Edition Announcement #113 - Juliane Eirich

Wednesday greetings, collectors! I'm composing this email so early that Ollie's skulked off to the bedroom, pouting at being disturbed from her foot-warming spot at such an inhumane hour. Apparently she's not fond of getting up during pre-dawn hours either. That's my girl!

As it does everyday, the sky will inevitably brighten on its own. My mood is another matter entirely; I usually require a little outside inspiration to burn off the gloom. Chocolate, fresh flowers, and happiness in the form of a warm puppy often do the trick. This morning, my cheer arrives in photographic form — Juliane Eirich's Fishline and Balloons are just what Dr. Feelgood would order for a girl like me.

Bright colors, faraway lands and balloons — all neatly composed in a square — these images are a double dose of photographic bliss. It also doesn't hurt one little bit that Juliane's work is reminiscent of the captivating contradictions I find in Rinko Kawauchi's work — gentle yet brutal, feminine but not girly, domestic without being mundane, quiet yet exuberant. It takes a keen eye to find the remarkable in the everyday, and I have a hunch that an ability to do so is another prescription for happiness.

Speaking of which, Sara Distin's blog post sent some brightness my way this morning too, photographically with Justin Visnesky's imagery and poetically. Naomi Shihab Nye's So Much Happiness is the sort of thing you might want to keep folded up in your pocket:

It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
A wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
Something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.

But happiness floats.
It doesn't need you to hold it down.
It doesn't need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
And disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
And now live over a quarry of noise and dust
Cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
It too could wake up filled with possibilities
Of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
And love even the floor which needs to be swept,
The soiled linens and scratched records...

Since there is no place large enough
To contain so much happiness,
You shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
Into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
For the moon, but continues to hold it, and to share it,
And in that way, be known.

Previous Newsletter : Edition Announcement #112 - Jessica Snow