29 December 2012

/ all the pretty hopes, february 2009

08 December 2012

/ lets make december beautiful

30 November 2012


'the inner freedom from the practical desire,
the release from action and suffering, release from the inner
and the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
by a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,
erhebung without motion, concentration
without elimination, both a new world
and the old made explicit, understood
in the completion of its partial ecstasy,
the resolution of its partial horror.
yet the enchantment of past and future
woven in the weakness of the changing body,
protects mankind from heaven and damnation
which flesh cannot endure.
                            time past and time future
allow but a little consciousness.
to be conscious is not to be in time
but only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
the moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
the moment in the draughty church at smokefall
be remembered; involved with past and future.
only through time time is conquered.'


/ from section ii of 'burnt norton' from ts eliots 'four quartets'

25 November 2012


/ saw this brilliant film yesterday at the moma on my favourite artist, marina abramovic
so inspirational, emotional & full of life - highly recommended

19 November 2012





/ beautiful things

14 November 2012

'time present and time past
are both perhaps present in time future
and time future contained in time past.
if all time is eternally present
all time is unredeemable.
what might have been is an abstraction
remaining a perpetual possibility
only in a world of speculation.
what might have been and what has been
point to one end, which is always present.
footfalls echo in the memory
down the passage which we did not take
towards the door we never opened
into the rose-garden. my words echo
thus, in your mind.'

/ excerpt from ts eliots 'the four quartets' from section I: burnt norton

11 November 2012





/ serenity
'laughter & tears are both responses to frustration & exhaustion. i myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.'

/ kurt vonnegut

10 November 2012

/ love this quote, whoever made this however spelled confucius wrong

08 November 2012




/ beautiful images that inspire feelings of winter

07 November 2012


/ beautiful song & perfect for the first snow of the year xxxx

06 November 2012

/ all the blessings come to this.. lauren webster ny june 2010
'music teaches us the passing of time. it teaches the value of a moment by giving that moment value. and it passes. it’s not afraid to go.'

/ anna kamienska, from in that great river: a notebook

03 November 2012

/ working on a book on relationships, should be done with layout by mid-november!
excited because it's been a long time coming




/ louise bourgeouis the spider the mistress and the tangerine 2008
beautiful & inspiring film

02 November 2012

cameron colby thompson/ brooklyn ny october 2012
'become totally empty
quiet the restlessness of the mind
only then will you witness everything unfolding from emptiness'


/ lao tzu

30 October 2012

28 October 2012





/ alice in the cities 1974 wim wenders

21 October 2012

/ so many blessings in this moment, brooklyn ny 2012

14 October 2012





/ photographs of my work hanging in the gallery during the aleppo international photo festival in aleppo syria, october 2012. photographs above by issa touma
/ happy 29th birthday to my brother johnny! he's currently in beijing for work xoxo
'i recall an august afternoon in chicago in 1973 when i took my daughter, then seven, to see what georgia o'keeffe had done with where she had been. one of the vast o'keeffe 'sky above clouds' canvases floated over the back stairs in the chicago art institute that day, dominating what seemed to be several stories of empty light, and my daughter looked at it once, ran to the landing, and kept on looking. 'who drew it,' she whispered after a while. i told her. 'i need to talk to her,' she said finally.

my daughter was making, that day in chicago, an entirely unconscious but quite basic assumption about people and the work they do.
she was assuming that the glory she saw in the work reflected a glory in its maker, that the painting was the painter as the poem is the poet, that every choice one made alone - every word chosen or rejected, every brush stroke laid or not laid down - betrayed one's character.'

/ excerpt from the essay 'georgia o'keeffe' from
the white album by joan didion

12 October 2012







/ greenwood cemetery visit, a digital sketchbook, brooklyn ny april 2012

08 October 2012

05 October 2012

/ claudia, brooklyn ny september 2012
'there are four questions of value in life... what is sacred? of what is the spirit made? what is worth living for, and what is worth dying for? the answer to each is the same. only love.'

/ johnny depp

04 October 2012


/ my brothers in the backyard, webster ny june 2012
'for, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments; and if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments. and all the time your soul is craving and longing for something else. and in vain does the dreamer rummage about in his old dreams, raking them over as though they were a heap of cinders, looking in these cinders for some spark, however tiny, to fan it into a flame so as to warm his chilled blood by it and revive in it all that he held so dear before, all that touched his heart, that made his blood course through his veins, that drew tears from his eyes, and that so splendidly deceived him!'

/ fyodor dostoyevsky, white nights: and other stories
my birthday is in two days






/ valerie & her week of wonders, jaromil jireš 1970