glaube an den Schuhmacher...

[in the window of the workshop of bespoke shoemaker Benjamin Klemann in Hamburg]

swedeheart

walked along the antipoetic wall...

it is easy to love fragments that have been on the way a long time...

feel the smell of truth...

the poem which is completely possible...*

*selected cryptic lines from 'Hommages' by Tomas TRANSTROMER (translated from the swedish by Robin Fulton)

wisewabbits

pinkbottleblob

a salacious sea creature...a gigantic squeak toy...a rare and exotic flowerhead...a pretty party-dressed mine...
this vivacious vandal's delight squats benignly on the sidewalk, unperturbed by the passing feral urges to kick at its protuberant presence...
 

BIGness

a roomful of BIG [Bjarke Ingels Group]  hyper-innovative projects on exhibit was a sumptuous architectural feast...
the immaculate maquette for the sleek-peaked WEST 57th apartment building in New York soaring aerodynamically towards the ceiling - this sharp-edgy pyramidal superstructure soon to grace the Hudson riverfront...

[part of the Frontiers of Architecture series of exhibits at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark]

swede boy

the tyroboy looks me in the eye
with raised fists and taunting mouth...
the tornout words do not tell me anything - I am guessing they are not gentle...
I pass them by, I turn back - he is still challenging me...
the fledgling alpha round with this freshface minimenace  - the futilefight is on...

paris mirage

the sentimental skies of a paris spring beckon - pierced with antique crosses, the tall iron maid, the tricolour pride...

the years dwindle, the moss darkens on stones forgotten, the metal corrodes, and the flag frays - and yet...

"dans le vieux parc solitaire et glacé

deux spectres ont évoqué le passé.

-te souviens-tu de notre extase ancienne?

-pourquoi voulez-vous donc qu'il m'en souvienne?

-qu'il était beau le ciel, et grand, l'espoir!..."

[selected lines from "Colloque Sentimentale" by Paul VERLAINE (1844-96)]

on skeppsholmen...

they march no more down these halls - the young swedes of a naval order...
outside, the dark trees shield the statues low and the tall ships...
they see a light on - the light that casts shadowlinks in a tight room...
a hollow box, a fulfilled sack - the season's ending in a corner...
the solstice is rounding up, the days lengthening -
and so begins the music again...

[at the Hotel Skeppsholmen, Stockholm, Sweden]

swede abstraction

the detrital conflation of peeling paint and sprayed symbols, of pasted notices and torn images, of flaking glue and dried spit - presents an accumulative reading as complex as an archaeological dig, a vertical congregation of visual strife as dissonant as a Twombly passage...

["Turner, Monet, Twombly: Later Paintings" at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm  from October 8 to January 15, 2012]

thinktanker

 jag tanker att...jag tanker...tror jag.../lois

think...thinking...thoughts...
he paid a penny for her thoughts...
she was thinking of someone else...

blindcouplebluff

"...their most secret thoughts meet as when two colours meet and flow into each other on the wet paper of a schoolboy's painting..."

[excerpted from 'The Couple' by Tomas Transtromer, the Swedish poet awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature - finally! - (from 'The Winged Energy of Delight: Selected Translations' by Robert Bly, 2004)]

[on a divider wall outside of Goteborg, Sweden]

metal-liturgy

 the french artist Francois Morellet's inter-locking stick metal "Sphere" [1962] floats in one corner - a primitive steel hive model for a futuristic orbiting space habitat...

the german artist Gunther Uecker's "White Field" [1983] of swirling nails maps the galaxies in a square studded universe - where man can orbit only on the minutest speck of iron dust...

[both pieces are exhibited at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebaek, Danmark]

pre-occupy any space...

 from the cozy compactness of a single city bench in copenhagen...

to the barren brushland beside looming suprarchitecture in barcelona...

manifest the urgent need to stake out one's piece of ground, if not one's peace of mind...

danish dropped diction

strips of danish lie dejectedly abandoned on a busy pathway...spilling from their frame, the words escape to the incomprehension of foreign interest...

marais nostalgie

Le Marais was my little piece of Paris for years and the Village Saint-Paul was just a cobblestone throw from where my nest had perched...
this was before the Marais was "discovered" and the onslaught of tourists began...this was when the small antique shops had dusty shelves and napping proprietors...this was when the boulangeries did not offer up doughnuts and muffins...this was when I fell deeply in love with a mise-en-scène that does not exist anymore...
the bell of Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis may still toll on the hour, but the unseen bird in the garden of the Marquise de Brinvilliers is no longer heard singing in the cool evening air...

l'île exotique

over 400 years ago, La Guyanne was a far-flung colonial outpost sweltering in the fetid tropical heat and  fought over by the sea-faring european powers of the time...

from the island capital of Cayenne to the island heart of Paris, the Marquis de Soumont spent months upon high seas to sail safely home again, never to know of the spaceships that could now launch him almost to the moon in a day...

[Hotel Rolland on Quai d'Orleans, Ile Saint-Louis]

[Guiana Space Centre, established by Charles de Gaulle in French Guiana]

les trucs jaunes

yellow is not a colour I would ever wear nor paint my house in, even if it has always been designated the happy colour...

yellow is the colour of many sublime things - bright flower petals, juicy lemons, melodious birds, fragrant spices - and with any sort of enlightening, may it no longer be an attribution to the most populous race on this earth...

skullfenestra

within the anatomy of a Gaudi vivarium, no artifice is too minor to address in symbolic narrative...
the skull-shaped windows rise up through the aqua-tiled spine towards the surface light from their watery depths...

coucou

peeking up her wide iron skirt, through delicate layers of gray metallic lace...
her long graceful neck held high, soaring above all that we strive for -
not realizing that in the end we can't take it with us...

la cuc

the anthropomorphization of a feisty and tenacious insect is championed in this boisterous bar...where in any language, a cockroach is still un cafard is still a creature that will survive to the end of time...