Perhaps This is Why ....

...I became a potter.



Back in the 1950s, the BBC had a load of short film-clips they used, titled "Interlude", when for some reason or other there was a gap in programming, technical failures, and so forth.
And I know, as a child, I was endlessly fascinated by this. I so wanted to try it, I made things out of mud all the time, but never had access to a potters wheel until I was at college, aged 19, on another course altogether, but at night, less than a hundred yards from my room, the pottery studio was unlocked!

The potter whose hands we see was George Henry Aubertin, who ran the Compton Pottery in Compton, Surrey.
He's buried at the Watts Chapel, in Compton, which is a beautiful building full of arts and crafts ceramics. Any potters visiting the U.K. might enjoy a visit there, it's near Guildford, just south of London.

Links:
http://www.wattsgallery.org.uk/watts-chapel
http://fannycornforth.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/beauty-on-hillside.html

I Don't Own Any i-things

But this phone case, made by BookBook, alas, for i-phones and i-things only, is almost enough to sway me toward the ranks of the ineffably smug.

 

Almost.

Being, as I am, a devoutly bookloving person, a little leather volume, like this  in my pocket, would feel just right, in worn soft brown leather.

 

Mmmmmm. I wonder if my current phone would....

Remember This Image?

BoingBoing's David Pescovitz reminds me that it was forty years ago today that this photograph was taken by Apollo 17's crew, on the last manned mission to the moon,

Five hours and six minutes travel time from Cape Canaveral, 28,000 miles from home.  The camera was a seventy millimetre Hasselblad, with an 80 mm lens.

Hardly Davidson

A slight explanation, found via a reverse image-search:  A comment by 'Michael'-

"This was initially built as "The Nine Wheel Harley Rig". It was built in the late 80′s by Kenneth Kilpatrick of Huntsville Alabama. I see from this photo It has since been modified to incorporate a second front wheel making it now ” The Ten Wheel Harley Rig “. The tractor is a modified Harley Davidson FLT. The interior of the trailer is nicely finished. Kenneth did receive license from HD to utilize their paint scheme and logo. I am told, at Harley Davidson’s expense, Kenneth has been able to show his rig in several countries around the world "

This thing beats me completely. It's a masterpiece of semiotic confusion, I admire, absolutely, the craftsmanship, the effort, the vision, that the maker put into it. But my poor brain bashes against the 'why?', like a moth crashing repeatedly against a lighted window.

I mean, if the guy's a bike freak, he's built something that's not a bike.
If he's a trike freak, well, he's built something that's not a trike.
If he's a semi-trailer freak, he's built something that's not a semi,
If he's a big rig freak, ditto, ditto, ditto.

It's like a Thai tuk-tuk on steroids.
Or a toy truck on pink sparkles.
Or the sort of inexplicable artifact that haunts my more problematic dreams. Hold on... is this real? Am I about to wake?

Surgery.

 

Monday's Muzik

Unless you live under a rock, I'll warrant you can not have avoided the rocket-like rise to global celebrity of South Korean pop star Psy.

But I'll bet few of you have heard of Berkeley, California-based Korean band Ra-On?


By the magic of the interblogs, I can remedy that.  They play Psy's hit song. But differently.

Friday's Poem.

 Eve Speaks:

Once I was in Eden and walked, blithely,
out of it.
How was I to know?
There seemed another Eden,
just next door. It looked familiar,
and I was tired of the new.
All day he strolled around with his name tags.
Glitter turned specific, but I craved
the blobbiness of things,
the inexact borders,
the possibility that this could also be

that. Of course I was an idiot. I'd run back
now, if I could, bear his painless
children, even call the girl If Only,
the boy, I Told You So.
Instead of living in this okay crowded world,
I'd make all my mistakes in Paradise.
Is that possible?
Is it?
I didn't even see the gate.
Then the gate closed.

Jan Heller Levi

Poem. Today's selection.

Let me tell you about my marvelous god, how he hides in the hexagons
of the bees, how the drought that wrings its leather hands
above the world is of his making, as well as the rain in the quiet minutes
that leave only thoughts of rain.
An atom is working and working, an atom is working in deepest
night, then bursting like the farthest star; it is far
smaller than a pinprick, far smaller than a zero and it has no
will, no will toward us.
This is why the heart has paced and paced,
will pace and pace across the field where yarrow
was and now is dust. A leaf catches
in a bone. The burrow’s shut by a tumbled clod
and the roots, upturned, are hot to the touch.
How my god is a feathered and whirling thing; you will singe your arm
when you pluck him from the air,
when you pluck him from that sky
where grieving swirls, and you will burn again
throwing him back.

Susan Stewart:- "Let me tell you about my marvelous god"

via Three Quarks Daily, where Jim Culleny posts a regular thursday poem.
Three Quarks makes interesting reading.