Two Favorite Recent Finds (Category Sculpture)

I spend a lot of time looking at folk art, outsider art, lowbrow art, ephemera, etc.

Sometimes I can't resist because I get the screaming mimis at how great something is and how I want to stare at it much, much longer. An object stamps its feet inside of me. I vibrate.

Love for the phenomenal world speaking through objects fashioned by humans or not.

This set of the usual suspects are solid wood and about a foot tall each and were found in Russia.

I believe they escaped from some debut de siecle paintings. So refugees. Like most beings in art.

 And this therianthropic beauty was found in a deep attic in deepest Connecticut. It bewitches me entirely. I think they were looking in the wrong state for the witches back at the end of the seventeenth century in America.

Could that be...sycamore wood...with that odd biomorphic relief to the grain? Also known as plane tree. And it has a third name, which I forget. It's about a foot tall.

It almost feels like Colonial period to me. I feel so lucky to have this weird, almost Druidic being watching over me while I sleep. I think I will have interesting dreams under that tutelage.

There is a larger monochrome watercolor landscape I have hanging on my third floor landing and I got tired of looking at it but didn't want to jettison it. So I bought this lovely bit of a tomesode in (online) Japan and covered just about half of the glass frame with this. So: a form of collage without glue and I love the way the landscape came alive again.

Avi Weider & Dave Chartier's Adaptation of Some Entries from Brainard's I Remember

Forest Meeting

The face in its carving

           turns to you.

Supernatural owl-turning,

       the moment of falling

            through a face

       to what it means to say

           without knowing.



Without knowing,

    only then can it be

                saying  a face.

  The moment of falling

        through the mask fitted at birth,

             into the welcome fire

               (you are burning)

             of what the owl will notice

                     in you.

Ocean

The word dying is dying

       it has no more resonance

          no appeals


      something pure life

       is battering pier legs to take its place

                 liquid turquoise streamers

           
          over sea rocks slimy
               our anticipation


           the person

                with no address

       
             the address

                    with no person


          they are falling in love

Someone

You are lying on a bed

                                   in a nursing home

your body is a bed of roses

   in your mind which is music

    full of love and waves

                                            of energy

     as large as the decaying children
              who tend the body

                    the idea

                  of being un-present

              in the window clouds

                     (large, piled up)

               in the breath of sheets and pillows

                            there is no patience

                                in a body

              full of love and waves

                                                of energy

                          dying

                                       under a sheet




       

The Genuineness of Bernie Sanders

I'm sure hundreds of millions of people are pulling for Bernie Sanders to come out of his medical procedure better and stronger than ever. (It's not only Americans who admire the man.)

One fact never to forget: Bernie Sanders declared only about two hundred thousands dollars of income from the years 2009 to 2015. It was only in 2016 and 2017 that he and his wife Jill surpassed (a mere) one million dollars in earnings. And that was largely due to book royalties and a few other incidentals.

The point is that those numbers show that Bernie Sanders has always lived his ideals. They demonstrate that he was not feeding at the trough, as he could so easily have done. They are the closest thing to a shining proof of his absolute integrity and honesty, and demonstrate his firmly-held core belief that a public servant should not be beholden to lobbyists or interests at cross-purposes to the people and their well-being. This is in contrast with virtually every other money-grabber in Washington. 

If we lose Bernie, Diogenes might as well skip Washington on his peregrinations with that lamp. 

Sanders is that rare, real deal who believed in you. He believed your struggle was real.

dark watery things

she said something to him
and then she watched
headlights cross the ceiling
like spirits disconnected from bodies
they only pretend to inhabit
most days, most nights

not seeing headlights
he said
many more things
so could not see
the souls on the ceiling
as they lay in bed
looking up
still he did not see
he had not guessed
she had said
a final thing

and so when he thought
she slept
she had congress with spirits
on their bedroom ceiling
from the street
who told her how lovely
it would be to live
without a soul
in her body
for just one year

mark the calendar
lest you forget

the things whisked

she found this religion
of just walking
just what she needed
thank you, ceiling
she told the light
and was soon gone

taking a knife and a pillow

da club

some flowers were being mean
earlier today
I watched them writhe in the breeze
listened to their petals rage
such colors
even marigolds can look like tigers, ya know
on such a small stem
and thought
about their meanness
but didn't say anything

I didn't belong to their flowerbed

plus

I figure it was just autumn

and maybe the things they say in autumn

with death listening
just outside the door

don't really count