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I saw that in Edinburgh - brilliant!

An evening with Neil Gaiman, FourPlay, and Eddie Campbell, at the Warfield in San Francisco. Many wonderful things happened during the evening, including a full-length reading by Gaiman of the artists’ collaborative work The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains, with accompanying music performed, and accompanying artwork projected on a screen.

As in other circumstances when I’ve thought “I’ll just take the backup camera,” I forgot to consider such questions as whether the backup camera performs decently in the dark. Sigh.

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Everyday heroes:

Our colleague, Amanda, shares her Unknown American story.

My Mother, my hero

Amanda Camino Aleksey

It was the Christmas of 1988 when my father left Ecuador for the States, but it was the year that followed that changed the lives of my mother, my sister, and I. My sister, the youngest, seemed to take my father’s abandonment the hardest. Her behavior transformed completely from active, happy, and curious to sad and absent. I would try to engage her in play, but it was like talking to a wall. Mom would call out to her, but my sister would act as though she’d forgotten her name, or as though she’d lost all hearing. That was most of 1989 and by the end of that year mom no longer thought that my sister was simply sad or in shock of my father’s departure.

In the years that followed we saw all type of doctors: neurologists, pathologists, otolaryngologists (mom believed my sister might be deaf), and child psychologists. No one could figure out what was wrong. Since no one could find a physical or neurological diagnosis for my sister, mom was told the explanation had to be some type of mental disability.  This was not an explanation my mother took lightly. It took several more months to get an answer, but in 1991 my sister was diagnosed with autism. The child psychologist who recognized all the warning signs recommended that we travel to the United States for further evaluations and therapy. There was hope!

Getting a visa to America was not easy. Family and friends said there would be absolutely no way that my mother would get a visa, especially because she was requesting to travel with two children.  A year passed by, but in July of 1992 the three of us boarded on a plane to New York City! We were not ready for the reality of my sister’s condition, though. Mom had hoped that my sister would undergo therapy, perhaps for a year or two, and she would be cured; we would all return to Ecuador after that. This was not the case, of course. I can’t imagine what this must have been like for my mother, accepting this new reality for her children and for herself.

 Mom was a Finance Director in Ecuador; she’s worked in factories, as a cleaning lady, nanny, and a nurse assistant here in America, and it’s all been in pursuit of her children’s well-being.

—Amanda Camino Aleksey

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Woolf often conceives of life this way: as a gift that you’ve been given, which you must hold onto and treasure but never open. Opening it would dispel the atmosphere, ruin the radiance—and the radiance of life is what makes it worth living. It’s hard to say just what holding onto life without looking at it might mean; that’s one of the puzzles of her books. But it has something to do with preserving life’s mystery; with leaving certain things undescribed, unspecified, and unknown; with savoring certain emotions, such as curiosity, surprise, desire, and anticipation. It depends on an intensified sense of life’s preciousness and fragility, and on a Heisenberg-like notion that, when it comes to our most abstract and spiritual intuitions, looking too closely changes what we feel. It has to do, in other words, with a kind of inner privacy, by means of which you shield yourself not just from others’ prying eyes, but from your own. Call it an artist’s sense of privacy.

Joshua Rothman's New Yorker essay on Virginia Woolf’s idea of privacy is the best thing I’ve read in ages. 

Do yourself a favor and read Rothman’s full essay here.

(via explore-blog)

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Series of paintings discovered in an abandon mental asylum in Italy.

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I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life, I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish… You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger.”

Simone de Beauvoir

I feel every word.

(via arcacouture)

my life.

(via amandapalmer)

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Maybe this is how I should shoot my choreography. I might die falling but who cares...

via wishfultimemachine:

Rooftop Ballet.

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I love it

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Another repost with Neil Gaiman- surprise surprise!

Neil Gaiman reads Dr Seuss’s GREEN EGGS AND HAM, in honour of Worldbuilders hitting $500,000.

Learn about Worldbuilders at http://www.worldbuilders.org/ (and this reading at  http://www.worldbuilders.org/our-next-stretch-goal-unlocks-at/neil-gaiman-reads-green-eggs-and-ham )

(I’m not really here. But I wanted you to get it from me first.)

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READING MY OWN DISSERTATION

credit: mostlikelytowearpink

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The Colorful Island of Burano, Italy

The island of Burano, a 40 minute boat ride from Venice, is a beautiful place with an equally colorful history. Burano is an old fishing village, and the fishing traditions of Burano date back to Roman times. Fishing is not the only source of income for Burano. The art of lace making has played a large role in Burano’s history.

Legend has it that a betrothed fisherman out at sea was given a wedding veil by a siren, and when he gave it to his betrothed; everyone tried to replicate it with needlework. Burano lace became famous. King Louis XIV was said to be wearing a Burano lace collar for his coronation and Leonardo Da Vinci purchased a piece for the main altar of the Duomo di Milano.

But what makes Burano different from the rest of the surrounding islands, is its rainbow of houses. Though these houses are beautifully painted and look like artwork, the reason for their vivid colors is quite practical. Years ago, the fishermen painted their houses bright colors so when they were coming home in the fog, they knew whose house was whose. That said, the colors of these houses have been in families for centuries. And, if you want to change the color of your house, you have to send in a request to the government.

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Abandoned Railroad Tracks, Missouri by large barge

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The Teatro Greco in Taormina

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Boogeymen - part of a series of eerie stereoviews - dated 1923 (Via)

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Plato's Allegory of the Cave

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And I knew that in spite of all the roses and kisses and restaurant dinners a man showered on a woman before he married her, what he secretly wanted when the wedding service ended was for her to flatten out underneath his feet like Mrs. Willard's kitchen mat.

Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar.

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I am afraid of getting older… I am afraid of getting married. Spare me from cooking three meals a day—spare me from the relentless cage of routine and rote. I want to be free… I want, I want to think, to be omniscient…”

Sylvia Plath written in 1949 at age 17.  (via seabois)

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