guidelines | attempted

part of me has always felt that creativity springs forth from itself in a way, that it's a sort of "big bang" that just occurs because it is meant to occur. and i do think that some creative work does get produced in this way, that it is just created in a moment with little to no planning and upon creation is already in its nearly final form

but reading more and more about processes and how people have accomplished so many things, i've learned that while many things are of the moment, so many more things are staked out bit by bit, piece by piece. this may mean a general outline of how things are to progress, or it may mean years of taking notes and writing down sentences until a thing seems ready

if i were to just kind of wing it entirely, then i would say that this blog would be a place filled with whatever variable thing struck me at a moment in time. and in a way i would really like that. but i do feel that for this to have some sort of cohesion, it has to have some sort of bounds or at least some sort of hoped for future path

so what can be expected here? what do i expect here? posts like yesterday's will probably be more the exception than the rule; i don't really want this to necessarily be a recounting of my daily affairs. i would like this to contain some element of free writing, which will deviate obviously from these sort of long, pragmatic posts. i would like to be able to discuss ideas here. i would like to be able to show work here. i would like this to be something which is positive but can be a place to mention difficulties as well.

i would say that at the moment my chief creative passions are : writing / visuals (drawings, photos, other) / kitchen. i think that this can be a place to pour out the first 2 of those 3 things. i think that if i feel i can do so in a regular way, i will try to deal with the 3rd in a separate place.

i honestly don't know if plotting out guidelines will in any way start to give this a sort of shape and form. it's early yet, and these things can grow on their own if given the chance and there is a regular contribution of work. that said, i do believe the above at least gives a decent idea of where my head is in all of this

return leg

on thursday night i made the brief flight to florida to do some family visiting. i made my return trip monday morning, having awoken at the lovely hour of 5.30am while darkness still ruled in central florida.

the trip was okay; unfortunately i have yet to purchase the new camera so come back pictureless. i did some reading, some walking, some eating of generally bad, fried food, and played with dogs. when i head down there, i usually like to try some weird chain i've never eaten at before out of curiosity (past winners : steak n' shake, sonny's, wing house) and without planning it wound up at one this time: a disturbing little place called R.J. Gator's (as i've learned upon research, R.J. stands for "Rockin' Jammin")



if you can manage to avoid doing so, please never go there. particularly if you are accompanied by troupes of old people. but even if you are alone and think the founding year of 1986 means the place has staying power : turn away.

soon, possibly tomorrow, i am going to try to talk a little bit more about where i think this is going to go content-wise (not necessarily setting restrictions, but giving some idea) and i will probably spout out on some general ideas about things because that is what i oftentimes like to do

14 january

smoking a cigarette on a cold night in brooklyn
and looking for the smallest sign of a moon
that might be tucked behind building tops
and i can't help but think
of how nice it would be to
climb to a rooftop and
lie down and sleep
but for the fact
that my lungs might
fill with frost

travels and such

the past few years, i've tended to get my travel done in winter. i don't know if it's simply a means of escaping during sort of depressing weather, that it's the easiest time to get away from work, or maybe just something to look forward to at the start of a new year. i am expecting to do the same this year, with a brief hop to florida and then a longer trip elsewhere (out of country).

i will hopefully have acquired a new digital camera by that time. whether i will acquire the skill to take any decent shots, of course, is an altogether different matter.

in 2003 (while doing "study abroad"), i was able to make it to copenhagen, denmark | malmo, sweden | stockholm, sweden and for whatever reason have just found myself attracted in a way to the style in these type of places. whether it is the buildings or the people is something i honestly don't know.


travelling to stockholm was the first time i headed to a foreign city completely alone, and i wound up taking quite a few photos while spending long days walking the streets. the city was beautiful, sunshine and spring weather every day. i stayed on a boat, hopped around the islands, fell asleep during a boat tour at complete peace. i ate and drank well, wanting to marry almost every beautiful scandinavian woman i saw walking through the city.

the above are a few photos from stockholm taken in may of 2003, edited mainly for size / cropped slightly. i am hoping that with the detail inherent in higher quality photos i will be pushed toward actually working to edit them properly in future

wochenmitte

midweek midweek ah the weekend approaches

a few things i like are:
[ ] winter days and winter nights; cold air on your face and smoking a cigarette at night while it's clear and you can look up and see something in the sky
[ ] knowing a few scattered, foreign words; sometimes the sound of them, even if you know exactly what they mean, i don't know... there's just something to a sort of flow of sound which is so completely different from what you are used to
[ ] getting enough sleep (i haven't been)
[ ] thoughts of travel and having time where walking around and experiencing a new place is my only "job", even if for only a matter of days

at some point soon i will try to maybe post one or two images from past places i've been and liked. i really enjoy taking pictures of places for some reason rather than people. i don't know why that is but maybe it's something i should change. photos were taken on a very old kodak digital camera [the only one i currently have] so we'll do the best we can

somehow in a city i don't expect it to get quite as dark as it suddenly and harshly does here on these short winter days - the absence of light is almost startling in the same way lightning can be if you really think about it

the potential for snow

allegedly tonight there should be some snow rolling in. i'm left feeling like the perfect place to be on a day like today, when it's not really too cold quite yet, is on a porch somewhere outside the city, drinking a good beer, smoking a good cigarette, maybe in one of those swinging benches that porches sometimes have

living in a city can cause some (myself included) to develop a sort of idyllic view of life away from noise and large crowds of people. i feel like in the past it was easy to look down on country life in the sense that by being so far apart from the lively aspects of a city you were separating yourself from so many things, be it music, art, whatever. with the growth of technology, though, doesn't it kind of seem like the separation really is dimming? granted, being inside of some place and experiencing an actual thing isn't equivalent to seeing its image or its recording on the internet, but that also doesn't make the experience of a thing online without value. there are so many things [pictures, video, even text in the form of foreign news service/blogs] that all of us use technology to readily experience. does this mean it's easier to walk away from a city because you're not really disconnecting?

what amazes me in a way is that 6 or 7 years ago the thought of stepping into a sort of countryside is probably something i would have viewed with scorn. now it's something that seems to me to merit a genuine weighing of value

i wouldn't mind having an open house, maybe only a few hours from an actual city, near some trees. there will be a big old wooden table in the kitchen for people to gather round. there will be a dog. there will be a porch to drink beer and smoke cigarettes and maybe even fall asleep until you feel the first cold winds that let you know the snow is coming