget to watch the recipe videos!
1.
…blank space have been filled by a book I found at Daedalus Bookshop in Charlottesville, VA, on a recent road trip. I was at the register, ready to buy a forgotten poetry anthology and a book about southern folklore, when I looked down and found There Are Two Lives: Poems by Children of Japan, edited by Richard Lewis and translated by Haruna Kimura. The poems in this book are direct and strange, honest and off-kilter, beautifully simple and utterly complex. They are a master class in poetry’s potential to illuminate the human condition. I’m not ready to write about the poems yet, as they somehow feel too special. Josh read many of them to me on one of the legs of our road trip. We found ourselves crying on I-95.
2.
Went back to Murrell’s Inlet, Garden City, Surfside Beach area for the first time since I was 18. I couldn’t find anything familiar for the longest time, as streets and parks and tiny plazas were dwarfed by side-of-the-road water slides and beachwear shops with 3-story-tall sharks plummeting from roofline to parking lot.
I finally found Fuller Park where Ryan jumped out of a swing to catch a branch and, inevitably, broken his arm. I found the subdivision where we lived twice, each house indistinguishable from the next, and the lake where the terrorist white duck held court. I found Wacca Wache Estates off of Wachesaw Road where the Waccamaw Indians once buried their dead, where in the woods Ryan and I hunted bad guys with kitchen knives. The Intracoastal. I found the marshes where I collected oysters for a science fair project in an attempt to prove the Worldwide Church of God’s adherence to the clean-and-dirty animal lists of Deuteronomy (or was it Leviticus?). Could I have grown up here? Could I have crossed that bridge every day on the long drive to swim practice? Could I have pushed my toddler sister in a stroller around this mall? Was that the shop where we bought my prom dress? Could I have eaten fresh-caught whitefish and flounder at this pier? Are those nurse sharks part of my memory or someone else’s?
1. When all you want is quiet, there’s a nest from which to breathe.
2. Kudos to Nutella, the dog not the spread, for her stellar job keeping up with Ruby today. She partied with the young folks and is now a lump on a log.
Back before Nut was a graybeard.
3. Went to a bar last night I haven’t been in since I was underage. They didn’t card me this time either. I saw more fake breasts and skirts on women over 40 last night than I did during my whole tenure in L.A.
4. Who said Saturday afternoons were about being productive?
I just read Blake Butler’s Scorch Atlas (thank you Alec Niedenthal) and it’s just great, so full of beautiful sadness. Read a review at the Tarpaulin Sky Interviews and Reviews blog here.
Here’s what Jesse Ball says on the back cover:
Scorch Atlas is a series of maps, or worlds, “tied so tight they couldn’t crane their necks.” Everything is either destroyed, rotting, or festering–and not only the physical objects, but allegiances, hopes, covenants. The sole glimmer of light come in recollection, as in: “a bear the size of several men…There in the woods behind our house, when I was still a girl like you.
But somehow the blurb doesn’t do the book justice. Butler has this knack for getting at the psychological horror of being alone, or nearly alone, at the end of the world. The inhabitants of this book are literally crawling with degradation and despair, but their stories are written so poignantly that the muck caking everything is almost beautiful.
Mark Rockswold gave Illuminatrix a stellar reivew @ the Tarpaulin Sky Reviews and Interviews blog. Check it out.
1. Cucumber perfume.
2. Backache. Shoulder ache. Neck ache.
3.
4. Completely random words from a poem I can’t get right:
backwards from hundred
office color
sand Dr. So and So
crow write it ten times
ganglia drunk turkey
village idiots drugged
frenetic crack we think
in Caddies Icarus
flying our rooster
faces in half
5. Looking for Entourage season finale as the tv has gone the way of the dodo.
you could just walk away? What if you could walk away when everything got too stressful? What if, when everything got too stressful, you could walk away to a hotel in the mountains somewhere, into the mountains and woods. What if, at this hotel, there were people who wanted to take care of you until you felt better? What if, at this hotel in the mountains somewhere, you could walk away into the woods. And what if, in the woods, you could meander without time constraints and talk to whatever nothing you wanted. What if, in talking, you could hear yourself talking and you could smile and walk back to the hotel. What if walking back is a new way of discovering the answer to any question? What if, in walking back, you’re taking back whatever you lost, which is totally indefinable. What if, back at the hotel, you could call home and say, “Come pick me up. I’m ready to return,” and that someone who loves you would answer and say, “Yay, I’ll be happy to have you back here. It’s been lonely here without you.” What if that’s the way stories go, with happy endings and hotels in the woods, hotels with nice beds and good food and lots of quiet into which you could speak and hear your own voice and then, going home, you could remember that sound for a long time?
…is rad!
Check out Little Boo Jewelry.
I especially like pieces from the vintage inspired collection featuring pendants, Swarovski crystals, gemstone and glass beads. Here are a few:
