The design is in the cards

One of C’s newest creations using House of Cards, designed by Charles and Ray Eames.

Many cards; many choices, many designs, many possibilities…

http://www.eamesgallery.com/

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All we are given are possibilities – to make ourselves one thing or another.
~ Jose Ortega y Gasset

Predictions

Snow and more snow. A series of storms sweeping through. They are predicting up to 5 inches tonight. And it’s snowing again now. Unusual weather pattern for Boise; the "banana belt" folks aren't used to it. We’ll see how many places open late tomorrow -- or are closed...

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The trouble with weather forecasting is that it's right too often for us to ignore it and wrong too often for us to rely on it.
~Patrick Young

There's one good thing about snow, it makes your lawn look as nice as your neighbor's.
~Clyde Moore

Alley art

On the side of a neighborhood garage…

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The artist does not see things as they are, but as he is.
~Alfred Tonnelle

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.
~Francis Bacon

Of the sacred

While listening to "Sacred Cloud Music" on "Silk Road Journeys: Beyond the Horizon," by the Silk Road Ensemble, the sky gradually became shades of rose and violet...

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We live in a world of increasing awareness and interdependence, and I believe that music can act as a magnet to draw people together. Music is an expressive art that can reach to the very core of one's identity. …as we interact with unfamiliar musical traditions we encounter voices that are not exclusive to one community. We discover transnational voices that belong to one world.
~ Yo Yo Ma ** Artistic Director of the Silk Road Project

http://www.silkroadproject.org/index.html

R-a-g-g-m-o-p-p

Perhaps the weather affects people in odd ways…

@#@# @#@# @#@# @#@# @#@# @#@#

M
I say M-O
M-O-P
M-O-P-P
Mop
M-O-P-P
Mop Mop Mop Mop

R
I say R-A
R-A-G
R-A-G-G
Rag
R-A-G-G M-O-P-P
Rag Mop

Doo-doo-doo-DAH-dee-ah-dah
Rag Mop
Doo-doo-doo-DAH-dee-ah-dah
Rag Mop
Doo-doo-doo-DAH-dee-ah-dah
Rag Mop
Doo-doo-doo-DAH-dee-ah-dah
Rag Mop
Doo-doo-doo-DAH-dee-ah-dah
R-A-G-G M-O-P-P
Rag Mop!
(D. Anderson / J.L. Wills)

I got in a fight one time with a really big guy, and he said, "I'm going to mop the floor with your face." I said, "You'll be sorry." He said, "Oh, yeah? Why?" I said, "Well, you won't be able to get into the corners very well."
-Emo Phillips

A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water.
-Carl Reiner

Wind, chime, and time

Music on a windy day...

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We have heard the chimes at midnight.
~William Shakespeare

Wisdom sails with wind and time
~John Florio

If you reveal your secrets to the wind you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.
~Khalil Gibran

Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones, as wind extinguishes candles and fans a fire.
~ Francois de la Rochefoucauld

Lighter side of snow

One of the results of yesterday’s snowfall…

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Snowmen fall from Heaven unassembled.
~ Unknown

It snowed last year too: I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea.
~ Dylan Thomas

Where did Frosty the Snowman meet his wife?
At the snowball.

Fire tree

Taken at sunset the other night...

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Love is the Fire of Life; it either consumes or purifies.
~ Unknown

More thoughts about truth and love

Continuing to think over the truth about love. And have been asking others about their ideas. B (who massages out the muscle spasms in my back with great care) said she’d have to think it over, because it was so complex. And "Sandy", a commenter on my 1-17-08 entry, said: "the truth about love is there is no one universal way to describe it".

To add to the mix, here are a few thoughts about love from others :

Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.

~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

There is no love apart from the deeds of love; no potentiality of love but that which is manifested in loving.
~Jean-Paul Sartre

Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.
~Eric Fromm

Love must be as much a light, as it is a flame.
~Henry David Thoreau

Sometimes it's a form of love just to talk to somebody that you have nothing in common with and still be fascinated by their presence.
~David Byrne

What "love" is I don't know if it's not the response of our deepest natures to one another.
~William Carlos Williams

Searching for the truth about love

Thinking of entering a writing contest, and the theme is love – What is the truth about love?

So, I’m making notes, mulling over many things. Asking questions: What is the truth about love? Perhaps it should be "truths", yes? Can you love a place you’ve never been? What is the difference between love and desire? Is there really love at first sight? How many ways can love be defined? Or is the truth of love beyond definition?

A couple of news articles caught my eye.
One is about Qassim Sabti, the owner of the Hewar gallery in Baghdad whose love of art and the intellectual discussion and friendship it brings makes him resolute in keeping his gallery open. Even in the midst of a violent, damaged city. Sabti is also an artist and is creating a series of works about Baghdad, the city he loves, but also mourns. He says his new works "reflect what the tanks did to our streets, but they are not about the ugliness of Baghdad. Rather, they reflect the city's melancholy. We used to be very proud of Baghdad."

The other is about Bill Inman, a rancher from Oregon who just completed a 7-month trek across the U.S. on horseback to "uncover what was good about America." His wife, Brenda, accompanied him via pickup, hauling the daily food and supplies. A filmmaker documented the trip, and they hope to make a documentary film about the experience. According to Inman: "It's probably the most stupid thing I've done financially, but I truly believe in it." He also said he felt "encouraged by the spirit and stories of the people" he met along the way. And Bill and Brenda, who have been married 27 years, renewed their marriage vows at the end of the journey.
http://www.uncoveringamerica.com/

Two stories of love, and the continuing search for what it means.

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The art of love... is largely the art of persistence.
~Albert Ellis

Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.
~Zora Neale Hurston

Looping

A Slinky, coils, an ink painting, or some wild wheelies at 3 am

Marking territory or making the mark

A severed Moebius strip, dance of a figure 8

Another loop where the sidewalk ends

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I made the first Moebius strip without knowing what it was.
-Max Bill

The best way to keep children at home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant, and let the air out of the tires.
-Dorothy Parker

Arranging pieces

A globe lantern hanging outside our favorite coffee shop. The place where we often go on weekends and have lattes and their tasty breakfast croissant sandwiches. In fact, that sounds like a good thing to do this coming weekend…

And what’s on my mind recently? Been researching info about my ancestors, with the help of some friends. Why the interest? Maybe it’s because it feels like putting little pieces of myself, of where I "came from," together. Been researching my father’s side of the family – the side with the mysterious relatives who continually pioneered new land, scattered, and did not keep in contact. The great-grandfather who left his wife and 2 young kids (and $$ from his in-laws) to stake out land in Oklahoma – and never came back. Was he murdered? Did he die? Or just take off to start a new life?

That side is a great contrast to my mother’s family, who came to MO from Germany/Prussia, settled in, and have remained there. Their family history is well-documented.

So, thinking about the ancestors and what their lives may have been like; putting together little pieces to make a unique design. And the light that shines from within.

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There are no extra pieces in the universe. Everyone is here because he or she has a place to fill, and every piece must fit itself into the big jigsaw puzzle.
-Deepak Chopra

You better cut the pizza in four pieces because I'm not hungry enough to eat six.
-Yogi Berra

Arrange whatever pieces come your way.
-Virginia Woolf

A matter of perspective

More snow today, more than we typically have at once in the valley, which causes traffic snarls on a work day. But it’s a matter of perspective. While driving home, saw a father and his little son on X-country skis heading to a local park. And the downhill enthusiasts on the mountain are quite happy.

Speaking of perspective, saw in the news that a 10 yr old boy in Mexico super-glued his hand to his bed to avoid going to school. It wasn’t that he was being bullied; he said he didn’t want to go to school "because vacation was so much fun." His mother couldn’t get his hand unstuck, but the paramedics did. And off to school he went…

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I've never let my school interfere with my education.
- Mark Twain

When having a smackerel of something with a friend, don't eat so much that you get stuck in the doorway trying to get out.
- Winnie the Pooh

I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may -- light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful.
- John Constable

Parabola?

How often does luck, chance, coincidence play a main role in the direction a life? Watched a movie tonight – Sliding Doors -- in which the main character, Helen, lives parallel lives which begin as she tries to take the London Tube back to her home after being fired from her job. In one version, she gets on the train just as the doors close. In the other, the doors are already closed -- she can't board the train.

What might have happened if we’d "taken the other path"? If we had or had not missed the plane, train, boat, connection, or phone call? What’s the chance of walking into a building just in time to collide with someone who will deeply affect your future? When, by coincidence, one life significantly intersects another?

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None but himself can be his parallel.
- Virgil

When One made love to Zero, spheres embraced their arches and prime numbers caught their breath.
- Raymond Queneau

Memory

Somewhere long ago, curtains rippled in late afternoon breeze. Piano music from a nearby house. She lay in the grass, watching a ladybug balance on a blade. That was before the rain. She should have realized it was coming. The build-up of clouds on the horizon, the stickiness in the air, the restlessness of the wind. But she wasn’t paying attention, intent instead on the life of minutia. Only when thunder cracked the sky did she look up.

The music stopped. Her mother glanced out the kitchen window. Her father stood at the edge of the porch, left hand fingering something in his pocket, cigarette in his right. Neither of them noticed her.

Curtains billow in the wind, smell of rain on dust. Windowpanes reflect like puddles; images shimmering, shivering, distorted by time and loss of vision.

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A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen.
~Edward de Bono

Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we did not take

Towards the door we never opened

~T.S. Eliot

Frozen music?

Autumn leaves caught in their dance, now part of this winter composition, which will transpose itself when melted by the sun. Temporary; just a song from a passer-by.

Not like a fused glass pendant, the symbols carved in the Rosslyn Chapel, or Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim in Bilbao.

These things are lasting, some say, frozen music.

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I call architecture frozen music.

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.
~ Franz Kafka

I start from something considered dead and arrive at a world. And when I put a title on it, it becomes even more alive.
~ Joan Miró

Do reindeer really know how to fly?

The 6th Street Dude’s been at it again. This appears to be a “reindeer flyer.” A pole, with reindeer attached, is set into a moveable base, and when the motor is activated, the base turns and the reindeer “fly” around in a circle. The reindeer are made from cardboard and paper mache. The ultimate in holiday decorating.

This guy is always inventing something new; last January, he built a “flying tie” machine:
http://ms-mz-pages.blogspot.com/2007/01/art-of-flying-ties.html

So, the holidays are gone, flew out into the bright night with ties and reindeer.

And we begin anew…

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An artist’s flair is sometimes worth a scientist’s brains.
~ Anton Chekhov