current favorite aesthetics: images from Mike Brodie, a young photographer who traveled 50,000 miles on trains across America + captured train culture.
"Lord, not you, it is I who am absent. At first belief was a joy I kept in secret, stealing alone into sacred places: a quick glance, and away-and back, circling. I have long since uttered your name but now I elude your presence. I stop to think about you, and my mind at once like a minnow darts away, darts into the shadows, into gleams that fret unceasing over the river’s purling and passing. not for one second will my self hold still, but wanders anywhere, everywhere it can turn. Not you, it is I am absent. You are the stream, the fish, the light, the pulsing shadow, you the unchanging presence, in whom all moves and changes. how can I focus my flickering, perceive at the fountain’s heart the sapphire I know is there?"
- “Flickering Mind,” Denise Levertov
A project my dad and I have been working on for over a week—finally complete:
An old book turned into an electric guitar.
"To pray you open your whole self To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon To one whole voice that is you. And know there is more That you can’t see, can’t hear; Can’t know except in moments Steadly growing, and in languages That aren’t always sound but other Circles of motion. Like eagle that Sunday morning Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky In wind, swept our hearts clean With sacred wings. We see you, see ourselves and know That we must take the utmost care And kindness in all things. Breathe in, knowing we are made of All this, and breathe, knowing We are truly blessed because we Were born, and die soon within a True circle of motion, Like eagle rounding out the morning Inside us. We pray that it will be done In beauty. In beauty."
- “Eagle Poem” by Joy Harjo
before and after of a recent creation: throwing darts at balloons filled with paint.
1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
(from Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction)
Kurt Vonnegut’s eight rules for writing a short story:
"A work of art works because it is true, not because it is real."
- Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil
So I read this book by Salman Rushdie. And this is the product.
Haroun and the Sea of Stories, mixed media.
