December 2011

Dear Diary

On cloudy days I can never be sure when the sunset will come and this means that sometimes they are in the streets before I can get back.
If I were more analytical I would be able to calculate their exact arrival, but I still use my lifelong method of judging nightfall by looking at the sky and on cloudy days this method doesn't seem to work so well.
It's been almost 7 years since I arrived here in Lisbon, Portugal to open a small yellow house on a hill and I still run from them.

As the end of the year begins to appear in the horizon I am sitting here in the office looking back over this year of the "Macumba." I would like to think that I have always tried to live my life searching for something that inspires me. Whether it be moving to a different city to breathe the air in a foreign language, trying things that seemed ridiculous and making them my career, or eating fruits with nefarious names like "Lychee" and "Rambutan."

Usually the questioning of this rarely enters my mind, but as you well know this year has brought it fair share of doubts, failures, and obstacles. It has also brought with it it's fair share of surprises and unexpected snapshots of happiness, among a rather unspectacular roll of film. If I learned anything this year it is this: The unreal is more powerful than the real, because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. because it is only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, and fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die, but things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on. Just thought I'd write you this quick note and share some things that inspire me today.

Sincerely,
DdD

Roman Opatka was a French-born Polish painter who painted numbers. In 1965 he began painting a process of counting – from one to infinity. Starting in the top left-hand corner of the canvas and finishing in the bottom right-hand corner, the tiny numbers were painted in horizontal rows. As of July 2004, he had reached 5.5 million.

I love this picture.  While buildings burned and chaos reigned down on the city of Vancouver this couple were captured in this terribly beautiful scene.  This girl had just been trampled and beaten by the police.

This just makes me smile...Visual acosutics.

 "Path in the forest"  Tetsu Kondo
When I fist saw this project i couldn't quite decide if I liked it or not.  I mean altering natural paths with artificial ones seems to be a bit of an intrusion on the existing natural space.  But the more I thought about it the more I began to appreciate it.  We no longer are looking up at the woods from the ground but we can get closer to the leaves and sliver through the branches, like a low flying bird. It is a piece of architecture which exists for the woods as the forest exists for the architecture, that suprises and changes your way of seeing them.



While My Guitar Gently Weeps on Ukelele...love it.

Merry Christmas. I thought that since it is difficult for us to spend Christmas together in the real world, we could at leat imagine it.

My meeting went well, I even had time to squeeze in some sausage, egg and cheese biscuits at an American fast food chain that will remain unnamed.  I have just arrived at the office and before getting back to work I just wanted to write you a little note.  I thought about telling you how much I enjoy you every time I see you, or how I have never felt closer to somebody than I feel with you, or how despite your terrible smell and complete lack of personal hygiene I could stay in bed with you forever, licking every single part of your body until I pass out from dehydration.  But upon thinking twice, I decided not to tell you any of that boring, vomit inducing drivel and write you a short, short story instead.  Enjoy.

Bugged Out

Insects are renowned for their ability to appear in the most unlikely of places; kitchens, bathtubs, bedrooms, office buildings, and in human bodies as parasites. So it should be no surprise that one should find its way into a courtroom. What was surprising was that it should appear as a witness.
  Cliff's building was a marvel of utilitarian architecture. It was a seven story housing unit, grey with bits of obsidian that protruded in the form of small terraces. Clothes hung from most of the terraces, adding an element of life to an otherwise lifeless structure; “ accidental architectural beauty” in the eyes of an archeological sociologist, but a “pain in the ass,” to the 75 people residing inside.   There were no functioning washing machines or dryers, no heat in the winter nor air-conditioning in the summer and since Cliff had contracted some local graffiti writers to render a version of Salvador Dali´s Accommodation of Desire in the lobby, there hadn´t been a renovation since the late eighties.
Its main commodity was cheap rent...