Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Ronald Stalin
Idea i had for a book-cover. They're visually remarkably similar, but somehow, the author didn't quite dare go for it.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Ready, sat, Ginkgo
Sat underneath a Ginkgo for a bit. If i were an impressionist painter, i would have made something slightly resembling this -but i ain't, so i photoshopped.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Linda Paganelli's new product
Here's Linda's latest creation:
The advertisement will go: "What you want? Piss off."
The advertisement will go: "What you want? Piss off."
Monday, July 20, 2009
Fires & Bathrooms
Classic or not, probably best not to confuse or combine the two -though i did have this Chilli once, and i didn't know toilets could melt.
Friday, July 17, 2009
The floral pub
It's probably rare to confuse a pub for a floral shop, but that's what happened to me today in London. Go in there to order four roses and you end up with bourbon.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Chopsticks in the road
A road near where i live always seems like a good one to photograph, but either i drive by it too fast to stop or the light isn't good. Yesterday i was a bit more attentive but could not decide on a perspective. Hence this, not quite a fork in the road.
An early Mondriaan sky
Before he went all primary and perpendicular, he messed around with impressionism and mixed colors, so i think it was a youthful Mondrian who did yesterdays sky
Piet Mondrian, Red Cloud
Piet Mondrian, Red Cloud
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Underneath
Do you ever get that feeling there's something lurking underneath the surface, about to come up for air?
Photo found here http://www.flickr.com/photos/lindes/877271813/sizes/o/
Photo found here http://www.flickr.com/photos/lindes/877271813/sizes/o/
What algae do for entertainment
Other than most Green Algae, Acetabularia Acetabulum get really good reception on pretty much every available TV channel and therefore mostly stay home
Photo found in the stream of Spearfish
Photo found in the stream of Spearfish
Walking through Turner
Yesterday's walk could've been through a landscape by William Turner
Joseph Millard William Turner, The Temple of Jupiter Panellenius
Joseph Millard William Turner, The Temple of Jupiter Panellenius
Friday, July 10, 2009
Hands, Cornelis Verhoeven
Dreamt about dad this morning. We were sitting at the kitchen table in his house, talking over coffee. I love those dreams, it's a bit like catching up with him. We were talking about my sister, who had her birthday yesterday, and about her kids. It made me think of a piece he wrote about us and our hands. I wonder how much he would adore those of his grandchildren.
Hands
When my little boy was five, he once sat on my lap studiously watching the landscape of my hands. I felt he was about to say something, and not just along the line of ‘They are so big’. So i anxiously followed his gaze. His index finger carefully ran over a vain and pressed the weak spot where the index finger and the thumb loose track of one and other. All of a sudden he said: ‘Papa, your hands are already old’. Apparently he noticed i was a bit startled, for he started kissing my hands like a madman. ‘My kissingmachine’ he calls that and he mostly puts it to work when he has something to make up for or has to put everything on the line to avert the incoming wave of chidlike melancholy. ‘Papa, my Papaatje’ he chirped with the unnaturally high little voice he uses at such occasions to sing his fear or sadness in major key. For naturally we scared of the same thing at the word ‘old’.
I turned warm and weak from this ritual and asked myself, if i myself had ever kissed my father’s hands as a five year old. I only remember doing that on his deathbed, when the life had already started to withdraw from them. And that was as much a primitive spell as an expression of affection. I wanted to make them young and alive again, call them back in the circle. Do we then learn, by becoming adult, so little more or do so few things change, when it comes to elementary matters?
Usually i take as little notice of my hands as of my face, and yet i can recognize people i’m interested in -at least a few hundred- as well by their hands as by their faces. Those are the naked parts of the human and at the same time the most individual. Perhaps that’s why they are the interface of a meeting, of contact and of recognition. It seems probable to me that people who are too shy to look others square in the eye, are more prone to fixate on hands. For those don’t look back. I don’t know, but even after i had gotten used to looking back and answering a evaluating look with real or feigned curiosity, i still kept noticing hands.
And now all of a sudden i see mine through the gaze of the apple of my eye. They cling on to a pen that almost refuses to register something so sentimental. They become small again and lay in the hands of my father, which were also already old when i was born. They were short and calousy, a little bit hard and dry, even when his brow was damp with sweat. I’ve never seen them tremble, not even when he was eighty-five already. My children would not recognize my hands in his and for myself as well i don’t feel a kinship on this terrain.
When i think about those hands, i feel them; but most of the time i would suffice with watching or merely thinking about them. They would then in my fantasy become monuments of diligence and care, sources of an insurmountable guilt. I recall reading at the seminary a passage about ‘father’s hands’ from ‘Am Eichtisch’ by Peter Dorfler, and that i had to hide myself, for i was ashamed for my tears.
No little hands have i ever adored more than those of my little girl. When she was born, i gave her a finger and she grabbed it like babies are supposed to do. I had been briefed completely in that area, and that always means: been warned about personal, lyrical emotions, but still i thought i was sure that in this exceptional case her grabbing little hand was especially greeting me as a father and sought support with me. Now she too judges my hands by their age, by their care and the length of their nails -for one who bites sometimes the cause for jealousy- but for me it is still my greatest joy to walk hand in hand with her and feeling, if only by the size of my hands, like a father and powerful protector, sentimental and perhaps autoritarian, but inescapable and an indescribable pleasure.
Still i scare away from that thought a little. For almost never do i feel, hand in hand with someone, something like equality. There is always bigger and smaller, stronger and weaker, something like communicating barrels that only seem to communicate until they have reached an equal level. When there’s nothing on tap anymore, the hands let go. Is the connection then lost or is that exactly where it is established?
~ Cornelis Verhoeven (1980)
Hands
When my little boy was five, he once sat on my lap studiously watching the landscape of my hands. I felt he was about to say something, and not just along the line of ‘They are so big’. So i anxiously followed his gaze. His index finger carefully ran over a vain and pressed the weak spot where the index finger and the thumb loose track of one and other. All of a sudden he said: ‘Papa, your hands are already old’. Apparently he noticed i was a bit startled, for he started kissing my hands like a madman. ‘My kissingmachine’ he calls that and he mostly puts it to work when he has something to make up for or has to put everything on the line to avert the incoming wave of chidlike melancholy. ‘Papa, my Papaatje’ he chirped with the unnaturally high little voice he uses at such occasions to sing his fear or sadness in major key. For naturally we scared of the same thing at the word ‘old’.
I turned warm and weak from this ritual and asked myself, if i myself had ever kissed my father’s hands as a five year old. I only remember doing that on his deathbed, when the life had already started to withdraw from them. And that was as much a primitive spell as an expression of affection. I wanted to make them young and alive again, call them back in the circle. Do we then learn, by becoming adult, so little more or do so few things change, when it comes to elementary matters?
Usually i take as little notice of my hands as of my face, and yet i can recognize people i’m interested in -at least a few hundred- as well by their hands as by their faces. Those are the naked parts of the human and at the same time the most individual. Perhaps that’s why they are the interface of a meeting, of contact and of recognition. It seems probable to me that people who are too shy to look others square in the eye, are more prone to fixate on hands. For those don’t look back. I don’t know, but even after i had gotten used to looking back and answering a evaluating look with real or feigned curiosity, i still kept noticing hands.
And now all of a sudden i see mine through the gaze of the apple of my eye. They cling on to a pen that almost refuses to register something so sentimental. They become small again and lay in the hands of my father, which were also already old when i was born. They were short and calousy, a little bit hard and dry, even when his brow was damp with sweat. I’ve never seen them tremble, not even when he was eighty-five already. My children would not recognize my hands in his and for myself as well i don’t feel a kinship on this terrain.
When i think about those hands, i feel them; but most of the time i would suffice with watching or merely thinking about them. They would then in my fantasy become monuments of diligence and care, sources of an insurmountable guilt. I recall reading at the seminary a passage about ‘father’s hands’ from ‘Am Eichtisch’ by Peter Dorfler, and that i had to hide myself, for i was ashamed for my tears.
No little hands have i ever adored more than those of my little girl. When she was born, i gave her a finger and she grabbed it like babies are supposed to do. I had been briefed completely in that area, and that always means: been warned about personal, lyrical emotions, but still i thought i was sure that in this exceptional case her grabbing little hand was especially greeting me as a father and sought support with me. Now she too judges my hands by their age, by their care and the length of their nails -for one who bites sometimes the cause for jealousy- but for me it is still my greatest joy to walk hand in hand with her and feeling, if only by the size of my hands, like a father and powerful protector, sentimental and perhaps autoritarian, but inescapable and an indescribable pleasure.
Still i scare away from that thought a little. For almost never do i feel, hand in hand with someone, something like equality. There is always bigger and smaller, stronger and weaker, something like communicating barrels that only seem to communicate until they have reached an equal level. When there’s nothing on tap anymore, the hands let go. Is the connection then lost or is that exactly where it is established?
~ Cornelis Verhoeven (1980)
Big big sky
Those summer rains don't bother me at all when they come from a sky like this
(click on image for larger, if not life-size, version)
(click on image for larger, if not life-size, version)
The Grey Lady, and the Mud Maid
High on the list of places to visit: the lost gardens of Heligan. If only to see her.
and take a nap with her.
Photos found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/teepee1/2241919824/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/ascott/2391304989/sizes/o/
and take a nap with her.
Photos found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/teepee1/2241919824/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/ascott/2391304989/sizes/o/
Thursday, July 9, 2009
The wind beneath
Flatcoats are known for their amazing aerobatic achievements
Photo found here http://www.flickr.com/photos/12851146@N00/119011967/sizes/o/
Photo found here http://www.flickr.com/photos/12851146@N00/119011967/sizes/o/
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
The hidden Greatness of Danes
Don't we all like our Danes on the rocks? Especially when they're as fine as Jesper and Jacob
Photo's found on Jacob's facebook page
Photo's found on Jacob's facebook page
Veni, vidi, pisci
Though i'm not opposed to a bit of kitsch, if i were to design my own swimming pool, it probably wouldn't look like the one from the Olympic Club in San Francisco. But i would like to swim a couple of laps there in a toga and pretend to be a Roman emperor. Augustsub? Caligulaqua? Finding Nero? Pretty cool dome, too.
Photos found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/2152555585/sizes/l/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/2564792014/sizes/l/
Photos found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/2152555585/sizes/l/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/2564792014/sizes/l/
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
from Sky to Magritte to mermaids
Saw a strange cloud a couple of days back that reminded me of the picture Magritte did of the mermaid whose top, rather than her bottom, is fish. In searching for the painting i found another, much more traditional, mermaid piainting Magritte did, called 'The forbidden universe'.
In summer falls
Hopefully it's not a sign, but of all the trees standing along the office park where my job recently moved to, the ones in front of the indeed none too cheerful building i work in are quite dead. And yesterday we had a grey sky and a big summer downpour, which made things a bit autumn. The rain hit the tilted window with a beautiful pattern, but i won't help the tree.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Pounce baby pounce
Pouncing is something even orphaned baby animals do in zoos, so it's more than learned hunting behavior. My theory is that besides an effective hunting technique, it's mostly fun to do.
Photo found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/esm723/3197397401/sizes/l/
Photo found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/esm723/3197397401/sizes/l/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
