29.1.09

"There were several Wests [in the 1830s]: the old Southwest of Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay; the old Northwest we call the Midwest; the Northwest of Lewis and Clark; what we call the Deep South, also once a "West"; and the Far or Spanish West, beyond the borders of the United States as it then was."

~William Seale

26.1.09

“As it happens, the etymology of the word true takes us back to the old English word for ‘tree’: a truth, to the Anglo-Saxons, was nothing more than a deeply rooted idea.”

~Michael Pollan

8.1.09

The painter has become at least as interested in the question of time as he is in the question of space. He has painted bare trees behind the house only to foliate them later. He has put in a certain worker three different times—carrying water, scything grass, chopping wood—and with each new version has erased the last: How can the same man be doing three tasks at once? Yet the man does do all these things in one day.

If the mural’s to be an image of only one possible moment, there are many tasks that will go undepicted, and many animals that will be hidden. Light from the windows in the dining room moves over the unfinished mural, from grey to gold to white and back again.
A time capsule is a buried pin that may accept water despite its maker's efforts. It is a pin designed to end its usefulness on a specific date in the future, when it will be dug up and opened. Until this date, several generations of people must be trusted to hold the knowledge of the pin's location and open date. Therefore this knowledge, if written down, becomes a pin in itself, sitting in a drawer, sometimes talked about.

Or perhaps the capsule is marked with a plate or a vertical stake—either one, of course, also a pin. The capsule’s contents, then the capsule itself, then the knowledge of it, fixed or mobile—these form a layered succession of pins, through which humans attempt to contemplate the passage of time on a scale that exceeds their own lifetimes. In other words, the contemplation itself must be performed by a succession of humans in communication with each other, none of whom can perform it alone but each of whom contributes a part to its whole. The contemplation itself is a pin. The newspaper inside the capsule is too wet to read.
The painter is visiting nearby and is told about a snowy owl spotting the week before. It was sitting on a fencepost and then flew across the road in front of the person's car, on enormous not-entirely-white wings, far out of its species' normal range. Newspaper accounts and official mobilizations followed.

The painter leaves and drives down the same road on which the owl was seen. It is a rainy, anticipatory day. After the bridge he sees it--on a fencepost, not entirely white, leaning forward--but it never takes off. It is plastic. It watches him pass with alarmed plastic eyes.
The dissolution of the house.

"Though doors and windows may be cut to make a house, the essence of the house is the emptiness within it."
~Lao Tzu









When it burns, it is as though a lid comes off a jar full of fireflies.

There is talk of taking down an important oak tree in order to replace the house that burned. But the tree itself encloses a houselike emptiness. To use its site for a house would be nothing comes from nothing.
Vibrating pins:

7. Some people consider personal wireless service facilities to be unsightly. Is there some way to make these structures blend in with their surroundings?

Answer: Antennas for personal wireless services can sometimes be mounted on existing structures such as building roof tops, church steeples, street lights, traffic lights, or electric utility substations, where they are relatively unobtrusive. Painting antenna structures to blend in with the existing structures is also an effective camouflage. Camouflaging of antennas is also used to accommodate highly specialized land use concerns. For example, a personal wireless service provider seeking to locate a transmitter site in a historic district may consider camouflaging the antenna in such structures as clock towers or artificial trees. Such camouflaging is, however, expensive and time consuming and most service providers are reluctant to routinely use the camouflage option.

~FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, Fact Sheet #2, September 17, 1996: National Wireless Facilities Siting Policies