Wednesday, November 15, 2017

Flying Monkey Repair, I

“Jesus, I’m / going out / and throw / my arms / around.”

--found on Orange Crate Art, who explains it's "an untitled poem from Lorine Niedecker’s Next Year or I Fly My Rounds Tempestuous (1934), a work made of short handwritten poems pasted over the inspirational aphorisms of a two-week-per-page calendar"
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This Flying Monkey, below, is the neediest stuffed animal I've yet scooped up––I found it yesterday in the alley, soaking wet and run-over by a car––quite icky––
so I'm showing the after-the bath photo first.

I'm drinking coffee this morning in one of the hand-painted, speckled stoneware mugs ^ I've become enamored of (Otagiri-type, made in Japan). This mug ($1.49 at Goodwill) is one of my favorites.
Ever since Marz got into Starsky & Hutch, I've reevaluated 1970s design style, which I hated when I when I was a kid––but I like some of the designs now.

And here, below, are the BEFORE photos--those rubber tubes allow Monkey's arms to work as slingshots, to fly across the room. Before I did anything else, I gave Monkey the hot tub treatment, with a friend (also picked up in the alley):

With some new stuffing, Monkey will fly its rounds again:

I found the original toy online--they have noise-makers inside (I took the smashed pieces out when I removed all the stuffing), and a cape;
I am going to make a flying-monkey jacket from Wizard of Oz for this toy--along the lines of (but not as excellent as) this one by costumer and body-painter Breanna Cooke [links to her instructions]:

6 comments:

  1. Pleeease don't change the eyes. I must remember to pick up new friends in alleys myself.

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  2. Oh Yeah, and also the Wallace Stevens poem that begins "The garden flew round with the angles"

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  3. Thanks for the poem, Sparker!
    The monkey does look great in photos with a half-missing eye, but in person it was one of those childproof plastic ones that broke off, leaving a sharp plastic shank--I'd already replaced it when I read this comment--
    Luckily I had a sweet old glass one that fit.

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  4. He is very winsome. I'm so glad you found him to rescue!

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