when trees say goodbye...

in the crazy wild wind of last night, many of the trees here lost large limbs, and some trees were uprooted entirely.

two of the largest branches that fell from the sky landed on the flagstone path, near the front door, and two of the largest that hit the flagstone left marks.

as you can see, these are quite beautiful drawings, certainly not too distant from the japanese calligraphic marks that might've been part of a jisei - japanese death poem, written down or recited in the last minutes before death.

the visual poetry of creating with space...

this fantastic sculpture was made by a 9 year old student, and is pictured in the book creating with space and construction by lothar kampmann. it was published in 1971 by the otto maier verlag, ravensburg co., who re-published the eames house of cards toys in the early 70's as well. kampmann's book "explains the fundamental concepts of space and three dimensional structure in clear, easily understandable terms, with many examples drawn from everyday experience; boxes, spheres, stones, trees, beetles, bowls, balls of clay, and more".

the text, while clear and straightforward, deals with a lot of poetic ideas as well as practical examples, and includes numerous examples of kid's activities. one of them is pictured above with the caption: "a structure reaching out into space, inspired by the sight of a tree laden with fruit". this fragile, handmade, temporal structure seen as a fruit tree somehow sends me to the fragility of nick drake's voice singing the phrase, as well as reminding me of the work of one of my favorite artists, al taylor.