2011: Calendar 2: Sally Harless (Sadly Harmless)

Sally Harless is an artist in Bloomington, Indiana, who graduated with a BFA in Printmaking from Indiana University. Her work "fuses images reminiscent of children's books with the struggles of adjusting to adulthood, and often involves elements of nostalgia and humor."

Love this quirky Sadly Harmless calendar of 2011 Adventures, featuring ink and watercolor illustrations of animals venturing to places they normally wouldn't go. Dimensions: 8.5x14 inches when unfolded. $12 US.

And that fondly reminds me of this headline from The Onion: 10 Million Killed Annually By Stepping Out of Comfort Zones.

Our Daily Bird 40: Crows and Shiny Things

The things a crow puts in his nest
they are always things he finds that shine best
somehow he'll find
a shiny dime
a silver twine
from a valentine
the crows all bring
them shiny things

leave me alone you big old moon
the light you cast is just a liar
you're like the crows
cause if it glows
you're dressed to go
you guessed I know
you'll always bring
them shiny things

well I'm not dancing here tonight
but things are bound to turn around
the only thing
I want that shines
is to be king
there in your eyes
to be your only
shiny thing

Our Daily Bird 37: Red Bird Battalion

Love this beautiful Red Bird Battalion, by illustrator Jaime Zollars (twitter: @jaimezollars).

Friday's Final Word

The poet Rainer Maria Rilke (from On Love and Other Difficulties):

"Ah! But verses amount to so little when one writes them young. One ought to wait and gather sense and sweetness a whole life long, and a long life if possible, and then, quite at the end, one might perhaps be able to write ten lines that were good.

For verses are not, as people imagine, simply feelings (those one has early enough) – they are experiences. For the sake of a single verse, one must see many cities, men and things, one must know the animals, one must feel how the birds fly and know the gesture with which the little flowers open in the morning. One must be able to think back to roads in unknown regions, to unexpected meetings and to partings one had long seen coming; to days of childhood that are still unexplained, to parents whom one had to hurt when they brought one some joy and one not grasp it (it was a joy for someone else); to childhood illnesses that so strangely begin with such a number of profound and grave transformations, to days in rooms withdrawn and quiet and to mornings by the sea, to the sea itself, to seas, to nights of travel that rushed along on high and flew with all the stars – and it is not yet enough if one may think of all this.

One must have memories of many nights of love, none of which was like the others, of the screams of women in labor, and of light, white, sleeping women in childbed, closing again. But one must also have been beside the dying, must have sat beside the dead in the room with the open window and the fitful noises.

And still it is not yet enough to have memories. One must be able to forget them when they are many and one must have the great patience to wait until they come again. For it is not yet the memories themselves. Not till they have turned to blood within us, to glance and gesture, nameless and no longer to be distinguished from ourselves – not till then can it happen that in a most rare hour the first word of a verse arises in their midst and goes forth from them."



Our Daily Bird(s) 32: Big and Little, Silly



Friday's Final Word

Illegitemus non carborundum est -

Don't let the bastards grind you down.