aug03

BirchLane.net

August

Sunday 31

Go Away.

Saturday 30

Friday 29

Trailers for sale or rent
Rooms to let...fifty cents.
No phone, no pool, no pets
I ain't got no cigarettes
Ah, but..two hours of pushin' broom
Buys an eight by twelve four-bit room
I'm a man of means by no means
King of the road.

Third boxcar, midnight train
Destination...Bangor, Maine.
Old worn out clothes and shoes,
I don't pay no union dues,
I smoke old stogies I have found
Short, but not too big around
I'm a man of means by no means
King of the road.

I know every engineer on every train
All of their children, and all of their names
And every handout in every town
And every lock that ain't locked
When no one's around.

I sing,
Trailers for sale or rent
Rooms to let, fifty cents
No phone, no pool, no pets
I ain't got no cigarettes
Ah, but, two hours of pushin' broom
Buys an eight by twelve four-bit room
I'm a man of means by no means
King of the road.

~Roger Miller

Thursday 28

New York City.

Wednesday 27

Family History.

Tuesday 26

Outline as Update:

Danielle is back at college and happy.

A book of my photos is being published in England to illustrate a series of poems; it is called "Bleeding Jesus."

I am working with a friend in Germany of a series of photos called "Family Histories" which, I think, will be published as postcards and possibly an exhibition.

I am going to publish a book of my NYC photos from the 1970s and 1980s.

Job is going well and should go better in Autumn.

Monday 25

Waiting. Self-portrait at the MET

self portrait with balthus. met. nyc.

Sunday 24

Honor.

Saturday 23

Ha. Ha. Ha.

Friday 22

Crystal Lake.

Thursday 21

Sunset.

Wednesday 20

~~Self-Portrait~~. Portrait.

Tuesday 19

If It Is Tuesday It Must Be.

43rd and Broadway. Gone. In its place: Conde Nast and NASDAQ and ESPN Zone.

Monday 18

Sunday 17

Saturday 16

Jacob's Pillow.

My friend

Friday 15

Coming.

Thursday 14

Truth

There is nothing closer to you than yourself; if you don't
know yourself, how will you know others? You might say,
"I know myself," but you are mistaken!... The only thing
you know about yourself is your physical appearance.
The only thing you know about your batin
(unconscious) is that when you are hungry you eat,
when you are angry you fight, and when you are
consumed with passion you make love. All animals
are equal with you in this regard. You have to seek
the truth within yourself.... What are you? Where
have you come from and where are you going?
What is your role in the world? Why have you been
created? Where does your happiness lie? If you
would like to know yourself, you should know that
you are created by two things. One is your body
and your outward appearance (Zahir) which you can
see with your eyes. The other is your unconscious
forces (batin</>). This is the part you cannot see but
you can know it with your insight. The truth of
your existence is in you batin. Everything
else is a servant to your batin.

(Al Ghazzali)

Wednesday 13

Family History.

Tuesday 12

What is Appropriate.

Monday 11

More Rain.

I am wishing for autumn.

Sunday 10

Contests. Last year the butterfly bush outside my window was in full bloom.

Saturday 09

American Wedding.

Friday 08

Jimmy Rogers.

Thursday 07

New York City

Wednesday 06

Autumn Sighting.

Tuesday 05

Lee Bontecou. Calvin Tompkins writes in The New York (August 4, 2003, "Missing in Action"):

"My first thought was that the new pieces were nothing at all like the wall reliefs that had made her famous, that they were lighter, more lyrical, and far more complex. This thought lasted about five minutes, until it hit me that they were also totally unlike the work of any artist I had ever seen--except Lee Bontecou. All the characteristics of the early work were there--the obsessive attentivesness to detail, excluding any sort of personal 'touch;' the exquisite workmanship, every tiny ceramic bead rolled and fired and affixed by the artist, every coil of thin wire wrapped by her fingers......the willingess to push an idea to extremes, risking failure at every point; and, underlying the whole enterprise, the ongoing dialogue bwtween the natural world the world of pure imagination, and the willingness to let the uglier and scarier aspects of both worlds interact with their possibilities of unexpected beauty. The new Bontecous came right out of the old ones, no question, and the amazing thing, which became clear in subsequent conversations, was that the work developed and widened and deepened in an isolation so complete that she might as well have been living on another planet."

Elizabeth Smith, curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, asked Ann Philbin, director of the UCLA Hammer Museum, to come and look at Bontecous work:

"I actually thought for a moment I was going to faint," Philbin remembers. "I just thought, Yes, it is amazing."

Monday 04

Art-critical Discourse.

Aesthetics is for the artist
as ornithology is for the birds.

~Barnett Newman

Sunday 03

Rain.

Saturday 02

Betsy Returns.

Friday 01

At Last.