/ i've said it all along, love, if you listen you can hear it. summer 2010

/ the beautiful natalia vodianova (not sure who the photographer was)

'd'ailleurs, c'est toujours les autres qui meurent'

/ the epitaph that marcel duchamp chose for his own tombstone, translated 'in any case, it's always somebody else who dies', simply beautiful. above is a photograph of duchamp, who i learned online here was a chess master in his time. interesting that duchamp was so interested in death, especially in connection to ingmar bergman and the seventh seal, as this film links chess to death.

/ inspiration

guernica, pablo picasso 1937

/ lillie, brooklyn ny 2 august 2010

part of a new portrait project in the works

"soon after we can see, we are aware that we can also be seen. the eye of the other combines with our own eye to make it fully credible that we are part of the visible world. if we accept that we can see that hill over there, we propose that from that hill we can be seen. the reciprocal nature of vision is more fundamental than that of spoken diaglogue. and often dialogue is an attempt to verbalize this - an attempt to explain how, either metaphorically or literally, 'you see things'. and an attempt to discover how 'he sees things'."

/ excerpt from 'ways of seeing' by john berger

/ old loves, virginia woolf

'the word 'time' split its husk; poured its riches over him; and from his lips fell like shells, like shavings from a plane, without his making them, hard, white, imperishable words, and flew to attach themselves to their places in an ode to Time; an immortal ode to Time.'

/an excerpt from mrs. dalloway by woolf

/ when you wake up and its rainy and grey, get cat power + coffee and watch the skies

/ museum of natural history, summer 2010 new york ny

'this is my past where no one knows me.

these are my friends whom i can't name -

here in a field where no one chose me,

the faces older, the voices the same.

why does this stranger rise to greet me?

what is the joke that makes him smile,

as he calls the children to meet me,

bringing them forward in single file?

i nod pretending to recognize them,

not knowing exactly what i should say.

why does my presence seem to surprise them,

who is the woman who turns away?

is this my home or an illusion?

the bread on the table smells achingly real.

must i at last solve my confusion,

or is confusion all i can feel?'

/ reunion by dana gioia, from the sept 2010 issue of poetry magazine

/ tout va bien (everything is fine), jean-luc godard 1973

'The problem of restoring to the world original and eternal beauty, is solved by the redemption of the soul. The ruin or the blank, that we see when we look at nature, is in our own eye. The axis of vision is not coincident with the axis of things, and so they appear not transparent but opake. The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself. He cannot be a naturalist, until he satisfies all the demands of the spirit. Love is as much its demand, as perception. Indeed, neither can be perfect without the other. In the uttermost meaning of the words, thought is devout, and devotion is thought. Deep calls unto deep. But in actual life, the marriage is not celebrated. There are innocent men who worship God after the tradition of their fathers, but their sense of duty has not yet extended to the use of all their faculties. And there are patient naturalists, but they freeze their subject under the wintry light of the understanding. Is not prayer also a study of truth, -- a sally of the soul into the unfound infinite? No man ever prayed heartily, without learning something. But when a faithful thinker, resolute to detach every object from personal relations, and see it in the light of thought, shall, at the same time, kindle science with the fire of the holiest affections, then will God go forth anew into the creation.'

/ excerpt from chapter VIII prospects of ralph waldo emerson's nature, 1836

/ andrew, a very talented photographer & dear friend

new york ny, 10 august 2010 - check out his work here

/the brooklyn sky watches over me, summer 2010

from the omniscient eye of a disposable camera

'who said that time heals all wounds? it would be better to say that time heals everything except wounds. with time, the hurt of separation loses its real limits. with time, the desired body will soon disappear, and if the desiring body has already ceased to exist for the other, then what remains is a wound... disembodied.'

/ samura koichi via the film sans soleil

candace murray of catholic charities, syracuse ny

/i had the pleasure of meeting & photographing candace yesterday

for the magazine at st. marys college of california

/whispers fall like weeping willows

12 august 2010, 5:33 pm

LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats	5
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …	10
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,	15
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,	20
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;	25
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;	30
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go	35
Talking of Michelangelo. /excerpt from ts eliot's 'the love song of j. alfred prufrock' this is a brilliant poem, check out the whole things here (i think i am on a ts eliot/time kick and im feeling inspired again!)

the camera project

/ photographs by dany, age 10

ouagadougou, burkina faso, thecameraproject.com

semper ad meliora, semper ad meliora

/ flynn, july 2009 brooklyn ny

'blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
teach us to care and not to care
teach us to sit still
even among these rocks,
our peace in His will
and even among these rocks
sister, mother
and spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
suffer me not to be separated

and let my cry come unto thee.'

/excerpt from t.s. eliot's 'ash wednesday' 1927

/ sans soleil, 1983 chris marker

".. a woman has strength to wait. ‘cause she’s had to wait. she has to wait 9 months of the concept of a child. time is built into her body in the sense of becomingness. and she sees everything in terms of it being in the stage of becoming. she raises a child knowing not what it is at any moment but seeing always the person that it will become. her whole life from her very beginning it’s built into her a sense of becoming. now in any time form, this is a very important sense. i think that my films, putting as much stress as they do, upon the constant metamorphosis. one image is always becoming another.”

/ maya deren

/from 'one hundred' 2010

/ stills from maya deren & alexander hammid's meshes of the afternoon, 1943