Rubikcubism

French artist Invader’s solo show opens June 27th at Jonathan LeVine Gallery.

TOP 10
by extermitent

Teaching is a Kind of Learning

Teaching is a kind of
learning, much like loving,
mutual goings-on,
both doing each to each;
mutual forbearance;
life itself, you might say.

~ George Johnston, from Farewell to Teaching

Order from Chaos

"We adore chaos because we love to produce order."

~ M.C. Escher

Laughing With

Regina Spektor’s CD Far is due out next week (6/23). 
[Stream it. Explore it.]

God can be funny
When told he’ll give you money if you just pray the right way
And when presented like a genie who does magic like Houdini
Or grants wishes like Jiminy Cricket and Santa Claus
God can be so hilarious

Love and Its Near Enemy

From The Self-Esteem Trap: Raising Confident Compassionate Kids in an Age of Self-Importance by Polly Young-Eisendrath:

Most of us think of love in terms of the comfort, passion, closeness, or beauty it will bring us. We imagine the enjoyment of passing hours and days with our beloved, who pleases us in touch, smell, and conversation. Perhaps we even think of living happily ever after. Unfortunately this is not love but its intoxicating sibling, idealization. Buddhists use the term “near enemy” to mean a superficial or misleading twin of a valuable state or attitude. In Buddhist parlance, then, we could say that idealization is the near enemy of love. If we mistake idealization for love, we can be harmfully misled in our connections to others and ourselves.

The special self is the creation of idealization. Exceptional, extraordinary, perfect: these are not the descriptions of any real human being, a person with weaknesses as well as strengths. If we have heard repeatedly how talented, beautiful, smart, or promising we are, we may grow up with an intolerance for weakness and difficulty in others, and a greater intolerance for imperfections in ourselves. Within such a self-esteem trap, we are unable to connect with others or embrace ourselves in the messy ambivalence of love.

Hope Must Remain

"Hope is both the earliest and the most indispensable virtue inherent in the state of being alive. If life is to be sustained, hope must remain, even where confidence is wounded, trust impaired."

~ Erik Erikson

Trying Hard is One of the Problems

The Great Poem
by Lawrence Raab, from The History of Forgetting

The great poem is always possible.
Think of Keats and his odes.
But we shouldn't have to be dying,

What I'm writing now is not
the great poem. After a few lines
I could tell. It may not even be

a particularly good poem, although
it's too early to decide about that.
Keep going, I say. See what happens.

But trying hard is one of the problems.
since it shows in the lines as a strain
or struggle that reminds the reader

too much of the writer, whereas
most readers want to listen alone.
The great poem, I think, will arrive

when I no longer care. Perhaps
I'll have abandoned art altogether,
and I won't even want to write

the poem down. But then I'll remember
what I once would have given
for this moment, and I'll go back

to my desk. And I'll write the poem
as though I were another person,
someone I will never be again.

[More by Lawrence Raab]

Asking for Permission

Listening for the Pauses

From “What the Land Says,” by Verlyn Klinkenborg, The New York Times (June 10, 2009):

Being a writer, in my experience, means putting up with an inner voice — a maker of sentences — that is always clamoring to be heard. More and more, I find myself listening for the moments when that voice lapses.

After a dozen years on this farm, I can name most of the plants and nearly all the birds. But what’s the word for the wake the pileated woodpecker leaves as it dips, flying across the pasture? How can I imagine that land speaks in a language when I’m surrounded by animals whose wordless attention is at least as great as mine? All I can do is put a period to this sentence and hope I can live, for a while, in the pause that follows.

[Thanks Kit!]

A Fine Warm Feeling

"I get a fine warm feeling when I'm doing well, but that pleasure is pretty much negated by the pain of getting started each day. Let's face it, writing is hell."

~ William Styron

Night in Day

by Joseph Stroud, from American Life in Poetry

The night never wants to end, to give itself over
to light. So it traps itself in things: obsidian, crows.
Even on summer solstice, the day of light's great
triumph, where fields of sunflowers guzzle in the sun—
we break open the watermelon and spit out
black seeds, bits of night glistening on the grass.

Watching Time Fly

Congratulations Alex! We are all very proud of you. It has been a joy to watch you grow so far. Now it’s time to begin savoring a new chapter. Enjoy!

• Somehow a Lot of Us Manage
• A Skill You'll Actually Get To Use
• We Need to Hear Other People
• Hidden in Plain Sight All Around Us

The Workshop is a Process

From "Show or Tell: Should Creative Writing Be Taught?" by Louis Menand, The New Yorker (June 8, 2009)

Creative-writing programs are designed on the theory that students who have never published a poem can teach other students who have never published a poem how to write a publishable poem. The fruit of the theory is the writing workshop, a combination of ritual scarring and twelve-on-one group therapy where aspiring writers offer their views of the efforts of other aspiring writers. People who take creative-writing workshops get course credit and can, ultimately, receive an academic degree in the subject; but a workshop is not a course in the normal sense—a scene of instruction in which some body of knowledge is transmitted by means of a curricular script. The workshop is a process, an unscripted performance space, a regime for forcing people to do two things that are fundamentally contrary to human nature: actually write stuff (as opposed to planning to write stuff very, very soon), and then sit there while strangers tear it apart. There is one person in the room, the instructor, who has (usually) published a poem. But workshop protocol requires the instructor to shepherd the discussion, not to lead it, and in any case the instructor is either a product of the same process—a person with an academic degree in creative writing—or a successful writer who has had no training as a teacher of anything, and who is probably grimly or jovially skeptical of the premise on which the whole enterprise is based: that creative writing is something that can be taught.

The Original Buttons

From “Mister Jalopy,” Studio 360 (April 3, 2009):

“Mr. Jalopy transforms garage sale junk into extraordinary machines. He's a hero to the Maker's Movement — a community of DIY-ers who mix science, technology, and art. Kurt spent an afternoon with Mr. Jalopy at his workshop in Los Angeles, and saw one of his inventions.”

Trying to Get Something Real

An excerpt from The Brothers Bloom by Rian Johnson:

BLOOM
Stephen enjoyed it. He loved the idea that we were internationally infamous art smugglers, but I think deep down, same as me, he felt like we were putting on a persona, faking it.

PENELOPE
Telling a story.

BLOOM
He’d love to die on a job. Cornered at midnight on a run to Jakarta. That’s his dream, to tell his story so well it fulfills itself. It somehow would make it finally real for him.

PENELOPE
That’s kinda the thing we all want, right?

BLOOM
Trying to get something real by telling yourself stories is a trap. Trust me on that one.

Original Human Mind

"Poetry is the one place where people can speak their original human mind. It is the outlet for people to say in public what is known in private."

~ Allen Ginsberg

True Happiness Lies Within

“When I first heard about meditation, I had zero interest in it. I wasn't even curious. It sounded like a waste of time.

What got me interested, though, was the phrase 'true happiness lies within.' At first I thought it sounded kind of mean, because it doesn't tell you where the 'within' is, or how to get there. But still it had a ring of truth. And I began to think that maybe meditation was a way to go within.”

~ David Lynch, from “Deep Thoughts by David Lynch,” Utne Reader (May/June 2007)

Hope, Promise, and Loss

“Kevin Lee and Matt Zoller “ReWatch” Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, finding the hope and promise buried in its story of loss.”

~ Film In Focus

Driving Straight Through

"Before I begin, before word one is typed, I need to have the complete story in my head. That's the important thing. Then I'll take what vacation time I can get from the paper, parcel out what needs to be done given what time I have available,  lock the apartment door, sit down and type eight to 10 hours a day (with regular cigarette breaks). I start with the first chapter and drive straight through to the end. I guess this comes from a deep love for the pulps."

~ Jim Knipfel, describing his marathon writing style

Get Some Plaster

Excerpt from Tinkers by Paul Harding:

George Washington Crosby began to hallucinate eight days before he died. From the rented hospital bed, placed in the middle of his own living room, he saw insects running in and out of imaginary cracks in the ceiling plaster. The panes in the windows, once snugly pointed and glazed, stood loose in their sashes. The next stiff breeze would topple them all and they would flop onto the heads of his family, who sat on the couch and the love seat and the kitchen chairs his wife had brought in to accommodate everyone. The torrent of panes would drive everyone from the room, his grandchildren in from Kansas and Atlanta and Seattle, his sister in from Florida, and he would be marooned on his bed in a moat of shattered glass. Pollen and sparrows, rain and the intrepid squirrels he had spent half his life keeping out of the bird feeders would breach the house.

He had built the house himself—poured the foundation, raised the frame, joined the pipes, run the wires, plastered the walls, and painted the rooms. Lightning struck once when he was in the open foundation, soldering the last joint of the hot-water tank. It threw him to the opposite wall. He got up and finished the joint. Cracks in the plaster did not stay cracks; clogged pipes got routed; peeling clapboard got scraped and slathered with a new coat of paint.

Get some plaster, he said, propped up in the bed, which looked odd and institutional among the Persian rugs and Colonial furniture and dozens of antique clocks. Get some plaster. Jesus, some plaster and some wires and a couple of hooks. You’d be all set for about five bucks.

Yes, Gramp, they said.

Yes, Dad. A breeze blew through the open window behind him and cleared exhausted heads. Bocce balls clicked out on the lawn.