Time to Create

Mary Oliver

“The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.”

– Mary Oliver

To write to your heart’s content….paint till you drop…play music obsessively…whichever you even have the tiniest spark to do,  just start.  We can surprise ourselves and find out things about ourselves we never realized we could do, just because we started!  – JQ

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves. […]
The world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”

From “Wild Geese”;

Dream Work (1986)

The Mystery

The answer is never the answer. What’s really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you’ll always be seeking. I’ve never seen anybody really find the answer. They think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.   -Ken Kesey

photo via Ensuite  Assai

Water Branch House

WATER BRANCH HOUSE

Exhibition title: MOMA Home Delivery Fabricating the Modern Dwelling
Venue: The Museum Of Modern Art, New York / 11 West 53 Street, between Fifth and Sixth avenues, NY, USA
2008.07.20 – 2008.10.20
Installation
1.2 m2

KENGO KUMA AND ASSOCIATES

Water block is a piece of plastic tank. By piling them up, you can build anything from furniture to a house. It is very light and easy to carry around. Water or other types of liquid can be stored inside. It is in the shape that each cube of 100×100mm is connected staggeringly so they can be turned into a variety of shapes. Furthermore, it can form a strong structure by joining its concave and convex firmly.

The weight of Water Block can be adjusted by the volume of liquid that you pour inside, and it also can be used as a safe to keep the water for emergency. By connecting the pieces, liquid can flow into the next block and run around within the tanks. By doing so, Water block can function not only as a structure but also as many other roles:
– Thermal insulation
– Network wiring
– Filtering by concave and convex, water purification system with precipitation tank
– Absorbing shock with its soft material
– Lighting equipment
– Storing rainwater
– Greening of wall and floor
– Change its role by the thing you put inside (such as mud, sand, concrete, opaque liquid, etc.)
– Hydroelectric generation

Moreover, Water block is a trial case of using PET, the Hydro/Biodegradable polyester that can eventually go back to the ground. If it is successful, a new sustainable recycling system will be realized that takes the route from a container, to construction material, and to soil.

And I would like to refer you to check out more on neo-modernism by reading

HOME DELIVERY: FABRICATING THE MODERN DWELLING , a MOMA article

that includes a great video of modern dwelling through the years.  Kengo Kuma and

Associates also designed a Starbuck’s in Japan that is out of this world.

Loie Fuller

Loie Fuller dancing with her veil, 1897

Photograph by Isaiah West Taber (1830-1912)

(C) RMN (Musée d’Orsay) / Michèle Bellot

Koloman Moser

Fuller depicted by Koloman Moser (1901)

“to Odette”

Fair white swan of mystic night
singing me wave upon wave
of moonlight

you spin and white lace encircles you
spirals of echoing light

a rapid bouree to a moonbeam
and the cold calculating scent of morning
hangs like icicles from your breath

caress me gently, my dove,
kiss me!
– the cold still kiss of night
of death
(a wane hand upon my shoulder now)

embrace
a circle of lines
a symmetry of passion
ending in arabesque
your converging planes
form a portal to my soul

love, fair, sweet swan of love!

-(c) 1998 Gustav BenJava

Ernesto Che Guevara

Ernesto Che Guevara 

In 1999 I was visiting Cuba during the 40th celebration of the Cuban Revolution (1953-1959).  Havana was in  full celebration throughout the city and along The Malecón,  ( broad esplanade, roadway and seawall which stretches for 8 km along the coast in Havana, Cuba).  One of the things I will never forget is running into a group of women in high spirits shouting ‘We love Che!  He is our ‘martyr’.  At that moment I especially realized the incredible importance of Ernesto Che Guevara to the Cuban people.  The following is a contemplation of this special man.  -J. Quigley

“In 1956 Guevara, Castro and eighty other men and women arrived in Cuba in an attempt to overthrow the government of General Fulgencio Batista. This group became known as the July 26 Movement. The plan was to set up their base in the Sierra Maestra mountains. On the way to the mountains they were attacked by government troops. By the time they reached the Sierra Maestra there were only sixteen men left with twelve weapons between them. For the next few months Castro’s guerrilla army raided isolated army garrisons and were gradually able to build-up their stock of weapons.

When the guerrillas took control of territory they redistributed the land amongst the peasants. In return, the peasants helped the guerrillas against Batista’s soldiers. In some cases the peasants also joined Castro’s army, as did students from the cities and occasionally Catholic priests.

In an effort to find out information about the rebels people were pulled in for questioning. Many innocent people were tortured. Suspects, including children, were publicly executed and then left hanging in the streets for several days as a warning to others who were considering joining the revolutionaries. The behaviour of Batista’s forces increased support for the guerrillas. In 1958 forty-five organizations signed an open letter supporting the July 26 Movement. National bodies representing lawyers, architects, dentists, accountants and social workers were amongst those who signed. Castro, who had originally relied on the support of the poor, was now gaining the backing of the influential middle classes.

In its first hundred days in office Castro’s government passed several new laws. Rents were cut by up to 50 per cent for low wage earners; property owned by Fulgencio Batista and his ministers was confiscated; the telephone company was nationalized and the rates were reduced by 50 per cent; land was redistributed amongst the peasants (including the land owned by the Castro family); separate facilities for blacks and whites (swimming pools, beaches, hotels, cemeteries etc.) were abolished.”

via warriorsrise:

Fish Shop of the Town

 All rights reserved by sora018

Rolleiflex SL66SE　Planar 80mm

In Japan, the fish means well-being, happiness and freedom. It is one of the Eight Auspicious Symbols used in Buddhism imported from China. The fish symbolises living in a state of fearlessness, without danger of drowning in the ocean of sufferings, and migrating from place to place freely and spontaneously.