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Vacation

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his labyrinth

to hell with borges and his labyrinths, this was a true labyrinth a room of art that required a different perspective, theory, in order to be able to understand each piece: one, descarte, another barthes, another freud, another... that was his basement gallery. his own place to find himself another, while observing and re-theorizing. each work would convert him into another thinker and throw him, with all his current knowledge, into his own past. there he made different decisions than he did the first time confronted with the situation (this time with less caution)

and then there was the room, the one room in the house that had not changed with the modern, minimalist renovation. there inside was an academic clutter: books, novels, magazines and publications, a globe, maps, a lamp, another armchair... there, his decisions were made with categorical and meticulously measured science. each past was a present to be remembered without remorse, and without change. isolated from the decision itself, and more aligned to the effort that later ensued.

he would button the top botton on his sport coat, run his hands through his measuredly disheveled hair, and step back through the door that looked to go back to the outside world, but that brought him to his modern moment, to the life he was living now between the four outer-walls that was built by his past and that held played as the battlefield to his current reality.

four walls and so many different worlds.  

imagined creativity

cannot sleep.

this is not the regular occurrence it once was, but i guess there are reasons enough. in the past, the moments of sleeplessness were fueled by readings, by tortured souls who years ago had written their internal worlds into a form that would later meet my eyes, by sudden moments of forced energy that urged immediate action. for the moment it is not the same, though it drive me to write as it did. wooded surroundings, things to come, responsibilities once so shunned, now almost desired.

i can imagine moments just like this, productive, fruitful pushes towards a long held goal. the unwritten manuscript that lays somewhat dormant in a beautifully bound notebook (a gift from an unknowing friend) and the source that struggles to find the way to unite and express what still remains un-"translated" from the human experience; my human experience.

i don't have a photo of a keyboard, though i wish i did. it would be placed somewhere here amongst the words i have pecked on on that very object. ideas must keep me awake, but in them...

a pretentious (and worthless) nook review

one of the few outgoing pecuniary transactions that manages to give me pleasure these days is one of a subscription to the nytimes on what has become the fascinating little ereading devise. while a feeble attempt at sticking to the paper and ink was superficially intact, there was a little rat that continued gnawing at my internal wiring, the last bite being that of an email from my mother sending me a link that advertised the nook for free with a purchase of the new york times. rather than my typical consumer-driving, knee-jerk reaction that brought me to previous, and often disheartening pecuniary results, i did not react immediately upon her email, but rather began a slow search to decide if the purchase was going to be made. initially, the offerings that the nook had seemed limited, the closest competition offered all of the news papers that i  have wanted to receive to my doorstep for the past 9 years, and this offered only a few, one of which has had my interest for the past 11 years (since my only tangential foray into the world of international relations through a class by a phenomenal professor and the book the peloponnesian war by thucydides). with the murder of motivation at its peak for the nook, i hurried to my usual monday night engagement and let the cold air ice the trails of intrigue that wound through the misfiring neurons. i began to vacillate between the prospect of the juggernaut of the ereaders and the one that offered my an easy point of entry.

the online digital nytimes (non-subscription) limits its readers (on each device, I might add) to 20 articles per month. in one of my last remaining articles i read the following: external link to the NYT. the decision as to which device, if any, was entwined in the lifeblood messaging of the article.

i still only have one paper delivered to my house -electronically- each morning, but there are also, much to my initial dismay, a couple ebooks whose letters, words, paragraphs and pages all hide themselves in code until the finger-tap is completed on the touchscreen. i will forever want to hold the pages of a book in my hand so that i can feel the history of the work in my hands, the tangible evidence of the process to existence, the smell of the historical trail of the contents and those fingers that previously molested the pages, waking them from the dormant period that precluded the momentary attention, that ended in a seeming ignorance of the contents with a re-gifted shadow of the next temporary focus. the existence in digital form seems even more ephemeral than the tactile paper-ink combination, but somehow it has manage to engage me just the same. it will never replace the desired bookshelves in my final place of non-celestial (given my aversion to an expected continuance) residence, but it has a place, a function, and even a facility that cannot be granted to the otherwise stimulating printed material. especially those publications that take the periodical form.

2011?

there seem to be chunks that are not reconcilable, the memory seems to be missing those bits

it seems as if other things have manage to find their way into the primary role of occupying my time, trumping the pretentious chase after "higher" knowledge and a formation thoroughly european (and western) in nature. in what i will call a certain under-tow, the branches into which i climb for my creativity seem to have been caught by extemely high waters, and subsequently swept away. the most obviously locus where this can be observed is on the very pages that hold these tardy words. one can find themselves struggling to breath the truth through the suffocating presence of the waves of noises that our modern, and confused society sufferd and ecos without even the benefit of reflective thought. in this case i will not pretend to be above the undulations of sounds that make sifting for understanding and value difficult.

by no means is this reflective of my current relationship, and in actuality, quite the contrary indeed.

foggy memories

just before starting back into the corporate race of protectiveness, competitiveness and miss-understood cooperation, and just after finishing the course-load for my masters program, the netherlands we my temporary home where i could spend some time with someone important to me. during that trip my camera had been placing a weird, black mark in some of my images. while cleaning it i noticed that it took some time for the lens to lose the fog and that the resulting effect was desirable in certain instances. with that in mind adrienne and i were on a bus from amesrfoort to woudenberg to spend some time at her parents' home and possibly pick up the car for some trip, even possibly the consulate general. so since the camera had begun to replace the small mark in the photo, it occurred to me that the light might make for a good photo where the image was blurred not from a lack of focus, but instead some fogginess of the "observer".

here is the image that resulted from the momentary photo-shoot that took place on the bus trip, somewhere in between the two dutch cities. now, of course the lack of clarity can be attained digitally through post-production, but there is something special from this photo, something that reminds me of the bus ride without telling me much more. 

but i am one of many people, and without the narrated context, there is something else to the photograph. i could intend to remove the contextual information from my mind, but even with the lack of clarity both in memory and photo, there is too much informational noise to allow me to remove myself from the image. even with that said, the photo gives me the sensation of distance, of lost sexuality (a shoulder slightly turned away and covered with a scarf and a light shirt that teases of something more but that moves away from the observers eye as they pan the photo from right to left. 

so shortly, i might take a cloth to the condensation on the lens and try to see what is underneath, try to remember exactly what it is behind the cold blue that accompanies the distancing shoulder. 

red 4th

so being that loved ones are a little farther away than i care to have them (and that they care to have me) the 4th was spent in a reclusive manner, and only in the last few moments of daylight did i decide to borrow my roommates rear bicycle light, throw the camera in a camel pack bag and mount the tripod on the back to take a couple photos of the evening. the initial thought was to ride lazily toward old town, hoping to make it before the larger fireworks were set-off in the surrounding areas, but shortly after a left turn on wadswort, the better part of a version of laziness took hold of me legs and my steering and the local high school cinder track became base for the evening. the view from the track was wonderfully underwhelming. no breath-taking firework could come even close to filling the camera lens. i took one series after another of the horizon, just letting the multitude take its small place as a temporary portion of the skyline of aging suburbia. (i will later post ta "stop-action" video as a stand alone post).

before i continue, it seems best to tell a brief narrative of the 4ths of my youth, especially those on glenroy. the venue (not the space) changed over the years: a metal shed that smelled of oil, grass and the occasional cat "shit"; the above-ground pool that one day with a monstrous effort from my mother suddenly disappeared; a wooden shed that slowly gained all the same smells of the previous but for the cat's (not part of the family) since it was successfully closed out by the properly latching door; the 10' by 10' concrete slab that served as our backyard basketball court, and the small path of cement steps that year after year served as the launching pad. the pyrotechnition was -of course- my father and the family and neighbors were the viewers. for my family and i at that point, the 4th was not clearly the birth of american freedom. in fact, it would take the war that followed that original date to gain liberation from a distant monarch. instead, it was about the cake my mother decorated with blueberries, strawberries and white icing (delicious if i may), both sides of the family arriving to our house to eat while sitting in the humidity and sun, having beers and jtms until the summer sun gave way to artificial flares.

my father would buy fireworks, and slowly, one-by-one, set them off. we all watched, giving oohhhhs and ahhhhhhs, depending upon the previous muttering. until a few brief moments afterwords a dark and silence would come over the family. the end of the fireworks meant a quick clean-up and time for bed. with hindsight, they were extraordinarily small displays. in my youthful mind, and in my memory today, they were a meaningful presentation for the family.

it will come to no surprise to anyone who had similar youth experience that the following photograph has a double meaning: it looks back on those family celebrations as well as gives some subliminal message as to the meaning of the festivities these days. the family display hit me in one way, and the red glow in another. a family just out of the strength of the flames and a airy sea of red in its immediate surroundings.

the reader can gleam from the image what he or she likes. and i will find myself writing an email and then sleeping. thanks.

lest i forget the sparkler...*

hop scotch

many people who know me personally know that i enjoy a good whiskey every now and then. since my return to grad school, those sips have become fewer and farther between. working full time for a technology company provided just a little better than the stipend offered by the american university where i did my studies, add on top of that some travel necessitated by an absence, and the scotch takes a hit. that said there was quite a selection that had accumulated during the (near) year long bet that i had with jonesy that culminated in my buying dinner for jonesy (for his victory) and jonesy buying my first drink.

since the days, i haven't really made much of an attempt to replace the occasional whiskey with anything else. of course there is a beer here or there, but that was also company to the scotch during those previous days. so, it was left to the wayside, though i cannot complain. there is a day every once and a while when i would like to walk over to the counter and grab a bottle of lagavulin or dalwhinnie and poor a small amount in the one whiskey glass my brother and his wife gave me for my birthday, but the truth is there are simply better things to be had.

on a recent trip to visit adrienne and accompany her to the (exterior) of the american consulate in amsterdam, i had to slowly walk away, reluctantly, towards a little restaurant away from the building that houses (in some sense) the fate of our future. after a small walk of reconnaissance, we found that it was one of the only places open at the hour we had to arrive at the consulate. to be simply stated, the day is not one of those experiences to remember, but on the walk towards the restaurant , the second time passing the piece of sidewalk, I noticed something on the ground: permanently placed into the blocks of the sidewalk, there was a hop-scotch that brought back the memories of the game i never played. but it was still a game of youth, where the enjoyment was the end and the means. it now seems as if the getalenteerde miss herzog has rediscovered that enjoyment in her running.


when this photo was taken, the moment was still unknown to me, and the ten seemed to be far towards the horizon, thankfully there are people in this world for whom it is worth fighting, and though the duration of the jump sometimes has caused a hard landing, it seems as if i might just be reaching the square with ten. depending, i might just leave a glass there for the next person to celebrate their arrival to ten.

reflections

the studio series

almost a year after spending hours upon hours in the top floor of an aging building in the area of cincinnati known as lower price hill, i find myself passing through the photos that i took during those warm summer nights (and occacionally the days that preceded them). there have been two pictures from this brief period presented in one form or another on this blog: "escape" and "a study of perspective". here is another image from that same space.

the warehouse where the studio is found stands in what was previously considered the appalacian ghetto, and what is now where small pockets of differing ethnic groups search for an existence in the american landscape. the appalachians are still there -though not to the same numbers nor same concentration (one can even begin to wonder to what degree they mantain any appalachian traditions through the necessity of aculturization, but this is a question for another time)- but there are also a few groups of differing latin american origins. there is not a large african american population in this small part of the city. one common characteristic marks each subgroup of the lower price hill ghetto, financial hardship.

when i was much younger, the school where i studied, in a type of urban outreach, sent the religion class (almost more of a social awareness class than religion thanks to the teacher's personal political views and his proximity to a local community leader, Buddy Gray, who was killed in over-the-rhine) to a school in lower price hill to tutor local children in reading. there was a very low percentage of literate locals and this had a reflexion in the low reading levels of the children in this school. the 4th grader that i personally tutored once a week repeatedly struggled to read the word "the", and there was clearly no creation of a culture of learning at home, but nor was there for her parents (one can assume) and though seemingly paternalistic, there might just be a social responsibility to assist in the creation of (at least) an awareness of the "true" value of education and its surrounding culture.

the difference in culture is reflected in the levels of this fotograph. the first. closer level to the camera, or the eye of the observer is the reflection of the artsists working in a space elevated above the empty and dark streets below, barely visible for the one light that dimly iluminates only the nearest surroundings. below in the dark, not only is the speed limited (25mhp), but also the inhabitants. their world is really limitted there, below. the elevation of the surrounding buildings and the derelict nature offer neither wealth nor comfort. besides new inhabitants moving the the area, very little comes from the outside either, very few but the local inhabitants feel comfortable stepping inside of this small sub-world.

above, in the internally lit artistic space there is a marked difference. against the panes of glass clear reflections of two artists -separated by doors and locks from the world beneath- foster their artistic visions. both with at least some artistic education, the views seems to be much broader. also, elevated above the darkness and the urban poverty, the view appears to be much broader. but the perspective can only be broad because of having experienced, in some way, the world beneath them. the artists have to walk through the spaces of (created and perceived) dereliction and hopeless to find the realization of their artistic vision.

hilversum


this is going to break slightly with the format of encuentros y caminos as of late, but hopefully it can serve as a prelude to a series of photos that relate to my current sense of dislocation, (de ser un desubicado). after having finish the coursework for my masters in hispanic studies, a series of events (possitive mostly) played out that have resulted in my being in this train from amsterdam airport, through hilversum and finally to amersfoort. in a little under a week i have gone from bowling green, to cincinnati, to boulder and finally to amersfoort, nl with the possibility of heading to vienna on friday.

i name this entry because it was precisely at this station where i realized that for me time had completely lost all point of reference, and an overnight driving trip (with the help of John Parr) killed any foundation that may have remained to understand time. it is nearly 5am where my week started, nearly 3am in the location where i got on the first plane and nearly 11am  here in the netherlands. i managed to get on the wrong train the first time simply because time had lost some meaning, and i stepped on a train that stopped in platform 3, 4 minutes too early.

desubicado

interplaced with other entries, slowly some entries will emerge highlighting photos that (at least for me) evoke a sense of the word mentioned above. the first in this series is a photo that happened upon me as i was driving home from the clifton area in cincinnati about a year ago, just after my premature return from madrid. coming back from madrid to the u.s., especially to cincinnati where i hadn't spent more than a few random days since moving in 2006, had its own sense of dislocation, a certain postmodern fragmentation. looking across from central parkway towards western hills, there was something that seemed hopefully out-of-place.

cincinnati had been the queen city, a river port frequented by riverboats, but it was the commuter rail system that allowed the city to expand, as is the case in the history of many cities. aside from the rail system for commuters, there was also a massive rail system to support cincinnati industry, raw material in and product out. proctor and gamble (among other multi-nationals) have their origins in the mill creek valley leading towards the ohio. in that same valley, an immense intertwining of rail occupies plots and plots of land that reach from the hills of clifton -just to the east of the tracks- to the western hills -aptly named considering its placement on the wrong side of the tracks- that undulate away from the city center. there, in the space between the east and the west, the valley separates the two worlds. in that valley, from one of the few, small patches of green in the concrete and iron mess that mangles the silence between the two hills, the magnolia extends silent and innocent hope. against isolation and sadness, the magnolia blooms with its bright and pungent flowers, strikingly different from the trailers, traincars, concrete and metal that surround it. and differing too, to the matted green of the hills found to the west, smoothered by the oppression of expired opportunity.

even though the tree is surrounded by color, that color is something of the product of modernity, not natural, but rather an industrial transformation of resources that have displaced life from the region where the resource was extracted. the same displacement can be noticed in the area surrounding the lone magnolia; the hills on each side are covered in the green trees while in the valley, almost all of the plant life is absent. behind the rail yard there is a line of vacant buildings, another residue of previous life. most of these buildings are deserted factory buildings that no longer offer a path to middle class for labor workers, other buildings are abandoned residences, with apartments above small, independent shops. 

the dark pipe that occupies the left half of the photo also carries something away from the view of the observer, or simply away from the observer. what it removes from one side, it brings to the other, and with the menacing presence of the pipeline, whatever it brings cannot be something possitive.

all the horizons -the industrial and the natural: the line of the massive pipe, the rail cars, the industrial buildings, the fog-covered green hills, and the clouded sky- appear to come to a point toward the left edge of the photograph, somewhere in the working class neighborhood that lays to the west of the rail yard. all of these seem to either find their origin or rest in the neighborhood previously of the employees of the surrounding industry. the employees, a working middle class, seem to have been displaced by the fall of local manufacturing. the only object in the photo that mantains its place, is the only that seems to be out of place, desubicado: the magnolia. its beauty and life is the only that remains in a declining area of the city that was once vibrant and the center of an energy that fed the growth of a city. the magnolia is out of place, but in its displacement offers a sense of hope: to bloom in a place and a time all its own.

obviously there have been a few days without a post, for those who stop-by and care to know. i am finishing up the masters, packing the house and the office, and working on a branch project with photography and collaboration from around the world. i am looking forward to launching that in july, but until then (and even after) the blog will be the spot that gives blogging its name: the personal web log where my bleeched laundry gets aired (minus the underwear...)

back in just a few days

...your a thousand miles away...

the shot

...adrienne, on her way to stand in the doorway, framed by the tree and the light post, created a shot that i could not resist but to take. the dim lights of the plaza helped to cast a shadow that pointed her walk directly back towards me. her shadow assures me that her walk is not one way -away from my presence and the camera- but instead a walk so that we can constantly see each other in new light, under different stimuli. never is there a doubt to the kind of photo that can result from her being the referent of the camera's focus.

over the past few months i have become a fan of black and white imagery. the contrast of dark and light, the timelessness that is lent to the shot, reaching both back into time and into the future. my past and future is in this photograph. one of the first memories that i have explicitly with my father is one that has to do with the camera. my father's camera sat on a tripod aimed towards the city of cincinnati to grab the momentary illumination of the entire skyline. his timing chord draped from the location where it screwed into the camera so that the movement of his pressing of the shutter button did not blur the resulting image. one of my first prized gifts as a child was a fuji camera from my mother and father. that is part of the past that brought me to this image, among many.

and then there is the future. this photograph holds the future, not in the sense of death that is barthes, but instead the reminder of the beauty that i must never take for granted in my life, the beauty of my present and future. to hold that in the focus of my eyes and not the eyes of the camera (though the latter will be part of it for sure).

and then lief would ask: "hey there delilah, what is it like in new york city?"

delilah would likely respond: "beautiful. tall and beautiful. you really must visit."

lief may just answer: "zwolle is as well. do you remember the wine? and bread?"

you are so close.

quick snapshot - grounds for thought

lovely

a study of perspective

with the camera sitting on the manfrotto as silent as it could be, i tried to disappear in the shadows of the studio, hidden behind the hanging window frames still filled with their aged glass. from a slight distance, and with their focus on their artistic production, i could attempt to make my presence one that was only barely -if at all- felt. i had noticed that of all the windows that hung from the warehouse rafters, one of the pains had cracked, distorting or breaking the clarity of objects behind it. the distortions wasn't what most interested me, but instead how one broken pane and one unbroken pane could change create a story about of the two artists sitting across from each other at the same studio desk, each the opposite of the other (note the color of their clothes). my thoughts began to wonder if the crack in the glass, couldn't represent the vision of the world of the person sitting behind it; one possibility. i also wondered if the state of the glass couldn't somehow represent future of the person sitting behind each one, a future only temporarily frozen in the act of taking the image. the values of the referents of the photograph will change as the lens free from the confines of the photo is changed, that is to say as soon as the image is frozen, the world continues and the experiences and occurrences begin to change the way people will see the image. or even, if the glass would be the internal filter affecting the external perception of the objects behind.

here, there are two individuals, two people from very different spaces and with very different experiences. knowing their personalities, i had to remove myself from making any judgment as to whether or not the image would in fact reflect their individual personalities, but instead personalities that any viewer could imagine. with neither subject in focus, it was easier to "dis-imagine" their known identities. the "lens" through which the observer views each of the subjects now takes absorbs more of the resposibilities of the persona of the subjects -in addition to the colors thrown over their blurred bodies-; one sits behind shattered glass and the other through a perfectly un-shattered pane.

one thing that i notice is that because the crack in the glass is clear, i keep returning to look at that side of the picture, rather than the one with the "unobstructed" yet blurred view of the reality i am creating. the crack, the imperfection gives me a point of reference for the rest of the photo. i almost seem to find more "perfection" in the broken side simply because i can see what is broken clearly. with something concrete in the image, i can grab hold of it and not throw ignore it, not throw it to the side. with that irregularity i can feel that the value of the image is changed, and that the person on the left may be less likely to ever have clarity because their view is forever blocked by the cracked glass. i stopped the moment (though not the reading of the moment) there and there is no changing that. so which of the two, equally unclear subjects is presented more clearly in this photograph (and how long will that reading be the dominant one)?

one thing i know is that i would like to return to the thought of the internal filter, held within, seen within the photograph as its obviety (especially if one is more apparent) creates a new dialog externally.

i would also like to note that my personal ramblings can be seen as such and that -while i will still hold ownership...- i am not, unfortunately, the "expert" of my own work. that very well could be a dangerous invitation to comments.

from one side of the west side...

not likely to follow the format of previous entries, there have been a series of events that have created a virtual cascade over the past few days. the first in the series of events happened a few days ago when there was some kind of tremendous windstorm that passed through the cincinnati area that knocked down numerous trees and created a small version of a disaster area. one micro-focus of the "mini-disaster" was the area immediately surrounding my parents home; in other words their yard...

with severe weather moving through the area, the local alarms sounded and my mother awoke to their sound deciding to head towards the basement. before she went down she mentioned something to my father and left the master bedroom to head down the stairs towards the first floor and then the basement. shortly after opening the door, there was an apparent pause, and then she said, "um, i think we have a little problem." the brief phrase was an uncharacteristic understatement for what was really a rather large problem with a series of little problems.

the "breeze" that came through tore two trees in half: one horizontally, the top half of which was thrown into the roof and wall of the house only to come to rest on top of the hot-tub enclosure and hot-tub; and the other vertically, the split missing the gazebo they have near the water feature and small pond but not missing the neighbors' pool. without need to elaborate further, the pool will need a little help...

at this point the house has also seen better days, likely even when the house frame was the only thing standing. with the initial impact to the house, a large portion of the roof (about a quarter) was destroyed leaving a gaping hole for the continuous rain water to work its way through the house. the continued impact smashed windows and walls, creating a buckling of the dining room wall where part of the frame is now broken and visible to those both inside and out. needless to say their is going to be a need for some construction in the near future, especially because the "tarp" that was placed over the hole in the roof was just left to lay over the exposed beems of the roof, so that as the rain water collected it was able to seep through and make its way into the house.

so with the continued wet weather, they have had an eternal fight one their hands to empty the flood-water from the basement while emptying a few of the upstairs rooms of all possessions since they are likely to collapse at some point in the near future. here are a few of the photos my father took of the aftermath.

...to the other:

speaking of flood waters, my brother and his wife had a problem (i think last fall) where the sewage under their house did not move through their property well, and went through the path of least resistance. this means simply having to defy gravity and surge through the drain in their garage. after this last "event" they created a list of all their possessions that were damaged by the cincinnati sewage water (since they are prohibited from keeping anything as the microbes of feces can be "harmful") and are then given a reimbursement from each that really only reaches garage sale prices (try to replace really nice musical equipment, computers, etc. on a garage sale budget, and then re-finish your basement).

the first production from the cincinnati metropolitan sewage district was not enough, so when the "authorities" thought they had solved the problem; they did not. this time, after having been told the problem was fixed, they moved their "new" possessions into the basement as well as some others since the office had to be moved and then the cincinnati msd decided to come out with the sequel. the video below is what they came home to find.

another sewage production

you can see there is little doubt that they are not responsible for a little back-up in their plumbing... also, i cannot think of much you can really do at that point to salvage the situation.

across the street

not to be left out (but really hoping to be left out of the fray) my sister began to notice some water coming through the ceiling. as of publication there was still no return from the adjustor to get the problem solved before it becomes a much larger issue. i hope that at no point there are neither photos nor videos to add to the entry.

other than the occasional indirect commentary, no more will be added here...

additional photos however, will be added. here is a link to more photos from my sister of the home destruction as the damage countinues to mount:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/fbx/?set=a.550780231904.2066167.206301068