A photo from the nepal trip and some killer Browning

Machhapuchre Base Camp

Here we are. 13,000ft. It's 3pm or so. Done for the day. The way up to this modest guest house was insane, probably the hardest of the whole trip for me. We'd started 4 days ago in sticky jungle. By this altitude in the trek, we're walking along the sides of mountains. Clouds roll in around 2pm. Snow and rain are not far behind.

3pm is late to finish but I'm the slowest of the group. The path was covered in fog in all directions except for a few feet ahead. I'm convinced I have a healthy dose of altitude sickness (symptoms: severe headache, nausea, feeling drunk) and it didn't help to watch a young girl rushed down the mountain held onto tightly by a sherpa. (The only way out of altitude sickness is to go down the up way immediately.) Eventually we make it to this point in the photo, our stop for the night, where I snap this before rushing off to get some tea and food in me. I end up being fine, the altitude sickness passes by morning. We start the last portion of the trek at 4am, in total darkness, to reach Annapurna Base Camp by sunrise.

The whole dumb thing about all of this is that I'm struggling to make it to the freakin base camp. That's where climbers start to climb Annapurna. It sort of feels like walking to Boston to reach the starting line of the Boston marathon. I don't know how much of this stuff is interesting to people who don't know me at all. A lot of the events of the trip are still sort of frozen in my brain, and it's hard to know how much is interesting to the casual reader of this blog. The trip was great, but it was big, and I feel like I have to take back pieces of it at a time, for me, but it would be great if you read it and enjoy it too. Whether or not y'all want to stick around for that...

Here's some killer Browning better describing what it feels like to barely make it to 13,000ft and see those badass mountains...

These are wild fancies, but I feel, sweet friend,
As one breathing his weakness to the ear
Of a pitying angel—dear as a winter flower.
A slight flower growing alone, and offering
Its frail cup of three leaves to the cold sun,
Yet and confiding, like the triumph
Of a child—and why am I not worthy thee?

I can live all the life of plants, and gaze
Drowsily on the bees that flit and play,
Or bare my breast for sunbeams which will kill,
Or open in the night of sounds, to look
For the dim stars; I can mount with the bird,
Leaping airily his pyramid of leaves
And twisted boughs of some tall mountain tree,
Or rise cheerfully springing to the heavens—
Or like a fish breathe in the morning air
In the misty sun-warm water—or with flowers
And trees can smile in light at the sinking sun,
Just as the storm comes—as a girl would look
On a departing lover—most serene.

- Robert Browning Pauline

a solidly freakin' awesome blog

If you're into clean, crisp writing you have to check out the 37 Signals blog. They're software designers who blog about all sorts of stuff. This particular post is about small leather company that tells its story well.

Read the rest of the post here.

Layout change

Had to change the layout of the blog to fix some formatting issues. Commenting wasn't available for some reason. A bunch of weird bugs too. I might go back to the other format later, but doing it this way for now. If the new layout is annoying, let me know.

couple of drawings in nepal

A couple of drawings there in Nepal...

 

Related posts: 
Back from Nepal 
A photo from Nepal and some killer Browning 
Back atcha nepal

Love this

From Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard P. Feynman I'm reading. Well written. Excellent.

April 23, 2012

From an interesting article at Fast Company - "The Lost Steve Jobs Tapes":

It's a higher-risk strategy, but the rewards are gonna be much higher, and it's where our hearts are.

Back from Nepal

Back from Nepal. Wowee. Nothing to say right now. Maybe the pictures will do the talking? I don't know. Maybe later. I bought a brilliant book there: The Snow Leopard. Part Never Cry Wolf. Part history of Nepal and Buddhism 101. All around, my cup of tea. Better than Into Thin Air. And speaking of Nepal and the Himalaya, I saw this quote today from W. H. Murray's The Scottish Himalayan Expedition (1951):

... but when I said that nothing had been done I erred in one important matter. We had definitely committed ourselves and were halfway out of our ruts. We had put down our passage money— booked a sailing to Bombay. This may sound too simple, but is great in consequence. Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets: Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!

My Batman comic

Heading off to Nepal right now(!) but before I do, wanted to upload this small story I prepared about Batman. It's sort of a comic, sort of not. Sort of vulgar, sort of not :) Seriously tho, there is a parental warning on this one (a few swear words and adult themes :) But that's the way I'd like Batman to be. Real and all (Aye, slit moon, yachtsman of out is an anagram of Too many lies. Too much fantasy.) Enjoy, and if you like it, pass it around.

 

Adolf Wölfli is off the grid

Caught the Adolf Wölfli exhibition at the Stone Bell yesterday. Overwhelming is the right word. Finally though.

There are plenty of places to read about the troubled life of Adolf Wölfli if you'd like. There's also a really good Czech site about the exhibition. In short, he made thousands of drawings and filled something like 40 books with writing and music notation during his lifelong residence at a mental asylum in Bern, Switzerland.

His pictures combine drawing with text and musical notation. The number of pictures, the detail in each, the time it must have taken, the mix of poetry with music with drawing - all on show here - are pretty impressive.

Kudos to the exhibition people that a lot of this music is actually available to listen to here. But it's a bummer that with all the writing in pictures that there's no translation beyond the titles of the pieces. The text is in German as far as I can tell. Occasionally there's a taste of his writing in one of his quotes up on the walls

"I can rock the whale, the whale rides it."

which is great. I just wish there were more translations since there is so much text in each picture. According to the exhibition, he was writing a semi-autobiographical 45-volume epic inside these pictures. Thankfully, throughout the exhibition you get bits of information about him from hospital reports and from things he said in correspondence, like this gem which reminds me of Walt Whitman:

"Adolf Wölfli, naturalist, poet, writer, draughtsman, composer, farm labourer, milker, handy-man, gardener, plasterer, cement-layer, rail worker, day-labourer, knife-grinder, fisher, boatman, hunter, migrant worker, grave-digger, and soldier of the Emmenthal Battalion, 3rd Company, 3rd Section. Alright!"

Adolf Wölfli, self description 

Not everybody will love the exhibition. The pictures and colors are dim, which may be his fault for using colored pencils and not paints. But he was in a mental asylum at the time. In addition, there are a lot of pictures. Maybe too many. It's a bit overwhelming to go through them all at once, but it does encourage repeat visits.

Adolf Wölfli until May 27, 2012 at City Gallery Prague - The Stone Bell
Staroměstské Nám. 13, Praha 1  
Open daily 10 a.m to 8 p.m. except Mondays
120 czk 

samuel barber

Platoon was just on czech TV the other night. I've never seen it. I started to watch it but had to get to bed. I was reading about it the next day and I came across this letter from Samuel Barber, who contributed music to the movie:

Dear Mother: I have written this to tell you my worrying secret. Now don’t cry when you read it because it is neither yours nor my fault. I suppose I will have to tell it now without any nonsense. To begin with I was not meant to be an athlet [sic]. I was meant to be a composer, and will be I’m sure. I’ll ask you one more thing .—Don’t ask me to try to forget this unpleasant thing and go play football.—Please—Sometimes I’ve been worrying about this so much that it makes me mad (not very).

 Real poetry. Completely human. Real. Down to the misspelling.

 Samuel Barber is best known for this:

This the whole thing. This letter to his mom when he's 9 is what makes him real. He was born in 1910, and he's dead now. This letter though is his first step. And the music wouldn't have come without it. It's a beautiful letter. I'm a big fan of things that show people we put on pedestals being normal. But we're all fans of that. I think those sorts of things are extremely healthy to see or read. Anyway, just loved this and feel like I discovered it even though it's on Wikipedia.

here's a new picture I made. proud of this one. chalk on paper

cus

came across some awesome clips about tyson today. of course the documentary Tyson about tyson is awesome. the original mickey line from rocky monologue came from mike tyson's trainer cus d'amato.



this is cool about another one of his trainers, kevin rooney:



this is cool too. A younger Cus with Ali. Narrated by Cus.

...after Miroslav Tichy.

batman trailer

I love a great trailer. A good trailer's like a good poem. Starts in one way but there's a touch of something really wild in it that's interesting. It's like in this trailer that starts with the boy singing and then you see Bane coming up the stairs totally casual. Love that. Genius since we all pretty much know Bane is in this one and that's he's a nut. It's downplayed a bit. Love that.

a new book Međugorje

Well this is gonna be long and potentially blowhardy. I’m putting up a new picture and poetry book called Međugorje. Anyone not interested in what it all means can skip this and go read the book below. It’s pretty short. Dante's in there. Hiroshige too. Van Gogh stops by towards the end. Darkman closes it out.

From here on, spoiler alert...

Međugorje means "an area between mountains" in Croatian. It's a town in Bosnia and Herzegovina where a group of children said they saw apparitions of the Virgin Mary. The Church is still investigating whether or not it believes them. A lot of people go there though. One of the boys (Ivan) tours churches in the US.

I first heard about Međugorje from the book Our Lady's Messages at Međugorje by Jim and Barry Tibbetts. It's a book about the history of the place and has all the messages that the apparition supposedly told the kids over the years.

There’s some beauty to the texts if you move them around or modify them a little. The text could be poetic and beautiful if it would lose some of its religiosity. So that’s this book I made. It’s called just about the same thing as the original. Međugorje.

I’ll warn ya. The language is a bit off, and the grammar and spelling were not priority numero uno. A couple of the poems are just a few words on the page. Some of the pages are just pictures. I did the more is more route before. This is small.

I took some of the pictures from the original book and put them in mine: the pictures of the two-towered church in Međugorje on the cover and throughout, the pictures of the kids who saw the visions. The pictures not from the original book are the pictures of a few churches and places in France (Verdun, Sully, Cap Fréhel) and the picture of a man diving into the ocean (I made that by rearranging a couple of Hiroshige pictures). The one color image towards the end is my drawing but a total steal of the only artwork Van Gogh sold in his lifetime. (p.s. from a letter of his to Eugene Boch October 2, 1888 about this painting: Ah well, I have to go to work in the vineyard, near Montmajour. It’s all purplish yellow green under the blue sky, a beautiful, colour motif. Good handshake and good luck, and much success in your work. Ever yours, Vincent). The picture on the last page is a modified version of a drawing in the original book. My version is supposed to look like Darkman. I think it does. I love that movie.

Ok. That’s that. Maybe more than you wanted to know, but my girl told me I should explain it so that it’s clearer. Hope that’ll do for now.

Here she is:

for annie by edgar allan poe

threw this together:

with music "Feedback Zwei" from the album Playthroughs by keith fullerton whitman. Awesome album if you like washy droney long songs. Words from For annie by edgar a. poe (1849). awesome too.

Enjoy.

TELEVISION
"Marquee Moon"
(Verlaine)

I remember
how the darkness doubled
I recall
lightning struck itself.
I was listening
listening to the rain
I was hearing
hearing something else.

Life in the hive puckered up my night,
the kiss of death, the embrace of life.
There I stand neath the Marquee Moon Just waiting,
Hesitating...
I ain't waiting

I spoke to a man
down at the tracks.
I asked him
how he don't go mad.
He said "Look here junior, don't you be so happy.
And for Heaven's sake, don't you be so sad."

Well a Cadillac
it pulled out of the graveyard.
Pulled up to me
all they said get in.
Then the Cadillac
it puttered back into the graveyard.
And me,
I got out again.

new morning

give any
give it
the Spirit
you need the
to convey the
to them or
to you. Pray
the spirit of
Mother say that

new pictures

I read a lot of music sites and I saw something awesome on pitchfork about how the local news in wisconsin did this story about justin vernon and his family. It's so good because it's so completely normal and real. I'd love to see more stuff like this on the local level.

http://www.weau.com/home/headlines/ASSIGNMENT_13_At_Home_with_the_Vernons_138621779.html
besides that though, did a couple new drawings. working on a few big ones all about the US. A couple of pictures about sports. they're bigger and mostly about missing certain things from the states. but here's a couple of these smaller ones for now. I'll put them up in the picture gallery section too.

nice shot

such a well-made cover

photo by Joel Van Houdt

from this NY Times mag cover story.

bus stop sunrise :)

 

and then sun up at the bus stop across the street... 

8am walking to work. ohradni street

outside of work

woman outside of wor

trying to do different stuff. see the paintings over here that I just uploaded if you want. just a few of the bigger ones I had to take to the park and take pictures of them under the watchful eye of Jan Žižka.

vids

Watched these two really good vids yesterday. The first one is from a couple months ago about how lobbying works. insane.



This one on Steve jobs is also awesome. I haven't read the book but it's about that.

  hearing Drake and hearing this:

 Declaring victory

Whenever you start a project, you should have a plan for finishing it.
One outcome is to declare victory, to find that moment when you have satisfied your objectives and reached a goal.
The other outcome, which feels like a downer but is almost as good, is to declare failure, to realize that you've run out of useful string and it's time to move on. I think the intentional act of declaring becomes an essential moment of learning, a spot in time where you consider inputs and outputs and adjust your strategy for next time.
If you are unable to declare, then you're going to slog, and instead of starting new projects based on what you've learned, you'll merely end up trapped. I'm not suggesting that you flit. A project might last a decade or a generation, but if it is to be a project, it must have an end.
One of the challenges of an open-ended war or the Occupy movement is that they are projects where failure or victory wasn't understood at the beginning. While you may be tempted to be situational about this, to know it when you see it, to decide as you go, it's far more powerful and effective to define victory or failure in advance.
Declare one or the other, but declare.

-seth godin

 sick dj shadowy song from the new free mixtape from Weeknd Producer DropxLife. Awesome maraca, is that what you call it? the thing you shake that sounds like it has sand inside:



Heard about it over on Pitchfork first. Get the mixtape there.