Diversity Trees from Susan Bee (Diversitrees)

While reading Charles Darwin, I find myself thinking about those Trees of Life. I really love what I'm calling "diversity trees," created by artist Susan Bee – paintings with many surprises in the branches. I wonder if she thought about Darwin at all when developing her tree-tropes.

They make me wonder: what sort of objects and items live on my diversity trees? Divinity trees. Trees of natural and not-so-natural selection.

What lives on yours?

Here is In a Medieval Garden:

And here is Butterfly Boy Drawing, which I currently use as wallpaper on my laptop.

Ice Cream seems relevant, too. (This appears to be a body-image piece, with ice cream in an ambivalent role):

Aren't they amazing? Here's another, from a cover of Fox, a collection of poems by Adrienne Rich:

April is No Longer the Cruelest Month

It's April Fools' Day, one of my favorite holidays as a child. The images today are paintings by Susan Bee; they seem to capture the capacious foolhardiness of the day. I love her trees, laden with objects: this one is called "In a Medieval Garden."

I wish I had a good "fool" for all of you here at elenabella, but the best I can do is remind you to keep your ears open when listening to the news today on National Public Radio – they always do a delicious story that veers off into the absurd. I recall the year when the Starbucks CEO talked about an American coffee pipeline (hot Joe from the kitchen tap!) and the year a teenager described her cosmetic surgery procedure for belly button removal. Here is more, from that great aggregator, Wikipedia:

National Public Radio: Every year National Public Radio in the United States does an extensive news story on April 1st. These usually start off more or less reasonably, and get more and more unusual. A recent example is the story on the "iBod" a portable body control device.^[22] In 2008 it reported that the IRS, to assure rebate checks were actually spent, was shipping comsumer products instead of checks. ^[23] It also runs false sponsor mentions, such as "Support for NPR comes from the Soylent Corporation, manufacturing protein-rich food products in a variety of colors. Soylent Green is People.”^[24]

Google also does April Fools' Day hoaxes, so be on your guard.

It's also a good day to take a look at T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland," a poem that was recently modified by the new American poet laureate, to make it less depressing. Under the Obama administration, the poet laureate has been charged with going back and expunging negativity and obscurity from poetry, making it more accessible and transparent. The opening line of this famous poem now reads:

APRIL is the kindest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

I like that, and it does seem pretty clear. The Greek epigraph to the poem has also been removed (because, after all, who reads Greek anymore?!): references to Hades, even when in a dead language, can only signal a disincentive to hope. (It's also really annoying when poets produce footnotes to their work, making you dig deeper to excavate meaning: who has time for that? Try to get it into a tagline, people!)

Let's hope the new Obama poetic language initiatives work, producing an April more kind than cruel.

25 Random Things: F-Words

Another of my 25 random things, as I work through the alphabet, a second post for the letter "f". (God bless the alphabet(s), by the way!) A few important f-words:

Fresh and free-range: I like my ideas and enthusiasms much like my food – fresh and free-range. I've never been able to constrain my wide-ranging interests, try as I have at times to delimit them. Hence this website, where I roam among them, drawing connections and following their lead. Thanks for indulging me, dear Ideal Readers!

Feminist: Yes, without a doubt. Beyond the waves of 1st, 2nd or post-feminist demarcations, I know that my life has been improved immensely by the efforts of our feminist forebears, women who brought us the vote, choice, more job security, and the freedom to speak out on domestic, personal, and political issues. The best men are unapologetic feminists, too. The wonderful free-range tree of life here ("Woman with Fan") is by feminist artist Susan Bee.

Fragrance: The people who I think deserve at least one shot at Keith Olbermann's "Worst People in the World" award are those who add synthetic fragrance to everything under the sun, including body care and household cleaning products. I'll be ranting about this again, as time goes by. Essential oils, good. Fragrance, deadly.

Far-flung family and friends: a fascinating trope. I'm very connected to my free-range far-flung family and friends, even though we often lack sufficient face time.

Frankenstein: No f-word list is complete without him, patron saint of the Other.

facebook: And finally, I guess I really ought to add facebook, as I'm a relatively new facebook afficionado. I resisted for a long time, and then capitulated when my friend Lisa assured me that "Facebook is all about fun and jack-assery." Whew, who knew? Just don't fling me any Lil' Green Patches – even I know they won't really save the world.

France: Ah, and France. Home of my favorite philosophes, Jacques Derrida and Jean-François Lyotard. For a magnificent glimpse of daily life in Paris, visit the web log of photographer Ricardo Bloch, Amphibious Andromeda.