Texas Trees

A golf course in San Antonio. Since I arrived in the city, it has been hemmed in by a fog that lasts the entire day.

In Austin, TX, where, clearly, the trees at night are big and bright.

Ditto.

Shortly after taking the images in Austin, I would realize that the face that I had seen in BookPeople was hard to place because I was only searching the mental catalog of Austin people I once knew, but this was a face from Rochester, the face of one of my most favorite waitresses at a particular, but now defunct, vegetarian restaurant. Standing across from her, separated by a low bookshelf, each of us comprised of 10% being, 90% presence, I told myself to say something to her, to inquire about why her face would seem so familiar to me, I even told myself that I would regret it if I didn’t. The notion that this would seem like a come-on nagged me, so I did not inquire and I grew to regret it tremendously once I had the realization.

Dirking

I had a fantasy. I’d think about my fantasy many times, refining it, trying it in small doses, but never fully implementing it. It was a simple fantasy: I’d fly somewhere I’d never been, rent a car, and proceed with a haphazard, random, and undetermined plan of following people. In my fantasy I would hop from person to person based on gut feeling. For instance, if I followed a red Ford Taurus out of the airport parking lot, I would follow them until I lost them, or until something else demanded my attention, say, a man in full clown regalia driving a brown sedan. Wherever I wound up would not necessarily be where those I pursued wound up. They would merely be leading me in the direction I had to go. I’d call it Dirking after Douglas Adam’s character Dirk Gently, who does this very thing.

Well, Thiel at LJ has spent 2008 doing something pretty darn close to my fantasy in what he calls 2008: The Year of Following People. Awesome.

New Artwork!

A few pieces I recently purchased from Portland artist Kelly Neidig.

I love her landscapes. They really boil the idea of a landscape down to its constituent elements: a series of lines indicating perspective and the occasional fluffy cloud. I really dig her color choice!

Big Bang Simulations