I can't sleep…
I take pictures, not for a living, but for reasons that I’m not quite sure of yet.
~ Petra van der Ree, Rotterdam-based web, text, and image editor via Ignant’s “Petra Van Der Ree’s Photographs Take Us Outside Ourselves (April 29, 2019)
Notes: Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”
Stephen Howard, Morning Light (Tree Island Series), Oil on Board, 800 x 800 mm. (via Your Eyes Blaze Out)
“Born in Masterton, Stephen Howard lived in Christchurch, New Zealand for several years before relocating to Auckland. Howard paints New Zealand architecture and landscape, but manipulates the subject matter to give an atmospheric sense of strangeness. Contrasts are his thing – a tree against the repetitive patterns of an apartment block, a pale concrete building with a dark doorway and rust over the door. Howard seldom depicts a single place. He takes buildings out of their original context and re-imagines them in a way that questions reality, rather than reflecting it. His work is contradictory in that the organic forms of his colour field works are achieved by calculated attention to detail and the building up of many layers of paint. Howard has been exhibiting in solo and group exhibitions in Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland since 1978.”
See more of his incredible art here: Parnell Gallery.
One world
Includes airplanes and power plants,
All the machinery that surrounds us,
The metallic odor that has entered words.
The other world waits
In the cold rain
That soaks the hours one by one
All through the night
When the woods come so close
you can hear them breathing like wet dogs.
~ Tom Hennen, “Picking a World” in Darkness Sticks to Everything: Collected and New Poems
Poem: via See More. Photo by Aleksi Tikka titled Hazy Moonlight (Harinjärvi, Lake in Finland)
I find myself walking softly on the rich undergrowth beneath the trees, not wanting to crack a twig, to crush or disturb anything in the least — for there is such a sense of stillness and peace that the wrong sort of movement, even one’s very presence, might be felt as an intrusion… The beauty of the forest is extraordinary — but “beauty” is too simple a word, for being here is not just an esthetic experience, but one steeped with mystery, and awe… Standing here…I feel part of a larger, calmer identity; I feel a profound sense of being at home, a sort of companionship with the earth.
~ Oliver Sacks, The Island of the Colorblind
Notes:
She addresses the cedar, using words of the forest’s first humans. “Long Life Maker. I’m here. Down here.” She feels foolish, at first. But each word is a little easier than the next. “Thank you for the baskets and the boxes. Thank you for the capes and hats and skirts. Thank you for the cradles. The beds. The diapers. Canoes. Paddles, harpoons, and nets. Poles, logs, posts. The rot-proof shakes and shingles. The kindling that will always light.” Each new item is release and relief. Finding no good reason to quit now, she lets the gratitude spill out. “Thank you for the tools. The chests. The decking. The clothes closets. The paneling. I forget. . . . Thank you,” she says, following the ancient formula. “For all these gifts that you have given.” And still not knowing how to stop, she adds, “We’re sorry. We didn’t know how hard it is for you to grow back.”
~ Richard Powers, from “Patricia Westerford” in The Overstory: A Novel (April 3, 2018)
Notes: