why i'll never be able to watch 'wizard of oz' again

my favourite of the wizard of oz characters is was the cowardly lion.

now he's the newest player in the ensemble cast of my weirdest nightmares, thanks to this:


moral of the story: never google where fond, nostalgic childhood memories are concerned. eek.

yeah, what would you know about it, astrobarry?

Photo by inkling

turns out, quite a bit. dammit.

Your days of holding the interpersonal dynamic at a breezy, easygoing, half-an-arm's-length distance are numbered, Libra. It's getting deeper, fuller, more intense and flavorful… and there's really no useful use in trying to defer the inevitable. I was also going to add that this heightening of involvement level (whether in a romantic, professional or other collaborative context) is due to occur whether you like or not, then thought better of it—mainly because I intuit that you will like it, even if this affectionate pull is unconscious (while your conscious mind continues to freak out about all the ramifications). But we all know there's only so long that two people can play a semi-detached game of nicey-nice with each other before it simply has to 'go there'. You know what I mean? As the next few weeks unfold, you will see that this is either the beginning of the end… or, perhaps more precisely, the beginning of the end of the prior initiatory phase and simultaneously the start of something more profound. Do not fear the tangled web you find yourself being woven into. There's an undeniable thrill to knowing that, though you'll soon have much more to lose should things go south, you'll also soon have much more to gain if and when they don't.

argh. astrobarry strikes again.

things i'm learning, over and over again, these days:

- there's nothing to be scared of, except of being cowardly.
- being afraid means you've got something to lose. having something to lose means you've got something at stake. having something at stake is brave, and good.
- strawberries taste exponentially better when the sun's out.
- i am really a very slow learner.

now wait until the sun goes down and light a sparkler. apparently it is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us. weirdos.

i know this much is true

we all must die. but until then, we all must live.

the tectonic plates are shifting. i'm just glad to be here to see it, to have to squint through the sunshine to see the monitor, to smell my mum's skin again, the most ancient smell in my small world.


...and for further proof that a pink moon gonna get us all, look at Nicholas Nixon's lovely, unsentimental series documenting the ageing of his wife and her sisters, or the Family Goldberg's collective growing up, or The Chive's fast-forwarded life, or, or, or -

341 years

in honour of the appointment, after 341 years, of a female poet laureate, i give you the poet laureate of my heart: sharon olds.

The Abandoned Newborn

When they found you, you were not breathing.
It was ten degrees below freezing, and you were
wrapped only in plastic. They lifted you
up out of the litter basket, as one
lifts a baby out of the crib after nap
and they unswaddled you from the Sloan’s shopping bag.
As far as you were concerned it was all over,
you were feeling nothing, everything had stopped
some time ago,
and they bent over you and forced the short
knife-blade of breath back
down into your chest, over and
over, until you began to feel
the pain of life again. They took you
from silence and darkness right back
through birth, the gasping, the bright lights, they
achieved their miracle: on the second
day of the new year they brought you
back to being a boy whose parents
left him in a garbage can,
and everyone in the Emergency Room
wept to see your very small body
moving again. I saw you on the news,
the discs of the electrocardiogram
blazing like medals on your body, your hair
thick and ruffed as the head of a weed, your
large intelligent forehead dully
glowing in the hospital TV light, your
mouth pushed out as if you are angry, and
something on your upper lip, a
dried glaze from your nose,
and I thought how you are the most American baby,
child of all of us through your very
American parents, and through the two young medics,
Lee Merklin and Frank Jennings,
who brought you around and gave you their names,
forced you to resume the hard
American task you had laid down so young,
and though I see the broken glass on your path, the
shit, the statistics — you will be a man who
wraps his child in plastic and leaves it in the trash — I
see the light too as you saw it
forced a second time in silver ice between your lids, I am
full of joy to see your new face among us,
Lee Frank Merklin Jennings I am
standing here in dumb American praise for your life.

no-one's going to give you permission

i'm loving the NYSAT project in new york at the moment. from Cool Hunting:

Finding it difficult to locate a strip of space free from any advertising, Jordan Seiler of Public Ad Campaign did some research and found many of the billboards around New York City are illegal. To propose an alternate use of these city spaces, Seiler organized the New York Street Advertising Takeover, a network of citizens set out to transform the spaces into their own works of art.


aesthetically, there's some really lovely work in there, but what warms my cockles most is the way that we're usually so cowed by the law of ownership and the money changing hands and the simple feeling that public spaces are not OURS. how much time do we lose waiting for an elusive somebody to grant us permission to do something we long to do?


i spend a lot of time waiting for someone to write me a note or issue authorisation to go ahead. but i think i might bunk off.