playlist

Ideal playlist for singing (links to videos):

1. Quelqu'un m'a dit, by Carla Bruni.
2. Gatekeeper, by Feist.
3. Ta p'tite flamme, by Amélie-les-Crayons.
4. La noyée, by Serge Gainsbourg.
5. Casimir Pulaski Day, by Sufjan Stevens.
6. To Build a Home, by The Cinematic Orchestra.
7. Amen, by Jolie Holland.
8. Don't Watch Me Dancing, by Little Joy.
9. The Littlest Bird, by the Be Good Tanyas, but ideally with someone to sing the harmony.
10. Hallelujah, by Leonard Cohen, but maybe a bit closer to this K.D. Lang version.
11. Say a Little Prayer for You, by Aretha Franklin.
12. Winter, by Tori Amos.

bunnies * konijntjes * shop * winkel

Guess who'll be in the shop today?

Meet Kaatje, Loetkin, Maartje, Elleke, Geraard, and Lien.

They're all made of cashmere and backed with the same fabric as their legs, with hand-embroidered faces and their particular personalities. Each konijntje comes with a name tag (not shown).

Last day to buy in time for Valentine's Day is tomorrow, if you live in the US, Thursday in Europe, Monday of next week for the UK. I can't guarantee arrival before the holiday due to the vagaries of the Post here, but those are my guidelines.

color to end the month

After several weeks of grey it was finally bright this weekend. On Friday I taught in Leicester, then took a walk and went to the printshop. Beeston was also bright in the sun.

St. Verde.

Angela Liguori.

a people's history

I read Howard Zinn's book A People's History of the United States while I was living in France. It was so absorbing I had to consciously pace myself so I wouldn't finish it too quickly. By the end, I knew I wanted to study for a PhD, because I wanted to make work that would make other people feel like that book made me feel: alive. Hopeful. Powerful. I felt an immense love for the strikers who were brave enough, unarmed, to call out 'Cowards!' when the police charged them; the people who risked humiliation, violence, harm, and death to change the way our political system works. And I felt despairing that those things felt like history sometimes. I am not always good at sticking up for what I think is just but that book made me want to be better.

Howard Zinn died yesterday. You can see him speaking and others reading from the People's History here. It's about an hour, but it is worth it. So beautiful, stirring. Overwhelming. Thank you, Professor Zinn, for reminding me that just a few people acting together can change things.

on saturday

We went to Rugby (the town, not the sport, although that's where we get rugby). Fran thought I meant rugby when I meant Rugby so she was surprised about halfway there. Oh, that's why you wore those clothes! Ha. We went to the gallery where my work is and then walked around the town. I had been there before, this summer, to see the Museum of Everyday Life.

Earlier that morning, terrible but joyously noisy breakfast with entire Beeston contingent, charity-shop shopping (where I found a really beautiful blue midcentury ceramic pitcher for £3), and walking in the brief sunshine. I love mornings. And my life.

Best part of the day was telling some (12-year-old) kids who tried to harass us that we were from an (imaginary) republic where there were no cars, and confusing them when they tried to explain (or point cars out) by calling them 'cows'. And our names began with a letter that was unpronounceable in English. And that we'd walked to Rugby--but very quickly, on the motorway, so it only took 20 minutes. Also gleaned the valuable information from said lads that ASDA is indeed Rugby's best candy shop. Out of the mouths of babes, folks.

recommend.

(An unrelated drawing of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis fulfils your recommended daily sketch allowance.)

Poetry readers, writers: I am in urgent need of your recommendations for single texts (NOT anthologies) to teach to intermediate/advanced adult students of poetry. I'm teaching a workshop this summer that will be a reading-as-writers (i.e., literature-based) workshop, and I'd just love to hear what other people would teach. I'm going to choose two books (maybe three); it's a two-week (6-day) course.

Right now my brainstorm list includes My Life by Lyn Hejinian; Glass, Irony and God, by Anne Carson; Residence on Earth by Neruda; Some Ether by Nick Flynn. I'd like books that are challenging formally or thematically but that students who aren't extremely familiar with recent writing could still enjoy (for that reason, the Hejinian is lower on my list). I'm thinking of structuring the course around the construction of the self.

Let the discussion begin. What text would you love to teach? What text inspired you (and/or still does)? What text do you wish you'd been taught? And why, why, why? All suggestions very welcome.

teaching

Tomorrow morning I start the first regular teaching I've had since I left France. This marks the end of the luxurious period of only-reading-only-writing-only-making of the PhD. Where are we going?

I am sure there will still be trains, also the ocean. Paris. Flowers in the spring. And poems, photobooths, the birdwoman, adventures, all the things I like. And things I don't know I like yet, like 18th-century British history, commuting, and grownup clothes. And and and. This is why I like teaching--my students remind me to think about how much there is to know and how exciting it is to start to know it.

and then there were...

Well, you know what happens when you leave rabbits in a room together. There are five 'vlaamse konijntjes' (Flemish bunnies) here now, and more on the way. Probably in the shop around the end of next week, in time for Valentine's Day.

grain

The grain guarantees the mediation and points me beyond the representation (the photograph) and to the Real (which, despite all postmodern tendencies, I find I do believe in, in my fashion). This is the moon at 5:15 p.m. today. Still a little light in the western sky; I can't believe how fast winter is going this year. I love this flickr group: The Archival Moon and Waiting.

Tomorrow I go back to the library, where I'm writing about textual ontology and reading books about art history. On Friday I start teaching again, as a lecturer in Leicester. Birds, rabbits, some Dutch, some French, some cakes, and probably lots of photographs in the interim. How are you?

MR HAT

Has adventures. But he is not the only one. You can still email me (ohbara at gmail cot com) or leave a comment if you want to participate in the project I'll begin in March. You need to have access to a public transport network that gives you a ticket, a digital camera, and to be willing to send me a photo (I'll tell you of what) and the ticket.

Full details will come to participants in March (and when they do, your utter discretion is necessary). If you know of people who might like to play along--especially from Asia, Central America, South America, Africa, and Europe--please pass my contact details along.

For now, look at her and this and this.

the story of making things

Pictures of art I love and the story of why I like it (and so why I make art), for the Belgian for Christmas, You can see them here.

there is a light and it never goes out

I didn't listen to the Smiths in high school. Or university. Or graduate school, the first time. I discovered them in April, after two years in the UK and in the aftermath of a cataclysmic breakup. They are so absolutely English to me. The ennui, the feeling of being caught somewhere small. The 'do I dare disturb'-ness of it (yes, I know Eliot was American). The ironic posturing. The sincerity buried underneath it all. The bleakness. The beauty in the damp, dark, watery, days: there is a light and it never goes out. Listening to this song makes me nostalgic for an adolescence that doesn't belong to me.