Magic.

Canadian artist Annette Labedzki specializes in abstract figurative painting, but she’s also discovered the internet’s insatiable taste for the unusual and obscure with her Instagram account where she shares paint mixing videos. If watching paint dry is the most boring thing in the world, watching paint mix might be one of the more interesting things. For some of her clips Labedzki makes symmetrical versions, where the palette knife is obscured and everything seems to happen like magic.

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Fully.

Laurinda Thomas is an advocate for libraries as a human right that enable everyone to participate fully in society.  

Loved.

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars. 

W.B. Yeats

Jethro Tull, "Dark Ages"

The sun has set ...

'Tis Autumn.

Respect.

Sticking your tongue out at someone in Tibet, is actually a sign of respect. Origins are mixed: A 9th century Tibetan king, Lang Darma, known for his cruelty, had a black tongue. Buddhists, Tibetans believe in reincarnation, and they feared that this king would be reincarnated. Tibetans have greeted one another by sticking out their tongues demonstrating that they do not have black tongues, that they are not guilty of evil deeds, that they are not incarnations of the malevolent king.

Thanks, iTraveler.

Typography.

Cradles.

Wyeth, Shade, 1981

OLD MYTHOLOGIES

And now, at last, all proud deeds done,

Mouths dust-stopped, dark they embrace

Suitably disposed, as urns, underground.

Cattle munching soft spring grass

-Epicures of shamrock and the four-leaved clover-

Hear a whimper of ancient weapons,

As a whole dormitory of heroes turn over,

Regretting their butchers' days.

This valley cradles their archaic madness

It upheld their savage stride:

To bagpiped battle marching,

Wolfhounds, lean as models,
At their urgent heels.

John Montague

Robert Plant & Jimmy Page, "When the Levee Breaks/Wonderful One"

Nigel Eaton, hurdy-gurdy ...

Technique.

Technique is the proof of your seriousness.

Wallace Stevens

Happy birthday, Bronzino.

Bronzino, Portrait of a Young Man with a Book, 1533

Agnolo Bronzino was born on this day in 1503.

Invest.

Forget, forget, and let us live now 

only this, how the stars pierce through 

cleared nocturnal sky; how the moon’s whole disk 

surmounts the gardens. We’ve sensed so long already 

how the darkness breeds many mirrors: how a gleam 

takes shape, a white shadow in the radiance 

of night. But now let us cross over 

and invest this world where 

everything is lunar --

Rainer Maria Rilke

Accurate.

It's a problem that has plagued cartographers for centuries: How do you accurately represent a round world on a flat map? 

The most common world map used today, designed almost 450 years ago, is highly distorted — it's that classroom wall map that shows Greenland as absolutely colossal. But a new map called AuthaGraph, created by Tokyo-based artist and architect Hajime Narukawa, just won Japan's distinguished Good Design Award for accurately representing the relative sizes of landmasses and bodies of water on Earth. The map is so proportionally accurate that you can fold it up into a three-dimensional globe.

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Happy birthday, Lightfoot.

Gordon Lightfoot was born on this day in 1938.

"Old Dan's Records"

You.

only one koan matters
you

Ikkyu

Bach, Partita for Violin No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1004

Anne-Sophie Mutter performs the Sarabande ...

Keep.

SONG of ORIGINAL MIND

Unborn and imperishable

Is the original mind
Earth, water, fire and wind
A temporary lodging for the night

Attached to this
Ephemeral burning house
You yourselves light the fire, kindle the flames
In which you’re consumed
 

Keep your mind as it was
When you came into the world
And instantly this very self
Is a living "thus-come" one

Ideas of
What’s good , what’s bad
All due to
This self of yours

In winter, a bonfire
Spells delight
But when summertime arrives
What a nuisance it becomes!

And the breezes
You loved in summer
Even before the autumn’s gone
Already have become a bother
 

Throwing your whole life away
Sacrificed to the thirst for gold
But when you saw your life was through
All your money was no use

Clinging, craving and the like
I don’t have them on my mind
That’s why nowadays I can say
The whole world is truly mine!
 

Since, after all this floating world
Is unreal
Instead of holding onto things in
Your mind, go and sing!

Only original mind exists
In the past and in the future too
Instead of holding onto things in
Your mind, let them go!
 

Having created
the demon mind yourself
When it torments you mercilessly
You’re to blame and no one else

When you do wrong
our mind’s the demon
There’s no hell
To be found outside

Abominating hell
Longing for heaven
You make yourself suffer
In a joyful world

You think that good
Means hating what is bad
What’s bad is
The hating mind itself 

Bankei

Bach, Unaccompanied Cello Suites

Yo-Yo Ma plays the Sarabande from Suite No. 6 (BWV 1012) ...

Measure.

The SWEETNESS of DOGS

What do you say, Percy? I am thinking

of sitting out on the sand to watch
the moon rise. It’s full tonight.
So we go

and the moon rises, so beautiful it

makes me shudder, makes me think about
time and space, makes me take
measure of myself: one iota
pondering heaven. Thus we sit, myself

thinking how grateful I am for the moon’s

perfect beauty and also, oh! how rich
it is to love the world. Percy, meanwhile,
leans against me and gazes up
into my face. As though I were just as wonderful
as the perfect moon.

Mary Oliver

Gordon Lightfoot, "Restless"

There's a kind of a restless feeling and it pulls me from within
It sets my senses reeling and my wheels begin to spin
In the quietude of winter you can hear the wild geese cry
And I will always love that sound until the day I die 

There's a plain and a simple answer to each and every quest
From every quiet dance who might be a special guest
In a movie made for TV or a late night interview
You might even find them on the Young and the Restless, too 

Do you get that restless feelin' when you hear a whistle blast
Like an echo from the past
Of an old engine flyin' down a road that's iron cast 

The lake is blue, the sky is gray, the leaves have turned to gold
The wild goose will be on her way, the weather's much too cold
When the muskie and the old trout too have all gone down to rest
We will be returning to the things that we love best 

Do ya get that restless yearning when you think about your dad
And the scrimshaw that he had
Of an old schooner rovin' 'neath a sky that's ironclad 

There's a kind of a restless feeling and it catches you off guard
As we gaze off at the distance through the trees in my back yard
I can feel that restless yearning of those geese as off they roam
Then trade that for a warm bed and a place I can call home 

Will ya get that restless yearning when you hear the wicked blast
Of a specter from the past
Of a cold diesel rollin' down a road that's built to last

Still I get that restless feelin' when I hear a whistle blast
See an image from the past
Of an old schooner flyin' down a sky that's overcast

Gordon Lightfoot is a poet, an artist.

Transformation.

To MUSIC

Music: breathing of statues. Perhaps:

silence of paintings. You language where all language
ends. You time
standing vertically on the motion of mortal hearts.

Feelings for whom? O you the transformation
of feelings into what?–: into audible landscape.
You stranger: music. You heart-space
grown out of us. The deepest space in us,
which, rising above us, forces its way out,–
holy departure:
when the innermost point in us stands
outside, as the most practiced distance, as the other
side of the air:
pure,
boundless,
no longer habitable.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Detachment.

Firchau, Molson, 2008

DHARMA

The way the dog trots out the front door
every morning
without a hat or an umbrella,
without any money
or the keys to her dog house
never fails to fill the saucer of my heart
with milky admiration.

Who provides a finer example
of a life without encumbrance—
Thoreau in his curtainless hut
with a single plate, a single spoon?
Ghandi with his staff and his holy diapers?

Off she goes into the material world
with nothing but her brown coat
and her modest blue collar,
following only her wet nose,
the twin portals of her steady breathing,
followed only by the plume of her tail.

If only she did not shove the cat aside
every morning
and eat all his food
what a model of self-containment she would be,
what a paragon of earthly detachment.
If only she were not so eager
for a rub behind the ears,
so acrobatic in her welcomes,
if only I were not her god.

Billy Collins

Thank you, Zoë!

Molson, I miss you, bud.

Everywhere.

As for poets
The Earth Poets
Who write small poems,
Need help from no man.

The Air Poets
Play out the swiftest gales
And sometimes loll in the eddies.
Poem after poem,
Curling back on the same thrust.

At fifty below
Fuel oil won't flow
And propane stays in the tank.
Fire Poets
Burn at absolute zero
Fossil love pumped backup

The first
Water Poet
Stayed down six years.
He was covered with seaweed.
The life in his poem
Left millions of tiny
Different tracks
Criss-crossing through the mud.

With the Sun and Moon
In his belly,
The Space Poet
Sleeps.
No end to the sky-
But his poems,
Like wild geese,
Fly off the edge.

A Mind Poet

Stays in the house.
The house is empty
And it has no walls.
The poem
Is seen from all sides,
Everywhere,
At once.

Gary Snyder

Worth.

Hit.

Think playing on sports' travel team will help your kids get a college scholarship? Think again. Commentator John U. Bacon advises that they hit the books instead.

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Gordon Lightfoot, "Canadian Railroad Trilogy"

There was a time in this fair land when the railroad did not run
When the wild majestic mountains stood alone against the sun
Long before the white man and long before the wheel
When the green dark forest was too silent to be real ...

Meandering.

I mean to tell you this story the only way I know how. That is to say, I will tell it like a river. It may meander here and there, but in the end it will always find its way to the sea.

Two hundred years ago, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark launched their wooden boats up the Missouri River in search of the illusory Northwest Passage, a journey that would capture the American imagination and help forge a young nation's identity. Now, in a riveting debut novel, Allan Wolf tells the story of this extraordinary voyage through the eyes of not only the famed pair but also several members of their self-named Corps of Discovery. Here, in powerful, lyrical language, is a medley of voices from a surprisingly diverse crew — from the one-eyed French Indian fiddler who pilots the boats to Clark's African American slave; from the young Shoshone woman who has a baby en route to Lewis's Newfoundland dog, a "seer" whose narrative resonates long after the book is closed.

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Pile.

There is no telling," said he, "what treasures are hid in that glorious old pile. It is a famous place for antiquarian plunder; there are such rich bits of old time sculpture for the architect, and old time story for the poet. There is as rare picking in it as a Stilton cheese, and in the same taste -- the mouldier the better."

Washington Irving, Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey

Protects.

Mozart, Sonata in C minor, K. 457

Friedrich Gulda performs the Adagio ...

Live.

Matisse, Study, 1951

Real poetry is to lead a beautiful life. To live poetry is better than to write it.

Basho

Typography.

Happy birthday, O'Keeffe.

O'Keeffe, Sky Above Clouds I, 1963

Georgia O'Keeffe was born on this day in 1887.

Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant—there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing—and keeping the unknown always beyond you.

Georgia O'Keeffe

Georgia O'Keeffe: By Myself

Opposed.

Clock measurement is not time itself. In fact, so opposed are they that one could argue the clock is not a synonym, but the opposite of time.

Jay Griffiths

Remotest.

Unknowing before the heavens of my life
I stand in wonder. O the great stars.
The rising and the going down. How quiet.
As if I didn’t exist. Am I part? Have I dismissed
the pure influence? Do high and low tide
alternate in my blood according to this order?
I will cast off all wishes, all other links,
accustom my heart to its remotest space. Better
it live in the terror of its stars than
seemingly protected, soothed by something near.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Moby-Dick.

Herman Melville's Moby-Dick was published on this day in 1851.

CHAPTER 39:  FIRST NIGHT WATCH

Ha! ha! ha! ha! hem! clear my throat!- I’ve been thinking over it ever since, and that ha, ha’s the final consequence. Why so? Because a laugh’s the wisest, easiest answer to all that’s queer; and come what will, one comfort’s always left- that unfailing comfort is, it’s all predestinated. I heard not all his talk with Starbuck; but to my poor eye Starbuck then looked something as I the other evening felt. Be sure the old Mogul has fixed him, too. I twigged it, knew it; had the gift, might readily have prophesied it- for when I clapped my eye upon his skull I saw it. Well, Stubb, wise Stubb- that’s my title- well, Stubb, what of it, Stubb? Here’s a carcase. I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing. Such a waggish leering as lurks in all your horribles! I feel funny. Fa, la! lirra, skirra! What’s my juicy little pear at home doing now? Crying its eyes out?- Giving a party to the last arrived harpooneers, I dare say, gay as a frigate’s pennant, and so am I- fa, la! lirra, skirra! Oh-

We’ll drink to-night with hearts as light, To love, as gay and fleeting As bubbles that swim, on the beaker’s brim, And break on the lips while meeting. A brave stave that- who calls? Mr. Starbuck? Aye, aye, sir- (Aside) he’s my superior, he has his too, if I’m not mistaken.- Aye, aye, sir, just through with this job- coming.

Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

Happy birthday, Monet.

Monet, Weeping Willow (detail), 1919

Claude Monet was born on this day in 1840.

It's on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly. I'm not performing miracles; I'm using up and wasting a lot of paint.

Claude Monet 

Slingshot.

There are many ways of moving through the Universe – of travelling from one point to another over great, even extraordinary distances. There is also a way of using the world for your own ends: taking advantage of slopes, winds, currents or gravitational fields, as fuel-efficient resources for your own acceleration.

Gravity-assisted space travel is one such example, when a spacecraft uses the gravitational pull of a nearby planet or other celestial body to ‘slingshot’ itself toward another, more distant goal. Crucially, the target or destination here is one that could not have been reached without this assistance, not only in terms of the ship’s velocity but even in terms of its original direction of travel.

You head toward one place to get to another – or, channelling Hamlet, "by indirections find directions out."

Remarkably, this metaphorically rich idea of heading in one direction to arrive somewhere else entirely connects gravitational slingshots with the oceangoing people who settled remote island chains in the South Pacific. These ancient mariners learned to use a combination of seasonal winds and celestial navigation to push ever farther east, reaching the most extreme outer edges of Polynesia.

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Leon Russell, R.I.P.

Leon Russell has passed.

"A Song for You" ...



Thanks, J.R.

Lost.

Rogers, The Lost Pleiade, 1875

Leonard Cohen, "Anthem"

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in

Thank You, Jessica.

Turn.

Autumn eve – please
turn to me. I,
too, am stranger.

Basho

Uncertainty.

You don’t grow on a secure path.  All of us should conquer something in life and it needs a lot of work, and it needs a lot of risk.  In order to grow and to improve you have to be there a bit at the edge of uncertainty.

Francis Mallmann

1982.

"Forever Now"

Desires.

Borrell del Caso, Escaping Criticism, 1874

He who desires but act not, breeds pestilence.

William Blake

Proper.

Fairfield Porter, Spruce and Birch, 1964

The wilderness does not make you forget your normal life so much as it removes the distractions for proper remembering.

Jim Harrison

Calling.

Krouthén, Autumn Sun, 1923

Have you gazed on naked grandeur where there’s nothing else to gaze on,
Set pieces and drop-curtain scenes galore,
Big mountains heaved to heaven, which the blinding sunsets blazon,
Black canyons where the rapids rip and roar?
Have you swept the visioned valley with the green stream streaking through it,
Searched the Vastness for a something you have lost?
Have you strung your soul to silence? Then for God’s sake go and do it;
Hear the challenge, learn the lesson, pay the cost.

Have you wandered in the wilderness, the sagebrush desolation,
The bunch-grass levels where the cattle graze?
Have you whistled bits of rag-time at the end of all creation,
And learned to know the desert’s little ways?
Have you camped upon the foothills, have you galloped o’er the ranges,
Have you roamed the arid sun-lands through and through?
Have you chummed up with the mesa? Do you know its moods and changes?
Then listen to the Wild — it’s calling you.

Have you known the Great White Silence, not a snow-gemmed twig aquiver?
(Eternal truths that shame our soothing lies.)
Have you broken trail on snowshoes? mushed your huskies up the river,
Dared the unknown, led the way, and clutched the prize?
Have you marked the map’s void spaces, mingled with the mongrel races,
Felt the savage strength of brute in every thew?
And though grim as hell the worst is, can you round it off with curses?
Then hearken to the Wild — it’s wanting you.

Have you suffered, starved and triumphed, groveled down, yet grasped at glory,
Grown bigger in the bigness of the whole?
“Done things” just for the doing, letting babblers tell the story,
Seeing through the nice veneer the naked soul?
Have you seen God in His splendors, heard the text that nature renders?
(You’ll never hear it in the family pew.)
The simple things, the true things, the silent men who do things —
Then listen to the Wild — it’s calling you.

They have cradled you in custom, they have primed you with their preaching,
They have soaked you in convention through and through;
They have put you in a showcase; you’re a credit to their teaching —
But can’t you hear the Wild? — it’s calling you.
Let us probe the silent places, let us seek what luck betide us;
Let us journey to a lonely land I know.
There’s a whisper on the night-wind, there’s a star agleam to guide us,
And the Wild is calling, calling ...  let us go.

Robert Service

Telemann, Fantasy No. 3, TWV 40:4

Frans Brüggen performs ...

Learned.

Anyone who’s not a fool should try walking in the woods on a cold night when the moon is full. That’s when I learned most of life’s secrets that I know.

Jim Harrison

Baptista, "Balada De Um Louco"

Viktoria Mullova performs with her trio ...