Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Distrust That Particular Flavor

Snow spattered Coco ponders eternity while distrusting
the mealy, mass-produced dog treat between her paws
In William Gibson's new book, Distrust That Particular Flavor,
he often admits his failings in the notes after each piece. 

One of his descriptions of the Internet hints
That he is grieving the same existential loss
as Coco:

It is like rummaging in the forefront of the collective global mind,
Somewhere, surely, there is a site that contains… 
everything we have lost?


Monday, February 20, 2012

Creativity

This image and text that follows is from http://www.nomadology.com/

Living structures canalize energy flows so as to insure their internal coherence and linear expansion. Creativity means transversing existing canals, inventing new ways. Thus, it is natural that rigid structures, such as totalitarian political systems, fear artistic creation.

Creativity is a kind of chaos, it is the fact of life. Creativity is also the principal tool nomads use to adapt to newsituations. Creativity arises naturally in conditions of changes and novelty. In a changing environment creation is permanent.

The construction of an identity is a creative, nonlinear process. It is a dialogue with one's physical and socialenvironment; a multiple-waysdynamic relationship.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

THE QUALITY WITHOUT A NAME

Sea Point Beach, Kittery ME:  2/17/12

The fact that this quality cannot be named does not mean that it is vague or imprecise. It is impossible to name because it is unerringly precise. Words fail to capture it because it is much more precise than any word. 

The word which we most often use to talk about the quality without a name is the word "alive." There is a sense in which the distinction between something alive and something lifeless is much more general, and far more profound, than the distinction between living things and nonliving things, or between life and death. Things which are living may be lifeless; nonliving things may be alive. A man who is walking and talking can be alive; or he can be lifeless. Beethoven's last quartets are alive; so are the waves at the ocean shore...*

* Quote from A Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander


Thursday, February 9, 2012

Cabin Fever: Ice Structures of the Mind


February 7th of 2012 from our N.H. winter that wasn't
The ice has unseasonably thawed along the edge of Jenness Pond
re-freezing each night only to be pushed up the next day
from the heat of the sun and expansion of the ice pack
forming shifting structures that look like
turtles run over by a 10-wheeler
or houses after an earthquake
to my cabin-fevered mind.


Friday, February 3, 2012

Who says it isn't spring?

It's Februay 3rd:
We are suffering through the worst of winter, right?
No way tweeted the 30 migrating robins 
who descended on my crabapple tree today,
some of whom I captured in this photo*.

* p.s.    clicking on the photo will enlarge it,
               making the robins easier to see.