31.7.09

An object
























Still in 3-D-mood - and this object (about 15 cm
in diameter, stuffed with batting and spelt) is
even useful - it´s going to serve as a head cushion
for (much needed...) relaxation exercise...

29.7.09

Daydreaming













A Calmer...













...made from a piece of a thrift-store
table runner with the pattern half gone














"All day all over the city every person
Wanders a different city, sealed intact
And haunted as the abandoned subway stations
Under the city. Where is my alley doorway?


Stone gable, brick escarpment, cliffs of crystal.
Where is my terraced street above the harbor,
Café and hidden workshop, house of love?
Webbed vault, tiled blackness. Where is my park, the path


Through conifers, my iron bench, a shiver
Of ivy and margin birch above the traffic?
A voice. There is a mountain and a wood
Between us — one wrote, lovesick — Where the late


Hunter and the bird have seen us. Aimless at dusk,
Heart muttering like any derelict,
Or working all morning, violent with will,
Where is my garland of lights? My silver rail?"

(Robert Pinsky:City Elegies/The Day Dreamers)

27.7.09

To love objects

























Three small objects I made yesterday.
What for? Don´t know...


"Why am i doing this? Failure
to keep my work in order so as
to be able to find things
to paint the house
to earn enough money to live on
to reorganize the house so as
to be able to paint the house &
to be able to find things and
earn enough money so as
to be able to put books together
to publish works and books
to have time
to answer mail & phone calls
to wash the windows
to make the kitchen better to work in
to have the money to buy a simple radio
to listen to while working in the kitchen
to know enough to do grownups work in the world
to transcend my attitude
to an enforced poverty
to be able to expect my checks
to arrive on time in the mail
to not always expect that they will not
to forget my mother's attitudes on humility or
to continue
to assume them without suffering
to forget how my mother taunted my father
about money, my sister about i cant say it
failure to forget mother and father enough
to be older, to forget them
to forget my obsessive uncle
to remember them some other way
to remember their bigotry accurately
to cease to dream about lions which always is
to dream about them, I put my hand in the lion's mouth
to assuage its anger, this is not a failure
to notice that's how they were; failure
to repot the plants
to be neat
to create & maintain clear surfaces
to let a couch or a chair be a place for sitting down
and not a table
to let a table be a place for eating & not a desk
to listen to more popular music
to learn the lyrics
to not need money so as
to be able to write all the time
to not have to pay rent, con ed or telephone bills
to forget parents' and uncle's early deaths so as
to be free of expecting care; failure
to love objects
to find them valuable in any way; failure
to preserve objects
to buy them and
to now let them fall by the wayside; failure
to think of poems as objects
to think of the body as an object; failure
to believe; failure
to know nothing; failure
to know everything; failure
to remember how to spell failure; failure
to believe the dictionary & that there is anything
to teach; failure
to teach properly; failure
to believe in teaching
to just think that everybody knows everything
which is not my failure; I know everyone does; failure
to see not everyone believes this knowing and
to think we cannot last till the success of knowing
to wash all the dishes only takes ten minutes
to write a thousand poems in an hour
to do an epic, open the unwashed window
to let in you know who and
to spirit thoughts and poems away from concerns
to just let us know, we will
to paint your ceilings & walls for free"

(Bernadette Mayer: Failures in Infinitives)

23.7.09

Balcony still life




































I

"I would like to place
that nightly blackbird
on a branch in a poem,
but after all why should
I, it´s perched there
where it should be: in
a poem out there.

II

Thank you so much, just
applause will do, that´s
how yardbird charlie
dismissed the flaring
ovations
and the blackbird
in my garden too
can make do with
some musing after
a stirring solo
at the slightest clap of hand
he swishes off into
the dark."

(Roland Jooris: Yardbird)


My favourite bird of the week (at least...):
Mickey Rourke as Armand "Blackbird" Degas
in "Killshot"...

21.7.09

She does not know how to shiver...

























A Cloth Lady (a peacefully sleeping beauty,who does
not even fear the Jabberwock, whatever it might be...)


To me, the fears in line 1,2,4 (!), 10 -
and, well, sometimes even 12, sound reasonable
enough...


"I fear the vast dimensions of eternity.
I fear the gap between the platform and the train.
I fear the onset of a murderous campaign.
I fear the palpitations caused by too much tea.

I fear the drawn pistol of a rapparee.
I fear the books will not survive the acid rain.
I fear the ruler and the blackboard and the cane.
I fear the Jabberwock, whatever it might be.

I fear the bad decisions of a referee.
I fear the only recourse is to plead insane.
I fear the implications of a lawyer's fee.

I fear the gremlins that have colonized my brain.
I fear to read the small print of the guarantee.
And what else do I fear? Let me begin again."

(Ciaran Carson: Fear)

19.7.09

Hommage a J

Having some dots left from the last
Cloth Lady´s age spots - and inspired by Guess Who -
I made this ...




































(that´s a doorbell panel -
on Nehringstraße, Berlin-Charlottenburg...)

16.7.09

Windows and balconies

Summer makes me drowsy. And irritable.
So I wanted to deal with something very
thin and soft... (tea dyed cotton on a
vintage handkerchief)





































"Wir schauen auf Fensterstücke und Balkone wie man
auf ein Rudel Rehe schaut. Aber wir machen kein
Klopfgeräusch, wir beugen kein weites Panorama und
setzen uns hin. Wir freuen uns, trinken und rauchen,
wenn der Wohnblock jetzt knarrt, ja, sehr seetüchtig
ist, ein Schnittblumenfrachter ohne Schrauben. Die
Reihen der Fensterstücke und Balkone erfaßt eine
unverschwommene Einhelligkeit. In einem Zimmer
spielt noch ein Kind mit Schuhen, den Schnittblumen
eines Sturmkapitäns. Die Schiffbrüchigen stehen unten,
rufen. Flammender Glyzinienbogen, wir spüren die
Nähe unserer Hände und Füsse, o Kastanienzweig.
Wer, ja wer hat eine Seenot gefunden? Wer ist der
Sturm? Birken, Birken, wenn wir ertrinken, sind wir
Birken."

(Farhad Showghi: Wohnblock mit Birken/
Row of Houses with Birches)

We look at windows and balconies as we look
at a pack of deer. But we make no sound
to rouse them, we don´t duck down beneath any broad horinzon
we just sit down. We´re quite happy, drinking and smoking
when the appartment block creaks quite seaworthy
that, a screwless freighter for cut blooms. The
rows of windows and balconies are encompassed by
unblurry unanimity. In a room
another child plays with shoes, cut blooms
of a storm captain. The shipwrecked stand below,
call out. Flaming wisteria arches, we feel the
closeness of our hands and feet, a chestnut branch.
Who, but who found a shipwreck? Who is the
storm? Birches, birches, when we drown we are
birches.

(transl. B. Currid)

15.7.09

13.7.09

Monday...














"The final mystery is oneself. When one has weighed
the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of
the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star
by star, there still remains oneself..."

(Oscar Wilde: De Profundis)

10.7.09

A Cloth Lady













Another approach at machine embroidery...
May I introduce to you a new species of softie
- the silver ager cloth doll
(or are there any, already...)?


"I have begun in old age to understand just how oddly
we are all put together. We are so proud of our autonomy
that we seldom if ever realize how generous we are to
ourselves, and just how stingy with others. One of the
booby traps of freedom — which is bordered on all sides
by isolation — is that we think so well of ourselves.
I now see that I have helped myself to the best cuts
at life’s banquet.”

(Saul Bellow, born July 10, 1915)

8.7.09

Scribbling













Practicing machine writing, spicing up
my humble efforts with Emily Dickinson
(It´s developable, I guess...)


"I´m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there´s a pair of us - don´t tell!
They´d banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog.
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!"

6.7.09

Black & white














There has been some summer over-charge here,
which made me long for non-colours...

A piece in the works from an assortment of
small black-white-grey squares - next to a
1990 National Geographic (it makes my day when
I find old issues...)
The lady with the giant 176-panel quilt on her lap,
it says, never sold one in her life, she only gives
them to people she loves and respects...

My give-away Calmer and pendant goes to Australia,
to Paula at The Beauty of Life.

Thanks again everyone for your kind encouragement.
So, I´m on my way into the second year of blogging -
which should be fun (+ recurrent struggles with
the blogging ennui...)

1.7.09

New arrivals/Reminder













Some pieces of furniture fabric I bought
(notice the handwritten little labels)...













And that´s Alice, just climbing out of the
envelope in which she´d traveled from California.
Susan at ArtSpark Theatre sent her and some of her
sisters/clons out into the world for adventures,
I´m going to give her a sightseeing tour of Berlin
soon. Stay tuned for the report...

Many thanks for your anniversary-comments!

I´d like to remind everyone that my Calmer/
pendant-give-away is still open till friday...