of summer, and of night

Here is something I found while rummaging through digital files of words, a collection covering several years. Something from the heat of a summer I think.

dense-packed places

In places
more frequented by stars
Night is a vast and velvet thing-
An arcing mass, abyss
from which the wisps
of dreams are rent
or born -- to which
their unreckoned ellipses return
at first light
or break of day-
Gifts to the morning star, forgotten.

But here in dense-packed places,
glowing gases trapped
Diffuse the spark of Heaven’s light
And night’s song
is not the breath of trees
nor sinuous tale
of crickets’ Morse
But an iron drone-
the hum of shapes
forged, not born
And nighttime, in dense places
closes in- a binding
in dust-filled quarters, corners
of space, repressed
In sleeplessness-

From which blurred dreams
at length release-
to memories- of light
sonorous blurs,
subconsciousness- and colors
that dissipate
And have no names,
In waking, nor in words.


© 2005 Elizabeth Daggar

shiny streets under lamplight

Had a mind to take some long-exposure photographs of rain-glittering streets earlier this evening, but a recommendation to visit friendly faces at the wine bar distracted and stole time. Pleasantly.

There is a Chinese proverb: "May you live in interesting times." A blessing and a curse, quite possibly perpetrated in some way upon every generation of humans since its coinage; probably earlier. So here we are. Interesting includes both sides of any coin, alas and alack! But, there you go. Do not the myths such as that of the garden of Eden (and all the many preceding it) speak of the doom of boredom? Is it not the very same reason that curiosity was both the thrill and demise of some fabled feline? (What, really, is the opposite of interesting? Something to think about-)

Where does all this come from?
Well, largely from reading and catching up on the news after several weeks' deprivation of mass media. (Deprivation may be the wrong word there.) These are interesting times, are they not? Horrifying is another word. Thrilling, nervous-making and death-defying too! Madness! And so civilized, too.

I'll say this much: things going as they have been, I do tend to worry less about my debts. (They may outlast us all!)

Each of our lives is an ongoing puzzle, as is the 'greater' picture. (still so small a picture if one could long-exposure the universe. Which, in fact, may turn out to be a multiverse... yikes! and brilliant!)

Sometimes it is about fitting one's own piece into the larger puzzle-of-puzzles. Sometimes it is about figuring out the pieces within one's own insular mini-puzzle. Always the shapes, colors, textures (and other maths) of the world are shifting-- If you've ever worked a standard, static puzzle, well-- Just imagine all those jigsaw'd edges -and the images upon them- shifting constantly! Impossible!
Seemingly.

Darwin: Adapt or Die.

Constants do change, and parallel lines do converge, eventually- it's only a matter of perspective. Sometimes, things are only unbelievable because the formulae have yet to be worked out.

springtime in january

Yes, two days of mild sunny weather here in Brooklyn. This afternoon I took advantage by forgoing public transport to get into Manhattan. Well, technically. I would say a walk over the Brooklyn Bridge should count as public transport as well, albeit self-propelled.

Gorgeous toxic sunset over Jersey around 4:50; my trek was perfectly timed for maximum viewing pleasure; sun waning in pinks and golds as the nighttime city came awake. Passed more than one solitary walker sporting wide eyes and a smile; amazement at the vision provided by the bridge, and to be in such a singular place. That kind of day. That is a great reason to avoid the subway; to re-connect with why one is here in the first place. To be amazed anew. (That can be pretty challenging to do in rush-hour a subway car. Not so on the bridge, especially during a fiery sunset.)

Mission on the island: a visitation upon Blick Studio for casting resin; two gallons-- hopefully enough to fill the top of the coolest table in the world. The elements of its frame wait patiently to be transformed into furniture, out in the hallway. Soon.

Very soon.

really interesting article

The Rebel Sell

23

= degrees of the tilt of the earth's axis.*

This, combined with the position in yearly revolution, determine the angle of the shadows of daylight hours. The angles of winter are distinct. They speak of wind and dry heat; cracked skin; long darknesses.

There's a girl I know -The curious Miss K; a great fan of winter and of stripey things, so I call her Too-Ticky. A Moomin reference. But we are not moomins, and winter will not ride away on the back of a horse made of ice.

The year seems off to a slow start. I'm sure it's too soon to even say such a thing, but I can be impatient and am not good at slowing down. Don't like the slowed-downness of winter. As for today, there is sunshine and it is milder than yesterday, so perhaps I should be outside.

*23.45 to be exact


sunshine and steam in the city

Cold day, seventh of the year

chicken breasts?

Incidentally, the little new fish did die, later the very same day that I (apparently) jinxed him here. Poor Pi.

tamarind

Bell Hollow played at Southpaw last evening; they sounded great. The newer stuff they played (not yet recorded) was really good.

The Curious Miss K shall be arriving in town tomorrow evening. She and I have much catching up to do. (understatement) Not seen her since the summer, and that seems a long time ago.

There is a new fish in Pi's tank; a wee Koi of silvery and black scales. I am having doubts about his health, however. He seems to have a weak sense of balance, or something. And a foolish fish, as well. He has got himself caught behind the filter tube twice already. Pi may be doomed to a solitary existence! I don't know. They just don't seem to be making fishes the way they used to. Where is a stout and hardy little fish of Serial's ilk? They are few, it seems, but Pi is one at least.

Today feels like it may be a day of a very long walk. Photographs and observations; meditation. There's a whole year with a brand new number spread out before me. Surely some thinking on what to make of it couldn't hurt.

a brief backward glance

(excerpt from trip book)

11 October 2005.
On a high-speed train ride from London King's Cross to Edinburgh.

The train is traveling close to the coastline now-- we are almost there.
There are parts where cliff walls rise up steeply from the sea, and there are parts where the hills gently turn to beaches. It looks cold.
Sometimes the green atop the cliffs is dotted with sheep.
(with sleep.)

There are trees every so often -out in the fields, in hedgerows- that remind me of the umbrella pines of Rome.

This country is punctuated with sheep like little tufts of wool growing out of the very ground; these rocky, angular hills. The Firth is an estuary; a vast grey-blue stretch that makes this feel like the edge of the world.

The train is slower now, we're on the scenic part of the route; specifically labeled as such on the map. It drizzles out there.

Up here, the countryside ceases to look familiar; it looks both harsh and lovely. Everything is gold or green or brown, save the steely blue sea which disappears into the fog.

Here there is a great block of a factory, almost the same pale grey as the canopy of clouds- it looks like a grey box on the landscape; no windows. It interrupts the coastline suddenly, and strangely.

Here there are gravel pits.

Here, a cluster of stone red-roofed cottages, and more of those umbrella pine sort of trees. (they have those same Art Nouveau-minded branches.)

There is a great rock -huge!- out, away from the shore. It looks like a great fat sleeping bear. The mist hangs above the land and sea in swaths, like smoke hanging still in the air at a pub.

Some beautiful old stonework houses with white wood trim. Fairytale. Fairy story houses. A patchwork land. A hilly autumn country of greens and golds, rich brown soil-tilled fields that roll and dip.

2 0 0 6

Happy New Year.


the farm in winter

Spent Thanksgiving and Xmas upstate at the farm. Sunny and freezing in November, as illustrated in the photo. December was milder. The New Year, as it begins here in Brooklyn, is drenched with rain and blanketed with fog. Sort of weather makes the knees ache and inspires reading more than venturing.

Mid-December Pi and I successfully moved house and settled into the new digs. Amidst work, errand-running and holidays, swift unpacking and driving of holes into plaster-and-lathe to decorate newly-painted walls!




painted walls

60º in November

Here's an inspiring read from Mr. Bresny: "Bigger, Better, More Interesting Problems"
There are more excerpts from his Pronoia book as well. A real smarty-pants, that one. And such a freak!

In other news:

Sad: Our lovely black Koi, Coffee, has merged with the Infinite. A shocking return to Brooklyn after a holiday weekend upstate; both of the fishes, unmoving and clouded over with white, sitting on the bottom of the tank in a corner. We thought they'd both passed, but at length Pi began to move. He looked the way mammals do when dehydrated, shrunken and compact. The feeder mechanism had failed, but there must have been something more. Coffee was completely white. Something unhealthy with him. Poor Pi has had to see two of his tankmates die now. He has fully recovered, physically, after only a couple of days. He seems at a bit of a loss though; unaccustomed to being solitary.

Speaking of which, changes are afoot. Pi and I will be moving into a new apartment next week sometime. A very lovely one bedroom on a fifth floor, only a block from the park-- North Slope. Painting of walls to commence on the weekend! Moving house is always a fun time; a three dimensional blank canvas of which to create one's next ideal surroundings. One of my favorite activities. I look forward to the composing of walls; arrangement of furnishings, old and new.

knickknactionary!

soon to be a table

That's what it looks like, pre-resin. A frame shall be built to hold the two type drawers together, and to be the high-water mark to which the resin will rise and self-level. It's going to weigh a lot! But finally a purpose for 15 years' worth of collecting such nonsense. And never having to dust them off again-- A knickknactionary to last through the ages.

20 nov

A working weekend is not a bad thing, especially in the freelance world. There are no phone calls, fewer interruptions in general. In addition to work there have been walks- wandering around the Slope- as well as consolidation, and editing.

The common cold is busy making its way through the local population, leaving a path of viscous noses and lungs in its wake! (thankfully thus far avoided by me.) It is the time of dropping temperatures and of dry apartment air beginning to grow stale for a lack of open windows... It's important to get outside and toughen up; to acclimate. Then make with the hats and gloves!

It is nearly time for the moomins of the world to begin their hibernation; the time when squirrels are eating like mad to become the fat l'il bears of winter. tFLBoW!
Such nonsense.

(I'm just waiting on a render in After Effects.)

randoms from the book

The books serve as keepers of the meaning. (Often of the meaningless as well.) Ha!

on the world, the universe:
Everything is ALL--
It's all just a chunk of stardust that got fancy.

on the fishes:
They are glittering things that never stop moving-- both fascinating and soothing. There is nothing redundant in their movement; they are a perpetual ballet. I never tire of watching them.

same damn day.

Sometimes it feels as if things are beginning to curl in upon themselves, the way newsprint pages do, and it becomes difficult to tell where one line ends and another begins; whether things are overlapping or simply mirroring one another-- inarticulate.

Or maybe it's time that seems to curl in upon itself; things grow confusing. The scale or chronology of things feels muddled. A great purge seems necessary: clothing, writings, scraps of paper, random objects, coats, hats, books, an overstock of pens never used, envelopes whose glue has lost its tack, chipped mugs, cracked plates, twist ties, rubber bands, socks with holes, jars of miscellaneous hardware, phone jacks, cables, anything incompatible with current computer, anything hasn't been seen in a year, nor missed in said time, half-dried sharpies, dull scissors, business cards of people you will never call, unworn jewelry, nail polish, all unused hair product, makeup, anything that's begun to look like an antique but shouldn't, anything doesn't fit properly, shoes that can't be walked in more than a few blocks (as they are never worn anyway), anything that's waited too long to be repaired, glued, or sewn, catalogues, magazines, bars of soap, empty boxes, old notebooks, calendars, lingering cards or invitations for events unattended, hangers misshapen and useless, cassettes and cassette player cleaning fluid (as you no longer have a cassette player), anything on VHS, tubes of paint gone solid with time, bits of fabric saved for a forgotten purpose, a million take-out food sauce packets in the fridge drawer (WHY?!), anything you can't remember why you have it, myriad useless widgets made of plastic, impulse buys.

And then there's so much that is digital-- a hexidecimal fog.

Digital: a medium which allows words, images, sounds, numbers, information, memory-- to all arbitrarily exist (even to mesh) on a single flat plane; the only notion or hint of time having passed being the little dates next to the filenames. Even those are subject to change at a whim- a single keystroke, and history can be irrevocably altered. At length, there is no chronology, no hierarchy, no intuitive way to follow any threads. In digital memory there is no patina; there is no softening of the edges or shifting of vividness as in organic memory. Sometimes i want to destroy all signifiers of memory and leave only the version retained in my mind; for some clarification, if only through the fading or falling away of things that were long ago.

Thus the invariability of purging.
When too many things share a single plane, the result is chaos and/or insanity. (see also: LSD) The idea of half-empty drawers; bookshelves with space still available; flat surfaces- tables, desks, counters- without all the piles of random nonsense having no other place of belonging... One doesn't necessarily need more space; one simply needs to edit. In this way, the Salvation Army becomes the cutting-room floor.

The hallway is filled with boxes, bags and milk crates, and they wait to be carted off. For some reason, it really does help to clear the mind.