01 First Thoughts:

… feeling groggy, a little headache, lots of yard work yesterday, might have overdone, dehydrated, got pretty fed up, tired of going away and coming back to a garden filled with weeds, a never ending battle especially since the neighbors on either side don’t tend to their weeds…

… another night without complete sleep, Fiona pacing the room, i get up, take her downstairs, she goes out reluctantly, drank a bunch of water then we went back to bed… didn’t seem no be a necessary interruption to my sleep… usually it is…

06 Tools of the Omelette Making Trade:

… Iwachu cast iron omelette pan, stainless steel mixing bowl, silicone omelette spatula, wire whisk, chopsticks…

05 Time to Tend the Chickens:

… have i mentioned that i and a group of friends share the responsibilities of feeding and caring for a bunch of chickens?… there are somewhere between 20 and 30 of them… in exchange we get fresh eggs… we also raise chickens for meat, sometimes ducks, turkeys and even goose, which we then participate in harvesting… the harvesting part was hard for me at first, still is to some degree, but i firmly believe that every meat eater should confront an animal that they plan to eat and take part in taking its life… it hasn’t dissuaded me from eating meat, but i do so with a little more reverence than before…

… at any rate, this is to say, that’s all for now… it’s my turn to tend the chickens today…

04 Jennifer Latour:

From Bound Species, by Jennifer Latour…

… i really like this work, looking so much like botanical drawings of yester-yore, but with the contemporary twist of creating franken-flowers, sublime and amusing idea and outstanding execution… and, she has a great instagram feed…

03 What Men Should Want:

… according to AnOther Magazine…

… hmmm… in light of my immediately preceding post an example of how the consumer culture leads us away from the idea that the simple things are enough…

… men’s jewelry from Alighieri (why should women have all the accessorizing fun?)…

… a T-shirt from Palace and Juergen Teller (wrote about this a few days ago)…

Palace x Juergen Teller

… and the list goes on…

… we are supposed to have too much money and spend it on our vanity… at least as far as Another Mag is concerned…

… be spendful and multiply your things!… (or not, you might be happier)…

02 Meditations:

Issa haiku…

… the one that catches my attention this morning is about being under a cherry tree and finding it strange to be alive… cherry blossoms are valued in Japan for there ephemeral nature, flowering briefly and gloriously, gone too soon¹… like life itself…

… Issa knows the lessons the cherry tree teaches, that life is brief and one needs to be alive to it… to find existence strange at any moment in time and space is being alive to it…

… this will be a bit of a non sequitur, but in the film Black Widow, the theme of family is the unifying good… family of Avengers, family, even make believe family, of Russian spies… family transcends everything…

… i find in literature and life, again and again, that what is truly important are the simple things… home, family, being alive to nature and life… all these things can be had and enjoyed for free (or little cost) as long as basic necessities are met… we are constantly being distracted from these core simple things, especially by the consumer culture we live in, where things upon things are the symbol of a good life… even as aware of this as i am, i struggle to execute, have never gotten close to centering my life around the simple pleasures…

… family is a particular challenge for me… my birth family is difficult and scattered to three of the four corners of the continent, my in law family is a good one, but not the family i grew up with… i have never had children, just wife, dogs and cats, which do teach me many things, including the brevity of life…

… as i write this, an epiphany of sorts… living well along the lines of simple pleasures is anti-market, anti-capitalist… it’s generally anti most forms of economic organization… it is rigorously repressed as a way to conduct one’s life…

06 Black Widow Part II:

… tremendous fun!… and what a down with the patriarchy movie!… i mean really, it’s wall to wall women as strong, smart characters and when they are not, it’s because they are mind controlled by evil men… fabulous… women rule!…

Tropical storm Elsa blows through leaving Fishkill Creek pretty angry. Flash flood warnings since yesterday, but not our immediate area. 📷

Does anyone know why pictures from a blog post sometimes render in the feed and sometimes don’t? It seems random too me. Are there rules for picture posting?

05 Black Widow:

… love Scarlett Johansson… beautiful and a really good actress… did you ever see her in Lost in Translation?, with Bill Murray?… one of my fave movies of all time… anyway, here is a review of Black Widow which makes it seem worth going to, and the local theater has it playing and is open!… i am vaccinated, but am i ready to spend a couple of hours with strangers in a theater?… hmmm, tough question…

04 Utility Poles and Wires:

… i am assembling a portfolio of images i have made of utility poles and wires over the years… i used to think it was so obnoxious, these wires and poles all over the place, getting in the way of the view… but then i began to think they are quite often beautiful… they are certainly ubiquitous where i live…

… i have a number of typology studies that i work on, Flattened Cans is one of them… Utility Poles and Wires is another… i am contemplating photobooks on each of the typologies i do…

… here are a few more of the UP and W series…

03 Maria Lax, Some Kind of Heavenly Fire:

Night Flight, Maria Lax from Some Kind of Heavenly Fire

… a photographic rendering of UFO sightings in a small Finnish town up north in the 1960’s… the sightings seem to have occurred at a time when there was an exodus of people to find work in the cities further south… it was a time of economic hardship and struggle… the photographs are beautiful and remind me a bit of Gregory Crewdson images, sans the people… they are noir in their generally dark and brooding character… they are on display as an OpenWalls Arles 2021 winner… i came very close to ordering the book… don’t really have the money right now…

02 Meditations:

The haiku of Issa…

… the poem that stand out today is about a snail climbing Mt. Fuji… the poet backs the snails endeavor but urges slow and steady… the apparent futility of a snail climbing a mountain is the poem’s pivot point… the snail might be viewed as the poet and climbing the mountain a spiritual quest… does the poet remind themselves that slow and steady is the way to go?…

… another poem about an Oriole singing at midday…

Image in the Public Domain

… the Black-naped oriole is the only oriole extant in Japan, and is a relatively rare sighting… it is not related to orioles of Europe and the United States…

… so, that an oriole is present and singing at mid day next to a river, an exceptional moment?… there doesn’t seem to be symbolism beyond that… birds in general are related to death and rebirth, as they are in many cultures, but no special significance seems to be attached to the Black-naped oriole…

… so, an Oriole singing at midday while the river flows quietly is perhaps a contemplation of middle aged life…

… the Oriole seems to be more important in Chinese culture…

… and then i learn that the Japanese have adopted the Chinese character for Oriole to represent the Bush Warbler, their equivalent to the Black-naped oriole… both birds have beautiful songs and both birds herald spring… so, it is possible that the oriole in the poem is a bush warbler… and the poem gets seasonal reference by its presence…

01 First Thoughts:

… i have been thinking the past couple of days how frustrated i am that i get no engagement with my posts from the m.b community… i engage daily with them… i post half a dozen times a day, plus or minus… i don’t expect every post to be engaged with, not even most of them, but i know i post the kinds of things that other people do, yet, no engagement… i wonder what that is about?…

… i wont’t stop, i like the blogging environment, it is the perfect home for notes on attention paid… maybe one just has to be around long enough…

… listening to “The World Keeps on Turning,” by Holly Honeychurch, one of the m.b members… i like it… in her introduction to it she talks about life’s hardships and how it helps her to get through them to have the daily rhythms, the chance for a new day dawning, every day… it reminds me of the micro poem i posted yesterday which makes the same point…

Chaos in the house— and still birds greet the dawn

… the music is lovely, very contemplative… immediately following, i cue up the Gregorian chants i so often listen to in the morning… i am part monk…

07 Fiona:

… our dog Fiona tested positive for a tick born disease in routine blood work… on to the PCR test… $200 later, all is well… better than prophylactic treatment with antibiotics…

06 I Wish:

… i could be sure that my country isn’t heading to a very bad place, but i can’t…

05 Photo Notes:

From today’s walk…

04 Micro Poem:

Chaos in the house– and still birds greet the dawn.

03 My Photography:

Flattened Cans…

I have been collecting images of flattened cans for a number of years. They represent uniqueness out of homogeneity to me. They start as cohorts (particular brand, particular size) of perfectly shaped and, for all intents and purposes, identical industrial objects. When tossed into the environment (sadly, there is no end of subject material) they continue the entropic process of becoming unique and beautiful objects.

02 Meditations:

Buson, from New Flower Picking…

… a story about foxes appearing out of nowhere in the middle of the night… foxes (Kitsune) have a long mythic tradition in Japan… old foxes are thought to be extremely intelligent, long lived, and have magical powers, like shape shifting into human form… the mythology of foxes is my main takeaway from New Flower Picking…

… anxious to move on to more haiku, i read the short biography on Issa, whose life was peppered with difficult situations with his step mother and with marriages which were tragic or unfortunate…

… of the first three poems, one about snow melting, the village flooding, with children, stands out, because the flood one expects is that of water, instead, it is of children…

… Issa is supposed to be more down to earth than Basho or Buson…

01 First Thoughts:

F…k my life!…

… living with peeps and animals isn’t always a joy… that should be a surprising statement to nobody, but there are times when you need to explitate and this morning is one of them…

… went to bed with H in a bad mood…

… evidence during the night that they didn’t sleep well and continue to be in a bad mood…

… woke up this morning to find a miscreant dog had peed on the couch… said pee spent the whole night soaking in… stripped the cushions to throw in the laundry which promptly resulted in goose feathers spread all over the place… cleaning up pee mess and vacuuming up goose feathers at 4 AM in the morning is not my idea of a day off to a good start…

… what can you do?… s…t happens…

08 Micro Poem:

_ Severe thunderstorm warning– another martini?_

07 My Little Desktop Fan:

What to do with no AC in my studio?

… my studio is in my home and i don’t currently have an outlet for an AC unit, which means that in 90+ temperatures it gets impossibly hot…

… this little fan has made the unbearable, bearable!…

… that little cylinder fan below my computer blows a steady breeze at me, is quiet and runs off a USB port… sweet…

06 The Classic French Omelette Learning Curve:

… i make classic French omelettes on an almost daily basis in an attempt to develop my skill to the near perfect level… i have been doing this since last October and am getting pretty good at it…

… i complicated my quest by refusing to use a non-stick skillet, which are generally bad for the environment…

… after a great deal of research and trial and error, I bought an Iwachu large iron omelette pan… it was factory seasoned and largely non-stick out of the box, though instructions recommended the application of an appropriate food oil before first use, which i did…

… frequently, my omelettes have been sticking in the middle of the pan which is not a big problem, but i was trying to figure out why…

… making omelettes in a cast iron pan is a matter of a well seasoned pan and knowing how hot to get the pan before adding butter then eggs… i have it down to the point that i time the heating up of the pan… 3.5 minutes at medium heat on the large burner has been the routine…

… it occurred to me that the pan might not be getting hot enough in the middle of the pan, so i increased the preheat time to 4 minutes…

… no sticking this morning…

… i will repeat for the next several days to make sure that was the problem…

… a photograph of this morning’s omelette…

📷 🍽

05 My Photographs:

… sometimes color is an important reason the photograph is made…

… sometimes color is the whole reason the photograph is made…

… homage to Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty…

📷