exquisite edifice & living machine

by Jane Hirshfield

It was like this: you were happy, then you were sad, then happy again, then not.

It went on. You were innocent or you were guilty. Actions were taken, or not.

At times you spoke, at other times you were silent. Mostly, it seems you were silent — what could you say?

Now it is almost over.

Like a lover, your life bends down and kisses your life.

It does this not in forgiveness — between you, there is nothing to forgive — but with the simple nod of a baker at the moment he sees the bread is finished with transformation.

Eating, too, is a thing now only for others.

It doesn’t matter what they will make of you or your days: they will be wrong, they will miss the wrong woman, miss the wrong man, all the stories they tell will be tales of their own invention.

Orange on yellow - Rutger Hiemstra. , 2026.

Dutch  b.1975- 

NJIDEKA AKUNYILI CROSBY

as long as you smile and nod, people are satisfied. it’s just to show that you are nice and there with good intentions. we’re small in a big world and have to rely on other people to be decent to us. so we do our little human dance to each other to say, “i’m not here to hurt you. here’s something we have in common, like the weather or sports or itchy sweaters, so we both know we’re on the same team. we both agree on a basic fact, like that it is rainy or that being itchy is uncomfortable, and this proves we can get along. i’m being light-hearted and non-threatening right now.”

small talk isn’t to get to know a person. it’s just a greeting to affirm you’re buddies in the universe.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s Untitled (Perfect Lovers), 1991

[The work] consists of a pair of inexpensive, plain-faced wall clocks, ticking away side by side. The instructions for installation insist that the two be set at exactly the same time, but because of their imprecise mechanisms, it is only a short time before one of the clocks falls a second or two behind the other. “The beauty of the piece is that it is a very perfect image of what a couple is, trying to stay on the same page but never actually being able to,” says Molesworth. (via)

American artist, Tracy Porter.