homecoming

your homecoming will be my homecoming-

my selves go with you,only i remain;
a shadow phantom effigy or seeming
(an almost someone always who's noone)

a noone who,till their and your returning,
spends the forever of his loneliness
dreaming their eyes have opened to your morning

feeling their stars have risen through your skies:

so,in merciful love's own name,linger
no more than selfless i can quite endure
the absence of that moment when a stranger
takes in his arms my very life who's your

-when all fears doubts hopes beliefs disappear.
Everywhere and joy's perfect wholeness we're

-E.E Cummings,  Selected Poems,
passage 9 of Love and it's Mysteries
pg. 68

Someone will always say it better than you will.

"He was always doing that these days.  Everything he saw became a symbol of his own existence, from a rabbit caught in the headlights to raindrops racing down a window-pane. Perhaps it was a sign that he was going to become a poet or a philosopher: the kind of person who, when he stood on the sea-shore, didn't see waves breaking on a beach, but saw the surge of human will or the rhythms of copulation, who didn't hear the eroding roar of time and the last moaning sign of humanity fizzing into nothingness.  But perhaps it was a sign, he also thought, that he was turning into a pretentious wanker." pg. 96-7

- Stephen Fry 'The Liar'

Cicero

A friend is, as it were, a second self.- Marcus Cicero

I would just like to take a moment to pay my respects to the late Cicero (fittingly named after the philosopher), my pet rat.  Fondly known as Cissy, she was one of the most mischievous and playful souls I have ever had the pleasure of coming in contact with mine.  Now, many people say, "that's just how rats are" well, true they are known for such behaviors but she was so much more than that.  Cissy came into my life not so long ago when my good friend asked me to look after her for the summer.  I quickly fell in love with the little sweetheart, and pretty much adopted her immediately.  Taking her on as my own she became my closest friend, the one consistent soul among my own that I could turn to with all the rapid and not so rapid changes happening in my life.   Normally I don't like to share my personal life on my blog with much else but my artwork, however she taught me some valuable things I would like to share with you all.
Anyone that got to spend time with Cissy understood her gentle nature and larger than life personality, she bonded with everyone, rats are social, but she knew how to play with you, how to get you going, and how to love you.  I am really honored to have had special moments with her that no one got to experience but myself.  Like, when she would take the bits of paper I use for collage and then run SO FAST cause she knew she wasn't supposed to take them.  Few things have been funnier than see that sweet little thing running away with an eye, ear or nose.  On odd occasions I would let her keep her trophies, and these nests she made would look like some horribly disfigured person! Definitely the root of some inspiration that is for sure.  Always so fascinated with what I was doing she would literally run over my drawings as I was drawing them, and steal papers, pencils, what have you, out of my hand when I needed them most.  Cissy loved to run around my desk, she would re-organize and steal objects lying around, such as a stuffed animal that was her size, which she took on as a friend.  Even in her cage she was NEVER satisfied with where I had placed her toys so she would destroy everything until it was the way she liked it.  (Who knew a rat could be such a picky interior decorator?) She loved to get on my window sill (even tho she knew she wasn't supposed to go up there) and knock everything off, even tho she would attempt to skillfully step over my rocks and shells.  But one of my favourite things she did was when she would lick my hand clean! As if she were some sort of pup! I would make kissy noises at her and she would lick my lips, I'd open my mouth and being the daredevil she was she would stick her whole head in there! Now, this may not sound like the most sane or even sanitary thing to do with your pet rat, but she was hilarious! Curious, mischievous, really full of life!
It's hard to sum up any living creature in a few sentences, even in a few memories it almost seems to make it feel like less than more, but Cissy really taught me a few things.  Even up to an hour or so before her passing, Cissy did not want to be in her cage, she wanted to be out on my desk, and running around in her favourite places.  That girl would not stand still, she refused to give up.  I always called Cissy my little psycho, and my god I will be lucky if i get to be that psycho in my life.  I say psycho in the sense of will power and determination beyond any source of reason.  I hope that I can manage to live my life the way she did which is to relentlessly play, never stop trying, live until your last moment, and love without question.  You will know you have achieved these things once it defies all reason, logic, or even proper manners.

So here's to you Cicero, I loved you more than most, and God knows I liked you more than the general populace.  You were a great friend to me, and it was my pleasure to have your company for the time I did.  I will remember you fondly, and miss you sorely.  Rest in peace sweetheart.

Peter Porcal, Renaissance Man

If you ever have the chance to study in Florence, Italy. You will be so lucky to be taught by Peter. Read this article which somehow manages to sum up his gentle nature, and poetic style of teaching. Peter, your students throughout the years miss you.

Peter Porcal, Renaissance Man

an idea

"An idea once formed does not limit itself just to being, it reflects upon itself: it exists."
pg 30
A Wave of Dreams
Louis Aragon

the sewing machine and the umbrella make love.

I am currently researching information for a paper I am working on.  I just read this and I found it, extremely interesting and applicable to what I have been trying to achieve.

(on Andre Breton and Louis Aragon) “They found desire and dreams to be lights within darkness generated by contrasting images as they rub against one another, setting both mind and body on edge and opening them to the uncanny."
- Gray Read "Aragon's armoire"


(post title derived from Isadore Ducasse's definition of beauty)

La Specola

Went to La Specola the other week... it is Florence's Natural History Museum established in 1775. Dedicated to Zoology and anatomical waxes, studies of the brain and workings of the human body.  It has a greatly artistic influence, a good blend of art and science.  As well, there is a fantastic little book store. It's a great place to come and draw and get "close to nature" in a Memento Mori sort of way.

However, this Museum, like a lot of museums in Florence, is not getting the right funding to keep up maintenance. 

Surrealist Manifesto

I just read the Surrealist Manifesto written by Andre Breton, and I truly found it to be an inspirational, humorous and thought provoking read.  It really brought light to some thoughts which I think float around in people's minds but we don't really know they have a definition or light shed on them...  Also, it's a very good perspective on writing and origin of thought, as well as the importance of dreams. Here are a few interesting and abstracted quotes from the manifesto:


-“...the absence of any known restrictions allows him the perspective of several lives lived at once; this illusion becomes firmly rooted within him; now he is only interested in the fleeting, the extreme facility of everything”


-“Christopher Columbus should have set out to discover America with a boatload of madmen. And note how this madness has taken shape, and endured.”


-“As a cleansing antidote to all this, M. Paul Valéry recently suggested that an anthology be compiled in which the largest possible number of opening passages from novels be offered; the resulting insanity, he predicted, would be a source of considerable edification”
- writings should give enough to the reader to imagine, but not enough to dictate what they see, the reader should have more choice than simply to “close the book”

- "If in a cluster of grapes there are no two alike, why do you want me to describe this grape by the other, by all the others, why do you want me to make a palatable grape? Our brains are dulled by the incurable mania of wanting to make the unknown known, classifiable. The desire for analysis wins out over the sentiments.** (Barrès, Proust.)”

-“ The imagination is perhaps on the point of reasserting itself, of reclaiming its rights. If the depths of our mind contain within it strange forces capable of augmenting those on the surface, or of waging a victorious battle against them, there is every reason to seize them--first to seize them, then, if need be, to submit them to the control of our reason.”

-  why do we hold reality higher than dreams?
- whose to say our dreams are more invalid than reality?

-“ Can't the dream also be used in solving the fundamental questions of life? Are these questions the same in one case as in the other and, in the dream, do these questions already exist?”

- the waking state a “phenomenon of interference”
- reality rarely expresses itself and when it does it is confined to an idea already

- “Let yourself be carried along, events will not tolerate your interference. You are nameless. The ease of everything is priceless.”  

-“ If man's awaking is harder, if it breaks the spell too abruptly, it is because he has been led to make for himself too impoverished a notion of atonement.”

-“ I believe in the future resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality, if one may so speak.”

-“ Let us not mince words: the marvelous is always beautiful, anything marvelous is beautiful, in fact only the marvelous is beautiful.”

-“ May you only take the trouble to practice poetry”

-“ I had begun to cherish words excessively for the space they allow around them, for their tangencies with countless other words which I did not utter.”

-“ The image is a pure creation of the mind.

It cannot be born from a comparison but from a juxtaposition of two more or less distant realities.

The more the relationship between the two juxtaposed realities is distant and true, the stronger the image will be--the greater its emotional power and poetic reality...* (Nord-Sud, March 1918)”

-“ SURREALISM, n. Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express--verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner--the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.”

-“ ENCYCLOPEDIA. Philosophy. Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought. It tends to ruin once and for all all other psychic mechanisms and to substitute itself for them in solving all the principal problems of life. The following have performed acts of ABSOLUTE SURREALISM: Messrs. Aragon, Baron, Boiffard, Breton, Carrive, Crevel, Delteil, Desnos, Eluard, Gérard, Limbour, Malkine, Morise, Naville, Noll, Péret, Picon, Soupault, Vitrac.”

“ But we, who have made no effort whatsoever to filter, who in our works have made ourselves into simple receptacles of so many echoes, modest recording instruments who are not mesmerized by the drawings we are making, perhaps we serve an even nobler cause. Thus do we render with integrity the "talent" which has been lent to us. You might as well speak of the talent of this platinum ruler, this mirror, this door, and of the sky, if you like.”

The entire Surrealist Manifesto and more can be found here.

Max Ernst- La Femme 100 Têtes

I just found Max Ernst's collage novel "100 Headless Woman" it takes a couple views to fully digest, just one image, let alone the whole thing.  Please, enjoy.