tisiwoota

if the earth would sit still for a moment

I would not get off but rather find the little

place at its center where some silent being

prays over pulleys & greases gears

to make them turn true & in that place

plant a forest to surround that being & build him

a tiny shrine to live in at the bullseye of all things

where nothing moves but the whirlwind centrifuge

& the exhaustion of everyone who has

held something dear

Portland, 1968

You stand as rocks stand
to which the sea reaches
in transparent waves of longing;
they are marred, finally;
everything fixed is marred.
And the sea triumphs,
like all that is false,
all that is fluent and womanly.
From behind, a lens
opens for your body. Why
should you turn? It doesn’t matter
who the witness is,
for whom you are suffering,
for whom you are standing still.

So. Today, via Stumbleupon, I discovered this amazing, mind-blowing video that tilt-shifts and time-lapses a monster truck show rally (and puts it to a rockin’ beat, to boot).

Since I’m taking a video editing class for fun this semester, I was ravenously curious to discover how it was done (I mean, I know about tilt-shift lenses… but for video?). And to figure out if (maybe maybe I hope I hope) it was something I could do, too– without buying expensivo equipment. Since it took more than a few clicks to answer all my questions, I figured I’d aggregate my findings for the internet at large. {You’re welcome}.

The way the artist, Keith Loutit, made his videos is explained in this interview.

But I’m just an amateur who doesn’t have the time (or fancy lenses) to take 60,000 PHOTOGRAPHS and then convert them to Quicktime.

Fortunately, there are short-cuts.

Someone has come up with a clever way to create a tilt-shift effect via Photoshop and FinalCut (okay, some fanciness required, but maybe it’s adaptable to other programs?). Example vid here.

Combine with instructions for making videos time-lapse (either by frame rate or in post), and voilà!

Or, I hope voilà.

Hopefully I’ll get a chance to play around with this before the end of finals.

SO COOL.

update: A friend says there should be plenty more tilt-shift video coming with the new DSLR bodies with video recording– e.g. the new Canon 5DMkII.

Time Lapse, Tilt Shift

Prison Song

The skin ripples over my body like moon-wooed water,
rearing to escape me. Where would it find another
animal as naked as this one it hates to over?
Once it told me what was happening outside,
who was attacking, who caressing, and what the air
was doing to feed or freeze me. Now I wake up
dark at night, in a textureless ocean of ignorance,
or fruit bites back and water bruises like a stone:
a jealousy, because I look for other tools to know
with, and another armor, better fitted to my flesh.
So, let it lie, turn off its clues, or try to leave:
sewn on me seamless like those painful shirts
the body-hating saints wore, this sheath of hell
is pierced to my darkness nonetheless: what traitors
labor in my face, what hints they smuggle through
its itching guard! But even in the night it jails,
with nothing but its lies and silences to feed upon,
the jail itself can make a scenery, sing prison songs
and set off fireworks to praise a homemade day.

No one is safe. The streets are unsafe.
Even in the safety zones, it’s not safe.
Even safe sex is not safe.
Even things you lock up in a safe
are not safe. Never deposit anything
in a safe-deposit box, because it
won’t be safe there. Nobody is safe
at home during baseball games anymore.

At night I go around in the dark
locking everything, returning
a few minutes later
to make sure I locked
everything. It’s not safe here.
It’s not safe and they know it.
People get hurt using safety pins.

It was not always this way.
Long ago, everyone felt safe. Aristotle
never felt danger. Herodotus felt danger
only when Xerxes was around. Young women
were afraid of wingèd dragons, but felt
relaxed otherwise. Timotheus, however,
was terrified of storms until he played
one on the flute. After that, everyone
was more afraid of him than of the violent
west wind, which was fine with Timotheus.
Euclid, full of music himself, believed only
that there was safety in numbers.

Poem Before Pronouns

No water, lots of glaciers.
There was one bird

but she had no nest.
It got colder.

There were neither humans
nor gorillas: too cold

to go outside and work.
Finally, things began to change.

An onion grew somewhere.
Seeds got invented.

Somewhere else, one lizard
walked across a desert

and found the other lizard.
There was a blue warmth.

There was a blue warmth
and still some things began

to grow fur–as if they knew
it will be cold again.

-Thomas Lux

BEETHOVEN ON THE BEAUFORT SCALE

sea like a mirror
scaly ripples, no
foam –

small wavelets, do not
break, crests have glassy appearance –
small waves, crests begin
to break, scattered
foam –

small waves becoming
larger, fairly frequent
foam crests –

moderate waves of pronounced
longer form, many
foam crests –

larger waves, breaking crests, cause
white crests of everywhere to be blown
into froth –
taller waves, white
foam –
of breaking crests along the direction of the wind

moderately high waves, crests of
waves form spindrift, well-marked
streaks of foam –
high waves, dense
streaks of foam –

along the direction of the wind, roller-forming, driving
foam –

very high waves with tumbling
wave-crests, sea takes on a
white appearance due to foam

exceptionally high waves, sea covered with
foam –
visibility strongly
reduced

air filled with foam
and driving
spray
sea completely
white

due to foam, practically
no visibility –

-Anneke Brassinga, trans. John Irons

Being

A letter is holy. A story
is holy hands reaching out into the world.
Birds come home
across distance I can’t conceive

and live in their bodies.
Ash in the air. Every place I’ve been
is on fire with words.

One day
I throw away all my love letters
without noticing. Mountains

in the heart.
What belongs
to me? I leave the world
all the time. These arms, these

fingers, this tongue, these feet,
and their bent wings. I know
it will be dirt, the prayers

now in marrow will retake
earth. I will live inside whatever flies.
Burning, the brink of all things.

Oblivio

The doctors who have made senility
Their subject say we pave a neural path
Anew when we recall a memory.
If this and genes are true, the awful wrath

Of plaques and proteins gathers in the gloam
And bides its time. Someday, should doctors care
To analyze my brain, they will see where
You kissed me in my youth and founded Rome.

When other memories are tattered cloths,
I’ll fold and keep the flag of that first kiss,
Defend it from old age as Visigoths
Beseige my brain. All pathways lead to this.

Physicians of my final days, note well:
I kissed her on the Seventh Hill.

Rome fell.

My whole life is mine, but whoever says so
will deprive me, for it is infinite.
The ripple of water, the shade of the sky
are mine; it is still the same, my life.

No desire opens me: I am full,
I never close myself with refusal-
in the rhythm of my daily soul
I do not desire-I am moved;

by being moved I exert my empire,
making the dreams of night real:
into my body at the bottom of the water
I attract the beyonds of mirrors…

Be my buffalo head nickel, my foreboding mountain, the leg I don’t have to stand on.

What if there were big things at stake?
Be my ruckus. Be my shoot-out.

Be my corduroy, my perfect non-sequitor.
Be my cedilla.

Be my circuit breaker, my prosecuting attorney, my lengthening shadows at dusk, my nest of pine needles, my second-story window, my autodialler.

Be my hilarious fugue, baroque rococo.

Be my Boolean logic, my array of pointers, my system architecture, my database management software.

Be my cascading waterfall, my oscilloscope.

My engaging imagination, my radical metonymy.
Be my stone fence.

Be my axiom.
Be my if-you-stare-long-enough-you’ll-see.
Be my subatomic particle. Be my ten lords a’ leapin’.
Be my backbeat, my key of C minor, my surly apostle, my green sea birdgirl.

Be my long strides, my inscrutable syntax, my mystic chancellery.

Be these things. Be them. Be my maximum payload, my elemental munitions, my full
complement of arms.

I’m asking for guidance here. Once I was water coiled under sand. Now I make my plea. This is errata. This is what I forgot to say before. Listen. Aren’t I your blossom, your acceptable loss? The comet is ellipse. The mitosis is continental divide. It communicates within its own enzymic parameters. I’m asking you. All this will be ours. Every desperate clutch, every extenuating syllable. Emerge, come forth.

Be my long gaunt carnivore, my nullifying vision.
Be my simmering, seething, flickering, radiating, shimmering, and undulating.
Be my hereby known as, my previously referred to, my otherwise, my elsewhere.

Be my scandalous reparté.
Be my semiotic wilderness, my midnight blue metallic, my queen’s gambit.
Be my unheralded latecomer.

Be that one move: the one where you cross over, go behind your back, put it through your legs, spin around, in midair, no look, no hands, with a wink, outstretched, half twist, and somehow escape with your eggshell intact.

Be my come on. Be my let’s go. Be my it’s a great day to be in Montezuma.
But I’m new now. I can never go back.