prosicated

( A sad and woeful tale )

So, my Mac-friendly friends, which one of these data recovery companies have you been happiest with, OnTrack or Drive Savers? Any recommendations? (Other than, you know, not being a dolt & backing up my files more than once a year?)

( rant, rant, rant )

Wooser Collective: Banksy Hits New York's Most Famous Museums
Wooster Collective: Outtakes from the NYTimes Article
Cool Hunting: Banksy hits NYC
Banksy: Current Exhibitions
NYTimes: Need Talent to Exhibit in Museums? Not This Prankster

Banksy installed art in:
The Met's American Painting Wing: "You Have Beautiful Eyes"
MoMA's 3rd Floor: "Discount Soup Can"
Brooklyn Museum of Art's Historical Painting Wing: "Give Peace a Chance"
Museum of Natural History's Hall of Bio Diversity: "Withus Oragainstus"

Banksy, a fictional character and public artist, dressed as a harmless old gent, carried his art and signage into 4 major New York City museums, and hung his works on the wall. This work was documented by a collaborator with a camera, and it appears that he encountered no trouble. As of yesterday afternoon, only the pieces at the Met and MoMA had been removed, though I expect the other ones will be down quickly as news of this spreads.

(Wooster Collective has an RSS feed on LJ, for those of you who are interested, at woosterfeed, and Cool Hunting is also a feed, at joshrubin_feed.)

Best links culled off the flist today.

Weapons of Mass... Seduction
Dirty Punk Fuckin Anarchy Machine

As of Tuesday evening, Ry and I live in Cambridge, MA.
As of yesterday evening, Ry's felt like he's home: we have a net connection.
As of this morning, I feel like I'm home: I made my first cup of tea.

("Home" in no way precludes the intense feelings of being misplaced, missing badgerhaus denizens, or Philadelphia.)

More to follow, when the computer isn't one of Ry's, balanced precariously on a bookshelf amidst a pile of empty boxes, cables, wires, extension cords, and blinking lights on a myriad of modems, routers, phones, etc.

Aftenposten reports a sword-wielding, knife-bearing foreigner dressed like a ninja stole cash from a gas station and made his getaway on a bicycle.

Now there's performance anthropology.

Instructions for Everything
25 wonderful bullet points, like this:
12. In the rare event that a mature adult of the human species confronts you, stretch your arms above your head to make yourself as tall as possible. Shout strong commands with a strong, commanding shout. If you are assaulted, fall down and play dead. Do not play dead for more than seventy-two hours, or you will die.
( Instructions to Everything )

You who never arrived
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost
from the start,
I don't even know what songs
would please you. I have given up trying
to recognize you in the surging wave of the next
moment. All the immense
inages in me -- the far-off, deeply-felt landscape,
cities, towers, and bridges, and unsuspected
turns in the path.
and those powerful lands that were once
pulsing with the life of the gods --
all rise within me to mean
you, who forever elude me.

You, Beloved, who are all
the gardens I have ever gazed at.
longing. An open window
in a country house --, and you almost
stepped out, pensive, to meet me.
Streets that I chanced upon, --
you had just walked down them and vanished.
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors
were still dizzy with your presence and, startled,
gave back my too-sudden image. Who knows?
perhaps the same bird wchoed through both of us
yesterday, separate, in the evening...

Under Grand Central's tattered vault
--maybe half a dozen electric stars still lit--
one saxophone blew, and a sheer black scrim

billowed over some minor constellation
under repair. Then, on Broadway, red wings
in a storefront tableau, lustrous, the live macaws

preening, beaks opening and closing
like those animated knives that unfold all night
in jewelers' windows. For sale,

glass eyes turned outward toward the rain,
the birds lined up like the endless flowers
and cheap gems, the makeshift tables

of secondhand magazines
and shoes the hawkers eye
while they shelter in the doorways of banks.

So many pockets and paper cups
and hands reeled over the weight
of that glittered pavement, and at 103rd

a woman reached to me across the wet roof
of a stranger's car and said, I'm Carlotta,
I'm hungry. She was only asking for change,

so I don't know why I took her hand.
The rooftops were glowing above us,
enormous, crystalline, a second city

lit from within. That night
a man on the downtown local stood up
and said, My name is Ezekiel,

I am a poet, and my poem this evening is called
fall. He stood up straight
to recite, a child reminded of his posture

by the gravity of his text, his hands
hidden in the pockets of his coat.
Love is protected, he said,

the way leaves are packed in snow,
the rubies of fall. God is protecting
the jewel of love for us.

He didn't ask for anything, but I gave him
all the change left in my pocket,
and the man beside me, impulsive, moved,

gave Ezekiel his watch.
It wasn't an expensive watch,
I don't even know if it worked,

but the poet started, then walked away
as if so much good fortune
must be hurried away from,

before anyone realizes it's a mistake.
Carlotta, her stocking cap glazed
like feathers in the rain,

under the radiant towers, the floodlit ramparts,
must have wondered at my impulse to touch her,
which was like touching myself,

the way your own hand feels when you hold it
because you want to feel contained.
She said, You get home safe now, you hear?

In the same way Ezekiel turned back
to the benevolent stranger.
I will write a poem for you tomorrow,

he said. The poem I will write will go like this:
Our ancestors are replenishing
the jewel of love for us.