The Black Isle

Orbigny, 1849
Common Rorqual, Fin Whale
Balaenoptera rorqual

Another print I’d like to own.

SILVER LAKE

It’s not like it’s Altadena where the drunken spinsters get married
then bitch and knit
and knit and bitch.
These people here have dogs and cats.
They’re happy and gay.

I know it best as the site of my husband’s egregious farting
on a patio overlooking the purdy reservoir.
The cat, one Constance Meriwether III,
(or somethin’)
smelled it. It’s dead now.
The cat, not the fart, I mean.
The fumes hang on, like the box-homes
clutching to the hillsides like Bauhaus dingleberries.

In Silverlake
Where the lake is fake.

(July 10, 2009)

John’s article on our dinner with Agnes Varda last week. From Vogue.com.

THIS goes on my blogroll PRONTO!

Guru mask
Batak people, Sumatra

12 inches, painted wood

A primitive looking piece with a cheery expression. Those sharp teeth are little slivers of bamboo. The Museum fur Voelkerkunde in Vienna, Austria, has a somewhat similar mask designated as a Guru from the Batak people of Northern Sumatra.

Uba mask
Japan

8 inches, painted wood, hair

Noh masks set the standard for carving perfection ever since the Shogun officially recognized the artform, clearly defining styles and features, back in 1647. Uba, a woman in a deranged state of mind, is actually a goddess in disguise in the famous play Isemonogatari.

Like any true Noh mask, this is not a molded piece, but is hand carved out wood. Some paint loss, but in good condition considering its age.

MERCATOR ASIA MAP - “Asia ex magna orbis terre descriptionie Gerardi Mercatori Desumpta studio et industria G.M. Iumioiris”. A beautiful, hand-colored map first published in 1595, based on Gerhard Mercator’s world map of 1569. The copy for auction appears to have come from one of the Mercator/Hondius atlases (Latin edition), prior to 1633.

NOTE TO SELF

Currently reading:
SEA OF POPPIES by Amitav Ghosh
The Annotated APOCRYPHA
Frederick Seidel POEMS

Want to read this summer (before the list expands/bursts):
CHILD 44 + THE SECRET SPEECH by Tom Rob Smith
some entries in THE VAMPIRE ARCHIVES, compiled by Otto Penzler
LAST EVENINGS ON EARTH by Roberto Bolaño
PURGATORIO + PARADISO (Everyman’s edition) by Dante Alighieri
selections from Pliny the Elder’s NATURAL HISTORY
SERVITUDE & GRANDEUR OF ARMS by Alfred de Vigny