Thursday, August 25, 2011

the kitchen chimney - robert frost (1923)



Builder, in building the little house,
In every way you may please yourself;
But please please me in the kitchen chimney:
Don’t build me a chimney upon a shelf.


However far you must go for bricks,
Whatever they cost a-piece or a pound,
Buy me enough for a full-length chimney,
And build the chimney clear from the ground.


It’s not that I’m greatly afraid of fire,
But I never heard of a house that throve
(And I know of one that didn’t thrive)
Where the chimney started above the stove.


And I dread the ominous stain of tar
That there always is on the papered walls,
And the smell of fire drowned in rain
That there always is when the chimney’s false.


A shelf’s for a clock or vase or picture,
But I don’t see why it should have to bear
A chimney that only would serve to remind me
Of castles I used to build in air.


Wednesday, August 24, 2011

part of 'song', john donne

...Let not thy divining heart
    Forethink me any ill;
Destiny may take thy part,
    And may thy fears fulfill;
        But think that we
Are but turned aside to sleep;
They who one another keep
    Alive, ne'er parted be.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

agAin : )





i+t !s a'g'g$r~a~V-a+T=i,,N"g



Their faces
plaster
castings.
Eyes wide
wonder...


as if-
-I'm... 
   i don t know what...
a token that just
glinted in the 
sun---- 
on the sidewalk 
as they stepped past.


a stone.


Only. hello.
 I breathe -- and smile
--the only oNE 
who
doesn't know 
What
 was just whispered
Before they looked


Sunday, August 21, 2011

Done.
Inverted plans
Spit out
With the coffee.

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Friday, August 19, 2011

caKe













I have the dead cactus.
    
       the spindly one 
that no one knew was really a cactus.
They were right, though, it wasn t a cactus at all.


I have the dead cactus in
the pot
on the small side table.


When it died I thought
               
                "good Riddance"


and threw it out, pot and all, into the yard. 
There remained a sprig or two alive.


I thought it may be right to re-pot
those live branches, and I did.
Then I let them die.


I have the dead cactus.


       the spindly one
that no one knew was really a cactus.
They were right, though, it wasn t a cactus at all.


I have the dead cactus, in
the pot,
on the small side table.
In the living room, 
next to the stove,
as if in remembrance of
whatever the fuck
that was



Sunday, August 14, 2011

Bacchus, Villa dei Misteri, Pompeii


Saturday, August 13, 2011

France Pavilion, Venice Biennale.  Christian Boltanski, Chance.


Thursday, August 11, 2011

German Pavilion, Venice Biennale


Canada Pavilion, Venice Biennale


Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Thursday, August 4, 2011

james turrell ~~ light ~~



"Once inside,



you feel suspended in pure color, which keeps changing, as if the light itself is holding


you up and you’re floating through a rainbow. With nothing to focus on, it gets hard to


tell if you’re seeing a color or imagining it. When you close your eyes, the afterimages


are so intense that your eyes still seem to be open. Suddenly bursts of flashing strobe


lights generate astonishing geometric patterns. Then serenity returns as you are enveloped


once more in luminous fields of pure color, pulsing slowly brighter and darker until you


feel the light like a massage, pressing down and releasing you into Turrell’s strange


cosmos. The voice of the attendant seems otherworldly when you hear him, as though in


a dream, saying, “We’re going to pull you out now.”