a desultory glance at the chaos that is my life right now

I wonder what happens when you type "chaos" into google images?
this:


While my life does not take the shape of sideways cool-looking stick things, it is pleasantly messy right now.

Things I am high on right now:
1. the elegance of physics and calculus
2. The fact that when you mix plain yogurt, sugar, and a slightly squashy orange together, awesome comes out
3. First Friday Art Exhibit tommorrow
4. The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
5. endorphins
6. granola bars and lack of sleep

Life's been treating me quite well, thanks for asking.

Rain, rain

It's raining today. While I'd rather it be snowing, I typically like rain, unless I'm sleeping in a tent somewhere on some godforsaken mountain and it won't stop and every drop feels like a personal affront. Actually, wandering around New York in 1945 in the rain as pictured above may not have been that fun either, but at least it was visually striking (The photographer is Arthur Leipzig, excellent, look him up). Ray Bradbury wrote some rather depressing short stories that take place on a Venus where it never stops raining. Surrounded by solid walls and heated, though, rain isn't half-bad. The dreariness is refreshing, interestingly enough, and even romantic in the non-love sense.

Remember Shel Silverstein?

Rain

I opened my eyes
And looked up at the rain,
And it dripped in my head
And flowed into my brain,
And all that I hear as I lie in my bed
Is the slishity-slosh of the rain in my head.

I step very softly,
I walk very slow,
I can't do a handstand--
I might overflow,
So pardon the wild crazy thing I just said--
I'm just not the same since there's rain in my head.

Shel Silverstein

The boy who cried Wolfgang

I apologize for the lame title, I can't think of any cool wordplay on Wolfgang. Titles aren't my thing in general. The past few days haven't been too amazing, haven't seen any cool art or been aesthetically shocked in any way, but I did manage to go to my local climbing gym and hang upside down for a bit. It is a mark of the general suckiness of my weekend that this was the high point of my existence. Therefore, on a climber note, I give you...
Wolfgang Gullich!

The sport of climbing is kind of a niche within a niche, and while there are pockets of the world fair teeming with built men and lithe girls whose sole aim in life is to climb, it's not really a sport that many people who don't participate in can understand or appreciate. Wolfgang Gullich, who was the sport's rock star in the seventies and eighties, though, I feel transcends the small world of climbers. The fear, the courage, the bravery, and the talent are of note not just to climbers but to the world. He died, ironically, in a car crash.


spiderman!

no rope...

still no rope...

“An incredible feeling of joy melts all the tension and I suddenly have an impression that it was not a game of gambling with my life; it was not subjectively dangerous. I sit in the sun on the flat summit plateau – the ‘other reality’ is now part of the past. It is the thought of death that teaches us to value life” - Güllich, 1986, after a freesolo (ropeless) 5.12b first ascent in Yosemite.

Also, this being the eighties, he wore pink spandex a lot and still managed to look remotely heterosexual. wow.

Guerrilla Art!

I suppose that photo entries are a bit of a cop out. Essentially I find snapshots of amazing stuff and put it on the web with a few lines about how amazing it is, which means absolutely no artistic or intellectual merit on my part. That said, I started this blog with the idea that I'd share things I find cool, because I live for the feeling of wonder you get when faced with something really exquisite, be it a plain old sunrise or sunset (on my way to and from my daily activities I see both, which makes me think I don't have enough free time) or a Remembrant at the Barnes Foundation. Of course, I began posting two days ago, so I can put anything I want on here because no on is reading it anyway.

The following is definitely not a Remembrant, but in my eyes no less wondrous. Banksy, if you haven't heard of him, is a graffiti artist from the UK. Few have knowingly met him, no one knows his face, he gave all of one or two interviews, yet he is famous and infamous. He provokes authorities and starts heated debates over whether or not his street art should be destroyed. He's surreptitiously installed works in major museums, he's even sold a few pieces (gasp! capitalism!). I think he's genius, but decide for yourself:





more on: banksy.co.uk, stuff in this style and many others...

Traveling Furthur On...

Recently I've been reading a book that a friend lent me, Tom Wolfe's legendary The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. It's quite hard to get ahold of, which makes reading it all the more exciting. When a bunch of wild avante-garde take a roadtrip across America while high on acid, you know it's worthwhile to read about it. This poem in particular inspired me:

"Methinks you need a gulp of grass
And so it quickly cam to pass
You fell to earth with eely shrieking,
Wooing my heart, freely freaking!"

Of course, it's a girl declaiming in "wild manic Elizabethan couplets" about drugs, but somehow the craziness, unboundedness, and freeness that it represents seems almost magical to me. Ah, Kesey, you lovely, fantastic weirdo.

The exuberance and audacity and adventure and freedom of this photograph inspires me.


The other book I'm reading is Flaubert's Madame Bovary. Worlds apart. I'm less than two hundred pages in and already I'm annoyed at Emma for being an annoying little whiny ninnybrat, albeit a beautiful one.

The Inaugural

There is something beautiful about this picture. Some would say kitschy, I say ethereal and nostalgic all at once. Jan Saudek took it in Czechoslovakia in 1968, and placed in context with this time it takes on a whole new idea.

From BBC recently, San Antonio festival in Spain. San Antonio is the patron saint of animals, why one would drive a horse through a flaming bonfire in his honor I'm not quite sure, but let's roll with it.

Another masterpiece by Saudek, very atypical (saudek.com or saudek.cz if you are interested in his regular material) but it reminds me of Seton and the wild and beautiful northwest states, even though it was probably taken in the middle of Prague on the Vltava. My dad looked at it and said those were soap suds from pollution. Way to kill it.

This last bit was taken by my fifteen year old brother while nordic skiing in New England. He's quite the budding photographer, no?

So I'm relatively new at this whole blog thing, we'll see how it lasts.