ding dong ding

VOICES OF TWO BELLS
THAT SPEAK FROM
TWILIGHT TEMPLES...
AH! COOL DIALOGUE


BUSON

MY TWO PLUM TREES ARE
SO GRACIOUS ...
SEE, THEY FLOWER
ONE NOW, ONE LATER


BUSON

NONE BROKE THE SILENCE...
NOR VISITOR
NOR HOST ...
NOR WHITE
CHRYSAN-
THEMUM


RYOTA

animal

The prison of one's character is painstakingly built to deny one thing and one thing alone: one's creatureliness. The creatureliness is the terror.

Once admit that you are a defecating creature and you invite the primeval ocean of creature anxiety to flood over you. But it is more than creature anxiety, it is also man's anxiety, the anxiety that results from the human paradox that man is an animal who is conscious of his animal limitation.

Anxiety is the result of the perception of the truth of one's condition. What does it mean to be a self conscious animal? The idea is ludicrous, if it is not monstrous. It means to know that one is food for worms.

This is the terror: to have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consciousness of self, deep inner feelings, an excruciating inner yearning for life and self expression - and with all this yet to die.

It seems like a hoax. . . . . Culture is in its most intimate intent a heroic denial of creatureliness.

Ernest Becker,
The Denial of Death

on the first day

first, yes. i know this is the same song as yesterday. but it's the version i wanted off this very wonderful tribute to joseph spence cd that i have called "out on the rolling sea." since it's all music from the bahamas, i thought the singers were from there too. uh, nope. blue murder.

second-- i and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of folks here in berkeley followed our annual new year's day ritual: we went shopping for calendars at the pegasus bookstore annual calendar sale: 3 for $10! what a great lot of calendars i found there yesterday. now this one from the carl larsson calendar -- what is that pink thing??! in front of the lamp.

i also found one of 'impressionist photographers'! this gertrude kasebier is hanging on my wall at this moment, and if i lean my head just a little to the left i see her there.

while i was poking around in the piles and piles of calendars, i started talking with a woman about design. turns out her father did this, among numerous other WPA posters! one of my favorites! wouldn't it be cool if our obama puts artists to work as part of new deal redux?

now, a couple of days ago, you know, the one with the crescent moons, i had an image i was going to use till i suddenly remembered it was new, as opposed to the 100 years old that it looks.

his name is john martinez.

these are both images from a long series he did about operas.

look how amazingly he manages to meld jugendstil, art nouveau and other japonisme styles.

green hair

I know you wonder why I wear
The hat which I have called Green Hair
And why I cover up my own

Which has a tawny chestnut tone

Warm, when all its lights are lit,
As a swarm of bees with the sun on it.

You say bronze hair is prettier

Than this strange green of feathery fur;

But there's a charm in
this strange green
Which is so nearly blue; I've seen

A comb of coral set with pearls
Drawn through lengths of such green curls

In the green gloom of a chilly cave
Down, far down in a hollow wave;

And under ancient forest trees
Long green tresses such as these
Shadow like a falling veil

Shy secret faces, dusky pale;
And I have seen green locks like those
Deep in a glacier, under snows.
I have seen such green hair tossed

From the brows of a creature wandering lost
On the other side of
a waning moon,
And in the golden sun at noon

I have seen young April plait
Flowers in showery hair like that,
And wring the rain from it in drops,
And spread it to dry on green hill-tops.

Now do you wonder that I wear
The hat which I have called Green Hair?
Thus with witchcraft I am crowned
And wrapped in marvels round and round;

There's sorcery in it, and surprise;

Believe your own dark-amber eyes
When mine of hazel look at you
Turned to incredible turquoise blue.

© 2008 Elinor Wylie

(the beautiful fouquet brooch
will be seen in
the boston museum of fine art's
Imperishable Beauty: Art Nouveau Jewelry, Wednesday, July 23, 2008 - Sunday, November 9, 2008)

birds

THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT A BLACKBIRD

I

Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II

I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV

A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V

I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI

Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII

O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII

I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X

At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI

He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII

The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

Wallace Stevens

From Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens by Wallace Stevens.
Copyright © 1954 by Wallace Stevens. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

(see also)

sinbad the buddha

i am not a hokusai expert, so i am still vulnerable to the wonder encountering a new area of his talents fosters. so when moon river mentioned a site with books illustrated by him, i went to check it out.

my first reaction was that these were different from any hokusai i remembered seeing; they were more narrative, with more depth to the characters. two books are offered. one is a collection of limerick-type poems (humorous, perhaps a bit ribald), none of which could i find a translation for. though the women featured look neither ribald not humorous, they do look more like real women than one usually finds in ukiyo-e.

my second impression, though, was that the illustrations in the other book(s), the life story of the buddha, reminded me of the illustrations from the era called the golden age of illustration.

when i first saw this one i immediately thought of s. clay wilson's 'the checkered demon.' but as i paged through the illustrations from edmond (or edmund--he changed it) dulac, i began to feel that the similarities were even more striking.

hmmmm, i thought... could dulac have seen them? "Dulac was born in Toulouse, France, 22 October 1882, the son of a commercial traveller. He began drawing and painting at a very early age, and his holidays were spent copying Japanese prints." 1

discussing another artist, bpib says, "Goble [was] well-versed in watercolor techniques and very influenced by the same Japanese techniques that fascinated Dulac." (though they don't mention this in dulac's bio).

according to wikipedia, "The Jātaka Tales [the books hokusai was illustrating] refer to a voluminous [547] body of folklore-like literature concerning the previous births (jāti) of the Buddha."

hmmmm, i wondered... could there be any actual relationship between these stories and the sinbad ones? or was the similarity of the illustrations merely coincidence, or perhaps inspiration?





"I have now followed the Western history of the Buddhist Book of Birth Stories along two channels only. Space would fail me, and the reader's patience perhaps too, if I attempted to do more. But I may mention that the inquiry is not by any means exhausted. A learned Italian has proved that a good many of the stories of the hero known throughout Europe as Sinbad the Sailor are derived from the same inexhaustible treasury of stories witty and wise." wrote thomas william rhys davids in 1880. 2

"These 'Jakata stories' about the Buddha were translated into Persian, Greek, Latin and Hebrew and formed the basis of some of the most famous story sequences of the Common Era - Sinbad, the Arabian Nights and Aesop's Fables - the latter being compiled by a monk in 14th century Byzantium."3

as has been mentioned here before, dulac was certainly not the only illustrator of his time to be influenced by the japanese prints. to mention only two others here by no means excludes anyone. in fact one would be hard pressed to find one who wasn't.

as dulac, along with arthur rackham and harry clarke and countless others demonstrate with their numbers, the phenomenon of japonisme was deeper and more labyrinthine than we have even begun to discuss.