ericellenberg

"My movie is born first in my head, dies on paper; is resuscitated by the living persons and real..."

Tue, 29 May 2012 16:52:17 -0400

“My movie is born first in my head, dies on paper; is resuscitated by the living persons and real objects I use, which are killed on film but, placed in a certain order and projected on to a screen, come to life again like flowers in water.”

- Robert Bresson, from his Notes on the Cinematographer.

This project needs $295 to get funded. Four hours remain. The...

Tue, 29 May 2012 15:09:00 -0400

This project needs $295 to get funded. Four hours remain. The filmmaker responsible is Dmitry Trakovsky, who made Meeting Andrei Tarkovsky, an excellent documentary about Andrei Tarkovsky.

Watch the trailer, pitch in a few bucks, then pass it on.

Adorned (Taken with instagram)

Mon, 28 May 2012 18:38:55 -0400

Adorned (Taken with instagram)

Taken with instagram

Mon, 28 May 2012 17:48:58 -0400

Taken with instagram

Storm’s a-brewin (Taken with instagram)

Sun, 27 May 2012 15:12:09 -0400

Storm’s a-brewin (Taken with instagram)

Taken with instagram

Sat, 26 May 2012 15:47:58 -0400

Taken with instagram

"Late afternoon. Huancayo. We’d made the long haul down from Ayacucho that morning. Were hungry &..."

Fri, 25 May 2012 15:31:11 -0400

“Late afternoon. Huancayo. We’d made the long haul
down from Ayacucho that morning. Were hungry & tired. Had stumbled
into one of those huge, operatic, down-at-the-heels Peruvian
restaurants: teardrop chandeliers, candles
in ribbed silver cages, frayed red cloths on the tables.
A building of three red brick walls & one of that massive, grey,
mortarless, hand-hewn stone whose secret had died with the Incas.
Not a soul in the place but a sleepy middle-aged waiter
tricked out in the shabby black & white jacket & slacks
of the trade. He brought us two menus, goblets for wine,
& a plate of papas a la Huancaina.
I was unaccountably happy. In one of those silly, insouciant moods
that come out of nowhere, despite the fact that the planet
was falling apart all around us. The previous summer
I’d given the Army the slip, leaving to better men than myself
the task of carpet-bombing the indigent peasants of Asia.
We’d exchanged matrimonial vows in Seattle & then headed south.
Had been bussing for months from town to town thru the Andes.
The truth is, the whole thing had happened by magic. “Hey,
you know the trick where you blow an invisible coin
into a sealed-up glass?” I lowered a saucer over her long-
stemmed goblet so nothing could enter, & grinned
as if I were going to pluck out of nowhere fishes & loaves.
Mary said No, she didn’t—& laughed, preparing herself
for another fine piece of buffoonery. On the table between us,
though it wasn’t yet dark, the candle was already lit.
In the distance, the endless sierra. I asked her to hand me
a coin, placed it into my palm, recited some hocus-pocus
known only to shamans from Brooklyn, then spread
out my fingers, & lo & behold it had vanished!
So far so good. But that part was easy. What I did next
was harder—to blow that invisible coin into the sealed-up glass.
The nice thing was you could see it fall in with a clatter,
hear the luxurious clink of silver in glass as it dropped
out of nowhere & settled. Needless to say, she was amazed.
I mean really amazed! & so too, as it turns out, was our waiter,
who’d been watching the whole affair from the wall by the kitchen,
& flew to my side, flailing his arms like a sinner whose soul
the Holy Spirit had entered—& who knows he is saved.
He wanted to know how I’d done it. How such a thing
could possibly happen. Milagro! I felt like Jesus
raising the dead: a little embarrassed, but pleased
that I’d brought the thing off—& that someone had seen it.
Huancayo. I liked the looks of the place. That sharp
mountain light before dusk. Folks walking around
on the other side of the window in woolen serapes.
If it wouldn’t have sounded so pious, or grandiose,
I’d have said to that fellow: “Friend, how I did it
really isn’t the point; in this world nothing is more or less
amazing than anything else.” But I didn’t. Instead,
I just shrugged, the way that when Lazarus opened his eyes
& shook off the dust & put on his hat, Jesus himself
must have shrugged, as much as to say it was nothing, a trifle.
The three of us chatted a bit & then we checked
out the menus & ordered the meal we’d come in for—me
& Mary, my wife, all wit & forbearance & grace,
who one day had fallen by some sort of miracle into my life.”

- “A Trick” by Steve Kowit. From the Atlanta Review, where this poem was selected as its Grand Prize Winner in its 1996 International Poetry Competition.

"We have all seen them circling pastures, have looked up from the mouth of a barn, a pine clearing,..."

Fri, 25 May 2012 09:53:00 -0400

“

We have all seen them circling pastures,
have looked up from the mouth of a barn, a pine clearing,
the fences of our own backyards, and have stood
amazed by the one slow wing beat, the endless dihedral drift.
But I had never seen so many so close, hundreds,
every limb of the dead oak feathered black,

and I cut the engine, let the river grab the jon boat
and pull it toward the tree.
The black leaves shined, the pink fruit blossomed
red, ugly as a human heart.
Then, as I passed under their dream, I saw for the first time
its soft countenance, the raw fleshy jowls
wrinkled and generous, like the faces of the very old
who have grown to empathize with everything.

And I drifted away from them, slow, on the pull of the river,
reluctant, looking back at their roost,
calling them what I’d never called them, what they are,
those dwarfed transfiguring angels,
who flock to the side of the poisoned fox, the mud turtle
crushed on the shoulder of the road,
who pray over the leaf-graves of the anonymous lost,
with mercy enough to consume us all and give us wings.

”

- “Under the Vulture-Tree” by David Bottoms. From The Poetry Foundation.

An Entirely Other Day: Don't Talk to Him Before He's Had His Coffee

Fri, 25 May 2012 08:46:58 -0400

An Entirely Other Day: Don't Talk to Him Before He's Had His Coffee:

Darth Vader summons a cup of joe with the Force.

Dan Reisinger. Yet another find from my old bookmarks in...

Thu, 24 May 2012 11:20:58 -0400

Dan Reisinger. Yet another find from my old bookmarks in Pinboard. From grain edit.

Good design is as little design as possible Less, but better –...

Thu, 24 May 2012 11:18:02 -0400

Good design is as little design as possible

Less, but better – because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials.

Dieter Rams: ten principles for good design

Swiss Graphic Design History - a set on Flickr

Wed, 23 May 2012 11:17:10 -0400

Swiss Graphic Design History - a set on Flickr

Found this in my Pinboard today, linked from grain edit.

Wed, 23 May 2012 10:57:53 -0400

Found this in my Pinboard today, linked from grain edit.

"The whole idea of it makes me feel like I’m coming down with something, something worse than..."

Wed, 23 May 2012 10:32:00 -0400

“

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I’m coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light—
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

”

- “On Turning Ten” by Billy Collins. From Plagiarist.com.

Korean Film Archive - YouTube

Wed, 23 May 2012 09:29:10 -0400

Korean Film Archive - YouTube:

“The Korean Film Archive launched a terrific YouTube channel. 70 titles, free to watch, with subtitles.”

Hat tip to Criterion.

Photo

Wed, 23 May 2012 09:20:57 -0400

National Vegetarian Week - The Vegetarian Society

Mon, 21 May 2012 15:36:03 -0400

National Vegetarian Week - The Vegetarian Society:

“National Vegetarian Week (NVW) is the UK’s annual awareness-raising campaign promoting inspirational vegetarian food and the benefits of a meat-free lifestyle.”

Wheat

Sun, 20 May 2012 18:49:58 -0400

Wheat

How The Times Have Changed

Fri, 18 May 2012 10:51:44 -0400

A short adventure in sharing photos.

Arrive at work and decide to take a few minutes to upload photos of M. Ward concert from last night.
How do I get the photos from my iPhone to my Windows laptop without a cable? Oh yeah, Photo Stream. Get the iCloud control panel thingy, turn on Photo Stream, bingo.
Download and install said control panel, log in and turn on Photo Stream.
Photos begin downloading. One by one they show up in the folder. All of them are upside-down. (15 minutes have passed.)
A quick Google search finds this to be common and that the culprit is likely Windows’ handling of EXIF data where silly things like orientation are recorded.
No problem, I’ve got Windows Live Photo Gallery, I can do rotate. Open said app for the first time. Look confused for about 45 seconds while my brain takes a lap around the ribbon and all its everything.
Select all the photos I want to upload using the little checkboxes in the top left corner of the photo, batch rotate them (hey that was easy), and select the Facebook button to share.
Screen 1: How much do I want my Facebook integrated with Windows Live? Deselect everything. Screen 2: Log in to Facebook. Click Allow. (Does anyone else feel a little uneasy every time they see this?)
Brilliant. “Service Unavailable”. That’s all it says. Something in Microsoft-land barfed while it talked to Facebook. (About 25 minutes have passed.)
Hey, you know what? The iPhoto app for iPhone. I’ll try actually using it for a change.
Launch App Store, search for it, install it.
Open the app, wait for it to update the photo library, open the camera roll. Wait a second. What is this Updating Photo Library thing actually doing? Can it not just read directly from the system’s photo library? I don’t know.
Fiddle around to discover that selecting multiple photos involves tapping Edit, then the gear, then Select Multiple…
Select 29 photos. That’s nice: it shows me the photo in the editing window when I select it.
Tap the share arrow button, then Facebook. Facebook app flies in and I tap “Okay” to give iPhoto permission. (Still feel uneasy at that screen. Try to forget about it when it switches back to iPhoto.)
Name the album, upload starts.
Five minutes later, upload finishes with an offer to look at the newly uploaded photos.
Total elapsed time: about 35 minutes. Around 25 on Windows with no success. Around 10 on iPhone with success.

I made an assumption: I thought I’d need the laptop to share a lot of photos easily. I was wrong. Even if the Microsoft Windows Live Photo Gallery Extraordinary Edition with Puppies and Kittens Application had successfully authenticated with Facebook and uploaded the photos, it still would have taken longer than sharing them from my iPhone. The iPhone with iPhoto was more than sufficient.

And the crazy thing is, I feel certain it’s only going to get better.

Taken with instagram

Thu, 17 May 2012 17:53:37 -0400

Taken with instagram