GRIZZLY PEAR

written snapshots

Category: Artifacts

  • The losing team paused, to practice mindfulness.

    The boy was wearing a sock on his right foot.

    He started the morning with a pair but shed the left when it developed a hole.

    I went upstairs and found a replacement.

    Two hours later, he was wearing the new sock on his left foot.

    The sock on the right had developed a hole.

    ..

    Tughra (Insignia) of Sultan Süleiman the Magnificent (ca. 1520–1566).

    ..

    You give me money, I’ll give you creative.
    I’ll start when the check clears.
    Time is money. More time is more money.
    I’ll listen to you. You listen to me.
    You tell me what you want, I’ll tell you what you need.
    You want me to be on time, I want you to be on time.
    What you use is yours, what you don’t is mine.
    I can’t give you stuff I don’t own.
    I’ll try not to be an ass, you should do the same.
    If you want something that’s been done before, use that.

    PRO BONO

    If you want your way, you have to pay.
    If you don’t pay, I have final say.

    Let’s create something great together.

    Segura Contract, via Signal v. Noise

    ..

  • He lives at the edge of reality where each step affects the probable.

    I tuck the kids into bed.

    At their feet, I swing the blanket up into the air and let it float onto them.

    We call it a floooph.

    Occasionally, I’ll whip the blanket down with a whoosh!

    The kids clamor for this 快 (quick) floooph, but mommy frowns upon this ritual of generating dust clouds.

    We laundered the sheets this afternoon.

    Tonight’s dust is clean.

    ..

    We’re It!
    We always have been, and always will be.

    A Cosmic Belly-Laugh“, William Martin

    ..

    Eglantier (wild rose) from La Plante et ses Applications ornementales (1896) illustrated by Maurice Pillard Verneuil.

    ..

  • The Blog of the Thousand Posts and a Post

    Grizzlypear would have hit four digits last year, but I had moved some old posts to private.

    It was worth the wait because this moment coincides with a programming change.

    For the past month, I’ve been playing with a new format. These Penny Delights started as a one-sentence story, but have expanded to include a short vignette, quote, and linked photo.

    Beyond the format, I have a rule — I don’t schedule Penny Delights. If I don’t write today, I don’t post today.

    I’d like to post every day.

    So I’m slowing down on the longer posts. I’ve also revised the Grizzlypear newsletter to publish a weekly digest on Sunday mornings.

    If you’d like a Penny Delight each morning, I’ve created a daily newsletter (that will also include the longer posts when they are published). Send me an email if you want to try it out.

    Over the years, Grizzlypear has been the home of many experiments, and this hobby has become more fulfilling with each iteration. It’s totally 2008, but everyone should start a blog. The internet was supposed to be a utopia of shared knowledge, not a mindless scroll of spoon-fed consumption in the walled garden of a soulless corporation. Plant your flag and start writing. Even without a big audience (we’re up to nine!) the exploration is its own reward.

    One of my mottos is “to tinker and delight, together”. Thanks for following this meandering journey. Please forgive my tinkering; I hope you enjoy the new delights.

    Who knows, maybe I’ll be writing about five digits in 2052.

    Until then, cya tomorrow!
    Justus

  • The lemon warned the orange, “You might want to lose weight, but the squeeze isn’t worth the juice.”

    The kids love making pancakes, but an eternity extends past pouring the batter.

    They run off.

    I glance up as they race out the kitchen.

    Her arm stretches right out of the room. His leg kicks back to the left. He pushes his head towards his sister. She angles her torso above her brother.

    They flash two grand smiles.

    ..

    An SEP is something we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem… The brain just edits it out.

    Life, the Universe and Everything, Douglas Adams

    ..

    Rubans aux Ombrelles aux Manchons (1914) by Charles Martin, published in Gazette du Bon Ton.

    ..

  • The banjo slumped into the corner without its fifth string.

    The girl scootched up the slide, but couldn’t quite make it.

    The boy ran up the structure. He offered a little hand.

    Ssssssstttrrretchh

    Clasp!

    ..

    Every door stands an open door: 
    our human settlements all temporary. 

    We share together the incidental shore 
    and teach the young to tend the lamp’s wick, 

    weary of anyone small enough to bar our entry.

    Visitors” by Joan Naviyuk Kane, via American Life in Poetry 887

    ..

    Design of arches, Coronilla (1925–1926) by Paul Nash.

    ..

  • The boy raced down the hallway shouting, “Momma I have a game!”

    At the start of the pandemic, my son learned to count to twenty while washing his hands.

    …十三、十四、十五、十六、十七、十八、十九、二十!


    Least year, he learned the alphabet song at the lavatory.

    a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l-m-n-o-p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, and ….


    Now, he wails for a few seconds.

    “AAeeeeAAAEeeeeeeAAAEeeee”

    ..

    Yes, everybody has his own trademark – or someone else’s for that matter, since we seem to be plagiarizing all the time.

    Borges on Writing, page 26

    ..

    Diagram no.5 print from Solar Biology by Hiram Erastus Butler (1841–1916).

    ..

  • The tessellated grid smothered a sliver of daylight.

    The boy discovered a new helmet.

    There’s a laundry basket on his head.

    He spins it round and round.

    A little man encompassed in a translucent white blur.

    ..

    Did you know that a group of pandas is called an embarrassment?
    People are trying to change that because it is embarrassing to the panda.
    Most of the time they are solitary animals though.

    from the girl’s research paper on pandas.

    ..

    Page from Shi Zhu Zhai by Hu Zhengyan (c. 1584-1674).

    ..

  • The canoe drifted through the night sky.

    bl-uh-d or-an-j!

    The thought grosses out my daughter.

    So the boy repeats it with zest.

    Not nice!

    And we warn her about imbuing sounds with power.

    How about the oranges?

    meh.

    ..

    At times [the twilight cloud] will overspread the whole west as a sheet of brilliant magenta, but more frequently it blares with scarlet, carmine, crimson, flushing up and then fading out, shifting from one color to another; and finally dying out in a beautiful ashes of roses.

    “Desert Sky and Clouds”, The Desert, John C. Van Dyke, 1901

    ..

    Bitter orange (Citrus Bigaradia violacea) from Traité des Arbres et Arbustes que l’on cultive en France en pleine terre (1801–1819) by Pierre-Joseph Redouté.

    ..

  • One day, the perpetual bickering shall fade into silence.

    While folding laundry, he found his new boxer-briefs.

    He was skeptical (they were one size larger than his current collection of underwear).

    He ran downstairs to verify.

    妈妈你有买短裤给我吗?
    Mommy did you buy the underwear for me?

    是的。“Yes.

    So he asked again.
    and again. and
    again. and
    again
    ..

    Until she snapped and disavowwed doing any such thing.

    He sauntered back upstairs.

    I asked him to double check.

    ..

    That first cry opens the earth door. 
    We join the ancestor road. 
    With our pack of memories 
    Slung slack on our backs 
    We venture into the circle 
    Of destruction, 
    Which is the circle 
    Of creation 
    And make more-

    “Memory Sack” by Joy Harjo, from American Life in Poetry #886

    ..

    A Centennial of Independence, by Henri Rosseau (1892).

    ..

  • The repeated pattern betrayed the faux stone floor from the spring of the 21st century.

    The boy drew a large oval with eyes, nostrils, and a smile.

    He proudly presented this egg to mom.

    We asked him to sign the drawing.

    To help, I wrote his name in big letters, all uppercase as an architect would.

    My daughter stepped in and taught him proper capitalization.

    ..

    Whence things have their origin,
    Thence also their destruction happens,
    As is the order of things;
    For they execute the sentence upon one another
    – The condemnation for the crime –
    In conformity with the ordinance of Time.

    The sole surviving fragment from the philosophy of Anaximander.

    ..

    Roman Mosaic Depicting Anaximander with Sundial, Johannisstraße, Trier, Early 3rd century CE.

    ..