lets go see these together

UP THERE from Jon on Vimeo.

Painters that create whole building-side advertisements. It is incredible how they are able to keep scale and proportion so accurate on such a massive canvas. And they're so modest. Next time I am in New York, I'll definitely be looking for these.

West Virginia in the Fall

I spent Thanksgiving in Martinsburg where I first lived when I moved to the states.  I flew into Dulles International from Boston, but I realized when I exited the plane that it was the airport I flew into when I first came to this country.

My brother Max lives on this farm now outside the city.  He is one of the children of the family that hosted/sponsored my mother and I for the first years of our lives here in America.  I enjoyed walking around the farm and looking at the decaying apple orchard.  It was very still and quiet, it looked like all of the dead apples were waiting for something that would happen any minute.

Beautiful. I am happy I went for this walk.  This trip comes at a time when I am applying for graduate school and having a difficult time expressing myself fully in the essays I am writing.  This requires a lot of mental effort compared to writing for this blog.  I am trying to write this way but it is very difficult.  I hope you enjoy these images, I really like the patterns here in the Appalachian foothills.


 
























   

one of my favorite photographs

This was taken in 1969 by Michael Collins as the lunar lander returned to the orbiter above the moon.  How fascinating, because here in this photograph, Collins is the loneliest human in the universe.  Here, he has captured an image of everything known to us as ordinary people: the moon, the sun's light, and every human alive, except for the photographer.  In this image, Collins is excluded.  Behind the lens is a void and one human being.  How absolutely amazing.

I was thinking about watching the movie The Moon  tonight but I am afraid that I will feel too lonely myself.  Though in reality I am not lonely and nor do I feel that way right now.  Perhaps I want to escape the applications I am writing right now to graduate school and to curl up in my bed and watch something that is distant and freeing.  Though I cannot imagine the feeling that Mr. Collins had up there taking this photograph, having nothing to fall back on if he did lose hold and if the moon let him suddenly go.

Do I have something to fall back on?  Yes, some dreams and some idealizations.  Perhaps on love and on non-careers.  Manual labor and art and creativity.  Perhaps I would attend graduate school in the humanities and develop my writing better, to learn about history and about thinking.  I would study the modern era and the history of science around the world.  Do I really doubt myself so much that I will not move forward next year?  I suppose that question is relative.

What will you fall back on?

New inspiration for the week

Can you believe this revisionist nature painting?  Fall in love with it with me.

 Tiffany Bozic

Walton Ford, alternating. 

These paintings make me feel very very good and remind me about being a scientist and about everything we are missing, all the details.  Please improve your relationship to nature like these artists have.  This article i received in the inbox today was very interesting to read.  These ideas made me wish I had a car or more time to travel out of the city by train to look at natural settings more often. 

This painting by Thomas Cole is a scene from Mount Holyoke in Massachusetts and I'm worried I'll never see it.

Like swallowing Seagulls

"This weekend i learned that sometimes whales swallow birds by accident. jan straley sitka's whale biologist said one of her friends once saw a humpback acting very strangely and shaking it's head back and forth. finally it opened its mouth and a seagull flew out. My week has been kind of like that so far. like swallowing seagulls. a new experience that's not very pleasant but ends well for everyone." KJackson