still porn

it’s late. and i’m seeing convex velvety folds, and i’m seeing an upright, conical shaft, and i’m really not even turned on i just want to go to bed and sleep, but but this is what i’m seeing tonight, and you can do with it whatever you wish, and i will be back with you tomorrow, and we will be elevated and cerebral. see you then.

dried anthurium flowers

benign neglect

i have been spending the last couple days (read daylight hours) doing spring clean-up in my yard. i have the luxury of time, so i have been doing a more thorough job than previous years. i like what i’m learning and discovering–yesterday i identified a patch of wild ginger that i never knew i had! on the other hand, although i just said i have the luxury of time, there are still only 10 or so good sunlit hours to make a daily STILL photo. sounds like a lot unless you are carefully cleaning up three acres of benignly neglected woods. so forgive me if this image is a slight repetition of a recent theme. i have been happily squandering my luxuriously empty days.

cut anthurium leaves

forme et fond

i made a similar design to this one recently using star anise. the two images are quite alike in their design, and entirely different in their materials. they each also say something slightly different about shape and color. in his french high school, our son was taught to differentiate between the form of a work of art, and the subject matter. the “forme” in french, and the “fond.” the question is how much each influences the other. i have a forsythia bush about to burst into yellow flame in my back yard. i wonder what language it will speak, when i arrange it into an asymmetrically weighted circle.

crushed dried red leaves

My daughter Eva who is home from Stanford has been doing weekly 15 minute poetry writing sessions with her friends over Zoom as a way to stay connected and have a mutual creative activity. Every Sunday night, she comes out and reads us the four poems of the session. This was a line that came out of last Sunday:

“My childhood room was mostly skylight & when it rained, my mom would tell me to listen for the fairies dancing on the glass.”

These pressed violets remind me of fairies dancing across glass.

pressed violets

a delicate balance

i had a very unexpected reaction to cutting up these feathers. they have been sitting in a box in my garage for two years now. they were a little too beaten up to use in my usual STILL compositions. and yet. when i started cutting them i felt as if i were somehow causing injury. taking a blade to millenia of careful perfecting felt like a form of callousness. an undoing of a small part of the world that is everywhere being so comprehensibly undone. it felt like the opposite of a prayer. i like the visual result. but the composition gives me an uncomfortable feeling.

composition of cut feathers