Quotes from Velveteen Rabbit that I might want to use . . .

"The Rabbit could not claim to be a model of anything, for he didn't know that real rabbits existed; he thought they were all stuffed with sawdust like himself."

"For at least two hours, the boy loved him."

"Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby."

"That night he was almost too happy to sleep, and so much love stirred in his little sawdust heart that it almost burst."

"Of what use was it to be loved and lose one's beauty and become Real if it all ended like this?"

cry bunny. :(

 I note this here now because I hadn't thought about this before, but yet another reason why I love the velveteen rabbit story has to do with this idea of MAGIC. It reminds me of whatever Chuck Close says about painting -- how the taking of colored dirt and putting on a canvas to create a picture of something never ceases to be magical to him. I so very much relate to that, but never connected it with nursery magic before. So many things.

Also: something else I love about the velveteen rabbit: it has a sub-title or alternative title "or how toys become real" and I think I should title all my work that way e.g. "McDonalds or You see, this is why I'd rather be alone."

State of the Studio: 06-26-2010

Studio shots as time-capsule.

On "On Looking" by Lia Purpura

Potentially my future Creative Nonfiction writing teacher, in a brief "let's get to know you and see if I can let you into my class" meeting, recommended to me that I read a short book of essays by Lia Purpura called "On Looking." And so I did.

The thing about it is that it is hard to read, or much harder, much less accessible, in it's short paragraphs. The paragraphs and sentences are like little gems, wonderfully selected descriptions that are sort of at once lavish and very simple and believable . . . unique and fresh ways of describing something that immediately paint a vision in your mind. It is very much like poetry. and yet you struggle as a reader to connect these paragraphs, to see what she is getting at overall, and to hold all the images in your mind long enough to see how they belong together. I like it because even if I can't quite pin my finger on just what it is that emerges from these small treasures of writing, I do feel that something more significant is being said. And that makes me want my artwork to follow that model -- that a collection of gemlike pieces might somehow begin to generate, together, and hum and make a nicer thing that is more complex and more elusive than the parts alone. There is sort of an undercurrent of sadness or ominous warning or seriousness, by the mention of death so often in the pieces . . . like when she interjects a paragraph stating that all this was going on while her friend was dying. It lends a gravity and narrative to otherwise object-focused descriptions of things. She uses very small, very discrete narratives to make her point, but the whole of the essays begins to reveal something about her, about her life, about her family and friends, that makes it compelling, and she seems very present. I think this is important because the descriptions, were it not for her being so present, might be just lonely objects without this person to connect them and give them significance. Some of it was boring to read and it took longer and was significantly slower to finish, this book, than the other book I was reading simultaneously (a shamelessly dramatic novel with sex and suicide and mystery that i could barely put down), but this reminds me that the push to make art more "difficult" is actually not just an asshole move, but really does make some difference. I mean to say that there is something perceptibly better about her writing, so that even though it is more demanding of me as a reader, I feel more energized or alive by engaging with it, in a way that the novel cannot do. Anyway, it helps that I like HER, or the person she reveals as an author, and am continually amazed and surprised and pleased by her choices of words.

Said better than I, here are the publisher comments about her book

"Publisher Comments:
Lia Purpura's daring new book of lyric essays, On Looking, is concerned with the aesthetics and ethics of seeing. In these elegantly wrought meditations, patterns and meanings emerge from confusion, the commonplace grows strange and complex, beauty reveals its flaws, and even the most repulsive object turns gorgeous. Purpura's hand is clearly guided by poetry and behaves unpredictably, weaving together, in one lit instance, sugar eggs, binoculars, and Emerson's words: "I like the silent church before the sermon begins."

In "Autopsy Report," Purpura takes an intimate look at the ruin of our bodies after death, examining the "dripping fruits" of organs and the spine in its "wet, red earth." A similar reverence is held for the alien jellyfish in "On Form," where she notes that "in order to see their particular beauty...we have to suspend our fear, we have to love contradiction." Her essays question art and its responses as well as its responsibilities, challenge familiar and familial relationships, and alter the borders between the violent and the luminous, the harrowing and the sensual."

And an example of that writing:
"Purpura describes single objects beautifully: Chinese lanterns are 'those orange, papery pods gone lacy in fall, with a dim, silver berry burning inside.'"

On Albert K. Bender

There is a really excellent radio piece by Paul Tough which he presented on the pilot episode of the Little Gray Book lectures in which he recounts his father's attempts to communicate with intelligent alien life forms. Through this story, which is both funny and touching and poetic in the way it deals with the irony of a person who has trouble communicating with people of this planet reaching out to beings from another, Tough also shares a lot of interesting history of the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence. He includes the story of Albert K. Bender, the editor of "Space Review."

I'm pretty sure, though I can't place it in my brain, there have been episodes of the X-files devoted to this man, if not at least alluding to him.

This lead me to want to know more about Albert K. Bender.

From the website: Global Windows

"The Men in Black are beings who appear anywhere major UFO sightings take place. They threaten people who claim to have seen UFOs, and intimidate them into silence. They wear sunglasses. They wear black suits. They have olive complexions. They drive black mint-condition vintage luxury cars, or sometimes they fly in black helicopters. Some think that they are government agents. Some think that they are alien agents."

"In his book, The UFO Silencers, Timothy Beckley has attempted to provide an overview of important and representative MIB encounters. According to Beckley, MIB have been with us for many hundreds of years, speculating that such diverse characters from the history of witchcraft and folklore as the Elizabethan "Black Men", the Native American "Black Man" and late nineteenth century reports of malevolent traveling salesmen, might have been manifestations of what we now know as Men in Black."

"An odd incident in the history of the Men in Black is the strange case of Mr. O. H. Krill. 

Mr. Krill's writings first gained publicity some time in the late 1980's when a text file called "The O.H. Krill Papers" was placed on the ParaNet B.B.S. The file told the story of shadow governments in cooperation with gray aliens, secret underground bases, exchanges of human organs for alien technologies, and the like. He offers the following information on the Men in Black:


All things considered, UFO research has become pretty much of a circus today, and the most intriguing and controversial sideshow skirting the edges is the question of the "silencers," or the mysterious "Men in Black." There is a strong subliminal appeal in these accounts of visits by mysterious dark-suited figures (I have been visited myself, as have others I've known) attempting to silence UFO witnesses. A typical situation would be that a witness has a UFO sighting or UFO-related experience. Shortly thereafter he is visited by one or more "odd"-looking men who relate to him the minutest details of his experience, even though he has as yet told no one for fear of ridicule or other reasons.

The men warn him about spreading the story of his experience around and sometimes even threaten him personally, sometimes obliquely, sometimes directly. Any evidence, if it exists, is confiscated in one way or another. Sometimes the visit is for some totally meaningless reason and the subject of UFOs is hardly mentioned, if at all. But again, the men all seem to look alike.

We actually seem to find ourselves in close proximity to beings who obviously must be directly connected in some way with the objects themselves or the source behind them, yet they seem to be functioning unobtrusively within the framework of our own everyday existence.

The classic conception of an MIB is a man of indefinite age, medium height and dressed completely in black. He always has a black hat and often a black turtleneck sweater. They present an appearance often described as "strange" or "odd." They speak in a dull monotone voice, "like a computer," and are dark-complected with high cheekbones, thin lips, pointed chin, and eyes that are mildly slanted.

The visitors themselves are often on absurd missions. They have reportedly posed as salesmen, telephone repairmen or representatives from official or unofficial organizations. Their mode of transportation is usually large and expensive cars -- Buicks or Lincolns, sometimes Cadillacs, all black, of course.

I might note at this point that their physical appearance also has included beings that have pale-grayish skin, and that some of them have been seen to have blond hair, yet they wear the clothing and drive the cars previously described.

Their cars often operate with the headlights off, but ghostly purple or greenish glows illuminate the interior. Unusual insignia have been seen emblazoned on the doors and the license plates are always unidentifiable or untraceable.

The fabric of their clothes has been described as strangely "shiny" or thin, but not silky -- almost as if they have been cut from a new type of fabric.

Their often mechanical behavior has caused them to be described by some as being like robots or androids.

A lot of descriptions of some of these "folks" are pretty bizarre. A businessman's family in Wildwood, New Jersey, was visited by an unusually large man whose pants legs hiked up when he sat down, revealing a green wire grafted onto his skin and running up his leg.

There are other cases of MIB appearing on the other side of a wet, muddy field after a heavy rain, but having no mud whatever on their brightly shined shoes and in the bitter cold, out of nowhere, wearing only a thin coat. Their shoes and wallets all seem new and hardly broken in."

First of all, I like this sort of writing. "He is warned. The men leave, their squeaky clean black shoes oddly unscuffed and unmuddy. And he never publishes again." :) so ominous and odd. I like it :) It's very truncated and dramatic.

Anyway, the website continues:

"Though Krill proved to be a fraud, the Krill documents are still valuable as an illustration of the Men in Black legend. Lear and Grace did not pull the incidents described in the Krill files entirely out of thin air. The Krill files were really a parody of the most extreme and bizarre UFO stories that circulated among the circles of UFO enthusiasts, and it was the resemblance between the Krill files and supposedly legitimate reports of UFO-related  phenomena that made the Krill hoax so successful.

Among UFO enthusiasts, the Krill files were accepted as legitimate documents for many years. Copies of the files are still to be found on the Internet, often presented as legitimate documents from a legitimate source. These files have had an influence on the Men in Black legend in the imaginations of all that have read them, and certainly must have had an effect on many fabricated account of Men in Black phenomena. For this reason,   sections of the Krill document remain on this page."

All this stuff is about legitimation and reality, and something being real and provable or not, and belief . . . and to what extent we need proof of something, and all of it is great. :) It's also kind of dangerously overwhelming -- that you can go so far down the rabbit hole, and that so many people do and loose sight of what might be reality.

Here is some more, from http://realmib.tripod.com/bender.html

"Men in Black encounters are genarlly said to have begun in 1953 with the case of UFO Investigator Albert K. Bender. Bender was the founder of the International Flying Saucer Bureau (IFSB) and editor of a small publication called the "Space Review," that was dedicated to news of flying saucers. Late in the summer of 1953, Bender made a series of discoveries, which led him to believe that he had finally found the truth to the UFO cover-up. He had planned to reveal his findings in the October issue of the Space Review, but before the issue was published, Bender was visited by three "men dressed in black," who had already read the unpublished report and confirmed his findings. The "silencers" as he called them, scared Bender to the point where he did not publish the report, but left a warning: "We advise those engaged in saucer work to please be very cautious." Bender then suspended publishing on his publication and dissolved the IFSB."

More: (http://obscurantist.com/oma/bender-albert-k/

Associate of Gray Barker, whom he asked to be IFSB’s West Virginia chapter head and chief researcher.”It is suspected that Gray Barker pranked Albert Bender, dressing up with two friends in all black, warning Bender to stay away from UFOs. Barker persuaded Bender to go public with his story, resulting in the book Flying Saucers and the Three Men (1962).

And finally, this snippet, from - http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/jessup_marinov_einstein.htm.

In September of 1953, Albert K. Bender claimed that he had received certain information that provided the missing pieces for a theory concerning the origin of UFOs. He wrote it all down and sent it to a trusted friend. Shortly after, he received a visit from "Three Men." One of them held the letter he had written in his hand. They told him that he had, indeed, stumbled on the answer, and then they purportedly filled him in on the details. He became so ill he was unable to eat for three days. A couple of other UFO researchers, Dominick Lucchesi and August C. Roberts, tried to persuade Bender to talk. He would only repeat "I can't answer that."

Finally, in 1962, Bender declared that he would tell the story and wrote a book entitled Flying Saucers and the Three Men. It described astral projection to a secret base in Antarctica inhabited by male, female and bisexual creatures. Researchers were perplexed and wondered if the whole thing was just contrived to hide something more sinister. Lucchesi said that Bender was a "changed man" after the three men had visited him. He said "it was as if he had been lobotomized." Bender was obviously frightened, and suffered from extreme headaches whenever he even thought about speaking about his experiences and what the three men had told him. He withdrew completely from UFO research, and went to work managing a hotel, and refused to discuss anything about such matters ever again.

Not too many months after Bender's silencing, Edgar R. Jarrold, organizer of the Australian Flying Saucer Bureau, and Harold H. Fulton, head of Civilian Saucer Investigation of New Zealand, had received similar visits and disbanded their organizations. Just recently, I was informed of a fascinating case where another UFO discussion group was broken up by the arrival on the scene of a psychopathic "contactee" who later involved the leader of the group and several members in a murder. I hope to get a full report on this case soon and will keep the readers posted.