birds in hats
As I mentioned in my last post, the birds think I should hang out on the sea shore this summer. To distract them from this discomforting vein of conversation, I indulge their penchant for FASHION.
The birds like trying on hats.
Black Swan likes hats more than anybody. Black Swan would like me to do a whole series of portraits entitled “CROWNING THE INEFFABLE: Hats O EPHEMERAL GARNISHING Across the Centuries as CLASSICALLY DISPLAYED Upon the TIMELESS HEAD of the Rare BLACK SWAN.”
I refused and made him share a portrait with Hawk:
Hawk was deeply moved by the metaphysics of the plumed, dove-white hat, bound as it is by a ribbon of blue sky. I don’t really understand Hawk’s line of thinking; it has something to do with avian creation myths.
Starlings swarm beneath a veil as if it were mist over the autumn brocade of the marsh grasses:
Crow-as-parrot with a parrot in a hat so naïve, I think it is surreal:
The phoenix thinks this hat is bad-ass, especially with a ruched tunic:
I put on a hat, too. The birds suddenly silenced themselves; their heads cocked to eye my every move with beady-black intensity.
They thought I might be going outside:
WHERE ARE YOU GOING!! squawked Parrot-that-was-crow.
I could go outside. If I knew where to go.
–The Odalisque
places I could go
While hunting for rodents in a nearby trash heap, Hawk found a very helpful book: Around the World in 1,000 Pictures. Now, when Crow squawks WHERE ARE YOU GOING? I flip open my new book and consider a page. (Read my last two posts to learn more about my Crow parrot’s persistent questioning.)
Here I am in my traveling outfit with Crow (as parrot):
Oh the places we could go!
[click photos to enlarge]
Distinctive tower features Bluebeard’s Castle Hotel, setting for many legends.
Ah, the Virgin Isles. But…the legends I’ve heard of Bluebeard’s Castle involve a slew of bloody no-longer-virgin wives strung up in a forbidden room. Let’s try another page.
Lovers sit by the bridge.
I’ve always wanted to go to England. I find the English language so romantic, mostly because I understand it. Two lovers embrace beside an industrial thoroughfare and a recently fired cannon! There, in the distance, another tower renowned for the murder of wives.
Let’s look up a place I’m familiar with. Henriette and I spent our early years in Paris:
Café de Flore, on the Left Bank, has been favorite of Picasso and of Jean-Paul Sartre.
Place Pigalle is center for night life and cabarets of the more bohemian sort.
Surrealism began at Café de Flore as well. It is a movement I am particularly fond of as it liberated my head, allowing me to replace it with strange objects (when I want to blend in with the bohemian sort, I wear red harem pants as a head). Ah Paris! A place to see and be seen. Henriette and I felt our souls excised by the cutlery at this gazing feast; if I went back I fear my scrapbook would regress to ghostly, bland snapshots, an empty odalisque’s un-experience of supposedly important non-events.
Students have beautiful scenes to paint.
This could be a very fine place to go as there do not appear to be so many people. I like beautiful scenes and the company of artists, especially when they notice that I am also one. Look at these beautiful scenes:
You may see bighorn sheep.
And yet, I don’t like the right-hand picture so much. It resembles the first violent scene in my movie which initiated my triumphant retreat into the obelisk.
An odalisque is lucky to have an obelisk of her own. If I left, could I find my way back?
Photographs from Around the World in 1,000 Pictures
Edited by A. Milton Runyon and Vilma F. Bergane,
(c) 1954, Doubleday & Company
movie stars
The publicity photos for my upcoming movie HOW I GOT INTO THE OBELISK have just been released! I’m a little bit miffed that the black swan is more prominently featured than me…as usual he’s flaunting his large wingspan.
This movie may be rated X. As usual, I’m not wearing any clothes, but this movie is especially scandalous because I’m not wearing a head. I feel shy about it, somehow. It’s awkward having so much exposed. For the publicity photos they shot my legs separately from my head. That was much easier for me.
I am very eager for the release of my movie! Final tweaks are being done.
HOW I GOT INTO THE OBELISK
STARRING:
along side
A FISH
and an
by Jimi Hendrix & the Experience
SEE YOU SOON
FAR FROM THE SILVERY MOON
ON A GLOWING SCREEN
–The Odalisque
fashionable birds part 2
Second in a series of Immortal Portraits of my very FASHIONable friends:
As usual, hawk was torn between el duende and the desire for repose. We went with el duende, I am delighted to say.
trying on repose
fashionable hawk (el duende)
(Conversations with hawk are indexed in the “hawk” category to your right.)
conversations with birds: the hawk despises youth
I want what will be beautiful in ruin
whose skin, like wax, melts towards a core flame
whose pleasing balance cracks like a Kouros’
whose eye sockets are packed with black poultice
the tap tap of Oedipus’ gnarled stick
his daughter is not half so beautiful
the gods blushed grapes are not so beautiful
beneath flesh pulp find but three smooth seeds
sweet potential youth
I want beauty actualized
not in-spite-of
because of time
the knotted root wrought in harsh soil
the scant juice prized aged
my friend hawk
(The hawk gazes from the window
like a saint from the door of an altar-piece.)
(Beyond, a minute wilderness.)
I am the odalisque who lives in an obelisk. I converse with birds.
