Above, work in progress.
Below WWII concentration camp images documented in Terezinsti Maliri 1 (1941-1944).

This is Tomo. He is the life of our friend and landlord, Baowen. As I write, they are at the vet, where HY is serving as the life-saving vest if anything major is to happen.

Not a major operation, just scaling, my friend. Our friend is not yet inconsolable, but he appears so, does he not?

Here’s a young Jack Kerouac, looking vital in the streets of New York:

Allen Ginsberg said that Kerouac was “making a Dostoyevsky mad-face or Russian basso be-bop Om”.

And here’s Jack Kerouac 10 years later, on the brink of drinking himself to death.

My favourite:

Rebecca Ginsberg, Buba, Wife of Laundry Man, Pinkus

More photos in the series here. Lots of photos of William Burroughs looking thin-lipped and evil.

If I love you -
I never behave like a climbing trumpet vine
Using your high branches to show off;
If I love you -
I never mimic infatuated little birds
Repeating monotonous songs into the shadows,
Nor do I look at all like  wellspring
Sending out its cooling consolation all year round,
Or just another perilous crag
Augmenting your height, setting off your prestige.
Nor like the sunlight
Or even spring rain.
No, these are not enough.
I would be a kapok tree by your side
Standing with you – both of us shaped like trees.
Our roots hold hands underground,
Our leaves touch in the clouds.
As a gust of wind passes by
We salute each other
And not a soul
Understands our language.
You have your bronze boughs and iron trunk
Like knives and swords,
Also like halberds;
I have my red flowers
Like heavy sighs,
Also like heroic torches.
We hare cold waves, storms and thunderbolts;
Together we savor fog, haze and rainbows.
We seem to always live apart,
But actually depend upon each other forever.
This has to be called extraordinary love.
Faith resides in it:
Love -
I love not only your sublime body
But the space you occupy
The land beneath your feet.

by Shu Ting
March 27, 1977
Poetry Magazine (Shikan), no. 5 (May 1982)

The above poem is from The Red Azalea: Chinese Poetry since the Cultural Revolution, available in Stevie’s book section. This poem hast to be one of the most beautiful poems I’ve come across in a while. Maybe it’s because I haven’t been reading poetry for too long; a cluttered head does not know the grass, the ocean, the land beneath the feet. Or maybe I like the outburst of romance and nature, undifferentiated. These are the best lines for me:

I have my red flowers
Like heavy sighs,
Also like heroic torches.

It’s like looking and seeing.

The three ships-in-the-bottle we have in Stevie… do you like them as much as I do? I don’t know who will want to buy them, but I keep looking out for them. Everywhere!

Above is a small ceramic wall vase of a pair of deers, and a ‘secret’ drawer made out of a tree stump…
Below is a really old deep trinket case that springs open when you unclasp it, and a sprightly Old Spice Brilliantine glass container.

You can’t really tell from the photo but this curio cupboard is a lovely small size, well, the width of two bedside clocks, and the old wooden trinket case below is smaller than your palm.

I love not only your sublime body
But the space you occupy
The land beneath your feet.

I tried to forget about them
yet the days…

I am older now and still a child
but time is a thirsty germ.

I have one year left to play in this lot
and am afraid.

Some people think about
what they do

or the school they are to lose.
Others just let a river go by.

I never see what I am looking at.
I see what I think.

At night life is blue waves,
piers with stairs going down,

people who jump off and frighten
fish who swim away,

boy who dive from the top of the rail.
This is my real life.

Time
Aliki Barnstone

She was eleven when she wrote this, how true is the eye if left to be child. Taken from the book The Real Tin Flower, and I must admit I got this old book because I wondered why would someone I’ve not heard of have a foreword by Anne Sexton. The poems in The Real Tin Flower are accompanied by illustrations, of a time frozen behind my eye. Here are some of the vintage needlepoint work Stevie has started to collect. You see, ever since the world could snarl and sneer, she could also smooth and smile.

If you, like me, see unparalleled joy in these woody picture frames, come down to Stevie. Or watch our collection grow

There is the heaven we enter
through institutional grace
and there are the yellow finches bathing and singing
in the lowly puddle.

Yellow, the first poem in Mary Oliver’s latest book Evidence.

I once drew a picture, titled Red Strings. There are two parts to this picture, I always try to explain. But even I cannot explain. This video made me think of it. It now hangs in the toilet of Stevie General Store. I also once wrote a poem called Only The Ones We Love. I reworked and reworked, and reworked this poem. It is now lost, in the memory of what love isn’t, and yet, so alive.

Top and bottom photos taken from aghersan‘s photo stream; clown on chair in store.

We have been surrounded by ruins this past week. Old things, old talk, old folks. The right word with the young is ‘collectibles’, but it’s ok, ruins is not ruined. The year 2010 is a special year for me. I’ve met so many old gentlemen and one old lady that the thought of throwing a party of sorts – to get them together – did actually cross my mind. Day after day our conversation went like this: “Should give the toy to auntie”, or “Must remember to give uncle the box”, or “must help uncle check the history of the chain”. I am inspired by the things they (want to) remember, so much to say I’ll let the thoughts settle in my head before you think I’m all dust.

Today or tomorrow should be a crazy day, we should be able to bring down 100 vintage pieces to the store. Plus plus plus the wonderful for the fast and curious.

The main pillar of my activity is making clothes, but this can never be the perfect and only vehicle of expression. I am always thinking of the total idea, and the context of everything. Fashion alone is so far from being the whole story. It seems that with fashion, as with art, things are getting easier in one sense, but at the same time it is getting harder to be stimulated about things or excite people. Without that impetus of creation, progress is not possible. All kinds of ways of expression are spreading out all over the place, information is overflowing, and it’s harder and harder to be excited about anything. In order to be stimulated or moved in the future, we probably have to go into space and look at our world from there.

What do I think is an unyielding spirit? It would be wonderful if everyone had it in equal measure. But it’s impossible. This defiant mentality can also be called the fight against absurdity and injustice and the power (authority) that thrives around it (that is rampant). One cannot fight the battle without freedom. I think the best way to fight that battle, which equals the unyielding spirit, is in the realm of creation. That’s exactly why freedom and the spirit of defiance is the source (fountainhead) of my energy.

Rei Kawakubo

Text and images from an exclusive in AnOther. All Clothes by Comme des Garçons S/S10 collection.

That, versus the overflow of information. Invisible forces; that within, that outside.