Shaker spirit/gift drawing.

"In 1853 visiting spirits dancing in twisting circles were seen and recorded (by Timothy Randlett) at Enfield, New Hampshire..."

"To be sure, the term drawing is a misnomer, because the Shakers did not use it themselves when they were referring to these works. In the few Shaker documents in which the gift drawings are mentioned, they are typically referred to as sheets, rolls, signs, notices, tokens of love, presents, rewards, hearts — sometimes prefaced by the adjective sacred. This definition focuses on the function of the works as gifts from heavenly spirits, rather than on the form in which the gifts were materialized. In fact, the gift drawings often include titles, captions, inscriptions, and extended texts, in English as well as in scripts written in indecipherable tongues, that place them on an uninterrupted continuum with other manifestations of belief, such as inspired writing, ecstatic movement, and spontaneous speech, especially in the form of song."

France Morin, in Shaker Gift Drawings and Gift Songs, The Drawing Center, New York, and UCLA Hammer Museum, 2001 (above image sourced from this publication via the internet)

This is cool/strange on so many levels. More information here.

The surfaces of things.

I inherited my dad's old rock collection. And by inherited, I mean that I unearthed it from a closet and promptly installed it among my own belongings without asking permission. When I was little I used to spend hours sifting through rocks, collecting ones that interested me... I still collect rocks and pebbles to this very day.

Rocks embody this quiet sort of pantheism that I follow without much of a doctrine. Edward Abbey sort of sums it up here:

“I am pleased enough with the surfaces - in fact they alone seem to me to be of much importance. Such things for example as the grasp of a child's hand in your own, the flavor of an apple, the embrace of a friend or lover, the silk of a girl's thigh, the sunlight on the rock and leaves, the feel of music, the bark of a tree, the abrasion of granite and sand, the plunge of clear water into a pool, the face of the wind - what else is there? What else do we need?”

Sometimes it's easy to forget just how lucky I am to have tactile and visual appreciation of the world around me. The small pebbles I stash in corners of my desk and shelves are a tangible reminder.

Why I love old photos...

Because behind each face lies thousands of stories I will never know.