I love this!

I think it's awesome that some guys were just fooling around one day and came up with this.

Daniel thinks it's creepy.

This freaks me out.

I am just learning of Monica Bonvicini's 2003 art installation, "Don't Miss a Sec," which is permanently (and operationally) installed outside the Tate Modern in London:

http://www.snopes.com/photos/arts/toilet.asp

Free

My mom sent me one of those email messages that periodically makes the rounds. It included an inspirational poem. Normally I just delete that stuff, but for a change it really meant something to me. It introduced me to Portia Nelson, a lounge singer and actress in the 50s (she played one of the nuns who sabotage the Nazis' car in The Sound of Music) who also happened to write poetry. I immediately ran to the library to check out her book of poetry, There's a Hole in My Sidewalk.

The title poem, "There's a Hole in My Sidewalk: Autobiography in Five Short Chapters," is the one that was reproduced in my mom's email. It goes like this:


I.
I walk down the street.
     There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
     I fall in.
     I am lost...I am helpless.
          It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.


II.
I walk down the same street.
     There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
     I pretend I don't see it.
     I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in this same place.
          But, it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.


III.
I walk down the same street.
     There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
     I see it is there.
     I still fall in...it's a habit...but,
          my eyes are open.
          I know where I am.
     It is my fault.
     I get out immediately.


IV.
I walk down the same street.
     There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
     I walk around it.


V.
I walk down another street.


The book also had this untitled gem:

I am so free with you
I never wish to be
          free of you.

True dat. :-)

Rotary

On the Library of Congress site, I found this poem reflecting on the disappearance of the rotary phone. It reads in part,

Why did no one think
to conserve the peal?

Just try once
to sing it to yourself:
it's gone,

like the sound of breath
if your body left.