fanciful devices: Today I Remembered

A Stone Is Nobody's

A man ambushed a stone. Caught it.
Made it a prisoner.
Put it in a dark room and stood guard over it for the rest of his life.

His mother asked why.

He said, because it's held captive, because it is captured.

Look, the stone is asleep, she said, it does not know whether it's in a garden or not. Eternity and the stone
are mother and daughter; it is you who are getting old. The stone is only sleeping.

But I caught it, mother, it is mine by conquest, he said.

A stone is nobody's, not even its own. It is you who are conquered; you are minding the prisoner, which is yourself,
because you are afraid to go out, she said.

Yes yes, I am afraid, because you have never loved me, he said.

Which is true, because you have always been to me as the stone is to you, she said.

Russell Edson

FAQs

1. Are you a Southeast Asian dancing girl from the 1800s?

No, sorry to disappoint. My avatar and banner images are from an ancient book I found in the depths of my grandmother's cabinets. More on that here.

2. How do you make everything look so old?

First, you need a good oxidizer to brush on every bit of metal you can reach. I'll tell you all about it here.

Then there's this wax. I first mentioned it here. You'll have to scroll down a lot.

3. How can you be so productive?

I'm insanely obsessed and I have no offspring. I do nothing else- I don't have a day job, I don't clean my house or cook, I spend all day in pjs, often completely abandoning personal hygiene... I only interact with other humans when I walk my dog. And I like people! But I prefer dogs.

And I'm sloppy- but I make that sloppiness work for me.

4. Any tips you'd like to share?

No! Except for these 16 posts about techniques and this one about how to find your aesthetic.

5. Would you be offended if I took some inspiration from your designs?

Well, I'd be happier if you outright copied them.

No really, imitation is how we learn. I have enough ideas to go around. And even if I don't- please. No one's going to do this obsessively enough to threaten my business. (Probably.) I learned by copying others and I've seen others copy me as a step toward developing their own voice. So feel free. (I'd love if you tossed me a link in my comments, so I can feel like a proud momma.)

6. What do you look like?

Why, what have you heard? Really? Wow.

4/25/10

Today I Remembered

I put up a bunch of new items in the shop and discovered a new poem.

The Buddhist

There never was a face as fair as yours,

A heart as true, a love as pure and keen.

These things endure, if anything endures.

But, in this jungle, what high heaven immures

Us in its silence, the supreme serene

Crowning the dagoba, what destined die

Rings on the table, what resistless dart

Strike me I love you; can you satisfy

The hunger of my heart!

Nay; not in love, or faith, or hope is hidden

The drug that heals my life; I know too well

How all things lawful, and all things forbidden

Alike disclose no pearl upon the midden,

Offer no key to unlock the gate of Hell.

There is no escape from the eternal round,

No hope in love, or victory, or art.

There is no plumb-line long enough to sound

The abysses of my heart!

There no dawn breaks; no sunlight penetrates

Its blackness; no moon shines, nor any star.

For its own horror of itself creates

Malignant fate from all benignant fates,

Of its own spite drives its own angel afar.

Nay; this is the great import of the curse

That the whole world is sick, and not a part.

Conterminous with its own universe

the horror of my heart!

Aleister Crowley

Let me repeat: "not in love, or faith, or hope is hidden/The drug that heals my life" and then, "all things lawful, and all things forbidden/Alike disclose no pearl upon the midden,/Offer no key to unlock the gate of Hell." Neither in love, hope, faith nor in vice is there an ultimate salvation or damnation.

Thus an immortal soul can feel trapped in eternity, because "There is no escape from the eternal round."

Because there is no black and white, no heaven and hell, just mixtures of grey,

of pleasure and pain in this universe. And in us, as we are the universe : "For its own horror of itself creates/Malignant fate from all benignant fates,"

because existence is made of our own spirit stuff, the snake eating its own tail, re-incarnation, eternal dying and rebirthing of only itself.

This poem made me remember how my mind expanded to encompass a very vast sense of all things, back in my college buddhist days. And as practical and secular as I feel myself to be these (medicated) days, whenever I go to add text for my posts, I seem to automatically reach back into that abyss of All, that madness, magic and horror that made life on this pane so hard. So I get convos from folks saying (and I literally quote) "I can see God in your work," when the work itself is just this tinkering fun...

(... Though I do seem to reach for an evoking of some impossible thing, aesthetically, wanting a mind to reach about saying "what is that?" trying to place where a piece of my jewelry came from but never arriving at an answer. I have no choice, it's what my mind always wants to make.)