I think you should do this.

Motivational Posters. The kind with animals.

"We fit together like a bunch of puppies!"







I have always thought that I could be great at making motivational posters. You know, the ones that are in high school guidance counselor offices with a koala holding onto a tree branch saying "hang in there!" Recently, my passion for motivational posters was rekindled through a conversation with my friend about how she felt she could be a great motivational speaker.

So maybe I googled motivational animals. This is not a big deal. It is the summer. This is what I found: http://imreallysad.com

Ok. The url is a little accusatory. But then I clicked on it, and it is a library of inspirational animal photos that you add your own captions to. I mean sure I'm in college right now, but honestly! What sort of a career am I going to get with an English Degree? Creative Writing no less! I think that as an investment in myself, I will spend the next two years honing my motivational caption skills on this playground of inspiration.

Here is my first attempt:http://imreallysad.com/342/#comment3049

Willy Pogany

Someone that I have been interested in lately is Willy Pogany. Truth be told I do not know as much as I would like to about him but I have wasted much time google image searching his work when I should be doing homework. He is a hungarian born illustrator who did most of his work between 1912 and 1918. I first became interested in him when I saw his illustrations for The Tales of Lohengrin,and had glorious plans to buy a copy of the book for myself, but unfortunately, the cheapest copy I found cost around $300. So it is google for me.

His artwork runs the gamut of bright festive oils to darker lithographs, and he did work on ad campaigns as well as illustrations for sacred texts and fairy tales. To the right are two plates from The Tales of Lohengrin, considered by many to be his masterpiece.

The good news is, one of his instructional books, The Art of Drawing, is being reprinted. I found it on Amazon for around $10. I think that is as much Pogany as I can afford these days, but it might make a good summer project. Here is hoping there will be more reprinting, and less expensive copies of Willy Pogany's illustrations in the future, but until then, happy Google Image Search to you!

This is about the Simic post.

So, I wanted to add something to yesterdays Simic post. I think that I was unfair to that woman who was ridiculous in the video. It was strange of me because I also often make an ass of myself around "creative types," but I did feel that her nodding was ingenuine but I should have been more sympathetic with it.

But what I think is strangest about this is that I have been thinking about how unfair I was to her all day today. And maybe this is the problem: people don't treat these "creative types" like normal people, there is this great misconception that they are all delicate flowers and that they need ingenuine appreciation (I blame the movie Garden State). So, I wanted to correct myself, and say that the woman below is not actually a bitch, but pretty human. That poetry is not a test, and that I shouldn't have judged her reaction so harshly (but then I also have to put in there that poetry is not a test and she should not have felt the need to let us all know that she figured out the 'secret' to the poem). There. I have parenthetically had the last word.

Charles Simic

I mean, I doubt that anyone needs me to introduce them to Charles Simic. But here is one of his poems that has made me incredibly glad. This poem is from The Book of Gods and Devils, published in 1990. Charles Simic is from Yugoslavia, and is therefore lovely to listen to. He was poet laureate in 2007.


A Letter

Dear philosophers, I get sad when I think.
Is it the same with you?
Just as I'm about to sink my teeth into the noumenon,
Some old girlfriend comes to distract me.
"She's not even alive!" I yell to the skies.

The wintry light made me go that way.
I saw beds covered with identical gray blankets.
I saw grim-looking men holding a naked woman
While they hosed her with cold water.
Was that to calm her nerves, or was it punishment?

I went to visit my friend Bob, who said to me:
"We reach the real by overcoming the seduction of images."
I was overjoyed, until I realized
Such abstinence will never be possible for me.
I caught myself looking out the window.

Bob's father was taking their dog for a walk.
He moved with pain; the dog waited for him.
There was no one else in the park,
Only bare trees with an infinity of tragic shapes
To make thinking difficult.



I am including an interview with Charles Simic that is very strange. He reads his poem "That little something" but then he pins down the poem to one particular event in his life. Which I am not used to hearing from poets. Also, please watch the bitch in the red jacket. How she nods at what she feels is the conclusion so that we all know that she is taking away some great meaning from the poem. Desperate.



Simic: "Try and read everything, you read and read and one day you say 'I'm sick and tired of all this...you feel a sense of mission 'I have to do something about the world.'"

Woman: "heh, you have to write poems, heehee."

Simic: "Yeah, you have to write poems."

I wear black levis and long strap purses.

so I was wearing my black levis today, obviously looking dank as shit, when I notice this other girl with a long strap purse watching; wishing she could be cool like me. I let have a good long stare, then I cross the street like I didn't even notice.

It wasn't until later that I realized she might be MK.

singingbabe26

One day on youtube, I came across singingbabe26. Now, I think that I spend most of my time procrastinating by watching her videos, and I think that everyone should know about her.



She and her youtube besty alwayzblu make videos about Jesus and Christianity as well as videos about what they did that day. Maybe the videos don't come across as they are intended to, but when I watch singingbabe26 try to remember what she wanted to tell me, I begin to feel a bit like I am her imaginary friend:




Which is kind of great.

The Bestiary: A Book of Beasts

I am reading a translation of a book called The Bestiary: A Book of Beasts which was written in the 12th century, that catalogs both real and fantastic animals, and explains where their names come from. I was not looking for such a book, it just stood out for a minute when I was walking through the library, but there are some really worthwhile things in it.

"If anybody smears himself with the blood of this bird on his way to bed, he will have nightmares about suffering devils."


And this, of course, is good to know. If you must smear yourself with the blood of a Upupa, then at least do it before dinner.

But a lot of this book deals with each beast's place within Christianity, something that I was not familiar with at all. Apparently the Panther is an animal parallel to Jesus, with their common enemy the "dragon-devil":

"When a Panther has dined and is full up, it hides away in its own den and goes to sleep. After three days it wakes up again and emits a loud belch, and there comes a very sweet smell from its mouth, like the smell of all spice. When the other animals have heard the noise the follow wherever it goes, because of the sweetness of this smell. But the Dragon only, hearing the sound, flees into the caves of the earth, being smitten with fear. There unable to bear the smell, it becomes torpid and half asleep, and remains motionless, as if dead.