Accidental wings

Paris - Perec III

“Apply yourself, take your time.” -Georges Perec

On a grey Sunday Philip Matesic and I went to the Louvre to find “le Condottiere” by Antonello da Messina (1475).  Georges Perec found a resemblance of himself in this painting, they both have the same scar on their upper left lip.

Georges Perec often thought his father, whom he never met, had a slight resemblance to Franz Kafka. There is a specific family photo that bears the resemblance. Underneath you can see a photo of Franz Kafka juxtaposed next to a family photo with Perec’s father.

We tried to find painted portraits that looked like ourselves, in between the hundreds of painted faces on the walls of the Louvre, but were unsuccessful. 

Supermarket art fair Stockholm

Philip Tonda's organization Transient Projects To People has a stand at Supermarket art fair showing artists' (interpretations of) individual notebooks, as well as photography and video work. 

If you happen to be in Stockholm and still have the chance: From 15- 17 February 2013 Supermarket Artfair is located in Kulturhuset right next to Stockholm Central Station. supermarketartfair.com

The participating artists are: Ryan Boatright, Viktor You Philip, Eva Marie Rødbro and myself.

Ryan Boatright is also in charge of Atelier Boba where he makes digital prints and artists books.

For the art fair in Stockholm I choose a selection of pages from various skecthbooks of mine that Ryan beautifully printed for me at his atelier Boba. Have a look!

Learning to take time - time passing

I have arrived in Kathmandu, Nepal. A very small rusty blue taxi. takes me to my hotel. The road is bumpy. I have to slide down onto my lower back as my head keeps banging against the low rooftop. The two front windows are a bit open and a suffocating mix of toxic gases enters the car.  I see a chaotic road where buses, carts, men, women, children and animals all zigzag around each other.
Dusk is falling.
We drive past small hills of garbage bags, endless rows of unfinished concrete houses, a dusty sidewalk covered by skinny dogs curled up like furry stones.
A mini bus without a door in the back drives in front of the taxi. There is a little window in the back of the bus and I see the beautiful face of a small child popping through. Her round face surrounded by a wooly hat and her large eyes made even larger by a dark circle of black kohl.
A fire is lit somewhere along the road and a group of men are huddled around, warming their thin bodies. In the early evening light everything I see becomes one grayish brown color. Now in the monotonous surrounding, very bright colors become even more apparent; the red back lights of the cars, the red scarf of a woman passing by and the pink jogging pants of another one.
We turn right on an even more bumpy road.

I see some scruffy dogs waiting in front of the butcher store hoping for a little piece of left over meat.

The driver turns his face towards me and smiles as he proudly tells me 
“I take a shortcut”.  But soon it appears that his intended shortcut doesn’t work, the road is blocked and he has to ask the way. In the mean time I can take a close look at the small scenes surrounding the car; Under a multiple colored umbrella a men is selling vegetables, a group of women are examining the cauliflowers, potatoes and carrots on his cart. The man fills little pointy paper bags with peanuts. A female dog turns sultry onto her back, she wants to be licked on her belly, her nipples who have fed many baby dogs already. One big black dog is willing to do so and licks her whole belly smooth. We continue our route. The road is narrow and I look straight into the open windows of the houses along the road. In a flash  I see bright red threads on my lefthand side. A group of squatted men - with the tiniest bodies I have ever seen - are working behind a loom in near darkness. The ceiling of my hotel is very low I keep bumping my head. It is clear that I need some time to adapt, to find out what the pace of life is here in Kathmandu, slow down and learn to take time.

I will sleep first. 

The next day I wake up by the snorting sound of men, a loud spit that empties the complete interior of their mouth and throat, smacks onto the floor. I will soon learn that it is something quite normal here.

I decide that I'll just slowly start walking somewhere and watch live pass by and pass by life that sometimes stands still.

Dogs and some other animals

There are various categories of dogs in Kathmandu. 

One is the a chained dog, destined to bark and howl a life long. Waking up everybody in their surrounding at night. Usually their chain will be to short and they will probably suffer.

Then there are a few lucky dogs that have owners that like them, they get fed and are unchained.

And then there is the category of free dogs. They rule the street.

A large part of the day you will see them sleeping covered by a layer of dust from the hundreds of scooters rushing along. You will think they are dead and a little bit worried you take a closer look, relieved when you see that their ribcage moves slowly up and down. Suddenly in groups of three or more they wake up from their profound sleep and are on a mission, no one really knows where to.

Two dogs are sunbathing against a wall. They are surrounded by sharp shadows. Their bodies strategically placed in between the black squares. I sit down on the sidewalk to take a look at them. Passers by cast shadow onto their bodies. An odd looking woman in an orange sari starts shouting at the dogs. She is encouraging her dog on a leach to bark and growl at the two friendly dogs who are still hesitant whether to go or to stay. Finally they decide to leave. Then the woman leans against the wall where just a minute ago the two dogs were quietly sunbathing. Her dog turns his back towards me and shits right in front of my face. I also walk of.

The rice is a good nutritious meal for the pigeons. It’s left behind by the thousands of offerings in town in front of temples and houses.

Children

It is a country where children are wild and play anywhere until darkness has already long fallen. They play "husband and wife, set fire onto small pieces of paper, play pingpong, football with a bundle of elastic bands, run ecstatically in any directions and they are also being terribly bored, thinking and doing very naughty things, laughing at strange foreigners, like anywhere else in the world.

Along the road

I decide to drive outside of Kathmandu for a a bit, escape the toxic fumes. The road where I am driving that leads up the hill is like a long line of life stories; very close to the road people wash, cook, eat, drink, play games, discuss, stare into space. Children and animals are dangerously close to the traffic. The houses are made of mud and there are many unfinished concrete houses. The unfinished part  of the houses is used to dry washing or keep other household utensils. 
It is sunny. In an empty field, the only object I can see is a deserted wooden cupboard, it’s back is  facing the road  The other side of the cupboard must have a mirror as I see a young man combing his hair looking at himself in the mirror. The sunlight reflects from the mirror onto his face. It creates a magnificent light. It looks like the start of a movie-scene.

Objects

Bright red is the color most women wear, burgundy red is the color the buddhist monks wear, red is what you see everywhere.

Red bricks to create pingpong tables, houses, improvised tables, waiting for many purposes.

Beautiful garbage

Paperplanes

A dragonfly found dead next to my bed in the morning. His front legs together as if praying.

Windows

From behind a window of a cafe I see a man sitting at the side of the road.

His clothes have become the same color as the street, a dusty grey. His face is hidden under a large hood, on his back - a little black backpack. I see him taking it of his back and placing it beside him. A large black hand appears from out of his right sleeve and takes something from out of the bag. His gestures are slow but not hesitant. He opens a tin and with a plastic fork he starts to eat the substance inside. His meal is interrupted by two women. They start talking to him. I cannot hear from behind the window what they are talking about, but looking at the way their bodies interact wit the man I just presume it’s about religion. They hand him over a leaflet. The man is making large gestures that look quite desperate. The women move on and the grey men is left behind.

Behind the grey man there is an entrance that leads to the subway, people walk up and down the stairs not paying attention to him. He has become part of the furniture of the city, merging with the other objects. 

Wound up in my thoughts I walk back home and on my way home I meet a friend. He tells me that he follows my blog but was wondering why there is so little activity, especially lately. I shrug my shoulders and tell him that I have been very busy with work. The truth is that indeed I have been busy with work but the main reason is that I could not see very clearly recently. My mind was elsewhere. 

It has been a while since I sat behind a window like the one from behind which I just saw the grey man. I realized that I had forgotten to look out of windows and observe the world with some distance and concentration.

This morning I sit down behind the same window again and I see the grey man at the same spot. Maybe he did not move the whole night?  Today sitting on top of a big white bucket his body bent over his head dug deep into a big black trash bag.

Tonight after a yoga class and an hour meditation my head has become more clear, the windscreen wipers have removed some mist from behind my eyes. I can see more clearly now and have created some space inside my head. 

I take the L line back to Manhattan. 

After Union square a group of loud teenagers talking about the Kama Sutra and the 69 position leave the metro. Now there is space to see the different people that sit inside the metro; a skinny old Asian woman sits close to me, across from me I see a man with sad looking eyes and a long ponytail and beside him an elderly couple. In the space close to the doors there is transvestite holding onto a mountain bike. She makes very funny gestures to her reflection in the window or an invisible person close to her.  She makes high squeaky sounds, waving with hands like a queen. 

The man is indifferent to whats happening close to him whereas his wife is amused and whispers to me on her way out, “enjoy, have fun”.

I smile, the man across from me says “ you look happy”  I don’t want to tell him it was the transvestite that made me laugh but say, “yes,  maybe I am”. 

He asks me “Where are you from?”

“Holland”, I reply

“Oh Holland is it like New York?”

“Well Holland is a country and I am from a city called Amsterdam.”

“oh! Marijuana is legal there ,right?”

“well not really” I reply to this standard question

“There are good hard-rock bands in Amsterdam, right?”

“I have no idea to be honest”

“What kind of music do you listen to?”

I find it hard to answer, even though I love music, I adore silence

I tell him I try to listen to silence.

“oh, I can't do that”

“I play music, I can hear music all the time everywhere in everything, it’s inside my head”

The grey man is gone when I walk up the stair of the metro up to street level,

an expensive car is parked where he was sitting this morning.

Now, from behind the car window I look at the grey city as I drive towards the airport again, this time promising myself I will always try and look out of any kind of window .

Looking at the grid from above

"At night, the radiance of the millions of electric lights which glow at every point and line and curve of the great play city's outlines lights up the sky and welcomes the home coming mariner thirty miles from the shore." (from:  Delirious New York by Rem Koolhaas)

Walking the Grid II - researching routes on Manhattan