W.I.P. and Jeopardy question

She was given the gift (gift?) of prophecy with one disadvantage...

I chose this as the oracular shell from among those below (and replaced the book cover with this piece of plain wood)

The final on Monday.

A Little Bird Told Me (Commissioned Work)

Do let me know if you are interested in commissioning one of your own...the next one I am doing is a wedding photo, very excited about that. I'm treating these differently than the ones I do for myself, they're softer, and of course I assume people don't want the faces hidden. Thursday I'll be posting another altered  photo of a child, this one more in the usual mode.

Not a Japanese Horror Film

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas


--From The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot

It's wrong to confuse an author with his or her works...but he has a dyspeptic look that seems perfect for a crab, does Eliot. Not to mention the poem being set in October, in keeping with its Autumnal mood. I'm going with literature-related t-shirts on Mondays for awhile. Next week, continuing with the nautical theme, I'll have the Ancient Mariner up.

Two Books from a garage sale (There are no seasons in California)

The second image is from Heath's New System of Writing, more from this exquisite little pamphlet on Tinytheatre.

The season to go inward and take some satisfaction in the hearth fire (whatever that may be for you) in Northern Hemisphere. For myself, I tend towards cooking root vegetables and sewing.

Lives of the Saints: The Burden of Proof

Things which don't constitute proof (aka truth):

Evidence

Deeply held convictions

Elegance of the Equation

Your dead Aunt Fanny's sugar cookie recipe

One draws one's own conclusion, the portrait you see is of necessity merely a sketch.

I like this set on flickr too.

Mythago

The esteemed Lettuce introduced me to Robert Holdstock's Mythago Wood Series, in which people in rural England find themselves drawn into a dark wood. Beings from the collective unconscious mind appear first as flickers at the corner of the eye, before they completely manifest as creatures of ambiguous intent. Another t-shirt design...I actually need to stop with these and maybe do some Holiday cards. In the mean time, I'm considering this an entry for Illustration Friday's spooky prompt.

OOh, look, here is another one...

And a fir tree king on flickr..

We Can be Heroes?

What's "great"? Just had a disagreement with another blogger about a piece of [literature according to me, something else according to him]. There are books that are revelations when one is young, but which seem tedious when we are older. This is not, to me, because we're necessarily wiser, it's more about what we need from literature ... or any art form. I have enjoyed introducing young friends to On the Road, for instance, but were I to reread it now I think I would feel like kicking the narcissistic a***s of the characters. In art, as my vision has become fuzzier, I have lost interest in murky images. What lasts? And even if it doesn't last, can't something be great in its time and place? Is knowing when we are older more accurate or just different from that when we're young?*

*Lewis Carroll addressed some of these questions in You are Old, Father William, of course.

Small Potatoes

Hmmm...May not be my greatest work, or even t-shirt ever. It started out with my being irritated with AT & T (the phone company, for my friends in far-off places). This photo is wonderful though, don't you think? And I thought the film Mary and Max was delightful and surprising, just about as uplifting as downbeat can get.

Like a hug that goes with you everywhere

My nephew Robbie was visiting, we took a walk in the Mission District and saw this treetop in Clarion Alley

and this inside/outside at Dave Eggers' 826 Valencia.

Robbie posed more or less graciously,

framed this Felix-reminiscent wall art (we found the frame in a box on the street)

and took a picture of me holding up this beautiful scarf Yvette sent me...the title of the post comes from his response to my saying how much I enjoyed walking around with it. 

Identity/Knowing

Just watched "Doubt" and "Boys don't cry". Both good films, and both ask questions about how we know someone else - are those mirror neurons of the funhouse variety, or do they really allow us to see something about the other person? How much do we ordinarily take someone at their own valuation? "Boys don't cry"*, in particular, is remarkable for dividing the supporting characters after the big revelation, two characters in particular feel that their knowing goes deeper than what seems to be a major falsehood by the main character, and they continue in their feelings of affection. Does the lie reveal a truth? It was interesting to watch the two films in succession.

Strange moth, former moth really, I found on the sidewalk.

* This film could also be seen as an extended gloss on the Tom Waits song "Whistle down the Wind" - let's put it this way, it didn't leave me with any great desire to visit Lincoln, Texas (or Falls City, either).

Just Point

I made a new t-shirt, the idea being that if you wear it you don't have to speak when you get your first cup of coffee at your local cafe, you can just point. And speaking of food you can get smitten with, I think I feel about quinoa the way PeeWee Herman felt about fruit salad. You're invited to the ceremony!

Wonderful

What a wonderful bird the frog are--
When he sit, he stand almost.
When he hop, he fly almost.
He ain't got no sense hardly.
He ain't got no tail hardly either.
When he sit, he sit on what he ain't got--almost.


        - Anonymous

We all get choked up at times.