“There is another world, but it is in this one.”-William Butler Yeats
Clouds and myths and faerie stories?
Daily Diversion #45: Another World?
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Tag Archives: Beauty
The New Novel by Winslow Homer, 1877
I would spend every waking moment doing this…
Winslow Homer, The New Novel (1877).
if only I could.
Daily Diversion #44: Sweater Weather Already?
It is, according to this tree…
Tree cozy
Daily Diversion #43: Dying is an Art*
I took the day off from writing…
Dying is an art.
to play with skeletons and drink hard cider. See you tomorrow!
*”Dying is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I’ve a call.”-Sylvia Plath
Daily Diversion #42: Dublin Will Be Written in My Heart*
It’s no secret that the Daily Diversion series features visual slices from the non-writing part of my life. Naturally, the photographs are always original Maedezs. I’m making an exception today-a magnificent exception.
My sweet, fierce, and always inspiring momma is on the first day of a five-week solo backpacking journey across Ireland and England. When she confided her vacation plans to me a year ago-a little breathless, but terribly excited-I saw her as I have always seen her, since I was a wee girl: as a passionate, committed, creative, free-spirited, positive woman. Any fearlessness I possess, is because of her. Any single-mindedness. Any ability to see beauty in the finite or the infinite or to see possibility in all things, however graceful or raw. It’s all because of her.
Her adventure starts in Dublin.
Terrace View. Dublin, Ireland.
*”When I die Dublin will be written in my heart.”-James Joyce
Scene from Dublin, Ireland.
Both photos are courtesy of my mom, Kay.
Daily Diversion #41: Sweet Summer’s End
I know, I know. Autumn doesn’t start until the 22nd. It’s still ninety degrees where I live, but I can feel a change. The ceaseless seasonal breeze has returned, bandying leaves about in her dancing wake. I’m excited, but apprehensive; yet I know that summer will be back. When she arrives next year, this is the first thing I will do in wanton celebration.
A Year in Books/Day 206: Crazy Sexy Cool
- Title: Crazy Sexy Cool
- Authors: The Editors of Us Magazine
- Year Published: 1996
- Year Purchased: 2010
- Source: My mom
- About: The editors of Us Magazine seemingly created this photography volume for the sole purpose of making the definitive cultural statement of their age. That is rarely a good idea, and it falls flat here. The text by David Wild is the problem. It’s dated in a way that the 1990s era photographs aren’t. Although limited to an introduction, his writing is so self-consciously important and self-indulgent that it’s embarrassing. No amount of evoking Let Us Now Praise Famous Men or You Have Seen Their Faces (with photography and text by, respectively, Walker Evans and James Agee/Margaret Bourke-White and Erskine Caldwell) will magically elevate this book to their level. There’s nothing of intellectual substance here; it’s all empty, pithy-sounding word combinations. Skip the text and go straight to the photographs. You’ll thank me. The images are genuinely captivating, and do their job of capturing the transitory nature of celebrity as it was experienced in the late 20th century. That’s enough. Too bad the editors of Us Magazine didn’t realize that.
- Motivation: My mom knows how much I like coffee table books, movies, pop culture, and photography. She found this book at a community sale for a dollar or two.
- Times Read: 1
- Random Excerpt/Page 12: The preceding anticommercial message comes to you directly from John Keats’ “Ode to a Grecian Urn”, written way back in 1819, a romantic, carefree era long before the fall of Communism and the rise of Courtney Love. At the risk of having my poetic license revoked, I would like to think if the old Keatster were still around putting quill to Powerbook he might forget about urns entirely and instead be penning “Ode to Mark Seliger’s Portrait of Drew Barrymore.”
- Happiness Scale: Text-2/Photographs: 8
Daily Diversion #39: Beating Time Along the Edge of Thought*
When I cannot write, I look up. Craned neck, closed eyes. I swivel my creaking chair, and open them.
Meditative whir and whirl
Rendered in black-and-white, like rubbed-away ink on a faded page.
*“…beating time along the edge of thought.”-Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Daily Diversion #38: The Gladdest Thing Under the Sun*
Although hundreds of trees spread across the distant horizon like ink blots, the park adjacent to my flat is the only true green spot in this industrial neighborhood.
Pretty flowers and plants near the old workhouse wall that dissects my neighborhood.
I’m partial to the rust and dust and accumulated dirt, the graffiti and old buildings that litter the CW. The flowers are bright and perky, but they’ll die in service to the coming season. I like the good bones of the stone and brick structures, even if the edges are crumbly. They last, even if they are a bit shabby.
*I will be the gladdest thing/Under the sun!/I will touch a hundred flowers/And not pick one”-Edna St. Vincent Millay, Afternoon on a Hill
Daily Diversion #37: Card House Kafka
It lives on a shelf above my desk. I look at it when I need to loosen my thoughts, daydream.
House of card
The card was made in Nepal and purchased in Montreal, but it reminds me of Kafka, Prague, and my artist friend Jack. I wonder, do the windows creak when they open? I’ve never been dreamy nor drunk enough to find out. Pity.
A Small Press Life: Books. Art. Writing. Life. Tea. 