I had the strange realization that it’s been a little over a year now since I did a HONEY post – so long, in fact, that any new readers may not even know what I’m on about here… So, yes – like a little bee, I flit through the arbor of the internets, collecting tidbits of tantalizing information, and the collected pollen of my trawlings end up being sifted into loosely themed posts here. Images, articles, music and snippets of words, that together adhere to a certain tone, and are collated by interest rather than chronology. My sense of time is variable and fluid at best, and thus news items very well be old hat or out-of-date, but intriguing all the same. HONEY posts serve as more than an aggregation of random links, or just my own elaborate filing system for links and bee-log bits that I want to remember, but also – hopefully – as an aid in the pollination of your own curiosity. I try to always accredit everything where it’s due, except in cases where provenance has proven undeterminable. If you recognize a mysterious photograph, and know where it came from, I am always grateful to be informed!

A beautiful still from Karen Elson’s video THE TRUTH IS IN THE DIRT
“Love, love, the clouds went up to the tower of the sky like triumphant washerwomen,.. and it all glowed in blue, all like a single star, the sea, the ship, the day were all exiled together.
Come see the cherries of the water in the weather, the round key to the universe, which is so quick: come touch the fire of this momentary blue, before its petals wither. There’s nothing here but light, quantities,clusters, space opened by the graces of the wind till it gives up the final secret of the foam
Among so many blues-heavenly blues, sunken blues – our eyes are a little confused: our eyes are a little confused: they can hardly divine the powers of the air, the keys to the secrets in the sea.”
– Pablo Neruda

sea horses and ghost house.
☾ I’ve been spending some time meditating on this piece by the amazing Michelle Mirsky – she is one of the bravest people I’ve had the honor of meeting, and I have a feeling I’ll be learning a lot from her this year. Here’s an excerpt:
“I found, one day in my virtual travels, the story of a woman buried for 2500 years high in the frozen mountains of Siberia. Near the end of the 20th Century, archaeologists uncovered her mummified remains. She was 25 years old when she died and heavily tattooed with inks of black and red in the shape of animals and mystical symbols. She’d been buried with a retinue of horses and warrior guards in full regalia. It’s unclear if she was of the noble class—an actual princess—or if she might have been an especially important storyteller: a woman of magic. The idea that those two stations might be of interchangeable importance seemed right to me, and it resonated. I’m neither royal nor magic, but I am a storyteller, tattooed and fierce. I don’t know yet what they’ll say about me, only that I won’t know how it ends. And I know the story won’t be written on my Facebook wall.”
– The Vessel

Girl on the strand

Slim crescent, my sigil: a silver scythe.

Zola Jesus – “Vessel” taken from ‘Conatus’ on Souterrain Transmissions. Directed by Jacqueline Castel.

Snail heart.

Damien Hirst – Requiem, White Roses, and Butterflies

Thinking about what home is. Being home, being your own home. Home is where my heart is. I am home, I am my own home.
☾ Let’s go here soon: Margate Shell Grotto
“The story goes that in 1835 Mr James Newlove lowered his young son Joshua into a hole in the ground that had appeared during the digging of a duck pond. Joshua emerged describing tunnels covered with shells. He had discovered the Shell Grotto, its walls decorated with strange symbols mosaiced in millions of shells. Is it an ancient pagan temple? A meeting place for some secret cult? Nobody can explain who built this amazing place, or why, but since its accidental discovery visitors from all over the world have been intrigued by the beautiful mosaic and the unsolved mystery.”
☾ Left to a Room – this piece by Shamala Gallagher has also been haunting me of late. So good, so true.
“It is hard to sit alone in a room and write poetry because it is an evocation of the more literal scenario: your self in the room with you, where everything she does to hide her terror from the world is transparent and gleaming and failed.
In poetry you are always in the bedroom with yourself at dusk, where you cannot bear to look and you cannot bear to turn away.
It gets so the only time of day you can enjoy is dusk, and it is best when it is long summer dusk and the windows are smeared with rain and green. I cannot bear to sit in a room with myself; I am always longing for another. In the moment of poetry the other you long for is yourself, for all her particulars which are ravenously embarrassing. It is the kind of embarrassment that would break over you as a child walking home in the dark outside a room with lit windows.”

This frog is sitting alone, on a bench, like a person. I’ve watched this video over and over. I never get tired of wondering what that frog’s thinking.
☾ This fantastic article by Nadya Lev over at Coilhouse has been sparking lots of great dialogue about being a person of color in a notoriously pallid subculture: “I am so goth, I was born black.” –

Photograph by Dean Morley
☾ Butterflies boast ultrablack wings – Insects use optical trick to get the blackest black out of dark pigments.
☾ TAXIDERMIED INSECTS SO BEAUTIFUL
IT’S DISGUSTING – By Marina Galperina
I fell in love with Claire Morgan’s work awhile back – especially her crow falling through strawberries piece. She’s brilliant.

☾ African fruit ‘brightest’ thing in nature but does not use pigment to create its extraordinary colour – If I was a fruit, I would most definitely be a marble-berry (Pollia condensata).
☾ The Secret Life of a Society Maven
This piece came out a while back, but I find myself thinking of it often. A fascinating life.
☾ Acid and Gold: The Modern Alchemy of Artificial Gemstones
☾ I can tell I’m going to have spend some time with this one, too – really wonderful writing from Coyopa – Nettle-Eater
“‘I thought you were a wise man,’ she said. I had been practising for wisdom all my life, in secret moments of grandeur inside my skull, and knew less of it now than I had ever. I told her she was elf-shot and that there were skeletons where there should have been only gold light. I gave her the name of a plant that might help. If wisdom has something of saying the right thing at the right time, I am more foolish than the robin, the blackbird or the shrike. She raised her eyebrow at the word ‘elf’ and laughed at ‘skeletons.’ As she left, I told the skeletons to leave her. They shrugged and laughed and tapped cigar-ash on the riverbank. Whether they left or not, I’ll not ever know. I suspect she was one who will be elf-shot again – she had that way of misery about her, sadness stalking her and never faced fully in the underworld of learning.”
☾ Echo Lake – Wild Peace
Drowned in Sound is streaming the new album from Echo Lake, and has a track by track guide to the album by the band. Beautiful dreaminess. A perfect soundtrack for early fall.