the woods are lovely, dark and deep…
April. 24. 2012
For those of you who ask where I go away to sometimes…
it makes just a little more sense in the wilderness and my love of life multiplies…surrounded by others also in search of light.
Some mornings I meditate to Valtari…add a little Sigur Ros and transcend into the sublime…
shanti for Rajiv Uncle
April. 23. 2012
Shanti means peace. Sunday morning I stood in the Catskill woods inhaling morning mist as it dissolved into the mountain. My tongue tasted the confluence of all five elements at once and some minuscule balance within me came to center.
There isn’t much to be said about losing someone beautiful…I hope as his being merges with the universe, kissed by death like the mountain in the mist, that he can lose himself and rejoice in his surrender to the cosmic embrace.
I may never read the Upanishads or the Vedas in their entirety, but I am so grateful that Sanskrit has come alive in me again. Here is a most radiant summation of wholeness excerpted from the Ishavasya Upanishad, part of the Yajur Veda. Let the shlokas resound in every grieving heart, that there may be no notion of grief any more…
ॐ पूर्णमदः पूर्णमिदं पूर्णात्पुर्णमुदच्यते
पूर्णश्य पूर्णमादाय पूर्णमेवावशिष्यते ॥
ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः ॥
Like this:
craving
March. 16. 2012
craving more Marfa- essentially endless earth n open skies
When I was a kid I had to write an essay on, “If I was a road…”
shed your shower shame n bring a tent to pitch @ el cosmico
Judd silhouette
Gimme a concrete box, n I’ll give you a backflip n say aauuhhmm! (oh, and Natalie will take a picture of it)
wouldn’t you if you were here?
That mini red dot on the horizon is a Marfa light. If you go out on an oddly aligned time of night, you’ll see these lights appear and disappear, they move along the horizon (not like cars). Apparently aliens flash their lights at people here, ALL year long. Go to Marfa. See Judd. See the stars. And, SEE MYSTERY LIGHTS.
Like this:
“Totally homeless”
March. 1. 2012
Nestled on the pavement caught unwittingly between a Coca-Cola and an American Eagle advertisement, cigarette in hand (notice the most elegant of holds), her sign reads:
Please help me please
Totally Homeless
A $1.oo sure will help me a lot
(I sleep on the streets)
Please help me
God Bless You
Somehow, the cigarettes, the backpack, the reading glasses and that vacant stare just don’t compare to her counterparts lining the streets of say, Mumbai…poverty redefined in New York City. Or is that being politically incorrect?
Like this:
remembering rockport seaport
February. 12. 2012
"There either is or is not a way things are.
The color of the day. How it felt to be a child. The feeling of saltwater on your sunburned legs. Sometimes the water is yellow. Sometimes it's red. The color in memory depends on the day. I won't tell the story the way it happened. I'll tell it the way I remember it." - Mitch Glazer (Adaptive screenplay for Charles Dickens' Great Expectations)
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rum boogie cafe
January. 28. 2012
what I miss most about the dirty south is the music (and the biscuits)…
I love you, my hope
November. 24. 2011
Purple sunset on a crisp evening walk with a friend today- unaltered I swear!
Friends often question my exuberance, asking me what makes me a happy person and I struggle to articulate that happiness is a spontaneous state of being. The list of reasons I rattle off when questioned begins with having breath and consciousness, but inevitably ends with the love I find everywhere.
I remember walking to my student job beat after three all-nighters spent dissecting form and space, on an ordinary Louisiana afternoon beaming in the bliss of just being there, then; I remember wiggling my toes in green grass on a warm evening watching a murmuration or tearing up in waking meditation simply feeling “So much joy! So much love!” That is the ecstasy of being- what is joy but synchronicity with existence and its magnificent flood? Even when it’s bad, it’s good- it’s all good. Happiness is a state of mind, I choose to exist in joy through and through the shit. And the love I have for and get from my family and friends, helps me shine on- they are my hope.
This Thanksgiving I am evermore grateful for you beautiful people who keep my life whole. Forget the miles between us, I feel the sweetness in you.
I love you, my hope- Happy Thanksgiving!
Like this:
look up, look out
November. 2. 2011
as the snow flashes by…
the highway series
October. 25. 2011
tail lights, billboards, street lamps….fueling my timeless dance with displacement, wheeling out of Boston on a whim
“Never wish away distance. Never wish away time.”
-Bruce Weber
freedom from fear
September. 11. 2011
I am steel and concrete.
“All material in nature,
the mountains and the streams and the air and we,
are made of Light which has been spent,
and this crumpled mass called material casts a shadow,
and the shadow belongs to Light.”
– Louis Kahn
marfa window
September. 7. 2011
stranded
September. 6. 2011
I have this love affair with trains that just won’t die. Found this stranded cargo train on the road to Marfa, TX (iphone shot hanging out the window)…ingredients for a swell weekend in West Jesus Nowhere-
1. one good friend+
2. the desert sky+
3. a tent to pitch (w/ hammocks)+
4. minimalist art+
5. falling stars+
6. an unusual bookstore+
7. and serendpitious reunions
= Ishi heaven!
Cyclical City
September. 1. 2011
Meandering through the streets of Tokyo, by yours truly. A very brief photo-essay for Architizer based on my Traveling Fellowship to Tokyo in October 2010…hope you enjoy the escapades!
full stop.
August. 8. 2011
August 8 marks the second atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, and is a good time for reflection, no matter which side of the war you fell on.
Sometimes it is good to encounter the edges of one’s profession, because then you may begin to stretch it. At the peace memorial in Hiroshima, I watched this little girl walk round and round the monument. Architecture can only do so much, I realized. No pain will be alleviated by the helix better than the cube, no wounds healed by steel and concrete. All it can do, is give a community a sacred space in which to collectively mourn and remember, and hopefully find the love to see each other through, and to let bygones be bygones.
check it!
August. 4. 2011
Commission for Architizer- shots of the Perot Museum as published.
The deck park is going to make this whole thing come alive, hopefully people will get out there to hang, once the triple digit heat leaves the city alone! All in good time, I guess!
za-koenji
August. 3. 2011
It’s the kind of day that I if I lived in Tokyo I would swoop up Suginami and hit up the Za Koenji Theatre in Tokyo by my very beloved
Toyo Ito. You won’t find a single square here, and that’s exactly what I crave somedays!
morphosis
July. 31. 2011
Just got off Woodall Rogers Freeway, shooting the Perot Museum of Science and Nature for Architizer after an exhilarating adventure, treading the highway and feeling cars swooshhh past my tripod!
Something about the first shot reminds me of the quarries Edward Burtynsky’s often shoots…except the delineation of chiseled form is so much more controlled…more photographic adventures ahead, as this beautiful beast comes alive.
My photographs are up on architizer’s website, so enjoy some Morphosis if you will, and send me some lovings on www.facebook.com/studioish!
Like this:
falling up
July. 7. 2011
and staring into the whirlwind atmosphere at 27,000 feet
she almost fell upwards, head on the ground (fast dissipating) and feet in the clouds
there was nowhere to go but up, and she had no fear of falling
and there is much to be said about that.
Like this:
still
May. 28. 2011
“the password is books…speak easy,” he said.
reflection
May. 20. 2011
still can’t get over the show…what a gorgeous walk in the clouds
