10's, Week 11

Place Narrative

My Sanctuary

You are a place that goes places. Never in the same stationary spot--in fact, it'd be odd if you were. Two doors for access and windows to spare. Your blazing blue exterior causes many to stare, while your gray insides bring comfort. The warm sun trapped by your lid, envelops me. Many come and go inside your warm embrace, but no one as much as I. I see you nearly every day to make barter. My songs and care for your services. You gladly accept, as always.

Strangers judge you by your nationality, but I don't mind. You have seen many places and taken me with you. You are strong and you are fast. No stranger to the elements you stand tough and endure. Daily you provide me with a sanctuary to meditate or share with you my vocal abilities (both good and bad).

At times I use you in vain, but it's only temporary--if I could, I would be the only one in this plac, because you are my place. No matter who I share you with, you are mine. Others have places like you, but you are you and you are mine and together we can conquer anything.

10's, Week 10

10 "Verbal Photographs":

• A brown horse laying in the sun like a dog in a fenced-in field.
  
• A plump, brown squirrel hunched over on a brick gate, chewing a peanut open with his mouth.
  
• An ominous, gray curtain of clouds hovering over I-94.
  
• Orange plates of fish wrapped in round, seaweed-rice packages revolve on a metal conveyor.
  
• A group of students gathered on the Diag in Ann Arbor, clapping and cheering as the major speaks.
  
• A collection of tween girls on either side of the neighborhood street with colorful balloons in hand, nothing but the wet cement between them.
  
• A silver pot of water rolling with green and white and orange vegetables.
  
• Two pounds of milk chocolate, packaged and shaped like a friendly bunny.
  
• Ghosts of outfits lie on the bedroom carpet like war casualties.
  
• A stack of folded papers in a wire cage, each the same as its neighbor below.
  

10 "Treasures":

• "Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is." --Carl Jung on "The Shadow"
  
• "Where we live, the skies are heavy with sleep. Sometimes high-flying jets come down encrusted with it, like bees dusted with pollen." --Stacy Levine, "Sleep" from My Horse and Other Stories
• "The best art and writing is almost like an assignment; it is so vibrant that you feel compelled to make something in response." --from Learningtoloveyoumore.com
• "For a brief moment it seems wonderfully easy to live and love and create breathtaking things..in the same way that the ocean gives the assignment of breathing deeply, and kissing instructs us to stop thinking." --from Learningtoloveyoumore.com
  
• "Don't look back, all you'll ever get is the dust from the steps before." --Zooey Deschanel (of She & Him), lyrics to "Don't Look Back"
  
• "Well alright, it's ok, we all get the slip sometimes everyday. I'll just keep it to myself in the sun." --Zooey Deschanel (of She & Him), lyrics to "In the Sun"
  
• "Sunshine, we all see the same sky. Looking, learning, asking the same why?" --Belle & Sebastian, lyrics from "Song for Sunshine"
  
• "Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant." --from Posterous.com
  
• "If anyone's curious what I look like with a beard, it's this ?:^(0) Coincidentally, that's also my ATM pin number." --Conan O'Brien, from his Twitter
  
• "America likes stuff that's familiar #healthcareforeveryoneisscarycauseitsnew." --Sarah Silverman, from her Twitter
  

Photobiography

Learning To Love You More:

Assignment #11: Photograph a scar and write about it.

This is a scar from a surgery I had in April 2008. In hopes of fixing my malformed foot I regretfully and apprehensively underwent a lapidus bunionectomy. After six months of crutches and wearing a big black boot, this is what I have to show for it.



Assignment #27: Take a picture of the sun.




Assignment #50: Take a flash photo under your bed.

Shadow Narrative:

Photograph, illustrate or write a narrative for your personal shadow.

Sappho Collaboration

"Aiga"

Spangled is
Your skin glistening in the sun
The earth with her crowns
Stretches far and wide
I would lead
You down the winding paths, between stones stacked like
Wedding gifts,
The land was called
Aiga,
A peaceful,
Non-evil
Sanctuary for us from the
Paingiver
In our lives, like
A vine that grows up trees
We
Channel
The emergence of
Dawn



**The 10 Sappho lines are in italic and were taken from 168C-175 (p.345-9) in If Not, Winter.

10's, Week 9

10 "Verbal Photographs":

• A white note card on the speckled, gray concrete sidewalk that simply reads "leap".
  
• Three giant post-consumer plastic bags hanging on a wood fence, each labeled for the appropriate plastic they contain (by number: 1, 2, 3).
  
• Ten pairs of shoes lined up in a row along the wall next to the front door.
  
• A mannequin head on display in a vintage store window, pale-faced with bright blue painted eyes, elaborate with painted eyelashes and rosy cheeks.
  
• A team of women pick up the countless necklaces off the shop floor from the fallen shelves.
  
• A line of people waiting outside State Theatre, under the neon-lit marquee that reads "CLOCKWORK ORANGE MIDNIGHT TIX SIX BUX."
  
• Various antique family glassware, stacked inside cardboard boxes, newspaper separating one piece from another.
  
• Globs of green toothpaste stick to the porcelain sink bowl, left for someone else to clean.
  
• A stack of pristine, white paper waits uniformly in the top of the gray printer for the day it will be called to service.
  
• A refrigerator filled with brown paper sacks, Tupperware, and stacked Styrofoam containers of wasted food that will wait until garbage day.
  

10 "Treasures":

• "The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." --Nelson Mandela (from an Honest Tea lid)
  
• "Always and never are two words you should always remember never to use." --Wendell Johnson (from and Honest Tea lid)
  
• "Choose being kind over being right and you'll be right every time." --Richard Carlson (from an Honest Tea lid)
  
• "Consider the letters of the alphabet and all of their various phonetic interpretations. Each individual character has its own history, its own stages of evolution, and its own place among the others. Some stand alone and others are hopelessly paired. Some are virtually unemployed while others are over-worked and abused." --Anatole France, "Alphabet" from The Garden of Epicurus (read from The Arcades Project)
  
• "Randomness: There are an infinite number of random entry points to this project. It can be accessed in countless contexts. Try going here and seeing that you can find interesting in the list of keywords." --The Arcades Project
  
• "The relationship between the mental landscape of the interior and the physical landscape of the exterior is a crucial aspect of the flaneur narrator's effectiveness as a literary device." --Walter Benjamin (from The Arcades Project, an analysis of Thoreau)
  
• "To great writers, finished works weigh lighter than those fragments on which they labor their entire lives." --Walter Benjamin
  
• "In a shop on the Rue LEgendre, in Batingnolles, a whole serious of female busts, without heads or legs, with curtain hooks in place of arms and a percaline skin of arbitrary hue--bean brown, glaring pink, hard black--are lined up like a row of onions, impaled on rods, or set out on tables. . . The sight of this ebb tide of bosoms, the Musee Curtius of breasts, puts on vaguely in mind of those vaults in the Louvre where classical sculptures are housed, when one and the same torso, eternally repeated, beguiles the time for those who look over it, with a yawn, on rainy days. . ." --J.K. Huysmans, Croquis Parisiens (from The Doll, The Automaton)
  
• "Boredom waits for death." --Johann Peter Hebel
  
• "Waiting is life." --Victor Hugo
  

10's, Week 8

10 "Verbal Photographs":

• A grey-haired man in black robe behind a desk, centered between the American flag and Michigan's state flag, speaking to a man miles away via the 40" LCD television mounted on the wall.
  
• A blue sign overhead that reads, "Aisle 9: Breakfast Foods, Candy, Healthy Living."
  
• A closet rack tangled with hangers and shirts, with neat stacks of folded clothes above on the shelf.
  
• A gray unshapely stain on the concrete, the wet shadow of ice once there.
  
• The brown and gold couch pillows scattered all over the living room carpet, like stepping stones.
  
• A white ceramic bowl sprinkled in ashes and crumpled up cigarette butts like a battlefield.
  
• Burgundy water, white with foam, running down the bathtub drain as she rinses her hair under the running water.
  
• Seven brown boxes stacked crookedly on top of one another and banished to the corner of the room.
  
• A red plastic box that reads "City of Ypsilanti," overflowing with empty cardboard food boxes and plastic milk jugs.
  
• The green number ":23" glowing on the microwave where the time should be.
  

10 "Treasures":

• "Someone will remember us I say even in another time." --Sappho, from If Not, Winter by Anne Carson (147)
  
• "As long as you want." --Sappho, from If Not, Winter by Anne Carson (45)
  
• "And on the eyes of black sleep of night." --Sappho, from If Not, Winter by Anne Carson (151)
  
• "With what eyes?" --Sappho, from If Not, Winter by Anne Carson (162)
  
• "Whiter by far than an egg." --Sappho, from If Not, Winter by Anne Carson (167)
  
• "Spangled is the earth with her crowns." --Sappho, from If Not, Winter by Anne Carson (168C)
  
• "People dull their wits with gibberish, and cannot use their ears and eyes." --Heraclitus, Fragments (4)
  
• "From the strain of binding opposites comes harmony." --Heraclitus, Fragments (46)
  
• "The way up is the way back." --Heraclitus, Fragments (69)
  
• "Applicants for wisdom do what I have done: inquire within." --Heraclitus, Fragments (80)