31 January 2011

"i wasn't really intending anything specifically other than to create a mood that reflected a particular mental state that had been recurring within myself and within my studies of buddhism. i mentioned in a previous question that i feel these images carry a sense of rebirth, or movement between transient states. transience is something that is at the root of the human condition. everything is ephemeral, nothing is permanent. while this idea is present in buddhism, it is innate in the nature of our very lives. we are all born, we all transition through various states of being, growth, decline, happiness, sadness, and we all will die. whatever one's beliefs, whether one believes that is where life ends or the cycle continues, everyone can agree that we go through different states of existence. i believe these images depict visually the concept of transience. the figures seem to be frozen, but moving in a sense that we can't really understand on a cognitive level, yet we fully comprehend on an innate spiritual level."


/ found this in an old interview i did with someone regarding my underwater series. the interviewer had asked me what i intended with the 'blurred effect' (her words). i think this quote sums up what i intended for the work quite better than i can usually manage to explain.












/ quiet now, the mind, brooklyn ny december 2010
i saw you by the forest wall, waiting,
and god,
my dear poor god,
how you were gone!

liquid sea congealing,
tantric nightmare,
son of adam fallen from the ground
and out and over that tree

so much hope bottled
and sent out to supermarkets

a beeline from the dairy case
rush of refrigerated air,
pushed over the ocean
over the waves
thrashing and crashing upon my chest

there in the emerald aisle
i raise my right forefinger to the sky
and part the clouds like curtains.



/ 'seeing my shadow' - 7 january 2011

30 January 2011












































/ frozen bits of chinatown, january 2011
'everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see.'


/ rene magritte

29 January 2011















/ mid-day levitation, milkshake

27 January 2011

































/ photographs by mark seliger, from the show
listen at steven kasher gallery today through february 26. went to this opening tonight, really spiritual and reflective experience for me at a time of great need. really recommend it, the prints are large and beautiful, palladium.







22 January 2011



//monday, 17 january 2011. pre-shoot in stratford ct
new things are coming hard & fast

18 January 2011



















crome yellow, 1937 // finished this novel by huxley a few weeks ago and thought i'd recommend it, really well written & gives you an interesting idea about what was going through his mind after writing brave new world (one of my favorites) years earlier.
Winter kept us warm, covering 5
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, 10
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie, 15
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.



// excerpt from 'I. the burial of the dead' of ts eliots the waste land
okay okay so i'm obsessed with this poem right now, i know i know

16 January 2011













/ the magick of home, november 2010 webster ny

13 January 2011













/ my beautiful momma, forever an inspiration
with my older brother johnny september 1984
THE Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Glowed on the marble, where the glass
Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines
From which a golden Cupidon peeped out 80
(Another hid his eyes behind his wing)
Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra
Reflecting light upon the table as
The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,
From satin cases poured in rich profusion; 85
In vials of ivory and coloured glass
Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,
Unguent, powdered, or liquid—troubled, confused
And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air
That freshened from the window, these ascended 90
In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,
Flung their smoke into the laquearia,
Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.
Huge sea-wood fed with copper
Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone, 95
In which sad light a carvèd dolphin swam.
Above the antique mantel was displayed
As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene
The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king
So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale 100
Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
'Jug Jug' to dirty ears.
And other withered stumps of time
Were told upon the walls; staring forms 105
Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.
Footsteps shuffled on the stair.
Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair
Spread out in fiery points
Glowed into words, then would be savagely still. 110



// excerpt from 'II: a game of chess' from t.s. eliot's
the waste land, 1922
















































the camera project
/ photographs by vainui n. of colombo, sri lanka

12 January 2011













/ nautilus, keeper of divine truth
stratford ct november 2010

11 January 2011

'It's morning. The brown scoops of coffee, the wasplike
Coffee grinder, the neighbors still asleep.
The gray light as you pour gleaming water -
It seems you've travelled years to get here.

Finally you deserve a house. If not deserve
It, have it; no one can get you out. Misery
Had its way, poverty, no money at least;
Or maybe it was confusion. But that's over.

Now you have a room. Those light-hearted books:
The Anatomy of Melancholy, Kafka's Letter
To His Father, are all here. You can dance
With only one leg, and see the snowflake falling

With only one eye. Even the blind man
Can see. That's what they say. If you had
A sad childhood, so what? When Robert Burton
Said he was melancholy, he meant he was home.'



// early morning in your room by robert bly 1997, from 'morning songs'

09 January 2011



















/ one of my true loves forever & ever, aldous huxley
photograph by cecil beaton, 1936












/ saints among us, somewhere in brooklyn fall 2010

08 January 2011

06 January 2011

"he wrote, 'I'm just back from Hokkaido, the northern island. Rich and hurried Japanese take the plane. Others take the ferry. Waiting, immobility, snatches of sleep, curiously all of that makes me think of some past or future war: night trains, air raids, fall-out shelters, small fragments of war enshrined in everyday life." He liked the fragility of those moments suspended in time, those memories whose only function being was to leave behind memories. He wrote, "I've been around the world several times, and now only banality still interests me. On this trip I've tracked it with the relentlessness of a bounty hunter. At dawn, we'll be in Tokyo.'"


// quote from sans soleil, a film by chris marker 1982

02 January 2011













//new year
swans as symbols/ stratford ct thanksgiving 2010