the_amarant

I was watching moths swarm streetlights on the hillsides, and they flickered as small embers in the distance; illuminated in the moment - as was I.
While sitting on that hill I remembered a metaphor someone once told me; that moths must be the closest relative to humans, that they are the only other creature drawn to the light which kills them. Though spoken with some melancholy, I smiled upon my remembrance. Perhaps the moth does not crave the flame in folly nor naievity. It's as though that light were a form of enlightenment - the enlightenment so many humans lose the path to, or ignore. For even if the moth never faced the light, and flew the streets in enveloped darkness, he still would meet his end, never consumed by the flame and fury.

I have touched the flame, I am basked in it's illumination, my face in shadow through the darkness and half new moon.
I have grazed my fingers through the brazen glow. I have burned, I am burning, I shall burn again.
(Thus hath the candle singed the moth.)

At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman, and these hills, the softness of the sky, the outline of these trees at this very minute lose the illusory meaning with which we had clothed them, henceforth more remote than a lost paradise. The primitive hostility of the world rises up to face us across millennia.

For a second we cease to understand it because for centuries we have understood in it solely the images and designs that we had attributed to it beforehand, because henceforth we lack the power to make use of that artifice. The world evades us because it becomes itself again. That stage scenery masked by habit becomes again what it is.

--Albert Camus The Myth of Sisyphus

An ambiguous animation painted on public spaces.


MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Debcha sez, "This is an incredibly arresting stop-motion video, both in technique and content. Entirely composed of paintings on public walls, sidewalks, and other spaces, it follows a creature as it undergoes a mindbending series of transformations - mating, mutating, and mitosing through multiarmed monsters, scuttling spiders, a herd of teeth, and more. Considerable visual wit is in evidence, as the paintings interact with their substrates - a trompe d'oeil brick falls out of a wall, pieces of paper are snatched with a froglike tongue, and hiding places are found in the corners of crumbling walls. Watching and re-watching it consumed way too much of my time today. (and it's CC-licensed - share and enjoy!)"Link.

from BoingBoing.

Poppies illuminate the roadside in silhouette against an otherwise drab and uninspiring landscape--

-- A pleasant reminder that we too can re-emerge after a winter gone too cold; a way to thrive, despite our own desert and drought.

To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?
We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.

--Henry David Thoreau

I am confused.
To say the very least, I am confused about a great many things and again, many more.

I do know that I often miss your heat while thinking of run down hotel rooms with stains of shiny lip-gloss kisses, and sleeping on hard and unfamiliar floors.

I know also that, sometimes, watching your sleeping cheeks finds my heart overflowing; and that sometimes, I catch my mind sneaking her fingers across a memory of your lips.

Beyond this there is only uncertainty; a fuzzy snow-storm of a cloud that hangs low over my eyelids and brings a numbness to my bones, and there can be no promises.

I can't say that I know much when it comes to street art, but every once in a while I stumble upon a graffiti artist that absolutely blows me a way.

After discovering Bansky in about 2005, and falling 100% in love, I later found and followed the Space Invader project, and actually spotted one of their pieces in L.A. while on my ridiculous bus adventure. (I have to admit that I had a complete "squeee!" moment, and was utterly disappointed when no one understood why I was so excited.)

Anyway, Swoon is one of those people who's art breaks my heart out of pure genius. Through intricate paper cutting she combines the idea of both wheat pasting and stencilry, executing her pieces with a near perfection. She also seems to have the keen ability of showcasing the nature of both the mundane and fantastical. I'm in love.

You can find more of her art on this flicker tag pool. Now go revel in the beauty!

It's good that we have the distance to cushion us. Our minds groping out for one another across the miles of sky and open road. Too far away to easily fall into the sticky pitch of one another's heart. It is far better to climb the branches of the other's conception, till our leaves intertwine with overgrowth and young sapling sprigs. And once our canopy is full and plush, we may take that leap together, and from the up-most bough fall slow as feathers into the soft spot of our wooden cores.

It's getting cold here, and the air is crisp and clean, and stings my eyes and ears. It's absolutely beautiful, despite the chill. Ice has been forming in all the puddles on the sidewalks; I jump on the frozen spots and imagine I'm breaking the glass that surrounds me. I'm breaking free of my constraints a little at a time.