Here are some trees made of sound – sounds recorded and then the soundwaves made large; made tree-like.  In place of the actual trees, you have a ravaged clearing, still echoing with the sounds of the fallen.  Imagine those sounds made visual, made vertical, and made monumental – monuments to a forest going missing…   See Also : Tviga

What is the day but an intersection, a series of moments about to happen –
a crossroads ?

A precarious act, to balance one’s self in the world, without destroying or being destroyed.

A heavy load must be carried to the crossroads, but may not yet have to be carted away. Look both ways…

I once found, in a Providence print shop, an image of the British ship Resolute.  One of those finds that quiets the mind, and awakens the imagination, without knowing why.  I didn’t know the history, but bought the etching and put it in a frame years ago.

The HMS Resolute was part of the British Navy in 1850.  Two years later it was enlisted to be part of a rescue mission to find Sir John Franklin, the explorer who had set out like so many others, to find the Northwest Passage through the Arctic Circle, and whose expedition had not been heard from in years.  In its search, the Resolute ventured up to Dealy Island and became frozen in ice.  After over a year had passed and the Resolute was still locked in, the captain abandoned the ship and marched his men off to find a way back.  The Resolute drifted for many months, empty.  In 1855 the ship was discovered by an American whaler, freed from ice, restored by the American government, and returned to Queen Victoria as a symbolic gesture of friendship.  This gift is documented in the etching of 1856.

In 1879 the ship was broken up by the British, and a desk was made from the wood.  As thanks for the ship’s return twenty years earlier, the Resolute desk was presented to US President Hayes in 1880 and has been in the Oval Office for almost every president since.

From forest to shipyard to Arctic wanderings to White House decor.
Sailing through the ocean storms, and the ice, and the years of emptiness, and the ultimate metamorphosis, something in the molecules of the wood must have had some good karma to be reborn so many times.   The Resolute is a survivor.

“Rebirth, then, is the pathway of evolution. It is the method by which nature progressively draws into growth or unfoldment the limitless capacities latent in all creatures from atoms to gods. Everything that has life reimbodies itself — universes, solar systems, suns, worlds, men, animals, and plants, cells, molecules, atoms. Each of these forms is ensouled by a spiritual consciousness-center which is evolving in its own degree, passing ever upward, and unfolding like a seed from within itself its latent potentialities.”
– Leoline L. Wright, ‘Reincarnation: A Lost Chord in Modern Thought’

See Also :: The burgeoning field of Deskology

Took a walk in Vermont today.
Found a spot and sat and peered into the bramble of grasses, branches, limbs and vines before me – the crows sang along, as did others.
Every good maze has a way in, but also a way out – how long can you look into the bramble before cutting through your own path ?
Then again, maybe just behind you is an open field.  Look around.

What’s in focus ?  Near ?  Or Far ?

See Also :: Wm Wordsworth, The Excursion, Book Ninth – Discourse of the Wanderer :

Yet was the mind to hindrances exposed,
Through which I struggled, not without distress
And sometimes injury, like a lamb enthralled
‘Mid thorns and brambles; or a bird that breaks
Through a strong net, and mounts upon the wind,
Though with her plumes impaired.

unisphere

…was the slogan for the 1964-64 World’s Fair.
Rode the 7 train to Flushing, Queens yesterday.
Walked around the Unisphere, around the kids skating in the dry fountain, and the families playing soccer along the Avenue of Progress.

Do we still have the will to create such grandiose monuments to an idea about the Future ?   Maybe they were just the pipe-dreams of a lot of powerful men who saw the Future as a hybrid state of existence between corporations and nations.  The Future was Large, Impressive, and Right-Around-The-Corner.  But the scale of the park (and the effort it took to build the New York World’s Fairs – 1939 and 1964 – on a former ash heap) are more inspiring than intimidating.  Maybe the least we could do is keep the rust off these old things… a tribute to our own capacity for idealism, even when idealism itself seems as dated as a World’s Fair.

See Also ::  Paleo-Future – concepts of the future from various moments in the past.

We have created a performance DVD of Feldman and the Infinite, and are seeking additional productions of the play.  Interested producers or theater managers please contact us for more information, or to request the DVD.

On September 11, 12, and 13, 2008, the play Feldman and the Infinite was performed at Artifact Pictures Studios, during the Philadelphia Fringe Festival.  We had a wonderful turnout and response, and special thanks are due to the cast for their commitment to the project.  On opening night, a reviewer from Interview Press attended, sat in the front row, and made a series of sketches of the performance.  Here they are, a wonderful document of a one-time event – they have a life and an energy that even photographs wouldn’t capture.  Thank you to artist and Sketch Book Reporter Aaron Krolikowski.

In 1975, Joseph Feldman, a 58-year-old lawyer in New York City, was discovered to have stolen 15,000 books from the New York Public Library. He had rented two or three apartments specifically to store these books, and it took 20 men, 7 truckloads over 3 days to remove them all.

Books covered the stove. Books filled the bathtub and sinks. There was only a small passageway leading through the apartment, not room enough to live.

But why did he do it ?

Was he obsessively hoarding ?  Making a political statement ? Making conceptual art ?  Or was he simply, as he told the judge who tried his case, reading ?  There are no accidents…

Feldman and the Infinite is a new play that speculates about Feldman’s motives, about seeking knowledge and enlightenment, and finding what appears to be randomness and chaos.

Feldman turns to his landlord, and his new acquaintance, the sculptor Christo, for guidance through the maze of his own obsession – told with humor, passion, and love for the library and its contents.

Feldman and the Infinite

a play by Erika Mijlin

featuring Jerry Perna, Jeffrey Adam Baxt, and Ted Borodaeff

Performed as part of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival

September 11-12-13, 2008 @ 8pm

at Artifact Pictures

Click here for directions

Click here for ticket info

or call 215.425.3721 for more information

Breaking News, September 1975…

Tour the stacks and the reading rooms of libraries around the world thanks to Curious Expeditions. Seen as a collection, the library – The Library – becomes abstract. In these photographs, virtually devoid of people, The Library is a concept : it is ‘potential’ energy as opposed to kinetic energy – the latent spring in the mind, coiled but waiting there, on the infinitely high shelves. Trying to decipher the magnetism of these images – having almost nothing to with a desire to actually read all of the books in each room – but each vaulted hall a physical manifestation of the phenomenon of the figurative mental space – the freedom to be found in endless rumination.