From the Cargospotter aviation video channel of the approach at London’s Heathrow airport. At 17x speed the planes are buffeted by the wind currents like so many toys.
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2 - Ice of Lake Baikal
From Wikipedia:
Lake Baikal is the world's oldest lake, at 25 million years. Located in the south of the Russian region of Siberia, between Irkutsk Oblast to the northwest and the Buryat Republic to the southeast, it is the most voluminous freshwater lake in the world, containing roughly 20% of the world's unfrozen surface fresh water.
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POTD - Now These Objects Will Move by Themselves by Hsia Yü
Now These Objects Will Move by Themselves
by Hsia Yü
Every time you get to thinking this time doesn't count
Every time you come to feel this here and now isn't real
The sound of silk ripping in the air
You run inside as fast you can
Hide yourself
Peering through a crack
Softly say: "Next time, OK."
Just as everything begins to happen you become conscious
Your consciousness is taking the happening
Out of what's happening
But for that one day someday you are able to say:
"Well, actually . . ."
Or maybe
"Once . . ."
Every time you find yourself believing:
"Next time will count far more than this time."
Which is strictly speaking
The next time of the next time
Or the next time ready to rush out
You shout:
"Doesn't count!"
Just as you think of making these objects move by themselves
On account of the fact you're beginning to fidget
Sure enough it all begins to happen
And so we see
A chair moving towards us all by itself
"Just the same it doesn't count."
You say ever so languidly:
"Even that doesn't count doesn't count."
translated from the Chinese by Steve Bradbury
There isn't a lot of contemporary Chinese language that gets translated into to English. Hsia's voice has such structure and shape in what are otherwise featureless worlds.
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3 - The Known Universe
From the American Museum of Natural History:
"The Known Universe takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang. Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world's most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History. The new film, created by the Museum, is part of an exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan through May 2010. "
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4 - Timelapse of the Swiss Alps
Alessandro Della Bella created this timelapse of the Swiss Alps, from Arosa to Zermatt, including the world famous mountains Matterhorn and Eige.
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5 - Blind Surfer Surfing Hawaii's Pipeline
Just astounding and inspiring, 19-year-old Brazilian Derek Rabelo, entirely blind since birth, surfs Pipeline, Hawaii.
A documentary called Beyond Sight, about Derek’s life is coming soon.
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POTD - Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form by Matthea Harvey
Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form
1.
Pity the bathtub that belongs to the queen its feet
Are bronze casts of the former queen’s feet its sheen
A sign of fretting is that an inferior stone shows through
Where the marble is worn away with industrious
Polishing the tub does not take long it is tiny some say
Because the queen does not want room for splashing
The maid thinks otherwise she knows the king
Does not grip the queen nightly in his arms there are
Others the queen does not have lovers she obeys
Her mother once told her your ancestry is your only
Support then is what she gets in the bathtub she floats
Never holds her nose and goes under not because
She might sink but because she knows to keep her ears
Above water she smiles at the circle of courtiers below
Her feet are kicking against walls which cannot give
Satisfaction at best is to manage to stay clean
2.
Pity the bathtub its forced embrace of the whims of
One man loves but is not loved in return by the object
Of his affection there is little to tell of his profession
There is more for it is because he works with glass
That he thinks things are clear (he loves) and adjustable
(she does not love) he knows how to take something
Small and hard and hot and make room for
His breath quickens at night as he dreams of her he wants
To create a present unlike any other and because he cannot
Hold her he designs something that can a bathtub of
Glass shimmers red when it is hot he pours it into the mold
In a rush of passion only as it begins to cool does it reflect
His foolishness enrages him he throws off his clothes meaning
To jump in and lie there but it is still too hot and his feet propel
Him forward he runs from one end to the other then falls
To the floor blisters begin to swell on his soft feet he watches
His pain harden into a pretty pattern on the bottom of the bath
3.
Pity the bathtub its forced embrace of the human
Form may define external appearance but there is room
For improvement within try a soap dish that allows for
Slippage is inevitable as is difference in the size of
The subject may hoard his or her bubbles at different
Ends of the bathtub may grasp the sponge tightly or
Loosely it may be assumed that eventually everyone gets in
The bath has a place in our lives and our place is
Within it we have control of how much hot how much cold
What to pour in how long we want to stay when to
Return is inevitable because we need something
To define ourselves against even if we know that
Whenever we want we can pull the plug and get out
Which is not the case with our own tighter confinement
Inside the body oh pity the bathtub but pity us to
One of the first poets of my generation I fell in love with, Harvey doesn't shy from muscular syntax or florid imagery.
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1 - Tilt-shifted Hong Kong Timelapse
Hong Kong remains one of my favorite cities, perched as it is on the edges of so many things: Asia, the Pacific, Democracy and Communism. Commonwealth in some of its bones, thoroughly Chinese.
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2 - The Edge of Finland
Photographer Mikko Lagerstedt captured hundreds of images of the Finnish landscape in this body of work called Edge.
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POTD - Reasons by Thomas James
Reasons
BY THOMAS JAMES
For our own private reasons
We live in each other for an hour.
Stranger, I take your body and its seasons,
Aware the moon has gone a little sour
For us. The moon hangs up there like a stone
Shaken out of its proper setting.
We lie down in each other. We lie down alone
and watch the moon’s flawed marble getting
Out of hand. What are the dead doing tonight?
The padlocks of their tongues embrace the black,
Each syllable locked in place, tucked out of sight.
Even this moon could never pull them back,
Even if it held them in its arms
And weighed them down with stones,
Took them entirely on their own terms
And piled the orchard’s blossom on their bones.
I am aware of your body and its dangers.
I spread my cloak for you in leafy weather
Where other fugitives and other strangers
Will put their mouths together.
When I was first introduced to James, it was in a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy. His Letters to a Stranger, published in 1974, had gone out of print. It was my professor, Lucie Brock-Broido who brought him to me. Her story of being introduced to him by my other, elder professor Richard Howard is itself a compelling story. The book, his only one before he committed suicide, is back in print, in no small part thanks to these twin literary lions.
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3 - Kanye Wes Anderson
I love a good mashup meme (i.e. Slaughterhouse 90210) and while this one might eventually need to broaden its purview or risk running dry of material, for the time being it is amazing. Kayne West lyrics with Wes Anderson screens or the other way around. Love it.
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4 - Wonderland Photos
Many of these photographs are from a project titled “Wonderland“, which photographer Cade Martin shot for the Washington Ballet in Washington D.C.
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POTD - Sailing to Byzantium by W.B. Yeats
Sailing to Byzantium
by W. B. Yeats
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
Yeats is inarguably a giant in English language poetry, but he can sometimes be less accessible under the layers of dusty age. There are certain poems of his, like this, that shake off all the gathered distance and bring him directly to my life now.
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5 - Kuala Lumpur Timelapse
Kuala Lumpur is one of my favorite cities: vibrant, dynamic, high contrasts, great food. Photographer Rob Whitworth explains:
“5 months. 400 hours of solid work. 4 cameras. 40 shoots. 640 gigabytes of data. 19,997 photographs.”
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1 - 2012 Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographers of the Year
The Natural History Museum and BBC Worldwide sponsor the 2012 Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest. Around 100 images pulled from 48,000 by an international panel of judges. The amazing photos were shown for the first time yesterday at London’s Natural History Museum and will be on exhibit there through March 2013, before going on a world tour.
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Photo by flickr/add1sun
POTD - The Couple by Tomas Tranströmer
THE COUPLE
They turn the light off, and its white globe glows
an instant and then dissolves, like a tablet
in a glass of darkness. Then a rising.
The hotel walls shoot up into heaven’s darkness.
Their movements have grown softer, and they sleep,
but their most secret thoughts begin to meet
like two colors that meet and run together
on the wet paper in a schoolboy’s painting.
It is dark and silent. The city however has come nearer
tonight. With its windows turned off. Houses have come.
They stand packed and waiting very near,
a mob of people with blank faces.
Nobel Laureate Tranströmer is one of the most masterful poets of the last century. "His condensed, translucent images give us fresh access to reality" were the words with which the Nobel Prize was awarded to him.
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2 - Papercut Silhouettes of Awesome
Inspired by the movies, these stunning, papercut action silhouettes were created by photographer David A. Reeves and are another example of creativity being the only limit.
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POTD - Act III, Sc. 2 by Jorie Graham
Act III, Sc. 2
by Jorie Graham
Look she said this is not the distance
we wanted to stay at—We wanted to get
close, very close. But what
is the way in again? And is it
too late? She could hear the actions
rushing past—but they are on
another track. And in the silence,
or whatever it is that follows,
there was still the buzzing: motes, spores,
aftereffects and whatnot recalled the morning after.
Then the thickness you can’t get past called waiting.
Then the you, whoever you are, peering down to see if it’s done yet.
Then just the look on things being looked-at.
Then just the look of things being seen.
Graham is a powerhouse of contemporary American poetry. When you start to become enamored of her thoughtful and open mind, the turn her words make, you can also begin to sense the vast continent of her work you have to yet encounter reaching out to you through even her simplest of lines.
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3 - The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
Such an outstanding themed personal creative writing project from John Koenig, a freelance designer. I absolutely love it. I think I will bombard all my friends with these (there are 178 pages of them!), and often: The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
"The Upper Midwest’s third-largest compendium of the outer spatters of the emotional palette. Its mission is to harpoon, bag and tag wild sorrows, then release them back into the subconscious."
Each word is completely made up and is guaranteed authentic by the author himself. All content is original and intended to be read at night.
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POTD - The Leaving by Brigit Pegeen Kelly
The Leaving
My father said I could not do it,
but all night I picked the peaches.
The orchard was still, the canals ran steadily.
I was a girl then, my chest its own walled garden.
How many ladders to gather an orchard?
I had only one and a long patience with lit hands
and the looking of the stars which moved right through me
the way the water moved through the canals with a voice
that seemed to speak of this moonless gathering
and those who had gathered before me.
I put the peaches in the pond's cold water,
all night up the ladder and down, all night my hands
twisting fruit as if I were entering a thousand doors,
all night my back a straight road to the sky.
And then out of its own goodness, out
of the far fields of the stars, the morning came,
and inside me was the stillness a bell possesses
just after it has been rung, before the metal
begins to long again for the clapper's stroke.
The light came over the orchard.
The canals were silver and then were not.
and the pond was--I could see as I laid
the last peach in the water--full of fish and eyes.
When I heard Pegeen Kelly read, in particular the poem "Song", I was so struck at the voice that seemed to flow through her with words.
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