Miniature Books

Miniatures, dollhouse accessories and anything utterly miniscule has always fascinated me. As a child I remember being captivated by tiny figurines and items that resembled the life size objects never cared for in my own life. The objects, as miniatures, took on an entirely new meaning and purpose; they no longer held this useless, mundane entity that it had previously represented as a larger item.

I remember owning a miniature book, although, I cannot recall what the book contained. I cherished this tiny piece of literature as if it was a piece of priceless gold, an object that I must keep hidden incase a thief was nearby. You have probably presumed the book has been long lost, which it has, but I can still smell the tiny, unreadable, pages and feel the soft leather that encapsulated them. I was on etsy.com and wanted to share some gorgeous little treasures that reminded me of the splendors of childhood keepsakes.

Money Walks... Sort Of.

Alberto Giacometti's 1960 sculpture of a 6-foot-tall, bronze slim, slim man, "Walking Man I," sold for 65 million pounds ($104.3 million) in a Sotheby's auction, shattering the record price for a work of art at auction. Perhaps a sign of a potential resurgent of art collecting? The bidding began at 12 million than quickly escalate, with roughly 10 bidders buying for the sculpture; the purchaser remains anonymous.

The 6-foot-tall bronze depicts a wiry man in mid-stride, his right foot jutting forward, his head erect and and his arms hanging at his side. Giacometti, a modern master known for his haunting sculptures of blank-faced Everymen, cast the work 60 years ago as part of a commission to plant several of his bronze figures on Chase Manhattan Bank's Pine Street plaza in New York City. The artist famously struggled with the project, eventually quitting it but casting stand-alone versions of several of the planned figures, including "Walking Man I." The price breaks the existing $104.2 million auction record, set six years ago at Sotheby's, for Pablo Picasso's 1906 portrait "Boy With a Pipe," whose buyer remains unknown.

Just who the hell was this artist whose work essentially shattered the economic cloud that of budget cuts and recessions? Alberto Giacometti,(b. Oct. 10, 1901, Borgonovo, Switz.—d. Jan. 11, 1966, Chur), Swiss sculptor and painter, best known for his attenuated sculptures of solitary figures. Notable works include “Head of a Man on a Rod” (1947) and “Composition with Seven Figures and a Head (The Forest)” (1950). His work has been compared to that of the existentialists in literature (ooohhhh happy dance happy dance); in 1963 Giacometti designed the set for Samuel Beckett’s drama Waiting for Godot.

So how do I feel about a work of art being sold for such an absurd amount of coin? I have yet to decide. I think I will forever be doomed to be vulnerable inside the complicated justifications of art and its value; I will save myself for this argument at a later date. However, I will leave you with my semi-developed thesis: Art is often taken as a primary example of something with intrinsic (rather than just instrumental) value. But what’s so valuable about ‘intrinsic’ value?

A Poem: "Here"

Here
By Jenna Reimer

Time is a soft sigh.
It is a quiet spoken breath,
Echoing than disappearing
With its resonance;
A hushed sigh - a silent silhouette.
It is a light dust that skims an undiscovered text
That embraces a powerful poem.
The Endless verses of written words
Suck the marrow from all that seems concrete.
The poet's voice becomes lost
Amongst a furry of illegible drafts
Where words shift and dance
Across infinite pages.
Pages that drift atop the breath
Of seamless, hollow sighs;
Sighs that die with every inhale
And exhale.

An Experiment of Decay

The time when I am most afraid is just before night falls. The sun is setting, the day has finished, and this inevitable silence begins to prowl throughout the house. Everything seems to change. All begins to take shape of a form that is both unfamiliar and dull, losing any significance it had just a few hours earlier in daylight. I become aware of ever possible sound. The breeze flutters the cotton drapery. The foundation of the walls speaks softly, slowly, of its age. The tread of someone’s footsteps outside. The whistle of smoke mushrooming from the neighbors chimney. It all is incredibly frightening.
Is this it? Have we all been born into a silent world, a world where there exists a hierarchal struggle between the human experience, reality, dreams and truth? Are our souls forever confined within this hostile world where indifference precedes the mercilessness of human nature and thought?
I know I am here. Now. Awake. Asleep. Yet, my sanity still appears to be slowly slipping through the slivered cracks of the floor; the floor I trust will hold me when I choose to awake from this reverie. When I breathe, breathe these thoughts, my body becomes as lifeless as the mound of sheets I so coldly lay upon. This place, this tired place, withers away; like a train, I see it getting smaller as it pulls away. It is here, in my bed, where life’s absence of meaning seems to remove any reason for living.
I believe life to exist. Although, I am unable to prove it does, or does not. This thought that my reality has limitless tangents, in which I dictate the direction and perception of each stream, is solely secluded to my own mind. So why must I abuse such freedom with doubt and uncertainty? It is a human fear. The fear of thought. The fear that passively accepts the mundane actions of life and leaves little room for subconscious contemplation. Perhaps it is this fear that is the key to the essence of existing; existing in a missing world, missing to me and to you.
Everything begins to slow down. My thoughts quiet but remain bellowing inside my body as if it has only this one moment to speak to me. All that is left to do is lay beneath the quilts in this bed and stare out the window into a deep blue sky that has swallowed the sun for another night. Tomorrow seems unimaginable, illusory, a dream that seems to end before it has started. All becomes out of reach where I am no longer burdened with the everyday struggle to be without having to ask. An experience that feels both make-believe and awfully real. Perhaps I have reached a level of true helplessness where even the nightmare of existing, without questions and expectations, becomes increasingly intriguing.
For now I will forget the mysteries of life, my place in this universe, and retreat to a soft slumber. A slumber that takes my frightened hand and guides me to a place where fish walk on land and we all drink tea on tree branches. It is a place that is marvelous and peaceful; a place that feels more real every time I visit.

A Poem: "Small-voiced"

Small-voiced
By Jenna Reimer

I live in a sliver of Time
Where no Hell frightens me,
Where a glorious fire ignites
Outside my window
And hisses an insufferable cry
Making everything red:
My skin is rose-red,
The silhouette on the floor,
The raining ashes
And my pale hands are red,
Gripping the window sill-
Its cracked wood gripping
Specks of fire.

I am uncertain not fearful,
But uncertainty may be
My only emotion.

A Poem: This Thing

This Thing

My words that disappear
Into a thousand faces,
Faces of myself and of you,
Are a mere pith
In the corner of my eye.
The way I live and write -
Waiting to die and to breathe
That intolerable pain of being,
That wretched wrestle to continue,
I realized
I have created very little.

Hell is in the Minds of Others

I’ve been thinking a lot about simply existing, existing in a world in which I cannot define nor wish to define. I often find myself lying in bed, at 3 am, completely in awe that I am here, now, in this place, blinking, shifting nervously, in this body, in this air of thought that only I experience. We are all born into a silent world, a world where there exists a hierarchal struggle between the human mind and truth. I often feel as if the soul is forever confined within this hostile world where indifference precedes the mercilessness of human nature. Life’s absence of meaning seems to remove any reason for living; yet, it is this lack of purpose that presents humankind with true freedom. It is a fruitless argument to relay the notion that life does not exist, as I am unable to prove it does not, yet it seems my own sanity is contained by the thought that my reality has limitless tangents in which I dictate the directions and perceptions of each stream that is solely secluded in my mind; my mind in which only I am able to construe and abuse. Why do we fear thought? Why do we fear the act of thinking and knowledge more than death? Humanity has a disastrous habit of passively accepting the mundane actions of life where there is little room for subconscious contemplation.