on necessities

Toni Morrison, in a conversation with Gloria Naylor:

And the wonderful thing is when I go and sit down and try to write--maybe I need a color, I need the smell, I need something, and I don't have it. And...it is always there; not necessarily when you call it, not even when you want it, but always when you need it. And, as they say, 'right on time'.

(From Conversations with Toni Morrison, D. Taylor-Guthrie, ed.)

What do I need around me? And what do I need?

Hard to distinguish my own wants and needs from the feeling of 'I should'--the feeling that comes from seeing how other people live (happily) and wondering whether that is better, forgetting that all the ways of going are necessary. That I have made my choices and lived my life in the way that's best for me. I couldn't be in any other life, even the lives I envy sometimes for their appearances of simplicity, settledness, commitment, foundation.

I need beautiful things around me: pictures, my own work, poems, objects that are pleasing. I was given an old, old threadbare Persian rug by a fellow freecycler last week, and it is one of my favorite things--it feels rich, not only because it is beautiful and wooly and stiff and deeply colored, but because it's clearly been used and made for use. I want things around me that reflect and relate to my commitment to valuing work--my own and others.

To be happy, to write and to make things, I need to be reminded of--but not overwhelmed by--other possible ways of thinking and seeing. Flickr is a mixed blessing--so much to see, so many ideas and new outlooks and inspiring images, but so much can quickly become a panicky list of what I haven't done. I need to keep sight, in my own mind and life, of what is important and organic from my own way of being in the world while being open to what I can learn from other people.

I can find what I need in myself--my own pleasure in choosing the things I like to have around me, in hanging up a new picture or making my bed look nice with colorful blankets, reading things that change the language I know, taking train trips and walking around the town. Wherever I am going, I have myself like a suitcase containing just the right things--all the color (bright yellow-green; deep red with a hint of pink; yellow with a tiny tinge of grey in it; deep turquoise; a brownish-purple with an orange sheen), all the words, all the ways of learning and opening and loving, too--although the hardest thing can be remembering that.

tiny valentine

{a tiny valentine}
January 26-31



FoxBirdBeeWorld
Set of four badges with cut paper fox, magpie, beehive
Edition of 20; nos. 14, 15, 16, 17 available
£4, shipping to UK £1, everywhere else £2.



Gingham agarics
Cotton and linen mushrooms, wool stuffing
Removable cord for hanging included
1 2 available
£6, shipping to UK £2, everywhere else £3.



Wallbunnies

Four felt rabbits for your wall, computer monitor, or gift-wrapping
Picture shows a sample; you will receive four Wallbunnies--some are brown, some tan

Affix with tape or tick-tack (not included)

1 2 3 4 available

£4, shipping to UK £1, everywhere else £2

Composite drawing A

approx. 6.5" x 8.5" (15 cm x 21cm)

Unframed

Watercolor and gouache on Fabriano paper

*sold, thank you*

Spotted toadstool

Wool-blend felt and cotton; wool stuffing with rice in base

Stand-alone mushroom is approx. 3" high

*all sold, thank you*

£6, shipping to UK £2, everywhere else £3.

Composite drawing B

Oval, approx. 6" (16 cm) high, 3.5" (9 cm) wide
Unframed

Watercolor and gouache on Fabriano paper
£18, shipping to UK £2, everywhere else £3


Email me: ohbara AT gmail DOT com to purchase
Include preferred edition numbers (if applicable), paypal email address, and shipping address
All orders will ship February 2nd

{Thanks, Amy, for such a sweet mention!!}

lucky life is like this

Having loved Gerald Stern's poem "Lucky Life" since I first read it, and having read it many, many times since that first time, I always have lines of it bouncing around in my head. Most often, the one that comes back to me is from the last stanza--"Lucky life is like this". So much seems to be made possible just by beginning with a sense that however it is, it is a lucky life. You can read the whole poem and others by Stern here.

I've made desktop backgrounds using this line, and if you'd like to, you can download them here (800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024). Right-click (control-click if you're using a Mac) on the image and select 'Set as desktop background'. Enjoy!

un petit cadeau

{a little gift}

for your valentines

tiny shop here
26-31 January

* * *
Reading today--

Paulo Freire: informal education, dialogue. Also John Dewey.

Which reminded me of Jolayne's project.

Making a perfect-bound journal with photographs.

Kodachrome.
Inaugural speech.

on the postal service

(A letter for a friend back in Minneapolis)

I like mail--I like its tactility, I like the ritual of adding a stamp (which is why the printed '1LL' labels for packets are so disappointing--every time), I like old envelopes (but who doesn't, it seems!). I even enjoy standing in line at the Post Office, which is a very particular feeling, indeed--hot and a little grumpy, but also excited to send off things or pick up a package! And I like thinking about mail--about the privacy of it, or lack thereof. I like Derrida's thoughts on the postcard (I have not kept up with my own postcards, but, no longer distant, there is no 'between' for the 'posts' now).

This envelope is a prototype for envelope-and-card sets that will be in a {tiny valentine shop} here from 26-31 January. I cut labels with birds' silhouettes, then added the birds themselves to the cards inside. (I bought the grey bristol board as an experiment for drawings using white pencil, and the card here has a hive on it in the same.)

Stationery, business cards, and ephemera: Daily Poetics (here's her flickr). Beautiful etchings and collections and titles: Fiona Watson (flickring here and here).

(Mail and drawings from July)

Stripes

Striped paint

Morning in Montmartre: under awnings, I duck
boas waving like fern fronds, a carousel,
and Sacre Coeur—first
tooth in a sky unreally blue.
Metro car green and white, RATP
stub likewise orange, white, holographic:
steps and plane trees in the Jardin des Plantes
dark, light. A row of Eiffel
Towers and a row of matching children
putting one hand up to grab.
What’s this, a treasure
hunt without rules? I had hoped
to find Austerlitz and thereby transport
you, one flash, to some café in the Marais
where we’d write, drink tea, laugh
about being in Paris, and dodge the waitstaff
and the rain. Along the Seine
a woman from Mexico offers half
her umbrella until the Institut du Monde
Arabe. There, among more trees
whose round leaves shine off/on red
umbrellas and pink umbrellas pass, black
umbrellas, a motorbike, and then her
umbrella is lost, crossing
Pont Sully. Every piece of writing I find
is a clue, every color, and I believe
in iteration. Therefore do we never step
on cracks and I will sleep
with your name under my pillow for a week.
Therefore the sense
of booksellers ranking riverbank and each
hawking copies of the book you love.
A wheelbarrow standing in a park.
Nib-pens standing in a jar, a clay
jester I’ll show you with red-striped tights.
Down a street that dead-ends into river
we’ll find a library cataloguing names
that don’t exist. City as trace, track,
trait, betrayal, map unmapping, sign
announcing its own approach.

Last day of color week--stripes and plaids. The books at top left are on my radiator (only momentarily) in my room here in England. All the other photos are from Paris--a few from when I was living in France, and most from when the English and I went there in May.

'Striped paint' is like 'snipe hunt'--'go look for something that doesn't exist'. I find that quite useful, actually!

It's been interesting to write (nearly) daily again--something I haven't done for a long time. (I mean poetry--I write daily for my thesis.) And it was a challenge to post here every day, too. It's also strange to write a poem and then post it right away, as though that were the finished thing (and as though it were any good!). But one thing I do want to do here is post more writing work, although it's intimidating and uncomfortable at times. So. Onwards. Excelsior. Etc.

Next week: clear envelopes, luck, news about a tiny valentine shop. Have a good weekend!

Pink

On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals
After a text of the same name, by William Harvey (1578-1657)


Since the intimate connection
of the heart

the probable cause of the errors committed
on this point
amiss, the human body alone
more perfect and warmer.

I shall prove that it is so in fact.

The forms of a single commonwealth,
the composition of a general system or a single field:

imagine the science of general conclusions conversant with doubt,
every kind of difficulty.

In fishes, the heart sufficiently transmits no more than a voice.

I have many observations on the action of the heart;
were the septum perforated, the mass of the four vessels

a thin tough membrane, falling loosely upon itself
the tide at the same time flowing—

All things permit us to believe
another union
two branches, a kind of canal. So that springing from the heart
there are three contracts
abolished, and consolidated,
a larger supply of nourishment.
The heart moves in us precisely as in nature. No such necessity.
I have myself repeatedly seen the pulse in various birds and smaller animals.

The heart propels the left, in like manner;
the transmission of the blood is a route
among numbers—the passages of the blood.

No other path or mode of transit can be entertained.
And when
adult
our heat is greater
—ignited.

©Éireann Lorsung 2009

Color weekers--here.

Small mushroom and other pink things. I've had time to sew...just no motivation. But now my shows are up and I have a few plans, including a plan to write down my plans. Harrrumph. And a plan to get the next chapter of my thesis into a rough draft for the end of February. It will be on the novel Beloved (Toni Morrison). And plans for this space--like I mentioned back at the start of the year--that I want to put into place. One more color-week photo and poem tomorrow, and then a rest...and then--sketchbook and process, new work, cooking, thesis, travel!

I'm going to be in Minneapolis for about two weeks in February (and in Chicago for three days for AWP). I'm looking forward to ribs from Ted Cook's, spending time writing and making and drawing and talking and thinking with L. and Z., seeing my mom & dad & brothers (for my mom's birthday!), and being in the snow. (It's a pretty good deal, going back to Minneapolis for a few weeks in the height of summer and a few weeks in the depths of winter; just long enough to enjoy the heat and snow, but not so long that I get exhausted by them!)

Purple, yellow

Mainline

About that night when we were sitting in the train
station: you
in the train, behind glass fading
and yellow, me on the platform with a glass
jar of tea wrapped in towels.
I tracked your progress through archive, cemetery,
the British Library, and a demolished London
station. I knew which satellite
would pass overhead on which day.

I hooked lights to my bicycle.
I stood on the roof of our school.
Someone wound the clock, and bells
called through atmosphere blue, transparent.

When all the signs were in place I watched
one light move from quite a ways off,
which was you. The light changed
yellow to white.
In the whispering station of this tiny town.
All arrivals, only you stepped down.

© Éireann Lorsung 2009

...good morning (again).

More color week.

blue

Beekeeping

How it was another world
under gauze and soaked
in honey, kerosene. Every
night we waited. Every morning
we woke up and walked
into the orchard.

What I could number
tagged with fluorescent green
tabs. What I did not know
on the leaves of trees, among
spines papery and synaptic.
The arithmetic

of evening gently crossing
a blue-painted table.
Our orchard
acres of separation. I surely
touched your hands
though I was on the other side.

Even now: creosote
and a glimpse of sheeting.
Here are the echoes.
What we kept. What rose
around us in gold hum.
Awake or asleep, bees outside the window.


© Eireann Lorsung, 2009


colo(u)r week: here, here.

...good morning.

colo(u)r

Nothing gives me away so fast as my voice in England, where accent can change within miles. Mine is definitely not from 'here'. I do not sound English. Sometimes people can't tell 'what' I am: I've gotten French several times (hmm!), or just 'European'. I'm sure my accent from home is flattening out, in any case, doing some conforming to the sounds I hear now (just like it did when I lived in France), making me more of a vocal mutt than ever.

But if there's a runner-up for giving me away, it's my spelling: several times a week I have to explain to colleagues, friends, or my roommates that, no, I'm not spelling it 'wrong', I'm spelling it American. I'm getting used to typing 'colour' for 'color' and 'organisation' for 'organization', but often my natural spelling catches me off guard and exposes me for the foreigner I am!

Anyway, thinking about color and colour, Leta from Curious Bird is having a color week beginning on the 12th (that's Monday). I've never done such a thing, but, in the spirit of being here more often, I think I will. Want to play along? Email her with your details.

little

Alice remained looking thoughtfully at the mushroom for a minute,
trying to make out which were the two sides of it;
and as it was perfectly round,
she found this a very difficult question.

(Hi Adity!)

thinking about wings

Who is the girl I imagine myself to be? The one with wings, the one with the bird mask? I spent a year shifting from winged state to winged state and finally settled into one attic room. Between The System of Objects and Ragtime I press drawings flat. Night skims, like a woman wearing a long cloak, from east to west--the window in front of me to the window behind.

I want to make a mobile with ships and birds, honey jars, hives, letters. Young women with gilt wings. Rabbits made of brown felt. A fox that dances through high grass, while the moon, on a long, thin stick, makes its customary arc above the little world.

My plan is to go back to working--which is to say, writing--four days a week and making art one day; the other two are for housekeeping, administration, and long walks in the nature reserve near my house. And whatever else--seeing films, making cakes. And writing here.

I want to post here about the things I make and the things I see, at least once a week. In my mind, these posts are of four kinds: posts about my writing work, whether poetry or theory; posts about making things--food, objects, art; posts about what I find around me, including on the internet; and posts that play 'the game' of connecting small pieces of information to one another in such a way as to create resonance (like this one, this one, and this one). I'll also have periodic tiny shops, like the one before Christmas.

I'm never sure whether the things I write about would be interesting to anyone else (although the numbers say there are quite a few of you who stop by here every day). Often I worry, especially when I write about theory, that things will sound pompous or stuffy. My hope is just to be able to create a record of the things I have found beautiful and useful, and that if you are here you also find them so.