no longer pending: roadkill in the news

opossum, my possum

profundo I

josef albers (this is actually titled 'profundo' !!!). sol lewitt. aakash nihalani.

maninbo

from "ten thousand lives" by ko un, an ongoing poem series by the korean author that started while he was in jail and is his attempt to describe everyone he has ever met.

Su-dong and the Swallows

Su-dong’s family is only his parents.

When they’re out at work

and he is playing, alone,

looking after the house, he gets bored.

Home alone, his only sport is idly pulling weeds,

until every year in early spring the swallows arrive.

Filling up the empty house, the swallows become his family.

As droppings fall on Su-dong’s head,

the swallows fill up the empty house.

The brood hatches, then in the twinkling of an eye,

the chicks grow up

and go their separate ways,

at which he finds himself bored again.

The yard is suddenly that much bigger.

Late in autumn the swallows,

setting off to fly fast over hills and seas,

over seas and oceans,

the swallows leaving for lands beyond the river,

for distant south seas,

gather on the neighborhood’s empty washing lines

and sit in rows, preening their breasts with their beaks

before setting off.

Looking up at them all, Su-dong feels utterly lonely.

Feeling lonely

means growing up.

‘You’re leaving now, you’ll be back next year.

Good-bye for now.’

He gives each of the swallows a name:

Chick-sun,

Chick-ku,

Cheep-sun,

Cheep-bo.

hello mrs. forsythia!

what a beautiful yellow dress you have!

museum of long life

i would love to live to be 112 if i got to do that living in the talysh mountains....
azerbaijani centenarians living the wood and paper dream:

i'm gonna hoo-hoot and howl like a lovesick owl until you say you're gonna come out with me

in honor of the (dead!) owls and other birds in roni horn's show at the ICA, this past weekend i got to kick it with a bunch of kiddos and six (live!) owls- saw-whet, screech, barred, great horned, snowy, & eurasian eagle owl- in the museum. 

live owls:

horn's 'dead owl' (1998):

horn's "bird" series, photographs of the backs of the heads of taxidermied icelandic waterfowl, is great too:

another swell dead owl in a contemporary art museum in the past year was jason dodge's "four carat black tourmaline and half-carat ruby inside an owl," part of the walker art center's amazing "the quick and the dead" show last year.