i've moved...

I am no longer posting on this blog, but if you like what you see then come and join me over at rachel-and-yoga.blogspot.com.
It's the same, but different

xx

Bird Migration on Toronto Island from Ben Panter on Vimeo.

(Found here)

Things to be Desired

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, Even to the dull and ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter, For always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; It is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs, For the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; Many persons strive for high ideals, And everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; For in the face of all aridity and disenchantment It is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, Gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; You have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, No doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labours and aspirations, In the noisy confusion of life, keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, It is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

 --  Max Ehrmann (1926) 
 Desiderata - Things to be Desired

Sunday Tune

Saturday Poem

What Kind Of Times Are These?

There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill

and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows

near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted

who disappeared into those shadows.

I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled

this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,

our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,

its own ways of making people disappear.

I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods

meeting the unmarked strip of light—

ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:

I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you

anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these

to have you listen at all, it's necessary

to talk about trees.

 

-- Adrienne Rich

Happy Weekend!

Janine Antoni

The first time I did Loving Care, it was not a performance; I did it as a relic and I showed it that way. It didn’t work! I realized that it wasn’t like Gnaw where the history was on the surface of the object and a viewer could re-create how it was made by looking at it. While making Loving Care, I realized that the power was in watching me mop the floor. The audience is the wild card. I am collaborating with them and I’m never sure how they will respond.

-- Janine Antoni via Bomb Magazine

All works from Loving Care

a point of contact

I just believe in the power of art, what it can do for our lives. I think if you stay focused on what art can do and don’t get distracted, you discover it is limitless. Somehow it seems like we don’t talk about the power of art in that way. Sometimes I think about Beuys; he seems so crazy to me, I miss that idealism. He believed that everyone was an artist. He really believed that art could solve all the problems . . . somehow we’ve lost that, or at least nobody is willing to come out and acknowledge it.

 I always think I make art so that I can discuss with strangers things that I would like to discuss but couldn’t otherwise.

-- Janine Antoni via Bomb Magazine

Found here

Seiko Tachibana

Seiko Tachibana 
locus of water installation ｜intaglio on japanese paper, 2009

I think of rivers, of tides. Forests and water gushing out. Rain and lightening. Rocks and shadows. All of these are in me. 

-- Haruki Murakami

Sunday Tune

Saturday Poem

Mathematics

demonstrate

Photo of NYC protest, ca. 1920s. Via all things amazing.

“Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it.”

― Howard Zinn

Frida

Frida marching for workers rights, at a rally protesting C.I.A. involvement in Guatemala and on a communist rally.

Remembering Jordan Davis

A Much-Needed Film About Life, Death, Guns And Race

Bread AND Roses.

Sunday Tune

Saturday Poem

Once

I got up early in the morning
to take pictures of this huge momolith
in the middle of the australian outbck.
It took me a whole day
to walk around Ayers Rock.
On my trip
I never met anybody,
but ever since I'd left the motel in the morning
I was joined by a dog
running ahead of me.
It was blazingly hot,
and except for a stubborn German like me,
nobody in his right mind would have gone on such a march.
Thanks to my local guide
I found a few amazing hidden places.
Only when, to top it all,
I decided to climb the mountain,
my canine companion backed out.
He waited for me at the foot of the steep climb
and welcomed me when I came back down,
wagging his tail.


Wim Wenders. from his book "Once"

Blindly

Documenting scenes from a painting workshop with visually impaired participants, Żmijewski’s video Blindly asks what it means to imagine and represent without relying on the sense of sight.

Artur Żmijewski, Blindly 2010

Video, colour and sound, 18min 41sec

Image courtesy of the artist and Foksal Gallery Foundation

Agnes Martin

Artists are intuitive. They wait for inspiration. That's what art is about, the intuitive, not the intellectual. Art about ideas stimulates ideas, but art that comes from inspiration stimulates feelings of happiness, innocence and beauty.

--Agnes Martin

I've just been to see her exhibition at the Tate. It's glorious, go!

I don’t think there is much separation in all the things we do. How we do one thing is how we do anything.

-- Lauren Spencer King

From apieceapart.com

Sunday Tune

Saturday Poem

Let children walk with nature,
let them see the beautiful blendings.
communions of death and life,
their joyous inseparable unity,
as taught in woods and meadows,
plains and mountains and streams.
And they will learn that death is stingless.
And as beautiful as life.

-- John Muir, Walk With Nature

Inga Kerber

all work by Inga Kerber

the whole of nature

A human being is part of the whole… He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

-- Albert Einstein, 1950

Peter Doig

Love the way Peter Doig places his figures in environments, like long bodies.