flesh
some petals are like paper. some petals are like velvet. some petals are like dried leaves. some petals are like flesh. good to know you, pink magnolia, while you and your plump-fingered petals last.
pink magnolia blossom
ruffed up
this photo ended up looking like an illustration. it’s actually feathers from the neck (or ruff) of a ruffed grouse. i brightened it to the point where it began to look like sketch lines. the semi-circular curls and occasional s-curves of the feather barbs kept drawing me further into the image, my eyes jumping from one delight to the next. the only thing lost with the over-illumination was the delicate, irridescent band of midnight blue at the tip of each feather. when the light catches them just so…pure magic.
grouse ruff (neck) feathers
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I would like this as a print on silk charmeuse so I can make myself a bathrobe to swan around in, please.
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improbablity
i have always felt there is something utterly absurd about magnolia blossoms. i suspect that is why i love them so dearly.
magnolia blossoms
a quarantine of consumption
Li Edelkoort was born in the netherlands in the 1950. she is regarded as one of the world’s most influential trend forecasters. she is also one of my personal favorite thought leaders. she has referred to this coronavirus reset as a quarantine of consumption. i love this idea. here is an excerpt from a recent interview she gave:
For several years we have understood that in order to survive as a species and to keep the planet going we need to make draconian changes to the way we live, travel, consume and entertain. There is no way we can continue to produce as many goods and the many choices we have grown accustomed to. The debilitating mass of information about nothing at all has numbed our culture. There is a growing awareness amongst younger generations that ownership and the hoarding of clothes and cars is no longer even attractive.
But somehow the human psyche is resistant and wants to test if things will just dissipate by themselves, waiting and biding our time while we are doing business as usual. Therefore the sudden stop on all of this by the virus takes decisionmaking out of our hands and will just slow things down to another, frightful pace in the beginning. We are no longer used to doing things without rushing, waiting for answers, searching for solutions nor producing in our backyards. Improvisation skills and creativity will become the highest assets.
We will be in a position of having a blank page for a new beginning because lots of companies and money will be wiped out in the process of slowing down. Redirecting and restarting will require a lot of insight and audacity to build a new economy with other values and ways of handling production, transport, distribution and retail.
I am hopeful for: another and better system, to be put in place with more respect for human labour and conditions. In the end, we will be forced to do what we should have done already in the first place.
Oh, Li, i so hope you are right.
rose petals
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I was born in 1940 – I had an idyllic childhood despite the fact that we were marginally poor. My father was a milk man my mother worked at home. One salary got 2 adults and 4 kids through. I played with empty cans, mud pies in summer and slush pies and ice forts in winter. I had a pet duck named Mabel. My grown children love these stories of my childhood. Thankfully they loved their childhood and feel that theirs, sadly, was the real authentic era before the me me me started. That is all for now, my stroke ridden fingers are tired.
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variations on a theme
making hay while the sun shines.
forsythia blossoms
