For a Year and a Day ....

At the Jaffe Center for Book Arts was an amazing display of collage/ pop-up books.  The form of the pop-up element was often lost in the battle between figure and ground.  They are whimsy with a touch of malice, a dose of medicine with just slightly too little sugar to make it go down.  They are disorienting in an Alice-in-Wonderland kind of way, and I loved them.  Each were made as an artist in residence in a different place.  One of the books had images of a meatpacking plant and steak, another, a mountain of toilets.  I think I may have to go back and study them again once summer comes.  They are a lot to digest.  Do I want to do them?  Hell yes.  Will I?  Probably not.  They're require a type of vision I don't have but in words, and even then.

This one puts me in mind of the Edward Lear poem, The Owl and the Pussycat, which was one of my favorite childhood poems.  Can't exactly tell you why this ship makes me think of their pea-green boat, but it does, in a dream-kind of way where it doesn't look anything like it but you know it is.  I think this kind of book would be perfect to tell the story of that year and a day, all the highs and lows, the romance and the ordinariness, the thrill of romance and then the steadier thrum of a truer love.  Anyways, here's the poem:

The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
"O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are, you are, you are,
What a beautiful Pussy you are."
Pussy said to the Owl "You elegant fowl, 
How charmingly sweet you sing.
O let us be married, too long we have tarried;
But what shall we do for a ring?"
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-tree grows,
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose, his nose, his nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.
"Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling your ring?"
Said the Piggy, "I will"
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon.
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand.
They danced by the light of the moon, the moon, the moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.