She rounded the corner with a purpose. The insistent cadence of her steps — slap slap slap slap — echoed off the buildings as she marched up the street. Was she heading somewhere or leaving something behind? Or just out for an early Sunday walk, wearing color-coordinated pink headphones, jacket, and flip flops? Whatever the backstory, […]
As I make more books and things (collections of postcards are in the works), I increasingly think of photos in series. I don’t deny the power of a single, amazing photograph, but there is a value in seeing photographs as part of a collection of related images. I have long appreciated the powerful work of […]
Arnold Schoenberg reportedly said: If it is art it is not for all, and if it is for all it is not art. This comment seems to call into question Karl Ove Knausgård’s link between challenging art and Protestantism, not because Schoenberg doesn’t agree that art is difficult but because Schoenberg clearly didn’t link art […]
The woman sitting at the table outside is the only person not consumed by a screen. She divides her time between a book on Chakra Healing and the tiny dog in her lap, which she has wrapped in a blanket despite the bright, warm day. She looks up eagerly when anybody approaches as if hoping […]
So I am pleased that you find «Ti con zero» “likable”; but the more unlikable a book is (that is, hard to take in, because of our habits of thought and our tastes) the more it counts; the more laborious it is to take in, the more it counts I. Calvino, The Written World, 64
I stop here every year for gas, tacos, and supplies. I often spend a night in town. When I do, it’s always a burger and slice of pie at Ray’s. This time I spent a few hours wandering around town. I passed two older women sitting in their yard, with a friendly but yappy little […]
Seven women sit in the cafe. I’m the eighth person. Aside from the worker’s voice that carries, the room is quiet. One woman is writing something, her pen poised above a pad of paper. One woman reads a book. Two are working on class assignments — like most students, “work” seems to mean announce that […]
The old guy is asking questions, offering suggestions, and taking notes. He’s there with a young couple, planning the music for the couple’s wedding. At first glance he looks like the leader of some cover band, but he’s probably DJ. A full head of lovely silver hair, he is in his mid-60s and easily twice […]
I don’t know quite how to begin. These ideas are just beginning to take shape. Maybe I can start simply, by describing what concerns me, what seems, at least to me, to be a problem. The other day, while stopped at a traffic light, the two people in the car next to me were both […]
I envy Vivian Maier. Not because I like her work — I have seen too few of her photos to know what I think of them, though I doubt they would appeal much to me. No. I envy Vivian Maier because she seems not to have cared whether or not I liked her work, or had […]