diagrams

 

Dear Drawing,

Ooh, I love these diagrams!  I found them in a book of paintings of birds, and they are really wonderful.  They are more compelling than the actual paintings, but I give you a few of them, so you can see for yourself.  I love the compositions of the shapes, untethered from their landscape.  If you are crazy curious about the books, you can see one here, and the other, there.

The whole thing has got me thinking about the outlines, the minimum that you need to tell the tale of identity, and I am also considering the circled numbers; the corresponding text.  Is that the compelling part?  Is the appeal the way this diagram hopes to instruct?  When we see a diagram, do we get ready to receive direction?

What if, say, I took a whole lot of outlines, of things, like leaves, cups, pillows, fruit; and I put some numbers on, or near, and I painted it all up in a nice buttercup color?  That sounds like it would be swell, doesn't it?  The outlines would have maybe the barest hint of reference to them, just enough to make you think, and then we can enjoy contemplating the question posed by having these varied objects in the same picture.  

Calling it: the end of Summer Fun.

 

Trees: Bole and Creeper, Henry Moore, 1979, Etching, 238 mm x 188mm.

Dear Funsters,

This, I believe, is it.  I am all funned out.  It's not the end, of course, it's the beginning!  We will still meet here and I will continue to leave you messages in the hollow of the bole of the big tree in the empty lot on the corner, but we will put this summer time pursuit of fun aside for now.  It's time to cram in all the fun that we haven't yet gotten to thus far, and to turn slightly towards the Fall.

For this week of summer fun, I offer you:

Take a photo safari.

Learn to walk on stilts!

Get an ice cream, large, or small.

Plan a cruise; large or small.

And, your dance party tune!

 

Thanks for joining me in the summer fun!

it's like

 

Drawing by David Lynch.

Dear Metaphorical and Analogical,

Like, I am pretty sure like is my favorite word.  It's like, really useful, because it sets up a dialectical, a juxtaposition, an analogy.  This is like that.  

Also, here's a few more beautiful bonuses to the word like:  Liking, indicating a fondness for, is a nice, positive thing to bring to a conversation or an object.  I like that hat!  I like those shoes!  I like this chocolate mousse!  You get the idea; liking things is pretty damned pleasant.  Let's continue, if you'd like?

The word also sounds very happily like the word 'lick.'  And that, my friends, is also likeable!  Imagine, you see a dark, nearly black stone on the beach that you like; you pick it up, you like its warm heaviness, and, to get a little closer, you give it a lick.  It's salty and fine!  Many things that you like, in other words, could do with a licking.

Anyway, it's like deja vu, because I feel like I have professed my adoration of like before, like, maybe a few years ago?  I don't think I could live without like.

Hello x, David Lynch, 2013.

Damn Near.

 

Dear People,

I am stupefied by the wonderfulness of this!  I can only add that it's a wonderful world, full of wonderful people, giving gifts, great and small, all day, all night!

Friday: Dance Day.

 

Dear Feet,

Here, try this dance for your Summer Dance Party this week!  Oh, wait, you are going to need some music for those moves:  try this.  Oh, you might also want some instructions.

line & sign

 

Here comes fun, again.

 

Still from It Came From Beneath the Sea.

Dear Summer of Fun,

Yes!  Here are another five possibilities for your summer fun pleasure!  It's true, we can't go on like this, and I see that the cottonwoods in the creek are starting to yellow, but this week, we continue to fun like the summer has no end!

Assemble a chair!

Read a wonderful book!

Make a special omelet!

See a creature feature!

Dance party track!  (That was so great; let's have another one!)

See you next summer fun week, while it lasts!

leaves & flowers

 

Friday Night Dance Music.

 

Dear Friday,

Here is your summer dance party tune for today!  ¡Diviértanse!

a letter

 Amy Vanderbilt

Dear A.,

I am beside myself.  Perhaps it is just the weather- today there is a sultry, warm rain, and little breeze.  This tropical exhibition comes to us by way of the furthermost fringes of a Hurricane.  Here, it is nothing but mildness, but I cannot help but wonder if its centered, powerful force is not also in some effect here, too, as I am in a fury of sorting and discarding items.

Perhaps, though, it is the influence of my acquaintances- whom travel, and move, visit and relocate themselves of late.  Some, indeed, have gone away for good.  Would that you were here beside me, on the porch, with the scent of the dampened bromes around us:  I would pour us two small glasses of a monukka wine, a dessert wine, into wee crystal cups, carefully, slowly, lentamente, so as not to disturb the lees.  We would set here, with bird and insect song all about us, and I would seek your counsel on a book that I consider parting with:  Amy Vanderbilt's Complete Book of Etiquette.

It pains me to part with it, and yet I realize that I cannot expect the possession of a book of manners to improve my own:  I desire to act in accordance with etiquette, but I do not consult the book, and what is worse, I am an oar without a boat to paddle, in that whatever is left of the forms of this book ate 64 years old, and my only opportunity to practice them will be with people of, shall we say, at least 80 years of age?

Missing you,

signed, 

M.

watercraft

 

A few more funs.

 

                                                                 Starlight Night, Georgia O'Keeffe,                                                                              watercolor and graphite on paper, 8 7/8 x 11 3/4 inches, 1917.

Dear August Fun,

Are all these weeks of fun dragging on for you?  I have an option for you and your discontent!*  I also have one that looks ahead to the approaching Fall and its longer evenings.  Try one of this week's five funs on for size; I am sure there will be something you like!

Sleep under the stars in a bedroll!

Listen to a lament!*

Provision yourself for a Fall knitting project.

Get a doughnut from Fany!

Another extended dance tune!

Until next week- keep up the good fun!

No Particular Place to Go

 

Dear Shutter Bugged,

Riding along in my automobile last week, it came to me, that the difference between me (and maybe you, too) and a photographer is this key behavior:  The photographer ALWAYA stops to take the photo.  Or, even, turns around and goes back.  Leading me to wonder another few questions....

Is dedication the thing?  Singularity of purpose?

Can we play so easily at being Photographers?  Can we, in a few short weeks, see with viewfinder eyes?

You might even take this last question as a challenge, if you weren't already up to your neck in trying to have fun twice a week; so put it in the back of your mind, and maybe, come fall, we will return to the notion of a photographic month or season.

Here are some photos I saw but did not 'take:'

a field of purple blue silver cabbage

intersecting barn walls

a fence of wood in dry dirt

an old station wagon with three big stripes

a murder of crows lifting out of a cypress

two women in pink shirts

a dozen different photos of shifting fog and revealed water

the front of a roadhouse

light on waves

tree trunks leaning left

There's moon in the sky.

 

Dear Dancers,

Another spatially and semantically significant song for your summer dance party pleasure!

Another(?) week of fun!

 

Dear Funsters,

I have more summer fun for you!  Remember, you must have fun at least twice this week!  It's a chore, but somebody's gotta do it!

Sing a standard.

Ride the big wheel.

Make Lobster Rolls.

Paint your toes.

Another extended dance mix (with ribbits!!)

Until next week's fun!

Ground Plane VIII.

Friday: Dance Party.

 

Jacqueline Marval, The Dancer, 1909

Dear Record Player,

Here is your Friday prescription: your summer dance tune for today!  

curtained & draped

 

Easter Hat, from Draped, Anonymous Women, by artist Patty Carroll.

Dear Confidante,

I am working on the mysteries, still.  What is identity?  Yes, we have spoken of this, and I think I mentioned my panic at being asked to define one for myself.  I have been digging at it sporadically, in my usual, unkempt garden kind of way, and I found this artist, this photographer, Patty Carroll.  She'll knock you out of your socks; enjoy the ride!

Special Fun Edition

 

Image taken by Valentina Pogudina

Dear Dodo Reader,

The summer fun continues this week!  It's true, a lot of the fun suggestions involve making something, but you already know to take a hike, or a swim, or a paddle without me telling you to visit the beach or go on a picnic.  I have chosen these funs for their unusualness.  Also, y'all know that if your kind of fun is to clean grout, you should be on a different channel.

For fun this week, why not:

Make a special effect.

Make a fortune (teller).

Play a card game.  (just push the Create a Game or New Private Game buttons)

Keep your hoop up.

A Summer's Summer dance tune!

Okay, 'til Tuesday's fun list next week!

(un petite encore- close listeners will enjoy the difference in vocal style in these two versions!)

slow dance to this

 

Dear Summer Dancers,

Here is your dance party tune for today!  And, don't worry baby.