Guess who...

A thought went up my mind to-day
That I have had before,
But did not finish, some way back,
I could not fix the year,

Nor where it went, nor why it came
The second time to me,
Nor definitely, what it was,
Have I the Art to say.

But somewhere in my Soul, I know
I've met the Thing before;
It just reminded me--t'was all--
And came my way no more.

ROWING, by Anne Sexton

A story, a story!
(Let it go. Let it come.)
I was stamped out like a Plymouth fender
into this world.
First came the crib
with it’s glacial bars.
Then dolls
and the devotion to their plastic mouths.
Then there was school,
the little straight rows of chairs,
blotting my name over and over,
but undersea all the time,
a stranger whose elbows wouldn’t work.
Then there was life
with it’s cruel houses
and people who seldom touched –
though touch is all –
but I grew,
like a pig in a trenchcoat I grew,
and then there were many strange apparitions,
the nagging rain, the sun turning into poison
and all of that, saws working through my heart,
but I grew, I grew,
and God was there like an island I had not rowed to,
still ignorant of Him, my arms and my legs worked,
and I grew, I grew,
I wore rubies and bought tomatoes
and now, in my middle age,
about nineteen in the head I’d say,
I am rowing, I am rowing
though the oarlocks stick and are rusty
and the sea blinks and rolls
like a worried eyeball,
but I am rowing, I am rowing,
though the wind pushes me back
and I know that that island will not be perfect,
it will have the flaws of life,
the absurdities of the dinner table,
but there will be a door
and I will open it
and I will get rid of the rat inside of me,
the gnawing pestilential rat.
God will take it with his two hands
and embrace it.

History of Photography in Pictures in Chronological Order from the Very First Photograph

1827 Nicephore Niepce (1765–1833) View from the Study Window [Very First Photo]

1838 Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre (1787–1851) Boulevard du Temple

1853 Jean Louis Marie Eugene Durieu (1800-1874) Nu masculin

1855 Duchenne de Boulogne (1806-1875) Portrait of a hunchback boy, 1855-1857

1864 Nadar [Gaspard-Félix Tournachon] (1820-1910) Sarah Bernhardt

1867 Francois Aubert (1829-1906) Emperor Maximilian's Shirt

1871 Andre-Adolphe Eugene Disderi (1819-1889) Communards in Their Coffins

1893 Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) Icy Night

1894 Maurice Guibert (1856-1913) Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

1898 Max Priester and Willy Wilcke -  Bismarck on his Deathbed

1898 Rudolf Heinrich Zille (1858-1929) The Wood Gatherers

1908 Lewis W. Hine (1874-1940) Spinner in New England Mill, From the series Child Labor (Textiles)

1915 Paul Strand (1890–1976) Untitled

1927 August Sander (1876-1964) Young Farmers

1932 Andre Kertesz (1894-1985) Clock of the Academie Francaise

1936 Robert Capa (1913-1954) Loyalist Militiaman at the Moment of Death

1939 Horst P. Horst (1906-1999) Eros Reined In

1945 Richard Petersen (1895–1977) View from the Dresden City Hall Tower Toward the South

1947 Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) Taos, New Mexico, USA

1951 Robert Doisneau (1912-1994) The Fortune Teller

1958 Dennis Stock (b 1928) Miles Davis, Birdland

1962 Bert Stern (b 1929) Marilyn's Last Sitting

1971 Gerard Malanga (b 1943) Candy Darling

1986 Sebastiao Salgado (b 1944, Aimorés, Minas Gerais, Brazil), Dispute between Serra Pelada gold mine workers and military police, Brazil

1987 Joel-Peter Witkin (b 1939) Un Santo Oscuro (A Dark Ghost)

2000 Sandy Skoglund (b 1946) Fresh Hybrid

The Waning Crescent Moon

“There's a waning crescent Moon tonight”
My dad would have said,
"You could hang your coat on that"

You weren't allowed to call Dad 'Pop'
("I'll pop ya," he'd say)
and don't call him "old man"
or pappy or by his first name.

Dad was often stoic,
a very practical man.
Yet, he would contemplate
hanging his coat on a crescent Moon...

Edwin Rowland

Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

Alan Watts

Dream Song 123, by John Berryman

Dapples my floor the eastern sun, my house faces north,

I have nothing to say except that it dapples my floor

and it would dapple me

if I lay on that floor, as-well-forthwith

I have done, trying well to mount a thought

not carelessly

in times forgotten, except by the New York Times

which can't forget. There is always the morgue.

There are men in the morgue.

These men have access. Sleepless, in position,

they dream the past forever

Colossal in the dawn comes the second light

we do all die, in the floor, in the morgue

and we must die forever, c'est la mort

a heady brilliance

the ultimate gloire

post-mach, probably in underwear

as we met each other once.

Why is the tao so valuable?
Because it is everywhere,
and everyone can use it.

This is why those who seek
will find,
And those who reform
will be forgiven;
Why the good
will be rewarded,
And the thief who is cunning
will escape.

(Lao Tzu)

Palace of Knossos, The Queen's Megaron and Dolphin Fresco

July Poem, by Kathleen Ossip

Probably lashes the moon to its neck,

overawed opal in a forest of joy,

the Dolphin prints himself on the wavering line,

and Good Health fireworks the twilight away.

While Bad Guy blackens the beach with oil,

Never does all it can to erase

the smiling Dolphin who splatters his face

printing and reprinting in that other place.

Blunt

Blunt [click]

Jennis Li Cheng Tien, Taiwanese artist, Have A Nice Day

Smile

Cindy Sherman is at it again, this time at the Venice Biennale 2011

Carlos Don Juan . . .

was born in San Luis Potosi, Mexico in 1982 and is currently living and working in Dallas, Texas. He currently has works in the collections of the Cheech Marin Collection, Jim Harithas, Dio Sumagaysay, and the Joe Diaz Collection.

Happy 4th!