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Wear Your Heart on Your Billboard

Fuz email this morning: A fantastic slideshow collection of the most affectionate walls Philadelphia has ever snuggled up to...

"Stephen Powers' 'Love Letters' is a collection of fifty rooftop and street-level murals in Philadelphia, each depicting a love note. Mr Powers, a former graffiti artist, spent three weeks with other artists working on the project, which is done in partnership with Philadelphia's mural arts program."




To crack open that egg-delicate heart a little further: A love poem from the honeymoon set Fuz and I collected for Nicole on her wedding day...

Again and Again

Again and again, however we know the landscape of love
and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names,
and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others
fall: again and again the two of us walk out together
under the ancient trees, lie down again and again
among the flowers, face to face with the sky.

- R. M. Rilke

Cheer Your Heart Out

"Cardiovascular Events during World Cup Soccer", New England Journal of Medicine, 2008; 358, 475-83.

The only redeeming quality of Saturday morning's three-hour cardio exam: Post-test shooting the shit with my cardio prof about how sporting events have been demonstrated in medical literature to push those on the precipice of cardiovascular unrest over the edge. So, sports fans, get that blood pressure down and amp up that exercise before the Bowl Series/Annual February Commercial Contest/Vancouver winter Olympics (American bobsledding is making a comeback after a 56 year slide ... bazing)/March Madness/Snooker Championships/Triple Crown/NBA Championships, ie the Neverending Story/Hockey Belongs in Here Somewhere ... there's pretty much always a good time and rhyme and reason to work on your stayin' healthy game, year round...

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —


over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

(by Mary Oliver)

Everyone Loves a Pregnant Woman ...

... but not when they're post-partum ... or so the pantheon of pregnant female photos (Annie Leibovitz's Demi Moore on the cover of Vanity Fair comes to mind) and complete void of recent mom pics would have you believe. Rarely do you see documented the stomach of someone a few days post-birth, stretch marks and floppy skin and all. And so: I found this a refreshing photo to stumble across on my blog-go-round yesterday:

'When Johanna agreed to shoot with me it was under one condition; I was not to try to hide or cover up the fact that she had recently given birth.

In her first e-mail to me she wrote, "There has been a lot of attention given to photograhing pregnant women lately, but not post partum women ( at least not specifically post-partum). I think it would be interesting, it's not something you generally get to see." '

You can find more of this model and this photographer's quality work here.

Laugh Hard - It's a Long Way to the ....

A couple weeks ago my friend turned me on to the well-known graffiti artist from outside London known as Banksy. Much of his work is socio-politically aware, using iconic or charged images, sometimes ruefully, ironically. Por ejemplo: The following image was painted on a wall partitioning off an occupied area in Gaza...

He has also installed, whether legally or illegally, many of his works inside art galleries.

Most of his work will make you squirm in some way, but I found this picture the most disturbing (the girl in the center was copied from a famous photograph documenting the aftermath of a napalm sweep in Vietnam, in which children were left naked in the streets as their clothes, and skin, burned off):


On that note: His website is worth checking out, as his shop consists of pictures you don't have to buy -- he doesn't sell his work but does make it available for others to print on their own.

Reason

From the New York Times, on 'the greatest health care system in the world."