So I am packing up to leave Bath...

and here's an apt poem commemorating a year in my precious tiny luminous slice of Georgian architecture. And all the baths I've had here.
Mainly because the shower doesn't work.
Farewell big windows!
Farewell 2am shouty drunkards!
Farewell fucking seagulls!

I will miss you.


Winter Trilogy by Sudesh Mishra

the lion-footed bathtub
is a beast
with the cloudy head
of a human being
-a sphinx, no less,
with a soul of clear water
or what passes for clear water.
thus when the divine portion
rejects the torso,
despite its sublime brutishness,
as the woman,
(we behold her now)
haunted by towels,
desquamates,
stepping out of her improbable loins,
into another,
more exalted afterlife,
the soul
(more water than soul)
exulting in baser things,
retreats further
into what's primal, mud-sullied,
and unfinished.

Food for thought: Nothing Twice by Wislawa Szymborska

Nothing Twice

by Wisława Szymborska   
(translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak)


Nothing can ever happen twice.
In consequence, the sorry fact is
that we arrive here improvised
and leave without the chance to practice.

Even if there is no one dumber,
if you're the planet's biggest dunce,
you can't repeat the class in summer:
this course is only offered once.

No day copies yesterday,
no two nights will teach what bliss is
in precisely the same way,
with precisely the same kisses.

One day, perhaps some idle tongue
mentions your name by accident:
I feel as if a rose were flung
into the room, all hue and scent.

The next day, though you're here with me,
I can't help looking at the clock:
A rose? A rose? What could that be?
Is it a flower or a rock?

Why do we treat the fleeting day
with so much needless fear and sorrow?
It's in its nature not to stay:
Today is always gone tomorrow.

With smiles and kisses, we prefer
to seek accord beneath our star,
although we're different (we concur)
just as two drops of water are.

Clayton Cubitt: Hysterical Literature

Hottest thing on the Internet EVER.
I am not kidding.
Art, sex and books. And VERY good books at that!!!

Rather not for children or workplace use.
I advise using earphones. :-)

For other videos explore the project web page:

Clayton Cubitt: Hysterical Literature

Rodriguez

Watched Searching for Sugarman last night - it was SO GOOD!
A documentary about a '70s musician who, unbeknownst to most of the world (and, perhaps most surprisingly: himself), has been a total hit in South Africa. A favourite of the anti-apartheid movement, he's been "bigger than Elvis" for decades.
Weird!
And pretty fucking awesome.

I just bought the soundtrack and looks like today is the perfect sunny day to walk around listening to it in search of my favourite drug (caffeine) ;)

Yum!

Quote of the day: Maria Skłodowska-Curie

 via Lisa Congdon

Amanda Palmer on forgetting

"No one's ever lost forever
When they die they go away
But they will visit you occasionally
Do not be afraid

No one's ever lost forever
They are caught inside your heart
If you garden them and water them
They make you what you are"

I can't help but love her. Freaky eyebrows 'n all!

Amanda Palmer & The Grand Theft Orchestra: Lost

Simon Rich: Center of the Universe

 On the first day, God created the heavens and the earth.

“Let there be light,” He said, and there was light. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening—the first night.

On the second day, God separated the oceans from the sky. “Let there be a horizon,” He said. And lo: a horizon appeared and God saw that it was good. And there was evening—the second night.

On the third day, God’s girlfriend came over and said that He’d been acting distant lately.

“I’m sorry,” God said. “Things have been crazy this week at work.”

He smiled at her, but she did not smile back. And God saw that it was not good.

fragment of Center of Universe by Simon Rich

That's just a taste of a great short story from Simon Rich's reccomendable collection "Last Girlfriend On Earth". If you like to listen to stories, the author reads it out loud on Savage Lovecast episode 330 - and lo, it is really funny!

If you prefer a full read-only version it was published in the New Yorker last year, and thankfully available online.

Dan Savage: Savage Lovecast

Check out the Savage Lovecast - the free audio advice column which I am subscribing to FOR LIFE. It is queer-tastic and straight-a-licious & I can't get enough ;)
Dan claims it's easy dispensing advice to strangers, but I have never met a person I agreed with so wholeheartedly on that many consequent issues. The man has... talent!

You can listen for free on The Stranger website here
or subscribe to it on iTunes right here
 

The Savage Saves!

Back

I am back from a whirlwind holiday in Chicago where I had a flamboyantly fabulous time. I went out dancing every other night, had a Chinese massage, saw bio-luminescent fish, I even ate elk!!! AND I got to spend time with people who are... the sugar in my coffee, the hole in my donut and the twirl in my confetti. It was simply too nice! Consequently I am now completely bedridden with terminal melancholy. And a tummy ache after eating all those Reese's Peanut Butter Cups which I was meant to bring to work tomorrow as a treat for my co-workers...

After getting back home I bummed around for hours, caught up on Girls (I think Hannah's character may actually be based on my life and my face), radiated inertia. The closest I got to achieving anything was when I finally finished reading Even Cowgirls Get The Blues. It is one of the best books I have ever read. Brilliant work of philosophical literary comic genius. Wickedly smart and entertainingly insane.

Perfectly reassuring.
Profoundly unnerving.

Seriously, read it right now and/or weep.

Being a woman is awesome

Nicely put.

Hepl!

Winter is trying to kill me...

Night shifts. Cold face.
Sad face.

pic via here

The best of recently snooped street art

Assorted randomness.

Because dancing is important

Icona Pop: "I love it"

Do you... mind?

Do you ever notice how your mind literally is never in the same way? I don't mean biologically speaking, as in the daily rise and fall of synaptic dynasties. I mean the way it... feels to you. 

Do you sometimes wake up and feel in a way you didn't expect? Like something was a bit off but you can't quite work out what, or why?

Maybe it's what we can call being in a different mood. But... what is mood? What makes you kind and cheerful one day, grumpy and irritable the next. And who does that make you?

I keep hearing these stories about individuals who become a "different person" after brain damage. Even with all their memories and abilities intact, people's "personalities" can change dramatically. For example from a pedantic prude they turn into a sexually liberated loud-mouth.

Why this is at all surprising, given how much we oscillate in the way we are in our day to day lives, eludes me. 

Surely if you just think about it,  what you think is you, that is only IT right this moment. Right now. Because how you respond and view everything around you is shifting all the time.

Isn't that fascinating?

*

So right now I am in my curious, pondering mood. I'm imagining things vividly, I feel like making things. This often happens when I'm procrastinating something I don't want to deal with. And by often I mean always. But I know, from experience, that this mental wave will ride itself out. In a few days I will look back in distaste at how I spent my time, at the things I wrote and drew, and will bemoan why OH WHY didn't I get on with the dreadful stupid boring thing earlier. Why did I waste all this time when I could have been writing my CV while cooking a balanced meal while riding an exercycle?!?

I suppose there are too many details to keep track of, so for most part we move seamlessly through our incarnations. Our attitudes to things, the measures of positivity and negativity, levels of excitement and anxiety rise and deplete largely unnoticed. 

Recently stress at work has been piling up. But I didn't quite realise that it was affecting me until I came back home one day to my cat sneezing every 2 minutes. Cat snot all over her furry little face. Who even knew cats got colds?!? In response the first thing that sprang to my mind is that she's got cat AIDS. Yep. Must be. But... waaaait a minute! Not only is it not a very reasonable conclusion, but also one I wouldn't have made at all a month ago when, incidentally, the fabric of my life was weaved through by the promise of a lovely holiday, and not stupid deadlines.

*

I have these wonderful, Proustian moments whereby a trigger (the sound of a helicopter passing by, the taste of Polish ham on a buttered piece of sourdough, the way the air smells at the very beginning of spring) sets off an explosion of feeling, of a shape of mind from years gone by.
Like, how fabulously weird is it to walk around a city you've not been to for almost a decade? And then out of the blue the wind hits some lemon tree and it hits your nostrils at the same time as the sky (the sky looks SO different on the other side of the world!) turns golden, and your hands are cold in your pockets because California always tricks you into believing it is warmer than it looks, and you... you sort of "remember" what it was like to be you a few years ago.

For a split second you feel what your mind used to feel like. The flavour of your hopes and worries forever entwined with the smell of sidewalk citrus, the deep orange glow of a San Francisco sunset and the discomfort of your freezing peripheries.

It is not deja vu.
It's your brain's version of time travel.
I love it.

God, I hope she doesn't have cat AIDS...

*

Shapely

Some things in my life are beginning to take shape.
At a snail's pace. Convoluted, unstraightforward.
Still, I have this light-headed feeling as if I was rising.

It is good.

 The blog author apologises for not remembering

 where she found most of these images. She should 

be much more organised, really. First from top:  photo 

by Olafur Eliasson, then trailing vortex featured here.

Wonderniture

One day I will have a home, with space!
Space to put LOTS of weird shit in it.
Until then... I'll just keep furnishing this blog ;)

Here's a new batch of home-improvement inspiration!!

 

High time to rock it up a bit

Again on the blog! Just to make sure you've taken notice: the delightful snake-tongued Wesley Morgan! 

Upon hearing his delicious smoky voice live, in the sweltering heat of the moment, I may or may not have exclaimed that it was not unlike a sensation one has when licking somebody very attractive. 

Yep.

Wesley Morgan "Backroom in Tulsa" by xabix

From the United Kingdom of Great Sounds, this coming summer's likely festival hits:
Velvet Stream - the lovely bouncy band from London

Peyote - the fantastic Rockabilly boys from Bath

Amanda Fucking Palmer needs no introduction. I've been OBSESSED with her new album - Theatre Is Evil - and now know ALL the songs. 

Handmade taxidermy monsters

The bottom one has a name: Der Wolpertinger. Apparently it is a make-believe creature of German folklore, supposedly living in the alpine forests of Bavaria. It possesses the body parts of several common game animals; portrayed with wings, antlers, and fangs, all attached to the body of a small mammal. Stuffed Wolpertingers are common Bavarian Inn mascots, often displayed alongside real Black Forest taxidermy hunting trophies.

 

by Sarina Brewer via Accidental Mysteries

On taking offence

I have thought a fair bit about this today, and I seriously do not believe I have been told I have offended anyone, apart from my father, since the age of 14.

I sort of assumed that "being offended" is something you, as an intelligent person, grow out of. Because you learn to name, untangle and trace your emotions better (anger, fear, sadness, jealousy). And you stop reacting to people dissing you, because their actions prove they are dicks & not worth your time.

I have this theory that "being offended" is not a real thing, unless you are a medieval knight. Or a Japanese samurai. Or eleven. Right?

My dad? Well, he has the emotional maturity of an aborted foetus. Not funny? Neither are his unpredictable mood swings with which he sort of terrorises people around him who want him to be happy. He gets offended easily, he holds grudges. He doesn't like spending any time analysing his own feelings. It takes a lot of patience and stamina to cope with him when he's in a bad mood because he will also be super negative about everything. And then he gets offended because I don't call him enough. Sigh.

Yep. That pretty much sums it up.

Weird and wonderful

I want to play with these... :)

Li Hongbo: Pure White Paper

comic sense

My family is... special.
And has taught me many important lessons.
Amongst them: there are many ways of grieving...

Some are more...
insensitive than others.

swan noir

via this place