The Sacrifice of the Jaguar Baby

One of many astounding vases from the Mayan kingdom by an unknown but brilliant ancient artist. Recently, an exhibition of the Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya was held here in San Francisco. It was not widely publicized but I imagine that those who attended early soon whispered to their friends: "This is something you must see." The exhibition was crowded, people gathering around to see the masks of the old Mayan kings and queens.

One small cylinder in particular (second link in the link above) I loved. The scene shows a reclining king, indolent, with ghastly long fingernails. Surrounding him are his court attendants, painted dwarfs and hunchbacks whom the Mayan royalty had a fondness for. The scene is gorgeous and surreal, both a painting from a work of fantasy and yet a frozen looking-glass into the past. I also love how the small green dwarf seems to be holding up a huge mirror for the king. Mirrors were consulted as Oracles. The nearby pots are full of chocolate, the drink of the Mayan court (and one of many things then unavailable to the kings of Europe.)

There are more vase paintings here. Most are drawn from the larger Kerr collection here.

Most people are surprised when they first see the photograph of Lee Miller taking a bath in Hitler's bathtub. It's an outstanding photo but whats going on here? Who exactly is Lee Miller?

Miller was born in Poughkeepsie New York and went on to become a well-known model for Vogue magazine. Here's some pictures of her and you can see that she was a classic beauty. Among many other firsts, she was the first woman to appear in a feminine hygiene ad.

Not content to be behind the camera, she next entered the world of photography. She lived with and collaborated with the more well-known photographer Man Ray. She entered the world of the Surrealists and was soon one of their Muses. Jean Cocteau was inspired by her and so was Duchamp. Picasso made a painting of her, the odd Portrait of Lee Miller

She became a wartime photographer for Life Magazine. She was the first photographer to document the use of napalm. She was in Europe when the Allies made their advance and entered Hitler's apartment. It is there that she disrobed and took a bath in Hitlers bathtub, photographed by one of her colleagues.

Later, she married the well-known Surrealist and art patron Roland Penrose and settled down in Britain. Her son later wrote a biography of her and has been exhibiting a collection of her works

She had two brothers, younger brother Erik and older brother John. John had independently made a name for himself as a pioneer aviator. He was a test pilot and the first man to fly an autogiro, preceding Amelia Earhart's flight. Here's an article about him in Aviation History magazine

I first heard the name Lee Miller when I was about eight years old. I was at the house of my childhood friend Matt (He and I are still close friends; My parents consider him an extra son) and I noticed black and white photographs of this striking woman on the wall.
"Who is she?" I asked.
"Oh, thats my great-aunt Lee. She's my Grandpa John's sister." He replied
I probably just absently nodded my head.

I've never been one to carry cameras around. If you know me then you also know that I do not like to have my picture taken. In family gatherings I will volunteer to be the picture-taker so that I can escape the eye of the camera.

A few weeks ago I got a kyocera, a tiny thing you can hold in one hand and shove into a pocket but which takes both pictures and movies. I think I was also enchanted with how the entire thing twists in half to position the lens. It reminds me at least of those transforming gadgets and toys.

Since then, I've taken it out only once in a while to snap a photo. I've posted a few above. From left to right, top to bottom, they are: A building on Market St, Odd people at a bus stop in the Mission, PapaToby's - a cafe I am often at, DJs Sensei and Phelan playing at a friend's birthday party, Me, My shoes, A couple shots of friends Pyotr and Lisa.

Sometimes, oddly enough, I'll just look through the lens at the world around me without ever pushing the button that captures the image. For a moment, I'm enjoying the world as it is seen through a lens without feeling the need to then take that image home with me. It is like leaning over on a beach to wonder at a shell without feeling you have to pocket it and later mount it on some shelf. Is it a theft? Is it a fight against the ephemeral?

Tsunami!!!



It is not uncommon of me not to hear from my friend Paul for stretches of time. He and I met in college and have stayed close friends, also living together in Manhattan for a while. Last year, he moved to Hong Kong and we dont keep in touch as much as we used to. When the Tsunami hit I didnt really think of checking up on him since I figured it was safe.

And just now, I learned that he was actually on the beach in Phuket when the Tsunami hit!! He and his girlfriend barely escaped with their lives, only through a series of miracles.

One of the difficult things for me during all the news stories about this has been how to make this all real. To hear 150,000 people died does not make it real and I have no way of feeling connected to the event. It seems too much like an abstraction.

Hearing that one of my closest friends barely escaped and hearing his story left me with a renewed sense of helplessnes but also gave me a small glimpse of the enormous and inhuman tragedy which just occured.

You cant take the story of two survivors and multiply it by thousands. You just can't. We were not meant for this. Our hearts would explode. Still, this has all really brought it home for me. finally.

Here's an excerpt:

it was hard to think to do anything. not that we could, except just hold tight and try to stay upright and not get sucked into the muck. and the waters were rising faster, we floating in it until our heads hit the ceiling, and we had 8 inches of air to breathe like the movies. it was getting darker, and i then started telling my girlfriend and myself, we're going to die here, we're going to die here. as if preparing ourselves for the inevitable as the waters were inching higher. i was trying to remember the orientation of where the glass doors had been so we could dive under the waters and try to get out. and then we were still there at 8 inches to the ceiling for what seemed a small eternity.

...

we limped up to the road, and then we could hear the screaming and wailing of people that had just made it, had just lost loved ones, were just starting to realize what had happened, and now were watching as other waves were approaching. small clumps of people by the road now started to panic and run up into the hills. we followed, barefoot, in our underwear, feeling like aboriginal natives running into the jungle. i could hardly put weight on my leg, and the blood was coming down in small spurts as my flesh split from my tourniquets with the movement.


You can read more here under "Personal Account" and also see photos of his hospital stay.

Instant Message

14:04:01 R.: She turned her sullen mouth now to the discussion of meaningless matters with Count Banubula, who bowed and swung as gallantly as Scobie's green parrot ducking on its perch.
14:04:12 Me: ;)
14:04:28 Me: l like that quote
14:04:42 R: i am making you re-read it a sentence at a time.
14:05:14 R: yes, it is poetry, Durrell's prose, rich and dense
14:05:30 Me: i think thats my new weblog tagline
14:06:04 Me: which book is that from?
14:06:15 R.: Balthazar
14:06:44 R.: page 49 of the Penguin paperback
14:07:18 R.: Clea gets some of the best lines.
14:09:46 R.: it is great to re-read the quartet. i dreamed it would be and it is. anticipating the overlapping meanings and with enough forgetten details keeping it fresh.
14:10:09 Me: its the kind of book that is better on a re-read
14:10:25 Me: the first time you are too consumed with trying to figure out what is going on
14:10:39 Me: the next times, you can just enjoy the words and descriptions
14:10:44 R.: although so beautiful

Photos I'd like to take:

Walking into a theatre after a movie has started. The movie is brightly playing on the screen. Look back toward the audience and you can see that their faces are all lit up with a whitish glow. But, look at their expressions! If it is a comedy, they will have the same joy and laughter on their faces as if they were with close friends or as if they were children. Or, you will see the fear on their faces, the skepticism or the wide-eyed expression of enchanted belief. An entire sea of faces but each with private expressions. I saw this once when entering a theatre late and that is a picture I'd like to take.

You have been walking through a forest and twilight arrives. The earth and the trees are losing their outlines. In fact, the trees are becoming the earth, the earth becoming the trees. The world feels intangible. Colors have disappeared and the faint light only leaves patches of gray. Ideally, this would be a black and white photograph. I havent seen one yet that captures twilight close to how it is experienced or felt, as a dissolved world.

You are invited to a small party of friends and it has gone on late. People have made that movement from awkward small conversations to the private banter of isolated groups and now it has reached the moment where the entire party of people all feels connected but fluid. Every word spoken, step taken now happens within the context of the group and in any captured photograph during these moments it is apparent that what is happening is that everyone in the photo is in tune, as if they are all listening to the same music. Each element, each glance or laugh is a mirror, a reflection of a choreographed dance.

salsa1

Saturday night I was walking on my way to meet friends for dinner (at Deep Sushi(great photos in that link)) when I was distracted by sound and a shiny, non-descript storefront. It sounded like Salsa to me. I opened the door and it was like when you open a portal to another time and space. In a tiny basement, an entire 10-piece band was playing Cuban Salsa. The center of the basement was packed with older couples (women in red backless dresses, men in striped suits) dancing wildly surrounded by a crowd of admirers rocking back and forth to the music. The little basement was alive and the whole thing had a sense of spontaneity to it, as if this had all erupted suddenly and was apt to disappear. Sure enough, when I went by later that night to show some friends, all we found was a sleepy basement bar with a few people idly playing around a large pool table. It could have all been imagined by me but luckily I managed to snap a couple pictures with my cameraphone.

Consuming:

*Jodorowsky

I am cheered up by the strange little nonsense plays of Jodorowsky. The Panic plays are pure fun. His films on the other hand are pure strangeness. Either way, his work is undiluted. I downloaded some of the plays online but now I cant seem to find the source again. Here's an excerpt from Cabaret Tragico:

D : ¡Insultame para que me enoje!
A : ¡Cochino! ¡Puerco! ¡Chancho! ¡Cerdo!
D : ¡Mas insultos!
A : ¡Cerdo! ¡Chancho! ¡Puerco! ¡Cochino!
D : ¡Mas aun!
A :¡Puerchino! ¡Cercho! ¡Chanco!
D : No es bastante, no estoy enojado.
A : No conozco mas insultos...
D : No importa, el tono es lo que cuenta, no el concepto. Dicho con furia todo es insulto.
A : Comprendo...¡Papa frita! ¡Bicicleta verde! ¡Telescopio! ¡Microscopio! ¡Corbata! ¡Tomate! ¡Cereza! ¡Boton! ¡arbol! ¡Arbusto! ¡Florcita! ¡Pajarito! ¡Mi amigo!

*Dictionary of the Khazars

I'll admit I was intrigued by this book when I heard that it came in both a male and a female edition. This is a fantastic world and a book I'd recommend. I bought the female edition.

*Marc Saporta's Composition #1

I tracked down a copy of this on a whim. I like the idea behind the work even as i expect to be dissapointed in the execution. A stack of pages, to be shuffled first then read in this arbitrary order. Here's the thesis:

The reader is requested to shuffle these pages like a deck of cards; to cut, if he likes, with his left hand, as at a fortuneteller's. The order the pages then assume will orient X's fate.

For the time and order of events control a man's life more than the nature of such events. Certainly there is a framework which history imposes: the presence of a man in the resistance, his transfer to the Army of Occupation in Germany, relate to a specific period. Similarly, the events that marked his childhood cannot be presented in the same way as those which he experienced as an adult.

Nor is it a matter of indifference to know if he met his mistress Dagmar before or after his marriage; if he took advantage of Helga at the time of her adolescence or her maturity; if the theft he has committed occurred under cover of the resistance or in less troubles times; if the automobile accident in which he has been hurt is unrelated to the theft -- or the rape -- or if it occurred during his getaway.

Whether the story ends well or badly depends on the concatenation of circumstances. A life if composed of many elements. But the number of possible compositions is infinite.


(Note: I wrote this quickly after dashing into a wireless coffe shop (Mission Creek) after having dinner across the street at Herbivore on Valencia St.)

Mexico as an Earthly Purgatory

Nathan Gardels: Mexico seems like an earthly purgatory, permanently suspended in contradiction...

Octavio Paz: Purgatory is a very apt characterization. Purgatory is a transitional state, a compromise. Perhaps that has been Mexico's fate. We have always had these two poles, pre-Columbian civilization and Spanish Catholicism and monarchy; great art and historical setbacks; marvelous poets and weak criticism; beautiful churches and palaces side-by-side with huts and hovels.

We have made a mix of this and that is our purgatory. We live amid our contradictions - our saints and our Indian gods; our republic and our enduring centralization of power; our peasants adoring the Virgin with the same fervor which their ancestors praised the Earth Goddess alongside our young economists from Harvard and our professors of philosophy fresh from Paris.

We have not solved these contradictions, but with them and through them we have created a truly original culture. We are alive at the end of the 20th century.

This is from a 1987 interview of Octavio Paz in The New Perspectives Quarterly. This brew of the Pre-Columbian imagination and the rites of Old World Catholicism are responsible for the surreal images captured by Shadowplay in this photoset of Mexico.

Those images capture Semana Santa as a resurrection, a Biblical play, as it unfolds in the area of Patzcuaro in the Mexican state of Michoacan. The nearby island of Janitzio, as it turns out, is an epicenter for the more well-known Mexican Day of the Dead. And so, these two fantastic worlds, one full of dancing skeletons, the other with figures sprouting wings exist, literally, side by side, distinct, two expressions of an original culture.

An indian man approached me today when I was down in Silicon Valley.
"Excuse me," he said "You were with XYZ company in 1999 right?"
"Yes," I say "I was..."

"You interviewed me then, in India. And you hired me."

I had flown to India to recruit developers for our India office. I spent a whirlwind few weeks in Hyderabad and Banagalore, meeting with officials, cutting through dark red tape, helping to secure our offices, meeting with potential partners and clients and, finally, hiring.

The administrators we had hired beforehand had already filtered out resumes of people who had responded to our ads but were clearly unqualified. This still left us with a few hundred resumes to sift through. S. and I spent a couple days going through them all, putting them into three categories: Definite interview, Possible and No Way. The latter were immediately sent thank you notes. The Definites were sent an invitation to come in for an interview.

Since our Bangalore office hadn't been set up, I rented a suite in a hotel and used one of the rooms to do my interviews. My assistant C. acted as a gatekeeper. She had flown with me from the U.S. and together we were the two foreigners trying to assimilate into the culture as quickly as possible (In the end, she wasnt able to and had a nervous breakdown but thats another story, which ends with her almost marrying a Bollywood movie star. But, again, thats another story) I worked almost without sleeping, catching quick naps in the back seat of the Honda as my driver raced from one place to another. Those were insane times.

I interviewed about forty people in the course of just two days so I can be forgiven for not recalling the man who approached me today. I had suggested we hire him and we did. Later, he was flown to the US to work in our offices here in the Bay Area. We sponsored his H-1 Visa. He left our company and went on to work for a large company here where he is doing really well. All of this because I hired him in India. I had forgotten him but he remembered my name and had recognized me by sight and even told me that I had "inspired" him.

Later, when I told this to A. she says "Much of life is like that. You set off so many things and rarely do you get the chance to see the results of what you started."

Jiri Trnka's The Cybernetic Grandmother

Jiri Trnka animated films when animation was a craft intended for adults as well as children. His rendition of Shakespeare's Midsummers Nights Dream took him years to create. It is unfindable now but you can see clips of it and some of his other films at this animators site.

It is a dream that we invent. Instead we just assemble old memories, our own and those of others. Especially those of others. With each visit, they further colonize your imagination.
.
"I know" you said "lets go to an opera, but lets first get drunk."
"Is intoxication all you know?"
"Do you mean the opera or the drinks?"
.
Did you know that, while you puzzled over your crossword puzzles, twisting your face in concentration, I would study your long, elegant fingers. I thought: She is like a dark-haired magician from an old book.
.
"Gajetas"
"No."
You put your fingers on my lips and squeeze them, like a clothespin.
"Gayetas. You cant even speak your own language."
.
When the rain fell, we all ran madly in every direction like perturbed ants.
.
It was the middle of the humid summer in NYC and our thin clothes were soaked. I saw you dancing at that Spanish bar on the Westside.
I walked you home later that night and you held me tightly, almost anxiously, as if you feared I would run away.
.
I was dazed and tired, a sleepwalker, awaking from a heated dream. You led me along, turned to beckon me with your finger, then ran, vanished behind a corner and reappeared again. I knew who you were. I whispered your name to you.
"Do you remember, beloved, how we all fled in so many directions? When we saw what had happened? We all met again at the nearest hill do you remember?" you whispered back to me.
"Yes" I said "That was centuries ago."

From Oskar Schlemmer of the Bauhaus, whose paintings seem to dance.

Those were the best days in the life of Tancredi and Angelica, lives later to be so variegated, so erring, against the inevitable background of sorrows. But that they did not know then; and they were pursuing a future which they deemed more concrete than it turned out to be, made of nothing but smoke and wind. When they were old and uselessly wise their thoughts would go back to those days with insistent regret, they had been days when desire was always present because it was always overcome, when many beds had been offered and refused, when the sensual urge, because restrained, had for one second been sublimated in renunciation, that is into real love. Those days were the preparation for a marriage which , even erotically, was no success; a preparation which, however, was in a way sufficient to itself, exquisite and brief, like those melodies which outlive the forgotten works they belong to and hint in their delicate and veiled gaiety at themes which later in the finished work were to be developed without skill, and fail.

From one of my favorite novels: The Leopard by Di Lampedusa

The fate of Senster, a robot that could respond to the sound of people's voices and their movements across its field. I agree with dataisnature that looking at this photograph of Senster, chained and seemingly abandoned, is like looking at metallic bones.

*
The Cult of the Frog is growing. I received my black shirt from Michael this week. Several friends have asked me for one. Schlomo, at his bar, is almost getting mugged for them.

*
Do you remember me?
And that chick you danced with two times through the Rufus album friday night at that party
on Avenue A
where your skin-head friend passed out for several hours on the bathroom floor
And you told me you weren't that drunk
And that I was your favorite Salsa dancer you had ever come across in NYC
...
And when we were finished making out, we noticed that your skinhead friend was gone
And you looked into my bloodshot eyes and said
"is it too soon if I call you Sunday"

-from Pink Martini's Eugene
(not on any albums...yet. You can email me for the MP3)

*
Toshio Hirano, the Japanese Cowboy
is Waiting for a Train (MP3 here)

*
Garcia Marquez's new as-yet-untranslated novel:
Memories of my Melancholy Whores begins
“In my ninetieth year, I decided to give myself the gift of a night of love with a young virgin.”

Celia Johnson, Incubators

Most of the art I really enjoy is from Illustrators or Graffiti artists or some combination.

Take a look at this years offerings from Art Basel, as an example of the state of Modern Art, and see if it doesnt seem like they are caught up in a self-reflective whirlwind.

Paul Davies: Many great scientists throughout their life have a vision. Do you have a vision?

John Wheeler: Well, to me it’s the picture that the whole of this existence of ours will some day have its single, central principle spring to life, that will be so natural we’ll say to ourselves: How could it have been otherwise and how could we have been so stupid all these years not to have seen it.


This is Wheeler's vision of the Grand. Like a mischevious elf, who sneaks in to leave unexpected gifts, Wheeler has been sowing the world of Physics with most of the bizzare but beautiful ideas that lie at its borders. He is a metaphysician in disguise.

I used to think that Feynman was divinely inspired when he first sketched the foundation for a timeless universe when he introduced this: Anti-matter is Matter which is traveling backwards in Time.

So, for example, when a proton and an antiproton collide and annihilate, what has really happened is that one particle has reversed its direction in Time. Anyways, Feynman admits (in his Nobel lecture) he got this idea from Wheeler who was his mentor:

...I received a telephone call one day at the graduate college at Princeton from Professor Wheeler, in which he said, "Feynman, I know why all electrons have the same charge and the same mass" "Why?" "Because, they are all the same electron!" And, then he explained on the telephone, "suppose that the world lines which we were ordinarily considering before in time and space - instead of only going up in time were a tremendous knot, and then, when we cut through the knot, by the plane corresponding to a fixed time, we would see many, many world lines and that would represent many electrons, except for one thing. If in one section this is an ordinary electron world line, in the section in which it reversed itself and is coming back from the future ... I did not take the idea that all the electrons were the same one from him as seriously as I took the observation that positrons could simply be represented as electrons going from the future to the past in a back section of their world lines. That, I stole!

Wheeler was a colleague of Einstein. Wheeler himself was a student of Neils Bohr. But Wheeler is famous for his students. It was Wheeler who guided his student Everett in forming the Many Worlds Hypothesis - the strange theory of multiple worlds which brings to life Borges' vision of a cosmic garden of forking paths. He also taught Tipler who went on to devise his own universe where humans are all re-incarnated near the end of time.

Wheeler just turned 90 and parties were had. These days he is still thinking about the consequences of his work on delayed-choice, an unsettling consequence of quantum mechanics, the essential idea being that the Past isnt fixed in any way until we decide to observe it and how we will observe it. At this moment, as experiments seem to prove, we are creating the Past, somehow summoning it into existence.

From 1929 to 1962, the French phenomenologist, Gaston Bachelard wrote several books in which he analysed and elucidated the "poetics" of matter, revealing the subtle yet profound ways the properties and associations of various substances affect the imagination. He demonstrated scientifically that water, for instance, could be experienced as "dissolved girl."

I am not sure whether Peter Blegvad is talking about Bachelard's book Poetics of Space which I read a long time ago and, after reading a few pages, decided to give it my own poetic kick across the room.

But it doesnt matter. Blegvad is having fun. There's a small cult of Blegvad out there. The quote above is from his site On Numinosity where you can also find and play with some Numinosity Flash toys. Also, it will become clearer that an object or thing (or person!) has three manifestations in the world - the object you imagine, the object you observe, and the object you remember. And so this already crowded space of objects unfolds into a kaleidoscope.

Blegvad also writes a comic strip called Leviathan which manages to reference every major French philosopher out there but is ultimately just about the world of a little boy named Levi. Predictably, Blegvad also has a band and makes music. So Blegvad is a rock star, literally as well as figuratively.

In an interview in the Paris Review, Gabriel Garcia Marquez said:

The first line [of Kafka's Metamorphosis] reads "As Gregor Samsa awoke that morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect..." When I read the line I thought to myself that I didn't know anyone was allowed to to write things like that. If I had known, I would have started writing a long time ago.

I love this passage for many reasons. One is that notion of "I didnt know anyone was allowed" which describes perfectly that sense, as you lean into your years of self-examination, that there are these piles of rules you inherited and now you must decide which are sensible and which others are meant to be shattered. The latter rules are the ones, that by breaking, allow you to become more yourself.

Garcia Marquez, a brilliant student of this process, went on to become one of the masters of the opening line:

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.
-from One Hundred Years of Solitude

It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love
-from Love in the Time of Cholera

And,

Jose Palacios, his oldest servant, found him floating naked with his eyes open in the purifying waters of his bath and thought he had drowned. He knew this was one of the many ways the General meditated, but the ecstasy in which he lay drifting seemed that of a man no longer of this world.
-from The General in his Labyrinth