crank crank crank
I do not follow enough people to get the inside jokes anymore.
If Pierce had not made me feel bad about following forty people… but since he’s marrying Kevin, who let me ramble about the Bronte sisters…
I don’t know. I guess it’s a wash.
bolide meteor
I missed the actual occurrence, but I have been watching the videos all day, fascinated. At 12:07 last night, a stray meteor from the Leonid shower decided to take a little jaunt through the sky over Utah, Arizona, and Idaho. By “little jaunt” I mean “possibly herald the end of the world with blinding light.” If I had not been cozily ensconced on the sofa in my basement, typing away, I believe I would have dropped to my knees and uttered something about sin and John Cusack being a prophet.
(The video from Payson Fruit Growers is the best one. Trust me. It’s pretty awesome.)
Bite-Sized Poem - Alex Caldiero
Rechristened in our office as “WTF or Possible Internet Terrorism”
Alex Caldiero
On Sunday night, I had the interesting privilege of watching a press copy of a documentary about Alex Caldiero, an Italian native and the Artist in Residence at Utah Valley University (my school and place of employment). Caldiero is a poet, but by a pretty far stretch of the word. He calls himself a “sonosopher” and a “wordshaker”, because the word “poet” doesn’t begin to describe what he does. And what he does is make noises. He writes, sure— poetry that is actually really beautiful— but when he performs it is some strange hybrid of performance art and recitation and improvisation, possibly with a little caveman thrown in for good measure. He sometimes reads poems that are nothing more than typed gibberish sounded out, a hyperactive pretend language that sometimes ululates into yuyuyuyuyuyuyuyu nbnbnbnbnbnbnbnbnb— and Caldiero makes every sound.
Caldiero is a controversial figure. Some people think he is a genius; other poets criticize him as a stand-up comedian. A professor of biology at UVU said he thinks half of Caldiero’s work is profound and the other half is bullshit. Caldiero is easily a little mad (generous— the man is three-quarters mad if I am being honest) and incredibly eccentric, with a tendency to speak like an aged hippie, tagging you know what I mean, man onto the end of sentences, widening his eyes until the whites are visible all round. Watching him perform is like watching a man possessed by some primitive spirit, zoomed off onto some other plane; it is amazing because it is beyond the bizarre and into the uncomfortable, and you wonder if it really is bullshit or if you just don’t get him and you are the stupid one.
The bits of the documentary with his live readings of his actual traditional poetry were wonderful— Caldiero has a deep, resonant voice and he knows precisely how to use it, for good or ill. I began feeling particularly uncomfortable when he recited a poem he had written in honor of Red Thundercloud, the last speaker of the Catawba language, who died in 1996. The poem is in Italian, and Caldiero gradually stuffs his mouth with a bit of paper, a stick, a piece of cloth, a rock, a watch, a ballpoint pen, speaking through it all the while, unintelligible but with his bushy eyebrows raised emphatically over his glasses. I watched him on my laptop, frowning through my own glasses, in a Nyquil haze. What am I supposed to be getting out of this.
Caldiero is often distracted by himself, disappearing into strange vocalizations and hand gestures in the middle of an interview. And yet when he speaks clearly about his life, it is eloquent, charming, original. He remarks with utter respect and solemnity that being in love when you are twelve years old is the most painful thing in the world because it is so impossible and there is nothing you can do about it. He gets visibly upset when the documentary crew asks him how he makes time for his poems, the dozen and a half volumes he is revising, the shelves filled with notebooks marked with a year and 1, 2, 3, 4, filled to the brim— Caldiero begins to rage. Shame on the poets who take time— time away from what? Oh, I think I feel a poem coming on, oh here is some inspiration… that’s not how it works. It comes from here, he says, gripping his throat, pinching the skin there, right above the microphone pinned to his red t-shirt. It’s right here. Time, it’s not about time, man. It’s about energy, it’s about sacrifice. It’s about devotion. It’s not about time.
This is how stories get started.
All at once, you and I are part of
a narration handed down from
time immemorial;
each one adding to it until
we are just barely recognizable.
(via viereckige-augen)
It was second snow today (first snow was fleeting a couple of weeks ago). Today it is finally cold enough for snow to stick, though I know it will go away by next week. November is finally behaving like November, but of course that isn’t good enough when I see a picture like this. (You know there has to be an excited three-year-old somewhere outside the frame gleefully squealing something about reindeer. That is what I am telling myself; it makes the story complete.)
via viereckige-augen
Aqualta: Roppongi Minato-ku, Tokyo
Called Aqualta, the project is an exquisitely produced tour of a hydrologically transformed metropolis. Gondolas float through a still-blazing Times Square; people fish atop gravel banks that have built up beside inundated skyscrapers; and an aerial network of blimps, catwalks, pedestrian skyways, and cable cars passes and sways above the Venetian streets.
(via bldgblog)
This is beautiful.
via blaaargh
contrariwise
There is a pervading sense of surreality in the days lately, perhaps because it is November and unseasonably warm despite the crunchy development in the texture of the trees. People are napping on the university lawn of an afternoon, sprawled next to papery piles of dropped leaves, and no one seems in a hurry to get anywhere, loping down the sidewalk in capri pants and flip-flops. This is not the November I know. It seems inappropriate for the flora and fauna to be following their patterns of sleep and migration when the weather insists that it is, at best, early September.
Today seems to have gotten the hang of things with a vengeance. It is cloudy, a misty blue-grey cast over everything, reflected in the lake. The temperature has dropped several degrees, from pleasant sweater-weather to windy chill in just a few hours. The wind is hissing at the windows and threatening to hurl rain onto the sidewalks, and people are walking in clusters with their arms folded. When it is five o’clock and I leave the office, it will already be dark, tail-lights strung down the freeway like coals.
There is a hierarchy of swears in my family home. I have only noticed this the past little while, at least consciously. “Hell” and “damn” are regarded as mild, perhaps the mud-digging peasants of the cursing caste system. “Bitch”, “ass”, and “shit” are all offensive enough to be scolded for, perhaps landowners, modest title-holders. “Fuck” is the earl, humbly to be addressed only in dire circumstances, and blasphemy is a grand-duke, the patriarch of the family the only one who is allowed to speak it without fear of swift retribution. “Cunt” is the high empress from a foreign country, known but feared, revered but spoken in a mouthing-whisper and only if one absolutely must for the context of a story, you understand.
I would love to see these at a wedding, with big galvanized metal flower pails filled with sticks anchoring either side of the table, and a bonfire flaming in the distance.
Again, I don’t know you, but let’s get married.
via youdonthavethis
VIDEO: Watch Elizabeth Lambert, The Dirtiest Player In Women's Soccer | RadarOnline.com 
We are talking full-body slams via ponytail. We are talking kicks in the face. Elizabeth Lambert does not have time for your fuckery.
