+
+
+
+ Rainbow (1973) (18.75 in. x 25.00 in)
+ Lithograph on paper
+
+
+
+
+ Bauermeister born 1934 Frankfurt, Germany, at the time was focused on pragmatic
+ reconstruction on the war torn cities. Bauermeister's unique home life gave sentiment
+ to the scientific and mystical influence. Her father's research in the genetic and
+ anthropogenic work may have been the start of Bauermeister's fascination with the human
+ experience, the natural laws of the world and our place within it. Additionally, she
+ recounts "astronomy. I never forget the night sessions with my grandfather [and] father
+ about the stars, the cycles of the planets, the mysteries of the moon and it phases -
+ early childhood memories," (Cahill 6), serving as a source of inspiration, and
+ childhood truth.
+
+
+ Additionally, growing up in post Nazi Germany affected her artistic pursuits, "the
+ illusion of beauty; the instabilities of form, norm; the hypocrisy behind
+ truth-spreading systems, be they religious, political, scientific," (Cahill 5), which
+ cause her works to focus on what she calls "the in-between", and the dualism between
+ truth and belief, or science and spirituality, and further how in our nature we analyze
+ and patternize connection, "They were not meant as absolute truth, they were
+ 'in-between' results of a thinking and feeling process," (Cahill).
+
+
+ Eventually Bauermeister grew into the Germany Fluxus and Nouveau Realism movements,
+ eager to redefine culture in response to a new post WW2 era. The Fluxus movement aimed
+ to bring art to all rather that the elite minority. Different than her peers, her
+ philosophy was "to make art was more a finding, searching process than a knowing,"
+ (Bauermeister, 1963). Smith College describes her methodology as "reminiscent of
+ 'automatic writing' (ecriture automatique), a form of spontaneous writing practiced by
+ the Surrealists of the earlier twentieth century. Bauermeister has described her
+ practice as 'a double process of spontaneous ideas which come up during the process of
+ working and ... a preconceived idea,' subject to change as her composition evolves"
+ (Muehlig).
+
+
+ Her "lens boxes" arguably her most well known works, are two dimensional works filled
+ with streams of consciousness and deliberate nonsense, obscured by optical lenses,
+ magnify glasses, and glass in wooden boxes.
+
+
+
+
+
+ Needless Needles (1972) (15.9 x 18.9 x 4.7 in.)
+ mixed media, india ink, glass lense
+
+
+
+
+
+ Needless Needles, 1964 (19 5/8 x 23 5/8 in)
+ Ink, colored ink, and pencil on paper
+
+
+
+
+ Throughout her rise to fame in the 1960s, and her work today, it is centered on tying
+ her natural, spiritual world with the scientific, mathematical understanding of micro
+ and macroscopic universe. Bauermeister said in an interview "I didn't want art to be
+ as firmly defined as science. I always wanted there to be something else, I always
+ wanted it to enter a level or layer other than what is predetermined and predefined. I
+ didn't want art to be as firmly defined as science." (Siano 10). Bauermeister is
+ particularly passionate about light and optics; "If you drove with a convex lens at a
+ certain distance over a black and white text, bordered on the border of black and white,
+ the letters with spectral colors! Breathless, I watched this discovery. It reminded me
+ of Faust II, where Goethe lets his fist say, 'We have the color in the colorful
+ reflection' 'Yes, it was about light!" (Oelschlager reciting Bauermeister). This
+ ideology reflects Goethe's experiments in "looking through lenses and the perception of
+ colour fringe effects....of in Faust 1831 which the seeker after truth is refracted as
+ through a prism, creating alternate identities of doubt" (Maconie 4, 8).
+
+
+ In Rainbow the two strips of color are like prisms of light orthogonally crossing each
+ other's paths. The more vertical of the two, consists of the colors in order of the
+ visible light spectrum. Strokes of pencil dash across the beam, breaking its straight
+ lines as if to fracture and obscure the prism, just as the glass lenses obscure the
+ image in her lense boxes.
+
+
+
+
+ Between the bands are clusters of dark circles, thematic in Bauermeister's work. On
+ Needless Needles (1964), "multiple spheres, some overlapping each other, some partially
+ framed by compass lines, suggesting the path of a planet in orbit," (Sechler). The
+ words cosmic harmony, galaxies, solar systems, energy and a variety of constellations
+ are clustered around these circular groups.
+
+
+
+
+ The two yellow colored parts of the piece below are irregular, and repetition of the
+ words cancer and sickness make the colored bodies malignant in comparison to the
+ circular clusters across the page, like a tumor. Bauermeister constructs a reality for
+ the viewer where the structure and communication of bodily cells is connected to the
+ gravitational relationships between celestial bodies and constellations, and light is a
+ form of communicative energy, and possible spirituality in the universe.
+
+
+
+
+
+ Wabenbild/Malberg 1961 (1 3/8 in. x 1 3/8)
+ Casein tempera, sculptural mass, phosphor paint on panel
+
+
+
+
+ Her early work in Wabenbild/Malberg 1961, "the possibilities (over absolute law)
+ deriving from such encounters of Bauermeister's mystical and spiritual concerns with
+ organic and planetary substances...It is possible to observe Bauermeister's
+ juxtapositions between infinity of the cosmic and the cells of living organisms,"
+ (Noy 38)
+
+
+ In her retrospective, Bauermeister discusses how her art is a means for thought drive.
+ "When looking at artworks, looking is generally required. Through the integration of
+ writing, the form of perception changes, the reading is added and requires the rapid
+ movement of the intellect from the letter to the mind, from the particular to the
+ general, from the surface to the depth....Written words engage in dialogue with the
+ viewer in a different way; it is a direct communication about the mind"
+ (Oelschlager reciting Bauermeister). Her use of artistic and written communication
+ are used as "instruments of perception, communication, and world-orientation, because
+ they easily link two different things together - something sensuous and somewhat
+ nonsensical, something present and something absent, something concrete and something
+ abstract" (Oelschlager reciting Bauermeister).
+
+
+ "By means of single words, which in turn represent whole word fields or chains of
+ associations, the artist can make the invisible visible....Similar to their slogan
+ 1 + 1 = 3, these terms stand for their approach of attaching special importance to the
+ indefinable, ambiguous, questionable and interpretable" (Oelschlager).
+
+
+
+
+
+ Orplid 1 und 2. Zweiteiliges Mappenwerk. Ca. 1979-82. (15.7 x 19.5 in.)
+ Lithograph on paper
+
+
+
+
+ Her only other lithographic work which uses similar colors are her Orplid 1 and
+ Orplid 2 from 1979 (ill. Pp. 68-75), "which were created in response to the death of
+ their mother...in which she painstakingly realized the farewell to her mother, who had
+ always been supportive of her side, but dedicated to life, dealing with the hereafter,
+ the reversal of space and time," (Oelschlager). It is possible that Rainbow is a way
+ for Bauermeister to conceptualize, intellectualize and spiritualize her mother's battle
+ with cancer.
+
+
+ To conclude, although Rainbow creates a relationship between the human experience, the
+ cellular and celestale, it does not project Bauermeister's own spirituality and
+ experience. Rainbow is valuable in that it is made shortly after her artistic voice in
+ the Fluxus movement and the start of her lense boxes. It culminates her use of art as
+ a way to change our perception of reality, and deviate from absolute truth, adding
+ humanity to her intellectualization of her mother's illness.
+
+ Bauermeister, Mary. "Mary Bauermeister - Detailed Biography." Edited by Simon
+ Stockhausen, Mary Bauermeister Virtual Gallery, 2017,
+ www.marybauermeister.org/biography.html.
+
+
+ Bauermeister, Mary, and Linda D. Muehlig. Mary Bauermeister, The New York Decade.
+ Smith College Museum of Art, 2014.
+
+
+ Bauermeister, Wolf. "Die Pneumatisierung Des Schädels Bei Den Anthropoiden Und Dem
+ Gibbon Und Ihre Bedeutung Für Die Menschliche Abstammungslehre."
+ Zeitschrift Für Morphologie Und Anthropologie, vol. 38, no. 1, 1939,
+ pp. 90-121. JSTOR,
+ www.jstor.org/stable/25749616.
+
+
+ Boecker, Susanne, and Mary Bauermeister. "DUBIO ERGO SUM (I Doubt, Therefore I Am)."
+ Art Museum Villa Zanders, Dec. 2017,
+ www.villa-zanders.de/download/portrait.pdf.
+ Accessed 5 Dec. 2018.
+
+
+ Cahill, Timothy, and Mary Bauermeister. "The Great Society An Exuberant Assemblage
+ from the 1960s Leads to an Overlooked Master." Art Conservator, vol. 4, no. 1,
+ 2009, pp. 4-7.
+
+
+ Maconie, Robin. "Message of 'Light': Goethe, Stockhausen and the New Enlightenment."
+ Tempo, vol. 58, no. 230, 2004, pp. 2-8. JSTOR,
+ www.jstor.org/stable/3878733.
+
+ Noy, Irene. "Art That Does Not Make Noise? Mary Bauermeister's Early Work and
+ Exhibition with Karlheinz Stockhausen." Immediations The Courtauld Institute of Art
+ Journal Postgraduate Research, vol. 3, no. 2, 2013, pp. 24-43.
+
+ Siano, Leopoldo. "Between Music and Visual Art in the Sixties: Mary Bauermeister and
+ Karlheinz Stockhausen." The Music Legacy of Karlheinz Stockhausen: Looking Back and
+ Forward, University of Cologne, 2016.
+
A Note on Cavell's The World Viewed,
+ The Joy and Purpose of Cinema
+
+
+ It's half-past one this Sunday, it rains outside quietly. I'm sitting in the comfy
+ chair in my bedroom. As on most mornings, I get out of bed, I put clothing on, I eat,
+ linger, reluctant to leave or frozen in the guilt of today's responsibilities. I've
+ realized that expectation, and routine dictate my choices. It seems like it's been a
+ while since I woke with a definitive goal or dream, something to rise to. It seems
+ like it's been a while since I lived without something to plan or prepare for, yet I
+ find myself to be fairly content in this moment.
+
+
+ On other mornings, I'll go back to sleep. Some department in my mind is analyzing the
+ processes and obligations of the outside world. Throwing meetings, and searching for
+ files. All the while a part of me, like a kid sick from school and at the office with
+ mom, feels distant from these corporate affairs. These days my head is filled with
+ deadlines and distractions and daydreams. These days I want to freeze time. I want to
+ be transparent in the mind of others and my burdens.
+
+
+ I used to wake to an occasion each morning. No hesitation, attuned as if each day was
+ exploration and consequence-less improv. My life eventually lead me to live in this
+ suburb and to attend this middle school between a graveyard and a hospital. Someone or
+ serendipity thought that this should exist, and I was in the making of it. Like in
+ a movie.
+
+
+ It happened a few weeks ago. I went to a reenactment of the Stop Making Sense
+ performance. Once in a Lifetime played, and it felt like I woke up from my life for
+ a moment. In an interview with NPR, Byrne said: "We operate half awake or on autopilot
+ and end up, whatever, with a house and family and job and everything else, and we
+ haven't really stopped to ask ourselves 'how did I get here'." It feels like we all
+ find ourselves in this forceful dream. I'm interested in the way that the experience
+ of a movie affects our conscious experience, and what purpose it serves our lives.
+
+
+ As I read The World Viewed, I resonated with Cavell's "metaphysical memoir -
+ not the story of a period of my life but an account of the conditions it has
+ satisfied," (Cavell, xix), I wanted to understand the account of the conditions of
+ when I felt associated with my life, and in the same light how movies change us.
+
+
+ Meals remind me of movies. I like meals. Meals with company. Meals without company
+ are so so. We make the food or the food is made for us. And we sit down, with plate
+ in front of us. And we feel a sense of purpose. Hunger is innate, routine, and this
+ meal wasn't wrong in a way like snacking is. The meal is a part of our day that we
+ attend to. It is a piece of time. It is shared in each family household, like
+ Rockwell's Thanksgiving. Movies are like meals. We sit down to eat them. We are
+ hungry, well what are we hungry for?
+
+
+
Escapism
+
+
+ The opening chapter of The World Viewed begins with the question of why
+ movies are important. It ends with the question "What is film?" For Cavell (and
+ myself) these are not separable. If this were his memoir, there was a turning point
+ between Cavell and his relationship to movies. "The movie's ease within its
+ assumptions and achievements - its conventions remaining convenient for so much of
+ its life, remaining convincing and fertile without self-questioning - is central to
+ its pleasure for us....how has film been able to provide this pleasure?" (15)
+
+
+ Like Barthes, Cavell notes that this mirrors reality unlike how a painting can. It
+ could be said further that what painting wanted, in wanting connection with reality,
+ was a sense of presentness - not exactly a conviction of the world's presence to us,
+ but of our presence to it.... by removing the human agent from the task of
+ reproduction....Photography maintains the presentness of the world by accepting our
+ absence from it. (22-23). As if you step into a new reality. Until games virtual
+ reality becomes indistinguishable from reality, movies are unlike other art forms
+ because of this connection to reality or a pseudo reality.
+
+
+ Is the pleasure in the escape? Escapism is the tendency to seek distraction and
+ relief from unpleasant realities, especially by seeking entertainment or engaging in
+ fantasy. Moviegoing, not movie watching, can be an escape in that you enter into a
+ theater which boxes you off from all sights and sounds of the outside world. The
+ motion picture Cavell describes "A camera is an opening in a box...for confining
+ (senses), leaving room for thought.... It screens me from the world it holds - that
+ is, makes me invisible. And it screens that world from me - that is, screens its
+ existence from me." (Cavell 24). "I am present not at something happening, which I
+ must confirm, but at something that has happened, which I absorb (like a memory). In
+ this, movies resemble novels, a fact mirrored in the sound of narration itself, whose
+ tense is the past" (Cavell 25-26).
+
+
+ I'm sure there are movie viewers that seek movies with a specific characters or story
+ arch; characters that exist and are like us, with a quest, and goal that they live
+ for or rise to. The audience can live vicariously through those characters within the
+ two hour picture, but is infinite in its reality. To feel what it would be like if we
+ were in love or successful, etc. To me the many genres Cavell denotes to the classic
+ hollywood, and many of today's box office success exploit one's pleasure in their
+ respective cliches, or if you believe in the human condition, our desires.
+
+
+ Movies that end with a resolution of a character's self or a success or failure of
+ resolution in their world are common. And if a movie-goer wants to fantasize, and
+ escape to a reality of success, it serves them. As we discussed in class,
+ acknowledgement requires a decisive conscious choice. Movies sedate and force us to
+ acknowledge a different reality because we absorb it like memory, and it screens us
+ from existence. All those sheeple, and their simple pleasures.
+
+
+
Expressionism
+
+
+ Our dreams at night are senseless, and upon waking we feel misplaced from the
+ normalcy of how it felt and how our awakened brain rationalizes our sleep. But every
+ once in awhile we dream something that makes perfect sense. So much sense that we are
+ in awe and want to know what happens next, and we know that we can't do it again,
+ because the "toon in next time" left the station once you realized it was a dream.
+ Daydreams can't compete. Daydreams are crude in indulgence like masturbation in
+ contrast to sex. But movies. Cinema gives the dreamer lucidity, consistency and a
+ living instance that will remain this time forward. A movie stimulates you more
+ intimately. A night dream and movies overcome you with an affective response.
+
+
+ A director is controlling the scenarios they dream so that they cinematographically
+ recreate this imaginary moment. It's like a dream going to the movies. Somehow you
+ appear there. And the tone of it all, the coloring the music. Things you didn't know
+ that we're going to happen do happen but you completely accept the next flash of
+ images and film. This is your experience because you consciously acknowledge and
+ decide how things make sense. Like oh "I became naked because I saw the sun and it
+ was hot. And I ran down the road once I knew that and I ran and fell in my bed."
+ Although a movie gives us the freedom to create something, it is only really true for
+ writers/directors with the privilege of producers, actors, and all points of
+ production, but I guess the best of directors and storytellers exploit the audience's
+ captivity in fantasy creationism.
+
+
+
The part where I start to diverge from Cavell
+
+
+ On pages 22-23, Cavell argues that presentness in photography, and the validity of
+ reality exists because we were separate in making this real picture, a camera shot it,
+ unlike a painting: "Then our subjectivity (our absence from the photograph) became
+ what is present to us, individuality became isolation. The route to conviction in
+ reality was through the acknowledgment of that endless presence of self." He supposes
+ that we value art because we wish for selfhood (simultaneous granting of otherness).
+ And from it spawns romanticism between representation and the acknowledgement of our
+ subjectivity.
+
+
+ I disagree with Cavell because I think we enjoy the breaking of selfhood. Selfhood is
+ the quality that constitutes one's individuality; the state of having an individual
+ distinct identity. It is this weird phenomenon when you watch a movie and you are
+ somehow split from the outside world that we attend to like a pipeline. What does he
+ mean by this individuality. It seems like individuality has to do with divisibility.
+ Its as if you had a real objective power to separate yourself from the existence that
+ the outside world dictates for you. Its like how I felt when i woke up and said no no
+ no more. It's like me staying still in that comfy chair was like defying time, and the
+ pipeline. It was this divisibility from my life. I think that's what sleep is like,
+ what movies are like. They give you this freedom to say every part of my subjective
+ experience isn't mine anymore, but more to be divisible from yourself.
+
+
+ Our subjectivity is not earth shattering. We already feel our view and individuality
+ is defeated. And what followed is our obsession with the attempt of objectivism. Your
+ ideology became as personal as yourself. With subjectivism or neoliberalism. I don't
+ know if the truth exists for people. I don't think they trust their thoughts. They
+ want to be right maybe, but I don't think they want that thorn of rightness. They
+ want to exist. They want a movie because it's as if you escaped yourself, and your
+ obligation to yourself to be right. In a religiously scientific society, we assess
+ good and bad to opinion. It's not about developing a hypothesis. This world is past
+ the developing understanding of information.
+
+
+ I think that this answers something about how we view our own agency, whether there
+ is some freedom in being absurd, emotional and irrational. I think irrationality is
+ kind of beautiful. It's something that goes against the way everything seems to be.
+ It's only for ourselves, for us humans. Its intoxicating to not have a self enact on
+ the world. Dreaming and entering the world of a movie is an acceptance of absurdity.
+ Its an escape from the scientific religious society predicament.
+
+
+ I'm watching a movie. No one cares about who I am or have become, and I don't want
+ to be it because it was always better when I was less of a stack of experiences of a
+ person, to have a personality, then to be like wind. For Cavell, the time before the
+ modernity shift might have been of individual freedom, "When moviegoing was casual and
+ we entered at no matter what point in the proceedings... we took our fantasies and
+ companions and anonymity inside and left with them intact" (Cavell, 11). Movie times
+ and movie going became regimented, and the advent of World War II took our belief that
+ we have no power on the world.
+
+
+ The screen relieves us from our own experience. When we watch a movie we are invited
+ into a world that is not our own but is like our own, and allows us to experience a
+ life that isn't ours. It's like when you're really talking to someone on the phone,
+ and you both exist in a space that isn't in your room or your friend's but somewhere
+ between the phone cables. So it is an out of body and breaking the continuum of our
+ day, and our local experience, into something connecting like that phone line.
+
+
+ Cavell may hint this with his love of privacy, and our displacement from our natural
+ world or experience. "In viewing films, the sense of invisibility is an expression of
+ modern privacy or anonymity. It is as though the world's projection explains our forms
+ of unknownness and of our inability to know. The explanation is not so much that the
+ world is passing us by, as that we are displaced from our natural habitation within
+ it, placed at a distance from it" (40-41). It seems kind of funny to me that selfhood
+ and individuality is the arrowhead of your experience or to Cavell this natural
+ habitation.
+
+
+ Are our realities automatisms like Deleuze's way of breaking recognition? To be
+ forced to recognize another style of thought. I'm not talking about taking a step
+ back to examine things. The intrigue is the escape from selfhood. Maybe it's about
+ being in an individualistic society. We value the development of character. Your life
+ seems to become these automatisms. These recognitions that you react to. Its like you
+ can't help it anymore. So go to this movie, and it intercepts your selfhood. Breaks
+ the continuum of your experience. It is unlike the experience of a theater because
+ you as an audience as a self have some say in the performance. Cabbage and tomatoes.
+
+
+ Footnote: I looked around online for someone to agree with me, because I want to
+ be right, and I found Prof. Leddy of San Jose State University's blog post to reckon
+ with. "Cavell says: 'It could be said further, that what painting wanted, in wanting
+ connection with reality, was a sense of presentness - not exactly a conviction of the
+ world's presence to us, but of our presence to it.' (69) This is where his theme of
+ the great quest of overcoming skepticism comes in: 'At some point the unhinging of
+ our consciousness from the world interposed our subjectivity between us and our
+ presentness to the world. Then our subjectivity became what is present to us,
+ individuality became subjective.' (69) I would call this the Cartesian wrong turning:
+ a wrong turning that everyday aesthetics seeks to overcome. The opposite of
+ individuality in Cartesian isolation is individuality interacting with the surrounding
+ world, i.e. the sense of John Dewey's notion of experience." This was meant to be a
+ footnote because he deserves some "rightness" too.
+
+
+ Movie going reminded me of my young self. When I was a kid, I didn't have to plan. I
+ did not have selfhood or a conscious effort to be a person or an individual. There is
+ only the now to experience. To explore. There comes an age when I grew up, and that
+ for me entailed giving up my freedoms of living and life to prepare. My person was
+ intertwined with the planning, and pipeline to a future or ideal self and
+ circumstance. Or the pipeline, planning, preparing, becoming has been my natural
+ habitation.
+
+
+ What happened to me. Bryan told me that he watches a film each day, and that Bryan
+ Arita only chooses responsibilities he can get out of if need be. He has allowed
+ himself a life where he can make choices that are not dictated by expectations, and
+ routine. If you think about sleeping with Sarah, does that mean you're unsatisfied
+ with Rebecca? Could you ever be satisfied with a single Rebecca? Could you ever be
+ satisfied with your life without escapism, expressionism, or an escape from something
+ that isn't your own? Well Rebecca, and you change, and for the convenience of free
+ will, it would be a hell of a lot nicer to live a life that satisfied your dreams.
+ Unless you want to talk about Paterson or Ikiru, part of life is accepting what it
+ is, and your hinge of existence in life, and part of it is allowing, and making
+ decisions that express and create your own dream. But whether that is possible, I
+ guess it depends on your dreams, and who you are.
+
+ The other day I was looking through my memory box. Came across these old photographs
+ of my family and me from when I was a kid in the summertime. They're from past summers
+ we all stayed in Aunt Sonia's New England vacation home. I never met Aunt Sonia. Aunt
+ Wendy and Joel were old wave artists and makers in the Boston contemporary scene. One
+ of their high class connections was Aunt Sonia. Sonia had two pieces of real estate in
+ Rockport, one of Massachusetts' coastal towns, the kind of place where you only packed
+ your beige Talbots slacks. You own a poodle mix. You live for the Volvo wagon suburban
+ aesthetic. Anyways, Sonia's first place was a historic witch hiding house, you know
+ Arthur Miller Crucible shit. Six year old me was not about this joint. Gave me
+ the creeps. The second place was this spot on the rocks. It was a guilty
+ yuppies' avant-gardener architectural hide away. Aunt Sonia would let the Hoo family
+ reside there for a few weeks in the summer, and in return, Uncle Joel would clean and
+ fix up the place.
+
+
+ So these photographs aren't like your normal photographs. Have you ever taken a panorama
+ on your phone? If you have, you probably would have made me uncomfortable twirling with
+ your phone as you captured the moment, like you were entranced with your lover, Mr.
+ Phoney. These photos are hoagie sized and linear, as if a director wheeled the camera
+ across the backyard, or out on the rocks and the seafront. It's sunny in all of the
+ photos, the light is warm and bright. The ocean has a glazed pottery blue, the wood of
+ the house is grey and gritty, makes your hands feel splintery. I smell the old sponge
+ smell of the carpet, the dusty people smell of the coaches, and the sweetness of the
+ sun baked books. I remember the time I got up in the night, climbed out of bed, took
+ the ladder to the third floor, slid the screen door, and walked out onto the balcony
+ to a view of waves, a full moon, and solitude. I know, I was a deep little six year old.
+
+
+ My brother Cameron and I were much younger than my high school cousins. Lily and Jasmine
+ would watch over us, and Toshi would hangout with his girlfriend. They showed us West
+ Side Story, and in return we'd surprise wake them up in the morning. My mom wasn't in
+ the picture then, so Aunt Wendy, Lily and Jasmine were like maternal and older sisterly
+ figures to us. My dad got to put his feet up, sleep, and listen to Jazz CDs in the
+ living room. We were there for a few weeks, but once Cameron and I were nine, we stopped
+ going to Sonia's.
+
+
+ Aunt Sonia has since passed away. Her kids have families who repair the place and keep
+ it company in the summers. My mom's in the picture. My brother and I are in college.
+ My dad lives with his girlfriend and their cats. Aunt Wendy and Joel divorced. He resides
+ in his bachelor art loft in Clearwater, FL. My cousins and Aunt Wendy trickled out to
+ the West Coast. Aunt Wendy was a hippy who went to California in the 70's when everyone
+ wanted to be Joni Mitchell, or Kerouac. Now they're all involved in the arts and are
+ gentrifying Oakland.
+
+
+ The Rockport that was doesn't exist anymore. And it does too. It exists in a memory.
+ It exists in a box where I keep all my paper memories. The photographs are hoagie sized
+ mirrors, reflecting a moment. Without us though, all of its context is lost. It isn't a
+ mirror of anything but a house and coast line. It isn't the sweet smell of sun baked
+ paperback books. It isn't the poking of little nails as you walk up the old carpeted
+ stairs. It isn't salt sprayed wood or Cameron getting poison ivy. It's an oddly long
+ photograph. The color is overly vibrant. If you're with people long enough, any place
+ could be filled with moments and sensations, but it's also never there. It's a memory.
+
+
+ The only place that I am of is now. My memory box is both a time capsule and a coffin
+ of who and where I was from. As much as I remember about the past the only thing that
+ exists is now and will ever exist is now. Outside of the photos in the box is my day to
+ day world. I have campus memorized, but Lehigh isn't a place I'm in. A lecture room is
+ more of a tool than a place for me, where I get the job done of being a student. There
+ are few memories of moments. Now I'm from my freshman hall. I'm the doodles in my notes,
+ the Laury Street anarchist cooperative house, Sokols, the members only, smoker
+ friendly bowling alley on Hillside. These are the places I am. Hey there reader, place
+ I am of now are these words where I am ever living and dying. All of these places are
+ dead and alive. If you're almost done reading this, remember to look up for a minute.
+ You're a big sack of meat and memories, dying and living too. The only thing you really
+ have is now.
+
+ Blood is renewed rhythmically. Like relay runners on a track, cells pass batons back
+ and forth, from lungs to heart and outwards. Inhalation calls them back, resetting the
+ race. The breath purifies the river of life, expelling the body's waste in spent sugar
+ remains. The runners reset. Carbon removed, blood anew.
+
+
+ The quiet heart. Its left atrium expands, inviting oxygen rich blood cells into the
+ first room. The atrium contracts, opening the door to the left ventricle. Its muscles
+ wrap the walls, waiting for the signal to open the gates. Onwards. A network of blood
+ shoots upstream the tributaries of vasculo-muscular tissues, to the loneliest fractal
+ ends of capillaries. Oxygen is released, the body rejoices, the blood becomes acrid
+ with carbonic acid. The poor blood is pulled back through the veins and returns to its
+ heart through the right side, atrium to ventricle and back to the sweet lungs. Carbon
+ and oxygen swing in and out of the body like a lead and follow. Sugar and air for each
+ moment of life. Her heart beats steadily 369 beats per minute.
+
+
+ How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! Here will we sit and let the sound of
+ music creep in our ears.
+
+
+ On the workbench lies a clear plastic shoe box connected to a system of machines by
+ two tubes. A gauge measures the amount of gas left in a canister of oxygen. A small
+ device attached to the tank controls the flow of oxygen to the tube. The last machine
+ whirls a solution into vapor, waiting to be misted in with the flow of air. The gauge
+ off, such that the shoe box is solely filled with air.
+
+
+ An assistant weighs the mouse. 21 grams. She is lifted into the box by the tail. The
+ lid is sealed. Her fine whiskers brush each wall and corner, bending against hard
+ plastic. She peers up at the assistant through the glass ceiling.
+
+
+ He switches the gauge, to administer 4% concentration of vaporized Isoflurane.
+
+
+ 20 seconds. Her attention is diverted to the smell emitted from a small circular vent;
+ pungent and unpleasant. Pacing the room frantically, her body becomes excited, alert,
+ unsteady. She can't keep upright.
+
+
+ 56 seconds. Concentration is lowered to 2%.
+
+
+ Lulled, she rests, drowsy, her heart beats 259 beats per minute. The assistant tilts
+ the box. The body tumbles to one side.
+
+
+ Soft stillness, and the night becomes the touches of sweet harmony.
+
+
+ 1 minute, 45 seconds. The body is equilibrated with the inhalant, 2% Isoflurane.
+
+
+ 2 minutes 20 seconds. The assistant turns the gauge and vaporizer off, and the chamber
+ is filled with pure O2. The remaining inhalant exits to the waste evacuation system.
+ Removing the lid, he holds her warm body. He pinches her foot. No response. Like
+ threading a needle, he inserts a small cone into her nose, dispersing a light dose of
+ the anesthetic to ensure she stays sedated. He places her back against the styrofoam
+ board, pins her arms to the side, and her ankles to the base.
+
+
+ Look how the floor of heaven is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold. There's not
+ the smallest orb that thou beholst, but in his motion like an angel sings. Such
+ harmony is in immortal souls.
+
+ Ти, мабуть, думаєш: чому ця дивна дівчина говорить українською?
+
+
+ Я хотіла б стати бабцею. Хто б не хотіла стати бабцею?
+ Вони дуже маленькі, дуже сильні, дуже милі й дуже квадратні.
+ Усі знають, що справжні бабусі говорять українською.
+
+
+ Але серйозно - чому?
+
+
+ Я почала, бо хотіла пожартувати над друзями кілька років тому. Ще у 2018 році
+ перша фраза, яку я вивчила, була «ненавиджу». Коли я зустрічала українця, я тиснула
+ йому руку і казала: «ненавиджу». Але ж ти знаєш, для мене це просто звуки. О, як це
+ гарно звучить! «ненавиджу» звучить, як поезія для американця. Навіть слово «молоко» -
+ англійською це просто "milk", а українською - молоко.
+
+
+ Зрештою я зустрічалася з українцем, і він розповів мені про борщ. Як можна вивчати
+ українську й не знати борщу? Це було під час пандемії, у січні, і він розповів мені
+ про зелений борщ - і що це смак весни. Я уявляла, що він на смак, як ранкова роса на
+ траві, коли розквітають вишні.
+
+
+ Мені здається, якби існувала українська версія «Матриці», там була б стара бабця з
+ двома мисками, і вона б казала: «Ти обираєш червоний чи зелений?»
+
+
+ У США неможливо знайти зелений борщ, бо в нас немає щавлю. Тож я намагалася його
+ виростити - не вийшло. Потім я чекала, поки пандемія закінчиться, і поїхала аж у
+ Літл Одесу в Брукліні, і там спробувала його - і це було огидно.
+
+
+ У січні 2024 року я була в Парижі на змаганнях із джиу-джитсу.
+ Я запитала свою подругу Марусю, чи могла б вона допомогти мені поїхати в Україну.
+ Який сенс навчатися чотири роки, якщо ніколи не маєш нагоди говорити? Нарешті я
+ могла використати всі слова, які вивчила - наприклад, «промислове сільське господарство».
+
+
+ Її дідусь був на пенсії, колишній професор промислової інженерії з Київського
+ політехнічного інституту. Він був першим, хто почав викладати українську після падіння
+ Радянського Союзу.
+
+
+ Тепер він жив сам, зі своїм собакою та котом. Нарешті я могла зустріти справжнього
+ дідуся! Івана Івановича!
+
+
+ Він сумував за студентами й запропонував допомогти мені з українською.
+ Ми пішли на вечерю біля станції метро «Олімпія» - у кримський ресторан.
+ Він був чудовий, такий наполегливий під час вечері. Він говорив французькою і трохи
+ китайською, і ми грали у поліглотичний телефон.
+ Мене зачарував цей чоловік у свої сімдесят.
+
+
+ Наступного дня ми пішли на прогулянку з його собакою. Це було справжнє випробування -
+ я запитала, як звуть собаку, і намагалася сказати, що він його тінь. Як, чорт забирай,
+ пояснити, що таке тінь?
+
+
+ Він зварив картоплю і сказав, що диявол - це сіль.
+ Потім повільно змусив мене читати одну зі своїх лекцій про вітряки.
+
+
+ Його квартира була повна скарбів з років, проведених на Мадагаскарі - корали, карти,
+ усе як у домі мандрівника.
+
+
+ Коли я повернулася додому того вечора, я плакала.
+ Мене щось дуже глибоко зачепило - він був таким чудовим чоловіком.
+ І я подумала, що тисячі юнаків ніколи не стануть дідусями.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
diff --git a/wave-in-a-seascape.html b/wave-in-a-seascape.html
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+++ b/wave-in-a-seascape.html
@@ -0,0 +1,131 @@
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ to become a wave in a seascape
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ I'm not convinced that time is linear. Occasionally I daydream in class. A day passes
+ by as the professor changes slides. My mind often drifts to memories or make-believe
+ moments of people who exist only in the past. When they drift out of my existence, they
+ stick to my thoughts vividly for months or longer. Those strangers we meet can feel
+ familial after an initial conversation. Although it is against my logic, they strike
+ through me metaphysically. I'm coming to think that the way we perceive time is based
+ solely on what we choose to remember.
+
+
+ A few summers ago I was a teacher's assistant for a middle school's writing program.
+ The class was your run-of-the-mill suburban group. Half of the students were book worms,
+ half the student's had moms who wanted book worms. Once the students were acclimated and
+ the tone was set. One girl caught my attention.
+
+
+ She glowed, had an aura of individuality. Wasn't afraid to say what she felt, and said
+ what everyone felt. She was deliberate, easy to talk to, and aware of how she came off
+ to her peers, yet wasn't concerned with herself when she spoke to others. She felt a love
+ of people and connection wholeheartedly, such that there was no room in her mind for self
+ absorption or negativity. Her lack of insecurity and self awareness made you feel
+ uncomfortable at first, but her charisma spread like crab weeds. To the class, she was
+ the protagonist of a book or theme of a symphony, shining through in subtle, moving ways.
+
+
+ I read her first essay, an introduction and explanation of herself. She was the daughter
+ of a single dad, and a few minutes elder to her twin brother. As a child she had the
+ fortune of little supervision, independence, and solitude. She frequented the classroom
+ library, exchanging short stories and coming of age classics. In her essays, she
+ cultivated a repertoire of characters from her recently read books and notable poets.
+ After the day was over, I'd ride my bike home, passing by the school yard. I remember
+ spotting her - bobbing and weaving among a crew of loitering kids.
+
+
+ Summer ends. Time passes. Pointer clicks. Slide changes. The lecture continues.
+
+
+ She's always been a standard I hold myself up to. I've never had luck with people.
+ Probably due to my social anxiety, and lack of self-awareness. Sometimes I feel like I'm
+ in a cinema aside two strangers, focused on our arm rests, rather than the big picture.
+ In a conversation, I like to imagine my stream of consciousness is a shepherd, herding
+ my thoughts and beliefs into something whole. Its a blessing and a curse to see past
+ someone's eyes. I'm quite neurotic, hyper aware of myself and the unease it puts in the
+ posture of others. My peers notice my discomfort as I resemble something closer to a
+ herding dog, running in the space between myself and others. In the face of my
+ insecurities. Like a nostalgic scent, I've grown an obsession, to return to those
+ moments, and love as fearlessly as she.
+
+
+ That period of my life is a lost trail, as if there was a way to trace back to or
+ stumble upon my former self. To clarify, she is no stranger, but myself. My time in high
+ school that followed middle school is distorted. During that period, I often felt like a
+ buoy, mooring narcissistic and abusive boats, drifting and drowning in stress. When you
+ live the life of buoy for so long, you loose track of yourself, associating more as a
+ wave in a seascape. I had lost my self-worth, and slip away to a simple past. I can't
+ remember much from this time of my life, and I don't think I chose to remember or forget
+ this period. When you live in the past, the present slips by.
+
+
+ I'm learning how to feel alone, uncomfortable, and weird.
+
Вони дуже маленькі, дуже сильні, дуже милі й дуже квадратні. Усі знають, що справжні бабусі говорять українською.
read more here
+ href="./ukr-shchodennyk.html">read more here
Hoagie Roll Photos
@@ -66,8 +74,7 @@
R.E.M.'s Nightswimming and Heidegger's Being & Time.
read more here
+ href="./hoagie-roll-photos.html">read more here
Investigating Bauermeister's Rainbow
@@ -82,8 +89,7 @@
humanity to her intellectualization of her mother's illness.
read more here
+ href="./bauermeister-rainbow.html">read more here
to become a wave in a seascape
@@ -99,8 +105,7 @@
time is based solely on what we choose to remember...
read more here
+ href="./wave-in-a-seascape.html">read more here
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+