28 January 2011

Nonsense

For those of you that don't know, my name means 'butterfly', an incredibly apt snapshot of me.  I flit from idea to idea, project to project, favorite to favorite.  I feel my mind - and my soul - are cluttered with an infinite number of facts, details, inspirations, snipits of memory, smatterings of half-finished novels.  Its feels like an internal warehouse filled haphazardly with stories-high stacks of papers, ready to topple over, and impossible to wade through.  Or a long hallway lined of doors: magnificent in scope, but you never know where one might lead.

For this reason, I love Nonsense work.  Nonsense in the classical sense, not in the modern-dance/hip-hop/Jar-Jar-Binks variety.  George MacDonald brilliantly touches my soul to its depths.  The poetry of Lewis Carroll, e.e. cummings and Odgen Nash fill me with wonder and I feel like a child again.  I cannot help but smile and laugh my way through The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

So, without further ado, here are my top Nonsense favorites (for today!):


1. "r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r" by e.e. cummings (the visual grasshopper poem) (Click here to see it)


2. Scrappy quilts - no rhyme or reason, no color scheme, no predominant shapes.  Sheer beauty.


3. "The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't." 


and 


"...felt as if your brain smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick." 


- Hitchhiker's Guide




4. Happiness in Perpetuity by Paul Bond:
Is the scene miniaturized on top of pebbles?  Are the rocks enormous?  I love the childlike
questions this one provokes as well as the sense of quiet and calm.
Whether big or small, I want to go there.


Are there works of nonsense that are particularly special to you?  Any that I should stuff into my mental collection?

4 comments:

  1. I haven't watched that since I was a kid. It might be time to pull that one out again! Thanks for the suggestion!

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  2. Men in Tights is brilliant! Great rec!

    Dr. Seuss has always been my ultimate 'nonsense' source. Here's one of my favs --- "We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love."
    — Dr. Seuss

    http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/61105.Dr_Seuss

    Love the Mr. Geisel! ...which led me to the etymology cause well, it's your blog :)

    German: from the personal name Giesel, a short form of any of several Germanic personal names with the first element gisil ‘pledge’, ‘hostage’, ‘noble offspring’. In ancient and medieval Germanic society, the younger children of kings and princes were sometimes sent to be brought up at the court of a neighboring ruler, as a pledge of peace between the two nations or clans. Thus, the male personal name Gisil and its feminine equivalent Gisela mean both ‘pledge’ and ‘noble offspring’.

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  3. I love that quote. I have never heard it before, and it is absolutely beautiful. I think I might have to calligraphy that and put it up on the wall in our bedroom. It's a perfect description of love.

    And yes, I love the etymology of Giesel! Nice work!

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