surprise shoulder monkey, by and © goopymart, reproduction authorized by a Creative Commons license.

San Francisco artist Goopymart is, by all appearances, obsessed with monkeys.* Not for Goopy the feces-tossing variety, however –- his monkeys* are, frequently, the angels of our better nature… and, even when they ape the less-than-ideal aspects of humanity, they are oddly charming. Goopy has a set on Flickr called Monkey Monday, as well as a specialized set dedicated to “Chimples,” whom Goopy declares “the all-purpose monkey.”

Goopy’s not only about monkeys*, mind you. His quirky worldview embraces subjects as diverse as Teh Internets, taco trucks and the revenge of Schrödinger’s Kitty.

* And apes.

O Fish, Where Art Thou? by and © monkeytime. ]]> http://www.michaelzara.net/blog/archives/318/feed 0 http://www.michaelzara.net/blog/archives/265 http://www.michaelzara.net/blog/archives/265#comments Fri, 26 Dec 2008 10:43:44 +0000 Mike Zara http://www.michaelzara.net/blog/archives/265

It’s not far, just close by, through an open door, by and © monkeytime.

Going home, going home,
I’m a-going home.
Quiet-like, some still day,
I’m just going home.

It’s not far, just close by,
through an open door.
Work all done, care laid by,
going to fear no more.

Mother’s there expecting me,
Father’s waiting too.
Lots of folk gathered there,
all the friends I knew,
all the friends I knew

Morning star lights the way,
Restless dreams all done.
Shadows gone, break of day,
real life just begun.

There’s no break, there’s no end,
just a living on.
Wide awake, with a smile,
going on and on.

Going home, going home,
I’m just going home.
It’s not far just close by,
through an open door.
I’m just going home.

For my days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burned as an hearth, by and © monkeytime.

I seem to have decent luck shooting pelicans. Perhaps this makes me a crypto-Catholic. The pelican figures prominently in some branches of Catholic mythology as a model for Christ, piercing her side and feeding or resurrecting her young with blood from the wound. This lore of the pelican apparently predates Christianity.

Interestingly enough, the pelican also appears in Christian writing (and perhaps Jewish writing) as a metaphor for isolation and desolation. Psalms 102 says (verses 3-7, King James Version):

For my days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burned as an hearth.

My heart is smitten, and withered like grass; so that I forget to eat my bread.

By reason of the voice of my groaning my bones cleave to my skin.

I am like a pelican of the wilderness: I am like an owl of the desert.

I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the house top.

It is not clear that the original writing actually referred to the sea-bird we know as the pelican, but most English translations seem to use the word pelican (notably, the New International Version does not). The Vulgate appears to use the Latin equivalent, and the Septuagint the Greek.

Get my good side!, by and © monkeytime

Over at Strobist, David Hobby cuts through the non-essential numbers (aperture, shutter speed, ISO) and focuses on the core of balancing ambient light and flash. 

Lloyd, above: I dropped the ambient two stops and shot on flash, ungelled. Nyahhhh!

Drawings above and below by Jamie Fales, a/k/a Noosed Kitty, on the envelope in which she sent me a print of “Minor Headache.”

Via Caitlin Burke, I discovered the art of Noosed Kitty, especially her drawing “Minor Headache,” which depicts the genesis of the protagonist’s headache as a miniature walrus of dubious intent and secure perch. Formerly subject to daily, severe and major headaches, I ordered an 8″ x 10″ print straightaway.

When the print arrived, I was delighted to discover that Jamie had added a couple of postcards with her drawings to the shipment, gratis. She had also decorated the outside of the envelope with the Shipping & Handling Walrus and the cat depicted above.

Having either mounted a 600 mm super-telephoto lens to his Rolleiflex or crept up really close, Derek Chatwood has an intriguing quartet of black-and-white, medium-format animal portraits shot on film at Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo. The Komodo dragon photograph above is accompanied by two of a gorilla and one of a leopard, both animals similarly in some form of repose.

The Komodo dragon, at least, needn’t do much more than wait. He’ll get you, eventually.

…Pursuit
is ended here, leaving me in the gallery forest
leaving me in the leaves already fallen,
leaving me to the sere clash of the palms that quiver in my head.
I shall stare, I know, into black obsidian forever…

The drums will sound once more in the sullen mountains;
the huge upreared white serpent will hold me close ensorcelled
as eye to eye with him I forget
how the beautiful rider passed
wherever it was she passed me
and how it was I searched before sleep found me
the seeker and the sought in that ophidian eyeball fading
into a night so black there could be no regret.

– Loren Eiseley, from “The White Python,” Notes of An Alchemist, New York: Scribner (1972).