the funny thing is, I've been bubbling up with these phrases lately, but when I sit down to write, nothing comes out.
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from the nytimes on an article about the acropolis museum: "As for the caryatids from the Erechtheion and the sculptural remains of the Temple of Athena Nike, including the sexy "Sandal Binder," works of textbook import, they look a bit stranded on a balcony and in a passageway because the museum, save for the Parthenon floor, doesn't have regular spaces. Free circulation puts everything on equal footing (this is the birthplace of democracy, after all), but the flip side of this layout is the failure to make priorities clear, which art museums exist to do."
tossed aside phrases meaning nothing. words like 'priorities' and 'clear' obscuring opinion under a mantle of objectivity. oh, come the fuck on. I'm always reminded how the nytimes feels so short and so lightweight.
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tonight I walked back at 2am from the GSD building. pools reflecting overhead streetlamps above. when you walk here at 2am there's literally nobody in the street except a few cars passing you once every few minutes; nobody, nobody, for maybe half a mile ahead and behind you. On a thirty-minute walk I saw two people: one guy walking by in the distance, and a homeless guy slouched against the 24-hour CVS. it's sparse. there's a sparseness to this all.
In return I get: leafy trees through which sodium lamps shine, houses, quiet streets, faraway sounds of tires lifting themselves vertically off of the street making the distinctive sucking sounds of water being pulled up from asphalt. a quiet walk through which I think and think and think. listen to music. stop short. walk by banks st. where that gray cat will come and entangle herself around my legs and mewl at me when it's not raining.
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it always takes me so long. what do I do? where am I going? I'd like to say something like "the truth is," dot dot dot and go on, but the truth is I don't have these truths and I am circling in mid air waiting to see what will happen. the guilt that accompanies this all is that in the midst of this holding olfa and xacto blades and sketching axonometric diagrams of movement and performing this process of abstraction (like the sense of cohesion you get when you start to think about a paper and feel the thesis coming together slowly skewering through several different themes and ideas) in the midst of this I realize that I've been feeling so vivid and fresh, like what I imagine the taste of bark on trees after a night's rain to be. and this is accompanied by a guilt. if for me there's my infinite hope in brennschluss it's here, the sort of finding of ways that appear, maybe this is the way, that sort of thing. firing forward. go, fire forwards as fast as you can. in the midst of this me and me there's you and you and you and you and I don't know a) what to choose and b) what my choices are. which way do I go? what is the right thing to do? what kind of person do I want to be?