cure for curiosity

It was either my mom or dad who came home with View With a Grain...

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:49:02 -0800

It was either my mom or dad who came home with View With a Grain of Sand for me. I can’t remember now. I was in high school. They had probably picked it up off of a prime shelf at Barnes and Noble or something because that was the year that Ms. Szymborska had won The Nobel Prize and that was probably the only year that one of Ms. Szymborska’s books would occupy a prime shelf at Barnes and Noble.

In high school, and maybe even still, I only had a vague notion of what might be regarded as “good poetry”. But man when I opened up that book, that was the first time I read poetry that was moving. Like, really, really moving. And I’ve still got that book somewhere.

So, in honor of Ms. Szymborska (whose name I still can’t really pronounce) here is a bad sketch. And below one of her wonderful poems.

A Few Words on the Soul

We have a soul at times.
No one’s got it non-stop,
for keeps.

Day after day,
year after year
may pass without it.

Sometimes
it will settle for awhile
only in childhood’s fears and raptures.
Sometimes only in astonishment
that we are old.

It rarely lends a hand
in uphill tasks,
like moving furniture,
or lifting luggage,
or going miles in shoes that pinch.

It usually steps out
whenever meat needs chopping
or forms have to be filled.

For every thousand conversations
it participates in one,
if even that,
since it prefers silence.

Just when our body goes from ache to pain,
it slips off-duty.

It’s picky:
it doesn’t like seeing us in crowds,
our hustling for a dubious advantage
and creaky machinations make it sick.

Joy and sorrow
aren’t two different feelings for it.
It attends us
only when the two are joined.

We can count on it
when we’re sure of nothing
and curious about everything.

Among the material objects
it favors clocks with pendulums
and mirrors, which keep on working
even when no one is looking.

It won’t say where it comes from
or when it’s taking off again,
though it’s clearly expecting such questions.

We need it
but apparently
it needs us
for some reason too.

translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

Taken with instagram

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 08:05:25 -0800

Taken with instagram

How Some KGB Oldtimers Tried to Bump Off a Visa Business

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 04:46:30 -0800

How Some KGB Oldtimers Tried to Bump Off a Visa Business

Alfred Hitchcock with his grand children. Pretty amazing.

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 11:40:50 -0800

Alfred Hitchcock with his grand children.

Pretty amazing.

Taken with instagram

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 10:02:51 -0800

Taken with instagram

It seems strange that Steve Jobs might pass away in a room with...

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 18:19:48 -0700

It seems strange that Steve Jobs might pass away in a room with his wife by his side; his children. Instead I imagine him in a spatial vortex of sorts surrounded by all of the physical things that he must have really lived for. iPhones, iPads, iMacs. All physical things that must have comforted him; that, oddly enough, comfort us too.

Sharpie on paper.

this is the website to our short film, Dumbleweed

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 21:45:19 -0700

this is the website to our short film, Dumbleweed

Sometimes you hear a song and you have to listen to it on...

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 13:08:25 -0700

Sometimes you hear a song and you have to listen to it on repeat. Over and over again.

Movies have the same effect too. So does all art, in fact, but with a song, it’s so immediate and so instantaneous - and the fact that you can listen to it on repeat - it hypnotizes you. Hypnotizes you so that for the rest of the day everything you do is focused through the lens of that song.

Have a vision. And don’t take no for a answer.

Sat, 10 Sep 2011 11:52:09 -0700

Have a vision. And don’t take no for a answer.

The answer is that the answer changes. -Nicholas Johnson from Test Pattern for Living

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 14:17:08 -0700

The answer is that the answer changes.

-Nicholas Johnson from Test Pattern for Living

This is really really incredible and should be watched! Two...

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 16:57:08 -0700

This is really really incredible and should be watched!

Two hands.

The Berlin Wall.

Magic.

facebook. i quit you.

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 13:08:50 -0700

Foster The People / “Helena Beat”

Fri, 05 Aug 2011 11:44:34 -0700

Foster The People / “Helena Beat”

Ink & sharpie. Drawn from a pretty iconic image of...

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 14:35:00 -0700

Ink & sharpie.

Drawn from a pretty iconic image of Solzhenitsyn.

“Own only what you can carry with you; know language, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.”

—Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Photo

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 13:03:54 -0700

Unfortunate Road Situation, Slavic Style

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 20:35:46 -0700

Unfortunate Road Situation, Slavic Style

My friend, Danner, bowling. Quick sketch from a facebook photo....

Wed, 25 May 2011 17:45:45 -0700

My friend, Danner, bowling. Quick sketch from a facebook photo. Ha!

love this. goodcabbage: Orgesticulanismus

Fri, 20 May 2011 16:15:59 -0700

[Flash 10 is required to watch video.]

love this.

goodcabbage:

Orgesticulanismus

Walt Whitman Pen on paper sketch. Below is an excerpt from one...

Thu, 19 May 2011 11:24:29 -0700

Walt Whitman

Pen on paper sketch.

Below is an excerpt from one of my favorite poems of his.

Not a terribly original choice but oh well.

Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

These, and all else, were to me the same as they are to you; 50I project myself a moment to tell you—also I return. I loved well those cities; I loved well the stately and rapid river; The men and women I saw were all near to me; Others the same—others who look back on me, because I look’d forward to them; 55(The time will come, though I stop here to-day and to-night.)

Carson McCullers in sharpie. Also a quick sketch. But not that...

Wed, 11 May 2011 15:04:42 -0700

Carson McCullers in sharpie.

Also a quick sketch. But not that quick. It’s hard committing to something with a sharpie. No going back. Lots of trouble with her bangs and hands. They’re not quite right but it doesn’t matter much though when it’s just a sketch.

McCullers lived in Nyack so it’s cool to draw her. Her book, “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” made a big impression on me when I read it. I’ve also read Edward Albee’s play of her novella, “The Member of the Wedding” which is quite nice.

Here is a little quote I found online from ”The Heart is a Lonely Hunter”:

“Then at last the opening music came again, with all the different instruments bunched together for each note like a hard, tight fist that socked at her heart. And the first part was over. This music did not take a long time or a short time. It did not have anything to do with time going by at all. She sat with her arms held tight around her legs, biting her salty knee very hard. It might have been five minutes she listened or half the night. The second part was black-colored—a slow march. Not sad, but like the whole world was dead and black and there was no use thinking back how it was before. One of those horn kind of insturments played a sad and silver tune. Then the music rose up angry and with excitement underneath. And finally the black march again.”
— Carson McCullers (The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter)