- October 24, 1940 -
6.5.09
Fall To The Floor
i dream of coming home
to you and silently, slowly
pulling down the straps
of your dress and
watching it fall to the floor
to you and silently, slowly
pulling down the straps
of your dress and
watching it fall to the floor
5.5.09
History Of Navigation Aboard The Normandie
(History of Navigation, 1934 by Jean Dupas)
(Detail at Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC)Jean Dupas's gilded-glass mural once adorned the first class salon of the Normandie. An art deco piece of the highest order, his History of Navigation was produced and installed in 1934 by Charles Champigneulle, and accompanied passengers on regular trips between New York and Le Havre, France between 1935 and 1939. The Normandie was seized in 1941 and stripped to be used for a supply transport in WWII when a fire of life preservers was sparked by an acetylene torch and the subsequent pumping of tons of water from New York harbor fire boats caused her to capsize. The panels of the mural had been removed before her sinking.
29.4.09
Woe To Those Who Through Storms Come
RNLI Gorleston lifeboat station was established near Norfolk, England in 1866 - the same year one of its private launches, Rescuer, capsized killing 13 of its 16-man crew. According to the Beccles & Bungay Weekly News, on January 13, 1866 both the Rescuer and Friend of All Nations set out to respond to a distress call when Rescuer hit a sand bar, lost her rudder and was upturned by a wave, trapping its 16-man crew beneath her hull. Two men managed rescue by boat-hooks extended from Friend of All Nations, who continued to pursue the disabled Rescuer saving two more men - both exhausted, one of whom died a few days later in hospital. The 12 others were never seen again. They left behind 9 widows and 22 children.The Rescuer drifted ashore near Wellington Pier and was returned to service shortly thereafter.
27.4.09
Artist: Earl Moran
His dames were a bit more sassy, caged in the clean, soft lines of the 30s and 40s. More of a Norman Rockwell sassy than wayward nudes. Their bodies were streamlined with legs that went all the way up. And those lips, they were as red as a bleeding heart. It was as if Earl Moran's ladies were sifting through the mess of 20th Century sexuality; only later did we realize we were right. Moran was the first to capture Marilyn, and he had painted Betty Grable before. And he was one of the few pin-up artists who actually studied formally - both at the Chicago Art Institute and at the Arts Students League in Manhattan. He'd come a long way from Belle Plaine, Iowa in a short time - all the way to Hollywood by '46 and up into the hills by the early 50s, throwing lavish parties and living the fast lane until he went legit in the final years of his life. Moran was 90 when he passed.
Carry That Weight A Long Time
It adds up. Quick. The weight. The growing list of holes to be filled and hills to climb. And it can break you. It can make you want to just slump over and call it, right then and there. It's never enough. The bills. The broken hearts. The hurt. The nameless, faceless sacrifices. What's the point in a few more yards when you'll just ask yourself for more tomorrow and they'll ask you for more still. The anger builds in you. The frustration. You're down on one knee just trying to get back to your feet. To stand. Not even to walk. To stand. You laugh but you can't seem to find the humor in it. Until you raise your head. Just a bit. You raise your head and you stare upon a monument built for all those that came before you. The ones that kept going.
23.4.09
The Only Easy Days Were Yesterdays
Joseph Campbell said in an interview that 'We are every ancestor we've ever had,' or so I was told by an elder. Perhaps in our world of saturated images and dreams it suggests that the representations of the past share a similar relationship to those of the present, and consequently with us.I find something tranquil in the old Saturday Evening Post covers. Something part pin-up, part elegant and familial. An illustration of the lost Americana, of all the shared acknowledgments of private lives, with a little softer edge. A frame just a little more patient than the angles of today; despite cover headlines that tackle dead space pioneers or racism or Mussolini, they seem warm and inviting. Now, you might say 'well, that time period had plenty of buried secrets and repressed attitudes and those covers did nothing but reinforce that,' which is plenty true. But real or not, there was a sense of buoyancy that was cut down too early in the Seventies and Eighties, as if reality contradicted hope. People wanted a dose of freedom, but they longed for it in the packaging of a simpler time. I guess I just wish that all the pain and strife in the world of now could come with a bow on top inviting enough to untie...
Three Poems From Shore
I.
the watchful crow
follows as we walk
and talk of worms
II.
spider defends his meal
the chase by lamplight
III.
bending over backwards
the leaf makes its distance
from the tree
the watchful crow
follows as we walk
and talk of worms
II.
spider defends his meal
the chase by lamplight
III.
bending over backwards
the leaf makes its distance
from the tree
Naked And Alone We Came Into Exile
Introduction to Look Homeward, Angel (1929)
Thomas Wolfe Dedicated the Book to Aline Bernstein
...a stone, a leaf, an unfound door; of a stone, a leaf, a door. And of all the forgotten faces.
Naked and alone we came into exile. In her dark womb we did not know our mother's face; from the prison of her flesh have we come into the unspeakable and incommunicable prison of this earth.
Which of us has known his brother? Which of us has looked into his father's heart? Which of us has not remained forever prison-pent? Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?
O waste of loss, in the hot mazes, lost, among bright stars on this most weary unbright cinder, lost! Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When?
O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.
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