Animation: Como te quiero

Directed by Cossa. Music by Khruangbin.

Found on Everlasting Blört.

Give That Wolf a Banana

It’s Eurovision time. Here’s Norway’s entry for this year, by Subwoolfer.

A Piece of the Storm, by Mark Strand

A Piece of the Storm

by Mark Strand

From the shadow of domes in the city of domes,
A snowflake, a blizzard of one, weightless, entered your room
And made its way to the arm of the chair where you, looking up
From your book, saw it the moment it landed. That’s all
There was to it. No more than a solemn waking
To brevity, to the lifting and falling away of attention, swiftly,
A time between times, a flowerless funeral. No more than that
Except for the feeling that this piece of the storm,
Which turned into nothing before your eyes, would come back,
That someone years hence, sitting as you are now, might say:
“It’s time. The air is ready. The sky has an opening.”

Mark Strand reading the poem

High Desert Weekend

We drove to Central Washington this weekend to visit some high desert spots, lush and green at this time of year. We hiked all around the Columbia National Wildlife Refuge and tried out our new phone cameras.

Ben Paris Restaurant Wallpaper

There’s a new hotel in the old Eitel Building in downtown Seattle, and the ground floor restaurant has cool wallpaper.

Pike Place flowers and seafood design by Kate Blairstone.

  

Mural by Kyler Martz.

Souvenir design by Kate Blairestone.

A Treasure Hunt

I have some old friends whose birthdays are both in April, and I’ve put together a treasure hunt for them. They aren’t on the internet, so I have no fear this post will spoil the surprise.

I’ll mail them a couple of letters, followed by a notebook that contains a small key, and finally an X-marks-the-spot map. The spot is about five miles from their house in rural Washington state, and there they’ll find a waterproof ammo can.

scroll, map, ephemera, and a book sealed with wax and The Yellow Sign

ephemera

clay bits

papyrus scroll, The Weighing of the Heart. Please note Cthulhu is officiating.

a copy of a fragment of John Dee’s translation of the Necronomicon, hand sewn in the Italian manner

The teaser letters and notebook help explain the contents. I’m especially pleased with how the scroll turned out. It took months to draw & color the papyrus. The scroll itself is just a mop handle with a couple of drawer pulls for end caps.

Though it’s unlikely, I worry that someone might find this thing before they do, so on the day I send the map I’ll also drive the 250 miles (400 km) necessary to hide it. I think they’ll like it.

Dedicated to Dave and Molly, written in Dead-ite font. Klaatu Barada Necktie.

Stromae on the French News

I got Stromae‘s new album, Multitude. It’s really great.

Here he is live on the French nightly news (click cc for English captions).

Digital Art from Ukraine on Etsy

Artists and crafters from Ukraine might not be able to ship physical objects abroad right now, but their digital art is available instantly on Etsy through a digital download search, and your payment is instantly available to the artist.

I bought these beautiful scanned paintings in super high-resolution images (not posted here).

 

From seller KuchmiyArt

From seller softwhitetrail

Find tons more digital art from Ukraine here.

Winter Day at the Arboretum

The winter garden at the arboretum is in full bloom.

The Darkling Thrush, by Thomas Hardy

The Darkling Thrush

by Thomas Hardy

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land’s sharp features seemed to be
The Century’s corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

*

Here is an audio discussion and reading of the poem by poet Tracy K. Smith.

More poetry