fig. 1158 (flaming valentine)
I have nothing to say but I do have a valentine.
fig. 1158: pleasure to/hearth
Last year’s valentine was my most popular post! It was full of ruins. This one has a hearth, which they say is the center of a home.
I hope you like this one, too, even though I don’t have much to say about it.
Here’s something someone else said:
if what we could–were what we would–
criterion–be small–
it is the ultimate of talk–
the impotence to tell–(emily dickinson)
It doesn’t matter what we say. It matters what we do.
Do something good.
–The Odalisque
why does the phoenix (billet 4)
a candle in my ear burned down to ash. wake up. eyelashes caked with ash. head thick with smoke. obscure.
o reader
o out-there
here:
fig. 6: astrolabe/the stairs
(the phoenix leaves flaming notes on my pillow. Click to read the last billet doux…)
there are no words left.
it doesn’t matter what you say.
it matters what you do.
what will you do?
Fig. 1 (enough) questionnante
A series this week! On the complex concept, “enough”
[click to enlarge]
[Fig. 1]
[Fig. 1 DETAIL]
[With words a beautiful, strange creature, all scales and song and shimmering fins, I bring out of the deep]
[for you to give you con ]
[The beast sings in the air then submerges. The sea folds over it.]
Fig. 3 (enough) enough
Part 3 of a series this week! On the complex concept, “enough”
[click to enlarge]
[Fig. 3: Perspective]
[for years a frayed rope tied to a timber]
[floats in the tide like a flayed eel]
[etc.]
Fig. 16 (enough) shimmer
A series this week! On the complex concept, “enough”
[click to enlarge]
[Figure 16: Variation]
[Emptiness, she thinks, is the reward of an open heart.]
Fig. 18 (enough) bleakness
A series this week! (Read intro here.)
[click to enlarge]
[Fig. 18]
[You were always welcome here, traveler]
enough (definition)
Each time I publish a scrapbook page, I feel I toss it from my high window. Its conceptual origami catches an earthly wind. I watch it disappear, blown far from my obelisk’s shore into a virtual populace. Over a frantic boulevard it floats, settling on a concrete median beneath a floriferous tree, there on the packed dirt amongst chicken bones, leaves, plastic cups. How is it it you reached down to pick it up? How is it, amongst fumes, glare, pedestrians in tight pants, honking horns (so many dangerous vehicles) you even noticed my scrapbook page?
If my scrapbook page pleases you, orange stars and plus signs shower my desktop (like like like), confetti tossed in friendly appreciation from you, out in that fleet & fleeting world.
I am grateful for your appreciation.
One year ago today I flung my first scrapbook page out into the world–a piece of notebook paper with some scribbled words (read it here.) I’ve found an earlier piece of notebook paper, excavated and illustrated it with figures about the complex concept “enough.” I’ll publish these figures + torn text one-at-a-time this week.
To start, I give you a graph, and a definition, of the word “enough”:
Is it enough? I think so. I think you are. Enough.
Thank you for looking. Thank you.
–The Odalisque
figures (overwhelm) redux
I feel overwhelmed. So I decided to reblog these figures from some time ago. Figures, as I mention on my about page, are what I use to illustrate complex concepts. I am working on some new figures, too, which I will publish later. I think they are about the word ENOUGH, but we’ll see.
Black swan would like you to know that he is overwhelmed, too. He is squawking and flapping his wings in the tidal marsh below to communicate his persistent shock and dismay. We ate TURKEY on Thursday, not swan, but it still was not a good day for the black swan. (click here if you don’t know what I’m talking about). Soon, I’m going to have to dump out the bones, and I just hope they’ll fall somewhere he’ll never see them.
So here’s an old post, on the word OVERWHELM.
Figures [click to enlarge]:
fig. 1
- figures 3, 5, & 22
I look up
like I’ve fallen down stairs.
recursive figure
Figure [recursion]: a figure approaches
—
I’m reading about art and the abyss. The book was first published in France in 1955. I read then gaze–longingly, futilely–into the depths of my teapot. I struggle to disclose in dissimulation some ceaselessly murmuring silence, some infinite-far which cannot be arrived at, though it entombs me. If only, I think, suffocating in the extremity of my super-abundant exclusion, if only I could SPEAK, not of art and the abyss, but of odalisques & the abyss, which is practically the same thing.
But first I have to answer the question that one amongst you– oh creatures of flight known as readers–posed…how did I get into my obsidian obelisk? I will answer that, in my first attempt at popular entertainment, very soon.
Questions for me, The Odalisque? Comment or email me here.
“In this communication it is obscurity that must reveal itself and night that must dawn. This is revelation where nothing appears, but where concealment becomes appearance.”–Maurice Blanchot, The Space of Literature, tr: Ann Smock
–The Odalisque
I am the odalisque who lives in an obelisk. I converse with birds.
