stereospondyl

"Putting to death of the king by the nation is then only the final phase of the process whose first phase is the putting to death of God by the revolt of the libertine great lord. The execution of the king thus becomes the simulacrum of the putting to death of God."- Pierre Klossowski Sade my Neighbor


How I spend some of my Sundays- photo courtesy of Mic Gendreau

Anyway......
When work gets you down, you just need a stiff cock-tail
Here are some cocktail articles I've enjoyed the past few months-bottoms up!


So you want a fancy drink in the East Bay?
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/Issues/2006-03-22/dining/food.html


What happens when you mix whiskey and chartreuse? Don't know, I'll tell you on Monday.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/03/16/WIG1PHO6EO1.DTL&hw=chartreuse&sn=001&sc=1000

Fancy special cocktails.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/03/02/WIG7LHEFNL1.DTL&hw=cocktails&sn=003&sc=983


Really expensive fancy special cocktails.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/08/18/WIGDEE8P9R1.DTL&hw=armagnac&sn=005&sc=153


And Mojitos
http://www.sfbg.com/39/10/x_bottle_rockets.html


Nothing says Sunday like a bloody mary-
http://www.sfbg.com/40/11/bc-bloodytriangle.html

And good old Vodka-
http://www.sfbg.com/39/26/cover_super_vodkas.html

more clouds ahead

my life this past week:

sleep- 29%
work-48%
listen to my friend analyze his break-up-10%
talk to my boyfriend-4%

and then a few little things one must do to slog through this life (like eating, bathing, negotiating with roommates, etc etc -9%

But I have been thinking of a few things that have been on my mind; and I would like to delve into them once I reclaim my life from work-

1. Global warming- when its on the cover of Time magazine- then you know you can't ignore it any longer.

2. Tango - I like having a music obsession

3. Clouds- they have been spectacular in this horrid weather- its the most amazing abstract painting you'll ever have the luxury of viewing.

4. Turn of the century Vienna- (in general, that time era in Europe- the people, the ideas....)
I'm reading a fairly academic book- Fin de Siecle Vienna- I wish I had been there....

precipitation

a picture is worth a thousand words, they say, perhaps a picture of clouds is worth 1500?
Someday I will present those 1500 words- but for now, a some picture of clouds:

the 1st from Duxbury Reef in Pt Reyes
the 2nd from Tel Aviv photo by. Mic Gendreau

eidetic

"The most mediodre libertine has dreamt of sultanas; every notary bears within him the debris of a poet." "...and his heart, like the people who can only stand a certain amount of music, became drowsy through indifference to the vibrations of a love whose subtleties he could no longer distinguish." Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert



Finished reading Madame Bovary the other night, it enervated me, it extinguish any hope of feeling a fulfillment in romantic love. But after finishing the book, I felt relief; after all, as I said before, it is a vivisection of limerance. And if one has experienced both limerance and love, the difference between the two, although at first indifferentialy similar, once crossing the threshold of depth - the contradistinction is shiningly apparent.

So therefore I have hope again…..



Another duodecimal poem- stolen from Debord:

contain
certain conspiratorial
allures.


And a link to a place I would like to visit in CA:

contradistinction

"It is a question here of 'acquired necessities'.Modern man is smothered in these necessities- the television, the fridge, etc.-which render him incapable of living his real life." - On the Current Value of the Functionalist Idea -- A. Jorn




Weekend:

Fri. night I wanted to attend the Pacific Coast Entomology Society meeting, but after 10.5 hrs of work, I could not bear the thought of having to sit through a lecture. So I went home, had wine and read about Alma Mahler instead. Mahler was a tyrant, he discouraged Alma's music aspirations-and saw her as a potential competitor- therefore stifling her talents. But he redeemed himself in the last year of his life, and realized his repression of her.

Sat. I went to the Anarchist Book Fair and later to the SF Garden & Flower show. I wandered around both of these events, watching people and observing two very different spheres of human desires.

And I read.

2046

"Reference in language is a strategy of promise and postponement; it’s the thing that language never is, never can be, but to which language is always moving." -Steve McCaffrey




Duodecimal poems-

(poems in 12 syllables- lines stolen from texts read (Zweig))

penultimate phrase
suffused in a silver sheen

how the tides march by

This month's aspiration: to maintain intellectual refinement in the midst of brutal mundanity, i.e. try to stay smart while having to work at my paper-pushing job, which has been absorbing a lot of time, for the next month.

Example: for breakfast today I ate a half-eaten cinnamon roll, purchase and nibbled on yesterdy, heated for 15 sec. in the microwave , then slathered with organic peanut butter- in order to have a little healthy content. And a cup of coffee. This is not how one should conduct a life.

At least I have been spending some spare moments thinking about Language poetry, can't say if I've made any insightful progress--



Then there are the emotional things--

I think about all the things between us, left unsaid-and no way to say it.

What can I say? Hi, that must be a new coat, I have not seen it before, it looks good. In fact, you like you're doing well. Sorry I ran off, its very hard for me to have small talk with you, that was something we really never did, and quite frankly, whatever is or was between you and I, does not fit into small talk. And yet, I am unsure if you are willing to actually have a real conversation with me.

What could I say to you? I've been very intensely admiring and watching clouds; paying strict attention to their details and forms. I would like to look up at the sky and know what is each cloud, how high it is, what atmospheric conditions gave rise to it.
Or how I've been thinking about colors. How do colors get their names? I've even been conducting experiments to see how colors relate to each other.
I would tell you my life has been going quite well, except for work, which is busy. But that my friends seem to have been afflicted with emotionally trying times. Sometimes I'm lonely for you and I miss you; I wish we could understand each other, but I realize that people make their own choices of how to conduct their life and how to come to terms with their past. I cannot hope to really understand how you feel or what I ever meant to you, perhaps nothing, and that is why things are the way they are.
The thing about us never having a real interaction since that time,is that we crystallize ourselves into that moment. We will never know each other outside of that moment. That is too bad. I would liked to have known you, and have seen the changes that you were to become. As we all go through these transfomations in our altered internal landscapes. I guess this is something we will never know about each other. I would have my appreciation for what you brought to my life…..but well?

personality disorders-

This morning I took a personality disorder test, inspired by this blog's entry

here are my results- I guess it means I'm kind of boring???

Disorder Rating
Paranoid:Low
Schizoid: Moderate
Schizotypal: Moderate
Antisocial: Low
Borderline: Low
Histrionic: Low
Narcissistic: Low
Avoidant: Low
Dependent: Low
Obsessive-Compulsive: Low


URL of the test: http://www.4degreez.com/misc/personality_disorder_test.mvURL for more info: http://www.4degreez.com/disorder/index.html

Gegenschein

"... and ennui, the silent spider, was weaving its web in the darkness in every corner of her heart." -Flaubert


This weekend held some overwhelming emotional brutality: thinking about these birds gave me some respite-

on Wrentits (Chamaea fasciata) "... unusual among songbirds, they mate for life and are virtually inseperable. They often sleep together on a branch, blending into a single ball of feathers."
-Verna R. Johnston California Forests and Woodlands: A Natural History




Stolen Poem- lines lifted from texts read:

The murk
has no shape
or pattern
except when carved by light.

where murk,
between,
metaphoric
space-defining
fires form
clarity
this order,
this intricate life

Art Murmur #3- and weekend

My weekend:

Is it absurd to write about your weekend when it's already Wed.? touché

Fri. I finally some home from brutal work. I meet with G.- we head out to Bootling gallery, its another Oakland Art Murmur, and since all the galleries are within a mile of my house, I should go...…

Bootling was crowded with people and art. Painting & drawings crammed on the wall- edge to edge, only marked by a number. There was a list that informed you of the art piece and its creator. I was surprised to see that I knew at least 3 people on that list (I always think I know no one and am surprised if I know anyone). But it was too people-filled and since it was hard to view art, we left, plus we had to meet A at the usual spot, the Dork Club- (I mean Stork). A was there, in her beauty, as always- she was in a sexy-casual look this evening, with eyeglass frames and Converse shoes, which finished the whole ensemble. A had tequila, G had a martini, I had vodka (I learned from last time).
Then we hit Mama Buzz- gelatinous prints of landscapes? I remember saying something controversial to a guy- then having to explain myself to his girlfriend, taking her by the arm and trying to understand a work with a character embodying informe (fr), having a discussion with a couple of other guys about the body which transgresses it's boundaries, running into a couple of more people I knew- surprise!!
G wanted a t-shirt but the shirts were too big. So we left.

Next stop- Ego Park- we took off our shoes for this one. A spotted a pair of pumps which drove her ecstatic- she tried them on and posed while G took some pictures-the pumps' owner came back, a bit surprised, not quite sure what to say to this red-haired woman who was wearing her shoes. However, she was a good sport and retrieved her shoes. A chatted with a boy and a girl with a little shivery dog- which I pet- then the girl handed over the dog, and I walked around looking at art with the little shaking dog.
Then off to the next gallery- 21 Grand...…

After a drink and watching slightly eery videos projected on the back wall- the vibe here was pretty mellow- A & G chatted up a few fellows- I think I just wandered around and looked at art. After going outside, I feel into conversation with 3 older women about boobs- and confessing that I did not wear a bra- they were stunned....and jealous.
A, G & I left with one of the women (a curator, I think) and headed out to 33 Grand, A & I skipping, hand in hand, while G conversed with the woman.

Large scale muted drawing of overview perspectives on landscapes. A ran into a older friend she knew, who seemed enthusiatic in joining us to the next gallery, but I think his boyfriend wasn't down with that. So we left.

A took us to Auto gallery- the one I wanted to go to all evening. But she left us and went to continue her evening elsewhere. Great photos at Auto, and as always, Tracy was a gracious host, it was nice to see her again. All the wine had been drunk; and stragglers were trying to find their last party, or finish their last conversation. In other words, the gallery was open enough to see the art, with little to no competition. We did head back to Bootling, but it was still quite packed- then after we ate at Koryo-(Lanesplitters was too much of a packed, wait for an hour, scene) we finally had a moment to see the art, before the proprietors closed down the gallery and turned off the light.

Then Sat. was spent waking up at 7Am- to go to U.C. Berkeley class on Natural Historians, Botanists and other adventurers for both Sat. & Sun. This was held at the Jepson Herbaruim. This place is amazing- even its acoustics. more details to come.....

clerisy heresy

Thoughts spurred by reading Madame Bovary- especially the idea of "le mot juste"- which has been very influential in my own attempts at writing. The effect and importance of the word …..I found that M. Bovary is an amazing crystallization of language's intrusion into our literary-crude world, but also it is literature's best vivisection of limerance.


This weekend I had been trying to think of what I thought my response would be to the idea of a spectral poetics- presented on this blog-


This is what he writes:
I think poetry (in general) is the house, the thing that gets occupied or haunted. And form or style is the vehicle, or the spectre, depending on your perspective and the age in which you live. To put it differently: poetry is an institution that we as a culture construct over time. We decide things like, “yes, this poem moves us,” or, “this poem is totally forgettable.” The establishment (academics, publishers, etc) decide a lot of that for us, but we have a say in what goes into the walls of that house too.
But over the centuries, things changed in the English-speaking world - we had a couple of nasty wars that broke our romantic ideals, or at least permanently altered them. Those romantic ideals - true love, an ordered universe, “civilized” behavior - were closely associated with things like the sonnet, the villanelle, the vocative O (”O Titus!”). We rebelled against those things - forms and styles - and gave birth to free verse. Once upon a time, the sonnet was the vehicle … now it’s the ghost. But the ghost and vehicle occupy the same house, right along with us.
I could be wrong about all of this, you know.



And this is what I thought: please forgive my hasty thoughts, however, as I am not trained in this process, I have also not been thinking about this idea for awhile. Mostly these thought are an intuitive response.

Vehicle, house- these are both metaphors which work as long as the construct of the metaphor is consistent. We are haunted by the debris of language's past meanings and uses* as language moves through time, it is a very flexible tool that can adapt to the changing demands of the user.

And many things have changed; not only socio-political/ economic, but philosophical, psychological understandings have (not totally usurped) at least challenged the romantic ideals of the individual as well as changes in technology and science. A cultural product (a poem in this case) is only as relevant to an audience as long as it speaks and addresses the concerns, desires and needs of that audience. The landscape of language has been altered so dramatically that poetry forms, like the sonnet, no longer correspond to the contemporary reader. These forms have been replaced more effectively with other types of cultural production- film, pop music, etc.

So perhaps the question is where does poetry fit in the contemporary world? I guess this is what some theses are about. I personally don't know.


* some idea of language through time- written by Mic Gendreau-
Some ideas from this morning, which will hopefully point to better ideas:

Parataxis, dynamic synchronism MLG 22 Dec 2004

Jakobson split from Saussure regarding the concepts of static synchrony and diachrony. He basically disagrees that language (or, its constituents, phonology, grammar, typology) can be examined as a present and static concept. He combines the concepts into a “dynamic synchrony.” That is, the various elements of a time-variant language exist simultaneously. (Similarly, spatial variants coexist.) Thus, we have a common form of English, but which coexists with various still comprehensible archaisms.

When the split occurred, it may have seemed more radical that it does today. We have the benefit of similar researches in other sciences, especially fuzzy set theory, the uncertainty principle, and the like, which consider the feature selection necessary to partition and examine a single aspect of a gestalt to be essentially an interference with the subject to some degree. This is akin to solving and equation by linearizing it, neglecting the messier components that one hopes will have less significance in the results.

What is interesting about this is, that if you go back far (or wide) enough, an individual, depending on their knowledge, might encounter a form of English that is no longer comprehensible. I am thinking of the variances in Old English and the versions that preceded it, in my own case.

Now, we consider this with respect to a language or form of communication that is paratactic, containing preverbal or extra-verbal elements. Paratactic communication is remarkably (and perhaps by definition) difficult to analyze or even “know” in a regular way. Perhaps an element of this is the extreme diachronic density of the information. For example, whatever the informational limits an individual might have of the syntactic language she or he uses, the limits are likely to extend much farther back in time and scope for a preverbal language. For example, a 1,500 year old poem heard in Latin (by me) might contain very little meaningful semantic information, but if read correctly, contain a significant amount or paratactic (or at least preverbal, or at least “sonic”) information. I can presumably process and “understand” or in some way “know” preverbal information extending back to the dawn of communication and beyond, but the ancient diachronous elements of English or French that I am able to use are much more recent and thus, more meager.

Chytridiomycota

[Cioran on England] "The country has not produced, to my knowledge, a single anarchist."

Here's a little excerpt abut Cioran written by Duncan Fallowell:

"As the high priest of cynicism, Cioran raises negativity to the most positive of virtues. He writes like a Nietzsche streamlined by Cocteau in the 1930s and given a flick knife by Camus in the 1950s. Cioran is the only modern philosopher who is also a great writer, turning extreme anguish into supreme elegance."


On another note, last night I started reading Flaubert's Madame Bovary for the third time.
The first time was when I was in high school; the second, while I was in college, now after reading inexcusable amounts (any amount would be inexcusable) of lit-crit, and after reading the wonderfully cogent Llosa book, The Perpetual Orgy that focused on Llosa's own obsession of M. Bovary and how Flaubert's novel changed the literary landscape; I decided to embark on this particular textual voyage once again.

The most striking element I noticed is the cadence of the writing. Granted, I am reading a translation, and I am aware of how much I will lose, but this translation (as mentioned in the intro) maintains much of the cadence. I am drawn into the sentence's rhythm; it alters the measure of my own thoughts. I will have to capture some paragraphs and present them at a later entry……

This weekend: art, Western Naturalists and possibly noise……..

As time goes by

I wonder if a love so complete exists that all other desires evaporate?

That you can find someone who can sit quietly with you, who will hold your hand, even if you don't want to say anything.

Someone with whom to wrap up in a blanket and listen to music, or to read books.

Someone to walk with in the night, along way; and listen to the darkness and watch scenes pass you by.

Someone with whom to pass an evening conversing feels like the best way to spend your time.

Someone who cares what thoughts you have brewed in your alone time.

Someone with whom sleeping next to feels like comfort.

Someone who you can trust to share everything.

Is it possible?

Pikas and Wittgenstein

Sat. I woke up and this poem popped into my head:


Another lagomorph poem:

a pika peeked
above high mountain peaks
and piped a squeak



Pika’s are pretty cute, and yes, I had pika on the brain because I read a sad article of how global warming could drive the pika to extinction. Here’s an article.

and an image




I spent most of Sunday reading Norman Malcolm’s Memoir on Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein and Xenakis are two men I would have loved to have met, they fascinate me with their unique minds, however, I think they would have been very difficult and moody.

Here are some excerpts:

“When a dish that looked especially appetizing was brought to the table, I sometimes exclaimed “Hot Ziggety”- a slang phrase that I learned as boy in Kansas. Wittgenstein picked up this expression from me. It was inconceivably droll to hear him exclaim “Hot Ziggety” when my wife put the bread and cheese before him.”

“Tell them I’ve had a wonderful life! By ‘them’; he undoubtedly meant his close friends. When I think of his profound pessimism, the intensity of his mental and moral suffering, the relentless way in which he drove his intellect, his need for love together with the harshness that repelled love, I am inclined to believe that his life was fiercely unhappy. Yet at the end he himself exclaimed that it had been wonderful! To me this seems a mysterious and strangely moving utterance.”

places to go...things to see

This quote was in my word of the day email, another attempt to wrap our bony fingers around art’s neck:
"Much art today has abandoned the ambition to please the viewer
aesthetically. Instead, it seeks to shock, discommode, repulse,
proselytize, or startle."
Roger Kimball; Art Without Beauty; The Public Interest (Washington, DC);
Apr 15, 1997.

Last night (wed), I attended one of Shaping San Francisco’s Spring Talks: Nature in the City. For all purposes it promised to cover a topic which combines a couple of issues I’ve been thinking much about as of late: urban design and ecology. Unfortunately the speaker was inexperienced and verged on the extremely dull. He hammered on about the alienation of the urban with nature a little to often- plus that point of view is old hat- I expected something a little more scientific. I also thought he would go into more detail about places within the city to go and "experience" nature, which he did in a small way. I do applaud the speaker’s enthusiasm in bringing this issue to the public, and he did have the foundations in creating a compelling talk- perhaps after a few months with the Toastmasters, he will gain the needed public speaking skills. The woman who followed him, Ruth Gravanis, was a far superior speaker, however after nearly an hour of the first guy, and she wasn’t informing me of what I already did not know, so I left.

Anyway, I did learn some cools facts about Douglas-Fir beetles and Spotted owls in my readings- here’s it is below- and also about amazing forest here in CA that I would like to visit soon…and I have been reading a lot of Bruce Chatwin's essays- the one I found particularly interesting was about nomads- more at a later date.

Douglas Fir Beetle-
the Douglas-fir beetle employs a half-dozen distinct acoustic signals. The males employ distinct chirps, indicating: (a) approach to the egg gallery entrance containing a female, (b) imminent copulation during courtship, (c) rivalry with other males, and (d) situations of stress. The female generates a distinct chirp when constructing and guarding her egg gallery (Ryker 1984). Toward Synthesizing Artificial Neural Networks that Exhibit Cooperative Intelligent Behavior: Some Open Issues in Artificial Life by Michael G. Dyer http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~dyer/Papers/Alife94Position.html

Northern Spotted Owl: “the right ear larger than the left to help triangulate sound”

Northern California Coast Range Preserve (NCCRP)

Located in the San Francisco Bay area, this biosphere reserve includes a highly diverse complex of evergreen sclerophyllous woodland, coastal, estuary and marine ecosystems. San Francisco is a focal point for coastal industry and trade. Tourism, some agriculture and fisheries, transportation, manufacturing, military installations, and research and educational institutions are also important to the regional economy. The primary aim of the biosphere reserve is to develop a commitment to ecosystem management among the various management agencies. Given the intense human pressure of the area, the conservation of biodiversity is very challenging. Of particular concern is to raise environmental awareness among the diverse urban communities.

Major ecosystem type :temperate rainforest

Major habitats & land cover types: At Angelo Reserve)Mixed forests (including mixed evergreen, California bay, tan oak, madrone, upland redwood, upland Douglas-fir, Pacific yew, and knobcone pine); woodlands (including Oregon oak, black oak, interior live oak, and mixed north-slope cismontane); mixed chaparral (including chamise, montane manzanita, whitethorn, tobacco brush, buck brush, interior live oak, and north-slope chaparral); bald hills prairie; grassland; freshwater seep; coastal winter steelhead trout stream; coastal salmon stream

(At Big Creek Reserve)Coastal strand; coastal bluff scrub; coastal scrub; ceanothus shrub; sage scrub; rocky scrubland; chamise chaparral; coast range and streambank woodland; stream-mouth woodland; sycamore-(draw woodland; coast live oak forest; mixed hardwood-coast live oak forest; mixed hardwood-canyon live oak forest; Ponderosa pine-Hoover's manzanita woodland; Ponderosa pine-mixed hardwood-coast live oak forest; Ponderosa pine-mixed hardwood-canyon live oak forest; Ponderosa pine-coast live oak forest; coulter pine forest;Santa Lucia-fir woodland; redwood streamside forest; redwood-mixed hardwood forest; pure redwood forest; aquatic (both freshwater and marine) habitats

UNESCO biosphere sites-

http://www.unesco.org/mab/BRs.shtml


Bruce Chatwin
http://www.prospector-utah.com/chatwin.htm

silly fixations- Furby's & Mt. beavers

Reading this week has been a bust, sad to say. Instead I can share some absurd little obsessions that I’ve had this week. One was on Furby's, I read earlier that the NSA banned them from their offices, so I searched a little to see what Furby’s were about. Here’s some very strange tidbits I discovered about Furby’s:


Equipped with a computer chip, sensors and a vocabulary of 200 words of a nonsense language called "Furbish," the slightly sinister-looking animatronic pet responds to touch, sound and movement. Furbys can communicate with each other through infrared signals and can be taught to speak English. Spooky. From idg.net November 24, 1998

Furby resembles an owl, with tufts of hair between its huge pink ears.

"We are prohibited from introducing these items [Furby] into NSA spaces. Those who have should contact their Staff Security Office for guidance," a memo said. CNN
January 13, 1999

Furby autospsy http://www.phobe.com/furby/auto1.html

They are still popular with many hackers as they can be dissected and made to do interesting things, as well as teenage pyromaniacs, who would often burn the devices while listening to them continue to speak their normal language. From Wikipdeia

This site I go to every day, an result of my color obsession. You can create your own little color cell then try to give it more life by choosing it each day- you can also choose other color cells to help give them more life and move up in ranking. Your color cell can even combine with another color cell and have a child. – Color evolution…?

http://colorcell.uneven.org/index2.php


I read a little about Mountain Beavers (Aplodontia rufa) in one of my readings- they are not beavers, nor do they live in the mountain- but here’s some very interesting facts about this strange rodent.


The mountain beaver is not really a true beaver. It's a little-known but fascinating rodent which occupies a unique taxonomic and ecological niche. It lives underground in burrows and is seldom seen above ground. Most people don't even know it exists. Little is known of its ecology.
http://www.infowright.com/mtbeaver/

Biography Aplodontia rufa is the only species and genus in its family with no known living relatives. The species, "is considered the most primitive living rodent, with an ancestry that goes back into the first half of the Tertiary Period (approximately 66 to 3 million years ago), when modern mammals first evolved" (Wilson and Ruff 1999).
http://bss.sfsu.edu/holzman/courses/Fall%2003%20project/mtnbeaver.htm

more
http://www.thewebsiteofeverything.com/animals/mammals/Rodentia/Aplodontidae/Aplodontia/Aplodontia-rufa.html

murmuring about art

I’m still at work, so I thought I would share my 2nd art murmur adventure which took place on Feb. 3. It’s Oakland’s newest hipster thing to do. I was re-reading it in my notebook last night, on BART, while all around me hopeful infautants were traveling to their destinations. Charmed…

Scene snapshot:

I’m early. I call A (who will be accompanying me) to see what she wants to drink. We meet at the Stork Club. Personally, I think it’s a kitsch-filled dive, but it has its fans, I’m not one of them. A’s a tequila drinker, and she’s apt to announce it, as she done each time we have gone drinking. I order, for myself, a vodka martini. The bartender has no touch this evening, and makes it too dirty and it tastes flat. A shows up with wild flaming red hair and red lipstick. It’s the kind of look that attracts men to a shiny object. We drink our drinks, we chat about possible connections we’ve had in the past. Then we hit the galleries.

The first gallery oozes the kind of art that I do not have an affinity. I look out of consideration, A talks. She mentions many names that I will forget. She has many men vying for her attention and many more coming down the pipeline. I see it as a potential bigtime operation. I listen well, but I don’t take notes, so I can’t really give any details.

Then another gallery. A flirts with men along the way, muttering under her breath to me after each encounter, how she hates men. I merely observe how easily they fall. I’m glad I don’t have their weak brains. I also feel above the need to interact in the romance hunt. Maybe I’m arrogant, but I feel relieved of ever having to participate in that again. Its more amusing and entertaining for me to watch everyone else do it. This gallery shows photos and paintings, mostly portrait work. The proprietress strikes a formidable presence, but I find that I like her. She gives me a large amount of vodka, more than what I should be allowed to drink- after some random chatting and looking, we are off to the next one.

This gallery shows the most interesting work, but its a hit and run. I have to catch BART to SF. A walks me to the station and leaves red lipstick on my check, then she heads back to her adventures. I go underground.

Red

Lately, I have dreamt of colors, mostly purples.

Some amazing things I read in the last few weeks- captures my fluctuating state of emotions: there, I find you hidden among the things I read.


“Nietzsche’s solitude was as wide as the world; it spread over the whole of his life until the very end…He wandered like a wraith in the shadow of great towns, in dusty trains, in various sickrooms, while all around the vanity fair of the arts and sciences was in full swing.” Stefan Zweig Master Builders

“We need art in the arrangement of cities as well as other realms of life, to help explain life to us, to show us meanings, to illuminate the relationship between the life that each of us embodies and the life outside us. We need art most, perhaps, to reassure us of our own humanity. However, although art and life are interwoven, they are not the same thing.”
- Jane Jacobs Death and Life of Great American Cities

“I shall never see an episode like it again if I live to be a hundred, nor do I think that one man in a million has ever seen it, because man is an intruder into such silences. The light must be right, and the observer must remain unseen. No man sets up such an experiment. What he sees, he sees by chance.” Loren Eiseley “The Judgment of Birds”

shades of purple

Shades of Purple-

Due to increased work commitments- posts will be a little less for some time.

For the past week, though, I’ve been obsessed with shades of purple-
Maybe because Valentine’s Day is coming up, and although I’ve never had any associations with the holiday, since last year, it has become a very sad reminder.
And purple- not pink or red, but rather like the color of a bruised heart.
Apart from that, purples and violets are lovely colors. So here are the ones I found, presented here for you, from the top row, left to right: mauve, puce, lilac, and orchid.




And the bottom row, left to right: amethyst, heliotrope, wisteria, and violet.




For the last month, and hopefully continuing for the next several months, (even years?), I have formulated an intensive reading plan. Books to be read, on the following subjects-simultaneously.

Books to be read n the following subjects:
1. science, natural history or math
2. Biography, autobiography, or personal essays
3. Urban studies, urban design or landscape architecture
4. theory, philosophy, literary criticism, or poetics
5. history- (political, cultural, etc.)
6. a work of fiction every 6 weeks.

I guess this covers almost everything of worthy interest?

ha!

Something I wrote in my journal (the analogue one, which I keep up to date and filled with “thoughts”)
I realize that in this life, mine, two opposite actions tears it apart. A life of contemplation and reading, is set against the other, a life of diverse activity. I go to lectures, art openings, performances, shows and other events; I meet and converse with people. This flurry of activity, walking, talking- are all very transparent. I am unable to contain it to words. On the other side is my reading life, with so many books read, yet I need to take better notes. How to walk down this life pathway so incredibly external and internal and how does one overcome the difficulty in documenting both?

“Extremism is usually an empty attitude.”

Gamboge

No real amazing quote today- just a funny little line I read in the newspaper a few days ago about plants-

"These days, I have a new attitude toward my plants: Perform or perish. Life offers enough irritations without playing nursemaid to a petulant shrub."

Tisa Watts SF Chronicle 1/25/2006

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/01/25/HOGSMGQ5ST1.DTL



Just weird stuff today- a little foray into my mind.
I get through the day by having little strange obssessions- so today I'm listening to animal recordings off this site- I'm sure any co-worker who might wander by, might be curious to hear frogs coming from my computer- I especially like the Lynx sample:
http://www.fonozoo.com/eng/sonidos.php



Gamboge is a rather transparent dark mustard yellow pigment. Throughout history gamboge has been known by many names. The most common in the western world are "rattan yellow" and "wisteria yellow". These are literal translations of the pigment's japanese and Chinese names. The English word "gamboge" appears to be derived form the same origin as Cambodia, which was earlier Camboja. Other names like Gummi Gutta, Gummi Gambogia, Gamma Gitta, and Gom Guttae are derived form the method by which the pigment is extracted from trees.

Gamboge: RBG (255,155,15) and my sample--






bye!