Lost (ampersand) Found

Jan
12th

Mon

We need to travel. If we don’t offer ourselves to the unknown, our senses dull. Our world becomes small and we lose our sense of wonder. Our eyes don’t lift to the horizon; our ears don’t hear the sounds around us. The edge is off our experience, and we pass our days in a routine that is both comfortable and limiting. We wake up one day and find we have lost our dreams in order to protect our days. Don’t let yourself become one of these people. The fear of the unknown and the lure of the comfortable will conspire to keep you from taking the chances the traveler has to take. But if you take them, you will never regret your choice. To be sure, there will be moments of doubt when you stand alone on an empty road in an icy rain, or when you are ill with fever in a rented bed. But as the pains of the moment will come, so too will they fall away. In the end, you will be so much richer, so much stronger, so much clearer, so much happier, and so much better a person that all the risk and hardship will seem like nothing compared to the knowledge you have gained.

— Kent Nerburn, Letters to My Son

Nov
21st

Fri

Nov
19th

Wed

Artist leaves his art on streets

Nov
6th

Thu

Nov
1st

Sat

300 love letters

Start with 302.

Oct
29th

Wed

Oct
28th

Tue

FOR YOU...

He will mail you the sky, or sand, or a memory.

Oct
23rd

Thu

Oct
19th

Sun

Well. One good thing has come out of this madness. (Is that too crass to say? It might be.)

I got an art exhibition from someone Jack put me in touch with.

Also. It’s really weird. I went to make tea this morning, and found a photograph of a man in my sugar bowl. He had a moustache. I have no idea how it got there.

Oct
18th

Sat

Library celebrates Banned Books Week with window-display featuring volunteers reading banned works

Oct
5th

Sun

Potato peelers put him on Park Avenue

Making joy out of your days

Oct
3rd

Fri

I called Jack. Jesus Christ. Sooooo. Uh.

Right.

A) This is one of those instances when not having a television is a Really Bad Thing.
B) This is also one of those instances where avoiding the news means I miss things.

Like. This woman named Amanda Palmer. Apparently missing. For a while.

The police came and picked up the photos. Evidence, they said. Though I don’t know how. If they’re really her… the photos still don’t make any sense.

But I get why everyone’s upset.

Sep
26th

Fri

Marcello Mastroianni was once asked how many films he had been in. The great actor thought a moment and said, “I’m not sure— over a hundred.” The interviewer then asked “How many of those films were any good?” Mastroianni said, “A few— ten maybe.” “But why would you spend years making bad films? Why not wait till a good script comes along and then make one that’s worthy?” Smiling and unaffected by the insult, Mastroianni asked the journalist, “Do you like what you do? Do you like writing?” The journalist said yes. “Well, I like acting. I would rather act than not act. Why should I sit around waiting for a good script when in the meantime I can be doing what I like now? Do you wait until only good article assignments come before you write? I doubt it. If you like to write then you write the best way you know how about everything. Some of it is good and some of it is bad. But all of it is what you want to do with your life.

— The Jonathan Carroll Web Site | CarrollBlog | September 2005

Sep
22nd

Mon

I Should Have Put It Back In The Rabbit Hole

I've gotten a bunch of comments and messages on my Flickr account about the photographs. Someone said I should take them to the police, but I think they were joking. Someone else said the girl in the photos was named Miss Palmer, but I don't know who that is. Then, yesterday, I got a message from wkapfm.com, asking if I was on IM. He sent me a message soon after.
Jack: what is this?
Me: Excuse me?
Jack: the photographs. what kind of twisted shit is that.
Me: Oh. Yeah, aren't they weird? Some art school thing, I guess.
Jack: ...
Me: Hello?
Jack: you don't know?
Me: Know what?
Jack: Fuck. how is that possible? look, let me give you a number to call. I think we need to talk.
. . .
I haven't called him yet. I'm a little nervous.

Sep
17th

Wed

Right. So I got my camera back up and running, and uploaded the photos from yesterday to my Flickr account. Hooray. I’ve posted several of the photos from my walk yesterday here— I was taking the shortcut on the bank alongside the train tracks, like I usually do, and taking photos of everything, like I usually do.

Pretty train, pretty tracks.

Normally I’m nimble and quick when I dip across the bank by the tracks, and no one is the wiser.

When I was taking this photo though, I saw something bright blue in the viewfinder.

I got up closer, and took a shot of this rusty tin can and cookie tin-thing, in what I think is a rabbit hole. I’m not sure what rabbit holes look like, but I think this is definitely one.

So, er, then I got worried for the rabbits, and took it out. Someone might have shut them in, and I couldn’t help picturing these half-starved baby bunnies, huddling at the end of a dark dirt corridor behind this giant scary blue tin.

So here I am, rescuer of tiny bunnies, removing the tin. Hooray.

And noticed there was a plastic bag poking out of it, so I opened it. And there were PHOTOGRAPHS inside.

Naughty photographs.

And other oddnesses.

But some of them were of these women.

Or woman. I can’t really tell, but it definitely looks like there’s one woman who shows up in several of the photographs.

I guess they’re some sort of art project?

Except I have no idea why they’d be sitting in a box in a hole in the grass.

I wasn’t sure if I should leave it there, or not. I couldn’t in good conscience put it back in the rabbit hole.

But I guess fate stepped in. At that point, a train pulled up and literally STOPPED in front of me. The conductor rolled down his window and told me in a very stern voice “miss! you are not allowed to be here, this is private property.” Damn. He literally held up the train there until I crossed back to the nearby train platform. Guess he thought I was a jumper. I grabbed the box without thinking, and brought it home. No idea what to do with it now. But it’s in my bedroom. Frame it? Send it away for publication as a weird found art piece? Maybe I’ll do a poll.