January 2004 Archives

We traveled at what was almost the speed of sound. Europe was on the menue again, or I was on the menue for europe. Mr. roll arrived under a plastic cover. I could not resist, I had to take some pictures of him... at least as long as he was still in shape to have them taken. I tried to keep him fresh for a while, I think... but he eventually dried out and turned back into crumbs... a lot happened then. a lot.

"You approved these yesterday." did I? "Oh, and we changed the time on that clock, just as you had requested." Did I really request that? I could have sworn it was a dream. Apparently not. Working through the night brought me completely out of balance. My brain did not want to let me get away without a night full of dreams, and so it turned everything that happened the day before into the memories of dreams. And I am still half asleep, actually... oh... maybe completely asleep. Could this entry be but a dream? What about all the kind comments and incredible pictures that made their way into my mailbox. Could they also be just fantastic dreams?... I will now need to rest just a tiny bit, again. WHy am I doing this? Who am I?, especially here?

hello there, hi, how are you?... it looks like I things got a bit more quiet here today... or was it yesterday?... or what day is it at all?... A night without sleep has turned me into a not moving traveler... Jetlagged without a jet... please forgive me for having been a little cranky for the last few weeks... you can always go back in time... one needs a little rest to be truly joyous... and so I will now close this powerbook and just fall asleep... ..

Everything magnificent had been said and done and given and taken and given again. The top was off now, the sun setting, one last hello, one last wink, one last smile. This was it, the key turned, the gas pressed, wheels set in motion. We were heading towards a very important moment. Well, or... from now until it happens to all of us.

Every single part of her carried the message of her beauty. A fragment of her was set in stone, but it was the missing pieces that would grow and transform themselves in the minds of generations. She appeared incomplete only to the those without imagination. Those who had beheaded her, must have considered her destroyed. She is still glancing at them, with ever new, ever re-imagined, perfect smiles. Holding on to her back... for all these centuries... but that's a different story....

Some of the best moments might be the ones that are left to be just that... moments. The ones that are not measured in time, words, brightness, anything really. When one manages to achieve the level of complete presence, a full awareness of the now... oh how incredible can this all be. No thought dares to cloud these moments. No ideas shout for attention. Wow... yes... The next level might be perhaps that which is the seriousness of a child at play. It is that, "zone" you know. That ocean of a line, or maybe the talking puppets. The leaves, the sky, the little stones. Anything has a life, a personality, a role. They might be not the most complex ones... but they are often more powerful than the things themselves. Wow, not bad... And then there is the very well calculated, the planned, the executed, the strategically positioned, the smart, smart thing to do. There are the plans, there are the memories, there are the lost moments, captured... but not by our minds or hearts, but by machines, or by devices of wonder, things that were imbued by others with some magic that we, after purchase, can also just unleash... It is the planning and the calculated thought and intrigue that have brought us to the high places in which we now reside, isn't it? We planned ourselves here, we saw the target and we did whatever it took to get here. And now we celebrate the path, we look back at it and we admire how primitive those look whom we, the great thinking ones left behind. And we put those who experience the pure moments into glass boxes. Those who draw and follow their playful instincts are put on medication... and only those who truly sneak their way into the rhythm of contemporary expectation, only those are then chosen to become our leaders. Because they look so darn good at it. And they capture the moment... and then... what will anybody ever do with that incomprehensible captured moment?... will we call the experts?... a committee? What if we just imagined what we really are... without anything that was given to us by those who were here before us and without anything stolen from those who will come after us?... what if we just imagined that... just very briefly... suddenly... well, I don't really know... I just do not think we really went that far... and maybe it was not even a "progression"...

For a minute or so the heart spoke loudest. It just made sure I heard it. I did, face down on the sheets, putting breaths between the beats. Boom, inhale, boom, exhale, boom, inhale, boom, exhale. The cushion on my head, there was no street, there were no lights, just this barely controllable sensation of a slow motion pirouette, lights off, a beating four chambered drum, my own, deep inside, boom, exhale, boom. Can the head feel like a sore muscle? My eyes are begging to stay closed. Eventually they will. Spirit will not move for several weeks, but we have landed Opportunity in a place never before seen, well, not even now really... Why did I think about something silly like the possibility of a return from the red planet. Will there be a ramp? A launch pad? An airfield?... Or more of a song, sung next to a flag, perhaps? Will they all just fall off once they find the edge of the disk? What if they stay attached to the giant magnet that makes the needles all point north? Where is north in space? I looked at some of the images and wondered why nobody had painted anything onto the landers. We scribble on bombs... why not on something called Spirit, Opportunity? Who forgot to brand these little buggers? Can we please design some logo for the next one? In the beginning was the word, I guess... and without it there would have been no "beginning" anyway. Blur had composed a song that would have been the first one to be played on... well it became a hit. A friend recommended that I put together an about me page very soon, just to make sure that the casual reader of these pages knows that I am not insane... (I am a very sane person, I promise.) For now, there might be at least a little picture -->, as a sign that I am an actual human being. It is a good thing to know, isn't it, three quarters water, some of it ... sapiens? I sometimes wish that Spirit and Opportunity were all in one single organ,... and maybe they are, maybe this is not beating, just knocking. A blurry wish to just come out and play. And we should probably really listen to some good old Holst... ...

The original post contained the quote that points towards the story told in the Rembrandt painting in this photograph... but it was all just so incredibly pedagogic... so now it is all gone. Some will thus enjoy the photograph below much more than others... and I think this is also a part of the idea of the image itself...

Okay, let's get back to happy. Let's smile and wait for the good feelings to kick in. Let's not get caught up into staring into the shadowy corners, looking for some dark stuff. Let's just make this world a better place. Let's grow. Let's make the kids happy (any kid is fine). Let's walk the dogs (long and joyful walks). Let's make sure to be around for sunrise and sunset and awake in between. Let's not waste any time on destruction, let's make beautiful things. Let's make things and ideas and everything great... grow and glow and snow on all.... (yey!) go!

There are moments, from time to time when I think that most of my little world is explored and that the next corner is just going to hold the same promise as the thousands of corners I already know. These are the most horrible moments, because they show a stagnation and a contraction of my little mental universe. I am very afraid of these moments and try to work towards a place where the darkness opens up again, and where light can be seen. I look for moments where I realize that not all is explored, not all has ended. (And all this does not mean, of course that i am some sort of thrill seaker, it is just that i enjoy a certain level of balance, stagnation is not balance) These happy experiences can be really wonderful. They can be tiny; like discovering a new way to draw a line, or enormous; like a new way to draw a line. (this entry is a rerun of an older one, which was spammed... Comments will now close after a few days. Sorry for that. It was just too much to clean up after some dirty spammer every morning... the time can be used in better ways... maybe now...) (Thank you tom!)...

Is there anything that guarantees that time spent in smelly little rooms, chopping at a huge blocks of soap actually will turn into a decent piece of something useful? What is the reward for running really quickly? I mean, really, really quickly. Does it matter what the direction is, or does one just need to chop and chop and chop a little more? (Maybe even make others chop. Or hire those who hire those who hire those who chop?) Is this the time of the obsessive compulsive winners and the brilliant tiny spark in the pan losers? Is quantity here to stay and quality to go straight through the stomachs... once? Are the better things to stay, or those that could be created cheaper in larger amounts, and brought to more households wrapped into a thicker coating of delicious high fructose mind syrup. Information laquer. Is this a really old question? Is it as old as thinking humanity itself? Do we need to hope that those who manage to create a lot of soap flakes eventually turn around and help to elevate... accelerate... oh, never mind... chop on...

It was very early in the morning not so long ago. The place was just outside of Eureka, California. Many seemingly very happy animals were getting ready for their day, which they would, as animals like to do, spend hiding from the humans. I think the factory in the background has something to do with wood... it was nice and warm... and peaceful. Some fishermen were just returning from their fun filled trips. Eureka it is a beautiful place. I would like to go back there... maybe hug a giant tree nearby... maybe some time soon... maybe... some day...

There are limits, of course. One can go so far, not much further. Sometimes things are good, then great, then spectacular, then they are too much. One can walk to the peak of that mountain... walking further would not really be walking, I guess. Some have managed to do this in the past, they are now famous, people kill each other to spread their message... Some of us just make it to the first base camp. Some just watch mountains. Some read about them. Some think they suck. The beach, the beach... life is not supposed to be a mountain... life is supposed to be a beach. No climbing, no deadly attacks of the mountain goats, no avalanches. Beaches are supposed to be fun and relaxing and filled with happy looking friends. And then, at the end of that walk on that beach one can say... well, one can say one walked on that beach, and everybody will just understand. (sunset.) So back to the mountains. The peaks are usually cooler than the lower parts, the views are better up there, the air is thinner, there are fewer visitors... and at the end of that trip... when back at the beach.. one can just say... well, and not many will understand... And there are limits, of course... and sometimes we just get really tired and would love to just rest. Just for a little while. Just a second...an hour? a year... I guess I will need to do that soon, because all this climbing without an oxygen mask or a map is making me a little dizzy... (actually very dizzy.)

Certain rooms were built to pretend to be outside, others were created to simulate a disarming warmth. Architectural wombs.
Windowless, glowing, well insulated little chambers of beauty.
How rich does it feel to walk through rooms that have blood colored walls. Not the fresh kind blood, not the blood that smells like torn apart iron, blood that was permitted to mix with oxygen, just a little, enough for us to feel the right amount of ownership over the large and very deserved kill. Frame it all with wood, exotic planks reduced to straight frames, and the air humidity better be measured, because we might break into a damp sweat of accomplishment.
Here we go, there is another one. Welcome to a chamber of sweet secrets. Here is a place that nature would never manage to create, at least not without the help of a superior being, one that is able to create a visual grammar, put things into an emotional, historical context... the past looks primitive, the future looks bright. The present is a blade.
Make sure not to step on the glass.
All yours... to look at.

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Where did I read that toy stores were not places where parents should look for toys for their children? Toy stores were for those busy uncles and aunts visiting from abroad. Those who did not really know the child, or culture, who needed to make a quick, age appropriate homerun. ("Say thank you to uncle Shlomo for the golden bongo."... ..."thank you uncle BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAM")

Toys given by parents should be the beginnings of stories, not the final word of such.
Do you remember the packaging of your very favorite toy? (I don't.)
Do you remember the packaging of your most useless toy?... The one that was the biggest disappointment when pulled out of its promising box?

What happens in a time and place where biological parents technically become the aunts and uncles, the rare visitors who only come home for the highlights? How many tv commercials show parents observing their children from a safe distance, while the superbly focused kids interact with some sort of device that perfectly replaces true human interaction?
Sometimes a pet is present: a drugged kitten, a loving puppy or a fascinated, cheerful, freshly changed sibling.
Children themselves are often seen as something that comes pre-packaged with pre recorded messages that just need to be activated and many well accessorized fun activities, and a whole bunch of matching clothes to buy for.
And God forbid that perfect kid turns out too active, too tired, too heavy, too fast, too slow, too different... too something that was not covered on the back of the box or in the manual...
oh, wait... things can indeed be adjusted these days... most conditions are the result of a chemical imbalance of the ingrediens anyway...
try me... press my heart, gimme that, feed me that. Or as a one 5 year old hyperactive boy recently put it while pretending to hit me with the hand that did not hold a starbucks hot chocolate: "I did not take my pills today!, I did not take my pills today!, I did not take my pills today!!!" (What appeared to be his grandmother was a neighbor who only borrowed him for a day, to overcome her own depression after the death of her husband 13 months ago, as she told me... and so the story continues.)

The weather was perfect. The conditions never changed. There was never any wind or rain or anything like that. The days were the same length. Always. The nights were quiet and peaceful. No danger, no danger at all. no predators, not even a food chain. Perfection, long life. State of the art conditions. Steady, predictable, just right.
Nothing one could ever complain about.
What else?... Not sure. What else was there?
Maybe something behind that shimmering wall?... nah, that was a dark and dangerous place.

The window of attention became smaller and smaller in the last few days. It was a few minutes at first, this turned into a minute, 40 seconds, 10, 9, 3 what was I writing about?
So odd, I could not keep up my curiosity levels either. and then the ability to...
what happened next was the appetite.
Were we ever able to draw?
How come the desk is so messy?
A rhythm keeps hammering into my skull and it is not a good one. It might be one that is produced my my own body, but was it requested? Shall we ask again in a few minutes?
Will this entry go to draft? Will I ever publish it? Maybe not... should not. Wait a second...
It was after a longer walk that I came across the sumatran rhinos. The taxidermist arranged the young rhino to look at the yellow note describing the species. This should teach the stuffed baby a lesson, shouldn't it? Maybe if the stuffed skin with the plastic eyes were made to stare at the yellow note long enough, for let's say 200 years or so, it would learn how finite a species can be... as long as it is not human...
now that was not quite the idea, I guess...
The window of attention became smaller and smaller. For some reason it became very difficult for me to hold a single and clear thought.
It must be the lack of sleep.
I think my body is about to crash... let's see what happens next...
Not much will happen to the baby rhino... enough has happened to the baby rhino... not much should happen anymore. How many animal artifacts are in that building anyway?
And who shaved the Sumartan Rhino? (See also here...)

For a split second, the alignment of all elements in front of me created what felt like the perfect opposite image of an Andrew Weyth painting.
At least for me it did. Everything was somehow the exact opposite to "Christina's World". Everything. The setting, the situation, the expectations, the composition, the time, the inside and outside, the colors flipping the perspective... everything. Complete opposites.
So what made me bring the two together?
The shoe of the girl?, maybe the position of her hand?, something about the shape of her hair?... even these elements were barely there... so why did my head make the connection? Why did it rush me to Maine, to Cushing, to the world of Christina Olson? Without aver having been there? (And at that time not even remembering the name of the painting or the artist or the location.)
I wonder if a mars lander would have made the connection by drilling into the floor of the museum. Hmm, maybe I should not have either?

Can you imagine this here were a real place? What if it were a room in which we would actually be present? Would it be a strange thing? Would I still say these little cryptic little pieces and pull out a little drawing out of a vault now and then? Tell some story that would not seem to make any sense? Would I, at the end, offer a little piece of paper that would be just titled: "You said?"... on the wall behind me would there be a slightly odd image that would change every time you entered the room? Would there be little drawers in the wall, labeled by month and year? Would there be a menue with other places to go? Some with comments, some not? Would there be rooms in the back? Hidden rooms?
And how many of us would be in this room here? What would we all look like? Would you get to see my father, with a camera, trying to record the conversation? Would there be very unexpected visitors from around the world? Or would it be a pretty similar makeup of people? Exciting? Smiling? Rushed? Curious? Happy?
Would you see me slap on the fingers of those who sneak in through beck doors and try to post comments for strange drugs, disguising them in sentences about Willa Cather's Lucy Gayheart? Would we watch as somebody repeatedly ask for directions, or for names of people I spoke about before?
How long would you stay? Would you tell others about it? Would you come again?
Will you?...

Walking out of the building and into the cold, I wondered how many faces of New Yorkers I get to see every day. By the time I left the building I was up to 7 or so, then there were so many more, looking at me, not at me, would printed faces count? Would I only count faces?, people?, the experiences of seeing a person?
A large fire truck was going west on 96th street. Should I just count the Firefighters I saw? Or what about the man who was driving the large ConEd truck, with two giant spools of cable, going uptown on Broadway.
The truck had a green light, the Fire Engine slowed down a little I think... the driver of the druck hit the brakes, both vehicles were coming closer and closer to each other slowly. The cab of the truck was as high as the side of the fire engine, the fire engine was almost out of the intersection. Their distance was maybe 10 feet, 5 feet, 3 feet... inches... the truck would stop, the truck would stop, the truck would stop, or so I hoped, or so I hoped...
what followed was the impact. Giants crushing into each other. I wondered how many tons of material just hit each other. Slow, yet hard.
The fire truck kept going. It stopped a few yards after the intersection.
The ConEd truck would stay a while. Well, it was not exactly a truck anymore.

Did I take any pictures of the event? I did not. Did I run up to the accident to see how badly the driver of the truck was injured? No, I did not. Did I stay a while to wait for help to arrive? No. Call help? No.

Not only did I not slow down to see anything that had just happened, I even had to jot it down not to forget it, so it seemed. The situation was just not one in which I could have been of any help, really, seriously, no? The fire truck was okay, they clearly had already called for help. The situation was completely clear. There was no wrong doing. This was a very clear accident...
I hope the truck driver came out okay.

What struck me as odd was that I somehow immediately forgot about the event. There was this accident that I just watched in full daylight. There, a major change to somebody's life had just taken place... and my head just almost erased it all quickly and efficiently... until much later in the day, when I suddenly remembered that yes, this was what happened...
and now again.
I do not think I will be counting people or faces... not any time soon... so strange.

stepped into a puddle of information the other day. it was a cold and thick one though small. And because my feet are not quite as good at finding out what it all means, the information did not quite make it to my head. I kept walking, slower, one foot seemingly heavier than the other.
Frozen, little puddle of information. Why did I have to step into it?
I wiped my foot on the pavement, tried to get rid of the stuff. Spread the information all over the place, and it just would not go away. Instead it just began to become more and more distorted, stranger, to grow into an even larger puddle... sticky, deep, with strange smells and colors and sounds.
And just as it all was about to cave in, I remembered to remember that I had just stepped into a puddle of information and that if I just kept walking... then...
and so I did... quickly... but in my pocket... there was still some of that sticky stuff, contained into a little object... and I had no idea... I rarely ever do.

we sat down for lunch in a place where the picture on the wall was a photograph of a city with many bicycles. somewhere in the sky area, right over that motorola-wings advertising on one of the shops, was a dead fly. it must have been trapped between the glass and the picture for a while until somebody just smashed it. now it was there forever, looking pretty much like a fighter jet with an exploding cockpit. a horrible thought either way.
all the bicycle riders seemed to stare at the explosion in the sky.
though they never met, in any way, well they did, now, somehow...
the question over lunch was if it is a better idea to turn oneself into a bright and fragrant flower, one that could be known among bees for the right reasons and among dung bugs for all the wrong reasons, or if one should just take things down the more winding path and just work towards becoming a tree.
I was definitely for tree... I was not very discouraged by the bright and attractive flowers around me. May they have petals the size of dinner plates and be as fragrant as chanel #5... I was not worried...
And so the lunch was not a bad lunch at all.
On the way back to the office, I picked up three seeds from the street. A truck must have crushed their protective hull and they would certainly not turn into anything major on that concrete corner of 50th and 8th.
They are still in my pocket. I will push them into the soil later this week. It will take them months to turn into those brilliant little guys... I think they will be fun. Their mother tree looked like one that still remembered when the neighborhood was packed with gangs. west side story...
i wonder if that fly, in that picture, planned to become something. and i know we all agree that it did not. but who says we ever actually do? Staring out into our three second attention windows... (They were three seconds weren't they?)

I like to visit Danny Gregory's site, just because I really like how he draws things, and and how he gets excited about his passion of drawing what he sees. A recent entry was even a bit of a drawing course, and interactive introduction to his way of seeing and drawing. I am not linking to this particular entry, because his entire site is very nice and one should go and visit it and maybe even follow the links and buy his books. (I want to buy them, I will, soon, promise.) I think Danny made me realize a little more that while we both clearly draw a lot, our understanding of the journey is a bit different. Danny writes: "Drawing is seeing. If you can see, you can draw. But can you see?"... For me drawing is not so much seeing something and then grasping it and trying to put it on paper, as planting and watching of the process of drawing itself. I think Picasso said something like:"I don't draw what I see, I draw what I know." I do not even know what I draw... I try to draw what I do not know. And sometimes I am not even sure I know it after I drew it... it is a bit of an infinite exploration of creation... Yes, I sometimes sit in front of something and then think about it and draw a playful translation of it on paper. And then the next time I draw it, it is a bit of a bread version of the first drawing, the next generation and so on... I sometimes draw with an old sketchbook open, and the items that make it to paper are some really odd shapes that are layers and layers away from reality... I sometimes really just plant little seeds and then the drawing just grows in some very odd ways... Many drawing are almost as much removed from reality as words could be... Just the idea that one could describe anything by making monochrome outlines on paper... I guess putting a hand on paper and tracing it will result in a drawing of a hand-outline... but does this mean that my hands have outlines? Aren't outlines inventions of our brain as well? Aren't outlines a bit of a shorthand for what we actually perceive as reoccurring and expected variations in focus, when we look at things?... (where are the outlines on a ball?, or a piece of bread?, or a flame?) Describing a ball as a circle of ink on paper seems for me to be in a similar category as naming an animal... Yet, just placing a circle of ink on paper and... well... not more than that... hmm... I don't know... it could be anything really... I really can not offer a solution here... and I do not even know the right questions, it seems... And please, please do not think that I am trying to suggest that there is a right and a wrong way... there really is not... I don't think there is... For me there is not... I seem to have a long way to go... I guess I like not knowing certain things...

The moment did not really look or feel unusual in any way.
Even though the event did not feel special to him, or was in no way visible to others, the trasformation of his perception was a complete one.
Before it all happened, he was somehow guessing what it could have been that he somehow wanted, from life, from himself, maybe others...
After that tiny switch in the last car of the 2 train, going uptown, he suddenly saw why everybody around him wanted what they wanted... all of the intentions of others were completely clear...
All of the intentions, hidden or not, conscious or not...
in others... and only in others.
His ability to see beyond the surface was flawless... and yet because he had lost the ability to recognise his own intentions, all of the information around him was just like a rich and ever growing, glowing web... one that he was not able to describe or judge or capture or... well, he did not want to anyway...
His smiling body was later found... or was it not?

The coffee this morning tastes pretty much like what I imagined it would have tasted had I ever licked one of those red wheels on a steam train from Jastrzebie Zdrój to Katowice. It is a bit as if the coal dust never dissolved, just turned to this brownish cloud in the water, luke warm, because there was no time this morning to even drink the coffee... Things are moving along swiftly, as we wag our tails at the day. Big Orka is here with me now, in the corner of the room, suspended by the air conditioning outlet. I am not sure what happened to the other guys that were in this little drawing private exit drawing... Somebody else is definitely very private behind these barely usable doors on 73rd. Orka knows. No, Orka does not know. The softeners seeping from his dirty belly left stains of dissolved plastic on the cover of the printer at home. He had to hide soon after. Cheat his toy-death. The place where I got Orka is now some fancy fashion experience... no more old fashioned New York toy outlet. (Orka might be about 20 years old?) He has a little sticker in a very particular place. It claims that he was Made in Poland. He was not, I assume, but maybe his idea was, maybe the best possible scenario already exists, somewhere ahead of us, and we just carry it along with us, until everything falls into place, and we can finally just close those eyes and dive into another incredibly intricate dream... I drew all over my arm with a pen that draws pink dotted lines. I wonder if this was part of that Made in Poland childhood dream. ; ) There are some really strange paths to happiness.

The radio in the cab advertised some language course, loudly, frantically. It might have been "Spanish in 30 days", "no effort at all". "Just lean back and you will be able to speak it, guaranteed, or money back"... I don't know... "Eat a pill and you will never get sick", "stop eating carbs and you will never get fat", "use a fancy camera and you will be taking great pictures", "relax", "enjoy", "win a million dollars", capture ... (enter the name of your favorite villain here)... and then what?... I can not keep up. Not tonight... Drawing is not always easy, it is not always relaxing, it is not that cool thing to do, it can require a very specific kind of focus, as not seen on tv. There are no guarantees. It is one thing to follow the path that the pen wants to take, or to use the nib to grab and translate the known... but in the end... in the end it is about walking against the current, barefoot, until the feet hurt, until there is blood coming from that thumb, or leg, or lip. And one either does it a lot and seriously, or in little bursts... but then the periods of leaning back push one out away from the bubbling, child like, laughing source... There is no happy lucky formula for a good piece... and it is not the book, it is not the pen, it is not the city... i have no idea what it is... but I can not be ecstatic about it tonight, and I work really hard to make things look easy... and it is not easy to do... not tonight... but it is really worth it, and it is one of my favorite things in the world... and it is actually after 2, the following day... and there will be not enough sleep... yet again... slow, so low, solo w, s low... ow.... (another older one that did not make it...)

Spent most of the day falling out of one sleeping moment into the next. I would wake up on the sofa, in a chair, in other odd places. Looks like I will need to recharge soon... and tomorrow would have been a nice day for this... but tomorrow will be filled with more work.
The 1936 Pen arrived... it first did not want to pull any ink. Then it pulled ink. Wrote beautifully... then tonight... it just spilled the ink, through its back, all over the table. The ink is in the wood now, a table tattoo, a reminder to be more careful with pigment carrying devices. Fortunately the dealer I bought the pen from is of the very friendly sort, so I will probably wrap up the pen and ship it back to Hamburg, so it can have its cork restored, so it does not spill itself all over the furniture anymore.
Accu weather real temperature feel is at -2F right now, which equals -18C... and the temperature will go further down. Am I glad to have silly problems like spilling ink. It would not be good to have to find a place to stay anywhere outside, though I would probably end up riding the train, until I would run out of paper, I would then just probably start scratching little messages into the plastic protective sheets on the windows...
Drawing into a book in public is a bit like graffiti for cowards, I guess... I leave a little mark on paper, some daring expression, and then close the book, adjust the coat and leave as if nothing happened. Portafitti. Carry on graffiti...
Next thought please.

Tried to make myself thin like a single sheet of incredibly thin paper and slip myself under the door into the next... today.
Bruised from having spent five days with a King Kong of a week, I will now try to fold myself into a little airplane and hope that I will be able to land somewhere near the table, to start working on those favorite little things.
Hmm... and there is so much I would really love to write about now... maybe later today... because now... well... let me start folding myself into shape here...

Oh, and the image below is a photograph of a photograph of a piece that was put into place by Damien Hirst, yes, but I wonder how much of Damien Hirst is left in it, after all these various filtration and transformation processes...
After all, each and every single point of the image had to crawl through a hotspot of so many lenses... hmm... actually not the worst thought, now that I think about it...
Hmm... successive convergence, hmm... maybe it is time to read some Lawrence Weschler...

The amount of work on my plate is very large... the timing is not ideal, but I have to get these things done first...
what a year... (oh, and it has just begun...)

so there I was, pushing up a window somebody had opened, in a cab speeding up 10th avenue. they probably had not left the window open on purpose anyway. It just did not want to close... eventually it did, a window now marked with desperate streaks from my hands... moving up the slippery glass. The driver told me that he liked it to be a little cool in the car, as he did not want to fall asleep. He was almost done with his 12 hour shift.
I have spoken too much tonight... I have exhausted the amount of words I can produce per day. I shall now sleep... and dream of a warm place, where there is not a razor sharp blasting wind in my face and on my hands and even under the jacket... brrr...

The Morning News today features a gallery with 15 spreads out of my Moleskine Subway Sketchbooks. To make more sense of the drawings there was an interview, which turned out to be about drawing, subways and some points of view on New York. Some of the drawings in the Gallery have not been previously published, as they are a sample of work from various sometimes relatively recent sketchbooks.
The feature (interview and Gallery) is called "Seeds for the pen." (thank you Rosecrans Baldwin for putting up with me.)

If you happen to be a visitor coming from the above mentioned feature and do not really know what to expect here on witoldriedel.com, there are two complete Subway Sketchbooks with comments (about 75 pages each) buried in the archives of this blog. You might want to use the search function and look for "Subway" or "Moleskine"...
If you do not want to read much and would just like to look at some stuff, then just take a look at the shamelessly incomplete Catalogue section of the site. (And those with especially short attention spans, might want to take a look at the drawings; those with even shorter attention spans probably never made it this far anyway.)

Thank you so much for visiting the site. It amazes me every day how many people (and robots) choose to do so. (yey!)

It took around 30 minutes to get around the reservoir this morning. Oh, I did not run, I walked, dressed like the regular me, not a striped or dayglo sport version of me.

I made sure to quickly pass by the two insanely serious business people who almost sexually excited each other by moving their venti red cups and saying things like: "... and I made sure to let him know that he will be the carrier of the message, and so he will have to take responsibility for it..."
I knew I was far enough when I actually was able to hear the nuts break between the teeth of squirrels on a nearby tree. They were probably not nuts, of course, but I just do not know enough.

I stopped on the south side of the man made lake to watch a very strange behaviour of some of the many ducks on the water. A group of 25 or so, swam in three tiny concentric circles, their bodies rubbing on each other, sometimes making one of the birds a bit upset. New ducks, often couples, were approaching to join the highly complex water dance. It looked as if there were some under water carousel, three tightly spinning disks, and the birds stood on them, turning in opposite directions. I saw great precision in the moves of the group. It was all very peculiar.
I had no camera to record the little cosmic event and I had to keep moving, as I did not want the high charged business meeting to catch up with me again.
I passed the South East Calvert Vaux gate house. A whole collection of pictures of Alberto Arroyo were on display in one of the windows...

The equivalent of a heavy diesel truck jogged slowly by me, and I was able to stay behind the man, in his giant wind shadow, keeping a good tempo for a really good while.
It was not until an older lady looked at me in a very suspicious way that I decided to slow down a little. It must have looked as if I were the heavily sweating man's trainer, with my little moleskin book, open from time to time, while walking at full speed behind him.
The north side of the reservoir was where the Canadian Geese stared at some floating trash and at each other; then the hundreds of seagulls, another major bird-event.
I left the track, left the reservoir, returned to 96th street...
and I wondered what the strange dance of the ducks might have possibly have meant.
I imagined the mars probe finding concentric circles inscribed into the red soil of the planet. I imagined how important such a discovery would be for mankind... and I wondered how many ducks perform such incredible dances on the waters of the lakes of this planet... every day...
there were other things that danced in tight concentric circles in my head, of course... and then one of the thoughts was...
... what if the messenger does not even know of the message?...

It was a much colder day eight years ago. I had been picked up from the airport with a sign that called me Andy. The elevator to the office made some very dangerous sounds. I moved into a Brazilian hotel just yards away from Times Square. I had been looking forward to this day with such high expectations, I had completely forgotten to think much further, or about the consequences.
It is exactly 8 years ago that I arrived in New York for good.
Looking back at that day, I realize that I had made some really daring decisions; I am glad I did.
It was a much colder day eight years ago...
I feel really lucky to still be here...

some days are filled with bursts of energy, and some of it makes sparks that fall onto these pages. Some are not, and it does not. Today was certainly filled with a lot of work, but the results might be more subtle and behind the scenes... And because it is on days like these when we should go to bed with larger questions... here is one... as seen just a few days ago... yes, it is a little blurry, but does it matter? You decide...

there were some really old rolls of film in the refrigerator... for about a year now... so it was really time to have them developed, before they managed to do it all by themselves. It turns out that the slide film, which is maybe ten rolls or so, can not be developed by my local photoshop here down the block, so I will need to seek more expensive professional help, and there will be loud laughter in the back-rooms of some place I choose, as the experts take a good look at the now certainly pretty old looking material. The film started doing something to itself chemically, and so the images are a bit out of focus and have the look of old 50's magazines. There were some pelican pictures on the rolls (oh, surprise) and some shots of that snowstorm that hit New York... last January. One of my favorite images on the rolls was the one below. I am not sure how I took it, but it looks very much like the reflection of an american airlines machine, ready for takeoff. The scene is reflected in some really weathered surface... and I do not know where it might be... hmm... maybe a sun protective coating on an airport window?... not sure... -- update... ahem... found a different version of the image... and it is now very clear what airport we are looking at here... (okay, i made it very easy...) Take a look...

the pen I recently received was a fine Mont Blanc from 1956, and I just let it draw whatever it wanted to draw, on the subway... the lines were short, much shorter than the ones I was used to, and there were many, the shapes became clear slowly, and there he was, an angry little boy, not really looking like a boy at all, the little spirit that might have been trapped in the old mont blanc pen that arrived here from hamburg. ; ) The pen had never been used before, never been "inked", it works much better now... we have much calmer encounters... but it still produces some of these strange drawings, angry little characters... hmm... use your pens, use them often... (Don't let them grow bitter over time...)

For a really long time there was a little sticker on my monitor at the office. It was from a fortune cookie, but it was still a really good one: "Things are admired because they are great or because they are new." The sticker prevented me from falling for whatever happened to be the greatest and newest thing on that particular day. Or at least it made me think twice about things... did I like them because they were really great, or were they just new and would seem pretty silly in a few days or weeks... or... well once they stopped being new. I had to eventually get rid of the monitor, as it was neither great nor new, but I think I still have the "great or new" fortune cookie message somewhere. I used to pair up fortune cookie messages with photographs for some time... and some of the pieces were quite great... hmm... today appears like a very odd kind of day... could it be possibly because this is clearly a new year?... How long will it take this year to be a really great one?... Let's work on it...

We all know this is going to be a great one...
don't we?