Caroline Denervaud

cathédrale from caroline denervaud on Vimeo.

‘You Aren’t like Most Girls’

"How dare you tell me ‘I am not like most girls’,
when those ‘girls’ you refer to
are my sisters and mothers, my friends,
the very solace and the kindness I have sought
when the worst things in my life have happened?
How dare you assume
I should take that as a compliment,
and beam at you like it is praise
when you are alienating me
from the very core
of my proudly female being?
There are a thousand ways
to tell me you love me,
and making my sisters small
to make me big
isn’t one of them.

Tell me you love me, but not because I am different.
Tell me you love me, just because you do."

- ‘You Aren’t like Most Girls’ | Nikita Gill

“One can never ask anyone to change a feeling.”

— Susan Sontag

"Caillois ... called stones l’orée du songe—the shore of dreaming—and he amassed a wonderful collection, which he left to the Museum of National History in Paris where you can go and look at them; he also wrote two luminous books about stones. These are not about precious stones such as diamonds and rubies but about dendrites, agates, Chinese scholars’ stones—pebbles and rocks that look like nothing much at first but can open up wonders under contemplation ... They lead him to understanding the physical make-up of the world, its 'algebra, vertigo, and order.' He exults in their inscrutability and their lack of affect, their silence, their sheer stoniness. "

Marina Warner, "The Writing of Stones." Cabinet, Issue 29 Sloth Spring 2008.

The Writing Of Stones

A selection of stones from Roger Caillois' s collection, found via Arts and Science Journal

"Who knows whether this tumult of triangles inscribed in stone, first brought about by nature and then by art, does not contain one of the secret cyphers of the universe?

"I see the origin of the irresistible attraction of metaphor and analogy, the explanation of our strange and permanent need to find similarities in things. I can scarcely refrain from suspecting some ancient, diffused magnetism; a call from the center of things; a dim, almost lost memory, or perhaps a presentiment, pointless in so puny a being, of a universal syntax."

—From The Writing of Stones

Recommended Read

“Everybody

needs

a rock.

I’m sorry for kids

who don’t have

a rock

for a friend.

I’m sorry for kids

who only have

TRICYCLES

BICYCLES

HORSES

ELEPHANTS

GOLDFISH

THREE-ROOM PLAYHOUSES

FIRE ENGINES

WIND-UP DRAGONS

AND THINGS LIKE THAT —

if

they don’t have

a

rock

for a friend.”

-- Byrd Baylor

Everybody Needs A Rock by Byrd Baylor, illustrated by Peter Parnall, is not just for kids. Follow her simple but insightfull tips on searching for the perfect rock to the letter and you'll find yourself moving and looking in all the ways nature intended. Priceless.

“My period of indecision is over – I am going West… It came quietly – naturally… the country seems to call one in a way that one has to answer it.”

- Georgia O’Keeffe on moving to New Mexico

kill your idols

Kill your idols and your fables
Take your weapons off the table
It's only mercy now that you need in your world

Lay your burdens on my shoulders
For a while until it's over
I'm gonna love you like we're all each other have

rebecca horn

Rebecca Horn body extension pieces

back to the drawing board

The marvelous Marthe Armitage, found via evencleveland:

'Making takes time, commitment and training. People expect to make their fortunes at the drop of a hat these days.'

Amanda Brazier

The work of Amanda Brazier, making her own paint from things she collects to layer her canvases. I LOVE the process.

Beyond talent lie all the usual words:
discipline, love, luck, but – most of all, endurance.

-- JAMES BALDWIN via The Paris Review

‘I am a reasonable and sane functionalist tempered by irrational frivolity’

– Alexander Girard

Agnes Martin

 D'Metrius Rice

bowling, 1921

Tatsuya Noda

it's to sing up the earth

Richard Long, White light walk (1987)

Just do your work. And if the world needs your work it will come and get you. And if it doesn’t, do your work anyway. You can have fantasies about having control over the world, but I know I can barely control my kitchen sink. That is the grace I’m given. Because when one can control things, one is limited to one’s own vision.

- Kiki Smith

Lil Buck making my heart skip beats

Eric Roinestad

Kate V. Robertson, Revelation (2010)

Arna Óttarsdóttir, Green slab (2013)

community

I’ve said before that it’s important to have people that believe in you as much as you believe in yourself. Your community doesn’t have to be big but it has to have the heart

— Tina Dang 

read her interview on apieceapart.com 

NAF

“I am obsessed with becoming a woman comfortable in her skin.”

- Sandra Cisneros

Haris Epaminonda

www.harisepaminonda.com

Dear Good Looker,
 

Gosh. So much to tell, so little time. Let's cut to the chase....

I need your help, dearest reader, with a project I have been busy putting together. I cordially invite you, and your loved ones, to celebrate the space of otherness, difference and delight that your body occupies through THIS SURVEY all about movement.

********
**** ABOUT MOVE ME ****
********

Move Me is an ever evolving survey designed to prompt people to think more deeply about their bodies in terms of movement choices, habits and patterns. The project is about commonality: The one thing we all have in common is that we have to move to live.

Researching the whys and ways of movement is a part of my job as a yoga teacher. I know there is a vast amount of information and advice about the way we 'should' move out there,  but often lacking from this are the personal stories, from a variety of different backgrounds and experiences,  that shape each of us in discrete and individual ways. Through eight years of teaching it is these stories that have come to help finesse what I do beyond the more 'evidence based' scientific discourse. This thread is a vital part of the map to understanding what it is we need to feel well.

Human beings are not built to float you see. They need an earthly anchor of meaning and care so they don't get left in confusion. This survey, with your help, is my contribution that anchor of meaning. The information gathered is being used on an ongoing blog and as research for an art project, both aim to express a riot of opinion and give a snapshot of the complexity of modern movement decisions with cultural influences; a portrait of the human body today revealing impulses that influence our daily ritual of being.

Anyone who has a body is invited to take part and I am also open to creative submissions about movement, like this wonderful story, from everyone and anyone.

Join me for this major shift in cultural thinking and be the laxative which lubricates the constipation of the way we contemplate movement (I'm so sorry about that sentence).

 CONVINCED? THEN MOVE TO THE SURVEY
(please note, you can answer anonymously and you DO NOT have to answer everything, just whatever takes your fancy.)

********
**** FORWARD THIS POST ****
********

The revolution is now. Yay! However, I know finding people willing to give up precious time to fill out a long winded survey is hard (I have no idea why). So, following the runaway success of my past newsletters free hug initiative, I urge you to forward this email to ALL PEOPLE WITH BODIES that might be interested in taking part. Come to me (click here) with evidence of your benevolence, and I will send you something magic in the post.

You can be social and forward via the magic of these buttons....

Share

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Forwar

we cannot know that we are illuminated by a great light

My Red Hills, Georgia Okeeffe

Ed Ruscha

Rite of Spring, Pina Bausch

Agnes Martin

Stefania Vasques

That light cannot be known directly is expressed in contemporary terms by Peter Russell. When speaking of the light of consciousness, he asserts:

Although all we ever see is light, paradoxically, we never know light directly. The light that strikes the eye is known only through the energy it releases. This energy is translated into a visual imagery in the mind, and that image seems to be composed of light—but that light is a quality of mind. We never know the light itself. 

Russell is speaking from a scientific viewpoint, but the fact that we can never know light itself is helpful in appreciating the working of boundless compassion. When the light of compassion illuminates our existence, it reveals our self-delusions. Hiroyuki Itsuki ... describes this as follows: 

We cannot know that we are illuminated by a great light simply by looking up into the sky. But if we lower our heads and look down at our feet we can clearly see the long, dark shadow that stretches out from us. We know that the darker and blacker that shadow is, the brighter the light that shines upon us.

Taitetsu Unno, Shin Buddhism: Bits of Rubble Turn into Gold.

Found via Evencleveland