Ant Lab is back with another stunning video, this one of Beetles, in flight and at swim, filmed at 6000 frames per second.
If you're unfamiliar with the Ant Lab channel, check out their vid on moths from a few years ago:
Kathleen Reilly has redesigned the butterknife so that it doesn't slide off plates and jars. Genius.
She calls this knife Oku. It was inspired by Japanese design and the Oku are made there. Back her on Kickstarter or get more information on her site.
Years ago, I had a small stroke that caused me to reevaluate what I was doing with my life and with my work. Invitations to my next birthday party went out with a photo and readings of two poems, one by James Wright and one by David Whyte.
In the years since, a number of the guests to that party have told me how much they enjoyed the poems. Here they are, along with the photo:
Robert Pattinson reads a poem by James Wright
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Everything Is Waiting for You written and read by David Whyte
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I’d taken the photo post-stroke, while bathing in a client’s bathtub in Beverly Glen, her dog Bailey watching from the sidelines. For some reason, the framing of it reminded me of Alex Colville's work, so I later tinted it in his style.
Outside that bathroom, not far away, the Skirball Fire was having its way with Bel Air, the neighborhood that was literally across the street from where I was staying. I'd spent the morning feeding the chickens and cats and walking the dogs as ash fell from the sky. I'd become consumed by chaos and worry about when it would be our time to evacuate the neighborhood. (If everyone flees simultaneously, no one gets anywhere, so you wait until instructed.)
My client was incommunicado, so I'd taken it upon myself to load her SUV with what I assumed were her prized possessions, leaving just enough room for me and the pets. Thankfully, on the morning when the street's more experienced residents had predicted we'd have to leave, the wind changed and we were able to stay put. Though the fire continued to blaze, the flames never crossed that street; the ash never returned. I drew a bath to celebrate and re-center myself.
Unpredictably, with a glowing reference from that Beverly Glen client (neighbors conveyed my preparedness, which they witnessed through their windows), I started getting job offers from people living in danger zones with their pets. A year later I got calls from a couple in Malibu, and would have accepted the gig had I not already been booked in Santa Monica. While there, the Woolsey Fire scorched that beach-side town. I heard numerous horror stories from fleeing residents who'd moved into the Santa Monica Fairmont Miramar, where I'm a regular at the main bar. They literally had nothing left but the clothes on their backs. Then, I booked a 4+ month gig in Vanuatu during cyclone season which I completed without incident. Less than a month after I left, Cyclone Harold ripped through much of the South Pacific archipelago, including the property I'd been living on, sparing my clients and their staff and their buildings — which had been built to withstand cyclones — but laying waste to much of the greenery.
Today, I'm reminded of this bathroom photo and these poems and that birthday invitation, because someone shared The Poetry Atlas on Metafilter and used the Wright poem as an example. Want to know, exactly, where the hammock swings that the narrator is wasting their life in? The Poetry Atlas will tell you.
The second poem is by David Whyte, who's written and spoken many wonderful things. If you appreciated the line, "Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity," you will enjoy his book, Consolations, which has many such pieces of wisdom. One of my favourites is "Beauty is the harvest of presence."
(In my mind, I always link that line to one by Tom Stoppard: "Life's bounty is in its flow, later is too late." Perhaps you also have lines or definitions that are forever-conflated? Do I digress? So be it. I digress.)
In What to Remember When Waking, Whyte tells the story of an ancient Irish tribe who no longer wish to fight — he describes them as "no longer wanting to have that conversation." So, when next they're confronted with battle, "they turn sideways into the light and disappear into the originality of it all."
Considering the "conversations" we're having, and reflecting on whether they're helping us be the person we want to be, living the life we want to live, can lead to some of life's great awakenings. Am I wasting my life in the right way?
After that stroke, I sold Good Music, my Toronto record shop, to a competitor, and made a promise to myself that I would no longer do things solely for money. I no longer wanted to have that conversation. Rather, I wanted to live a time-rich life. If that doesn't sound easy, I can assure you that it's absolutely harder than it sounds — for the most part, I've managed to do that while living in some interesting places, despite threats of fire, cyclone, or comfortable hammock.
The Geographics YouTube channel has a documentary on Kowloon Walled City, the once extraordinary and ungoverned enclave in Hong Kong.
Click the image below and then use the magnifying glass to zoom in on a cross-section of the city. Simply incredible.
More details on the image on Spoon + Tomago's site.
Via Metafilter.
Some nice street photography and portraiture by Brit, Charlie Kwai.
More in the Projects section of Charlie Kwai's site.
Charlie Kwai
Charlie Kwai is a British photographer known for his direct approach to street photography across the UK and around the Globe.
Stunning two minute video of a Starling Murmuration. Such a glorious phenomena.
From filmmaker Jan van Ijken.
Some wild genius has used Genius — the site generally used to explain Hip Hop lyrics — to completely break down Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.
Below are two 60-minute documentaries, made twenty years apart, about Clive Wearing, a Brit with the worst-ever recorded case of amnesia. Clive's memories only last between seven and thirty seconds.
I first read about Wearing in the 90s in Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Sacks later spoke about him on an episode of Radio Lab, and wrote about him again in The New Yorker in 2007.
Prisoner of Consciousness, 1985:
The Man With the Seven Second Memory, 2005
Oliver Sacks: Music and Amnesia
From 2007: Oliver Sacks on Clive Wearing, an English musician struck by a devastating brain infection that left him with retrograde amnesia and a memory span of only seconds.
Wearing is still alive as I write this. He's 86 and has been living with "the illness" for almost 40 years.
Clive Wearing - Wikipedia
Contributors to Wikimedia projects
I listened to this episode of 99% Invisible a while back and have been thinking about it ever since. It explores tradition, religion, class, and the holy work of Parsis who labor in the roofless Towers of Silence, sacred structures where bodies of the dead are left for vultures.
Regardless of what you think about religion, India, or vultures, I promise you, it's a fascinating listen that goes places you won't anticipate.
Towers of Silence - 99% Invisible
Situated right near downtown Mumbai, India is an area of about 55 acres of dense, overgrown forest. In one of the most populous cities in the world, this is a place where peacocks roam freely — a space out of time. This forest is protected by a religious community. It has survived in a relatively
Lasha Madan
It's reported by Producer Lasha Madan.
The Pudding does a deep dive on climate in 70 international cities over the next 45 years. Mouse your way to misery with data!
Climate Zones
Explore how will your city feel in the future.
Last year they mapped record-high heat in the US:
Mapping Record-High Heat in U.S. Cities
We’re tracking how the hottest year on Earth is affecting heat records.
