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

I was appreciated last tuesday, no documents required.

oh, i really like this poem. Last tuesday was my birthday. Here's to the slow understanding that comes with age that the birthday is just another day. A reminder that you're alive on this planet, just for a little bit. It was a great birthday, all the same.

Passing Through
by Stanley Kunitz
—on my seventy-ninth birthday

Nobody in the widow's household
ever celebrated anniversaries.
In the secrecy of my room
I would not admit I cared
that my friends were given parties.
Before I left town for school
my birthday went up in smoke
in a fire at City Hall that gutted
the Department of Vital Statistics.
If it weren't for a census report
of a five-year-old White Male
sharing my mother's address
at the Green Street tenement in Worcester
I'd have no documentary proof
that I exist. You are the first,
my dear, to bully me
into these festive occasions.

Sometimes, you say, I wear
an abstracted look that drives you
up the wall, as though it signified
distress or disaffection.
Don't take it so to heart.
Maybe I enjoy not-being as much
as being who I am. Maybe
it's time for me to practice
growing old. The way I look
at it, I'm passing through a phase:
gradually I'm changing to a word.
Whatever you choose to claim
of me is always yours;
nothing is truly mine
except my name. I only
borrowed this dust.

Track me on my trip

sharing the biking love

Hi Kostya!
I just wanted to let you know that you have indirectly inspired multiple first time bike rides to work today. Earlier this summer, I told my sister that she should bike to work because it's the best, and she bought a bike yesterday and rode to work today! And my mom has been talking all summer about how she's going to ride my bike to work, and she finally did for the first time today! (Completely coincidental that it happened on the same day... or cosmic.)
Hope all is well,
Sarah

Reflections in windows of a forgotten workstation

These were taken at an old automobile service station that is on my way to work. It is actually a building I pass about 5 minutes before I get to my hospital, but I'd wager that many people at McLean aren't aware that this sits there.
These were taken at an old automobile service station that is on my way to work. It is actually a building I pass about 5 minutes before I get to my hospital, but I'd wager that many people at McLean aren't aware that this sits there. It is empty and just a little bit creepy because I felt like I was the only one around. Everyone else was in a car speeding by. Fascinating, I think. What I really like about this building is that there is still some architectural input and influence. They are slight and probably were kept to a minimum based on the utilitarian purpose of this building but they are still quite apparent. The curvature of the office building, the typeface of the sign's letters, the brick design. To me, these are references to another time. Perhaps this building was constructed in the 50's or 60's. What made people add a unique touch to their buildings then? Today, buildings created for this purpose are identical and located in the expected places next to strip malls and car dealerships. I like that this one is kind of lost along this lonely road, far away from any of that. A physical representation of utilitarian aesthetics that seems to have left the canonical convention. Pay attention to these hidden cues in other buildings as you walk around your city. Places in their cramped facades where someone may have added a hand's touch or an extra hour of work.
























I also found this guy next to this building. The first sight of him made me stop and gasp, literally.

These are so great

From WNYC's Radiolab. Robert Krulwich produced this. I hope you enjoy it, whatever country you're in and whatever language you speak.

And life.

dream meditation

I've been thinking a lot about courage lately. I've been working in a lab since I was 20 years old. I was thinking today while I was riding home what that really means to me. How did I get onto this career track? Sometimes I can't believe, looking at myself, that lab work is my life, that's my thing. I know others that go to offices everyday, wear suits everyday, that work with kids, that help others, that help people use or get use out of computers, that have skills that are so different from mine. This realization, that I am specialized and skilled at something, stopped me momentarily on my way home today, and not just physically. A life-evaluating pause at a traffic light. So fascinating the little whirring's going on inside everyone's head during undoubtedly dull moments.

What does this have to do with courage? I find that I am all of a sudden inspired to find my own. Moving to Boston, I suppose, required quite a bit of courage, but it was as if I used it all up before winter came and I sort of sat on my life for a while. While the break was quite welcome, I found myself recently not so certain of my future after this job ends next summer. Interestingly, while I struggled with creating a home here in this new city I really fantasized finishing my work, popping out the last day and walking away from science for a while, totally into some sort of setting sun, swallowed up into uncertainty and "real life" struggle. But as I have grown to love Boston more and more, to make friends and to fill my time this summer with interesting activity, I've been less and less inclined to continue this desire of a floating life. What takes more courage? Having no direction or taking steps to achieve a goal? I suppose one's goal could be broadly defined, but to me the vagabond life seems quite easy to achieve, but the work required of me to continue on my path in becoming a scientist is certainly daunting.

Currently, the synonym I've assigned to courage in my life is Integrity. The identification of a dream, once it is born from your inner depths, and taking the steps necessary to achieve it. This drive to identify the path and to follow it is courage. One is either born with it or one has to learn it. I know I am in the category of having to learn it. But I am learning it and I am thrilled about this. The problem, it seems, is that everyone has to learn it themselves. There is no instruction. Teachers exist, I believe, but they can only provide examples and recounted stories of their own struggles; the inspiration, perhaps, to move on to find your own way.

And today I may have realized that I am slowly on my way. Ha, didn't even know it.

When did you see the ocean last?