I Believe in Everything

First go on my new typewriter. Thanks to Intern for best present of 2012!

November, whenever, 2011

Have not sketched in long time, and it sure feels good. Also haven’t been in this hood in a long time.  I miss cities. But prolly not enough to move from my island paradise.

(a poem to commemorate fall)

maple trees not maples
honey
what you want don’t grow
on money

birches birches barches oh!
underneath a slug doth grow

staghorn stagborn stag
alone
burgundy-red to make
you moan

oak fest steady, hold a fast
strings to tether fall to last

elm tree elm see, each has
one
each the same in eyes
of sun

Fall, from the roof, originally uploaded by Lea LSF.

Fall, from the roof

At the dacha had a sudden urge to go birdwatching (not unusual). The flight of the local Red Tail hawk caught my attention and I looked out of the window. Gone! I grabbed my binoculars and went outside. The day was really gray. Gray like there has never been a blue sky ever.  Leaning against the house, I scanned the sky for hawk. Some neighbors that never come over were milling about the pond close by.  The hawk! He landed on a young poplar not eight feet away.  I could see it just fine, but went for the binoculars anyway. Meanwhile the hawk leaned in, and as he did he morphed into Werner Herzog’s face, which spoke “sometimes it’s best not to look from within.”  A conversation ensued…I tried to explain the necessity of binoculars in birdwatching. The subtleties that are not otherwise visible. The personalities visible upon magnification. That they were not somehow frivolous, the binoculars. Some things were said. I woke up right after HawkHerzong said “yes, but we still live in an industrial and mechanical age.” Go figure!

I think I’ll spend the rest of the day thinking about- binoculars as video cameras, birds, and this idea: the widespread belief that we are somehow post-industrial and beyond mechanical (aka onto digital) is false.

JFK’s Face in the Rocks!, originally uploaded by Lea LSF.

JFK’s not dead, he’s in Los Organos, Peru. 2011

, originally uploaded by Lea LSF.

Vilcabamba, Ecuador 2010

taken through sunglasses to combat high-altitude brightness.

##quotes**

“I never was lost in the woods in my whole life,” said Daniel Boone, “though once I was confused for three days.” (pg. 13)

Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, and where you will go.” (pg. 4)

The word “lost” comes from the Old Norse los, meaning the disbanding of an army, and this origin suggests soldiers falling out of formation to go home, a truce with the wide world. (pg. 7)

&&JUST A DEEP THOUGHT__and a brief comparative literature type of jam.

Last week, I read Knut Hamsun’s The Wanderer, which coincidentally or not is a story of a man losing himself.

The Wanderer has left behind wealth and comfort in order to wander from estate to estate seeking seasonal work and rough shelter.  His claim that he left cultured city life in search of peace and quiet is sincere, but not exactly reflective of reality.  In practice, he seeks out the company of others and becomes invested from a distance in the dramas surrounding the Masters and Madames on whose lands he toils.

It seems that he is lost, not physically, but in the cares and worlds of others. In a sense, he is like a reader who never writes, living lost in other people whose actions and feelings he cannot impress.  Oh, but what effect they have on him! His preoccupation with the lives of others would make him seem dull, if it were not true that reading is an art itself–an art whose very process entails getting lost.  The getting lost that Solnit is after when she posits that, “Never to get lost is not to live, not to know how to get lost brings you destruction, and somewhere in the terra incognita in between lies a life of discovery.”

From this a lesson or two. #1. read a lot. #2 don’t be afraid from time to time to get lost in other people’s lives b/c they too are overgrown woods whose only paths are the forays we make into them. #3 Get lost!

MORE NOTES AS BOOK IS FURTHER READ.

Dacha Model in prog, originally uploaded by Lea LSF.

I’ve been working on this sketch, eventually to include the entire 16 acres of property!! Yes.. This idear has been floating about for a while and is now coming to fruition b/c of two impetuses.

1. Lovely + talented Ari Moore of Shirari Industries is building the Dacha Protege a new shiny wordpress hacked website, in exchange for what is essentially a lot kale over years to come. My role in this: To help design the Dacha a logo, and to create a map of the homestead that can be inter-activated through flasher. I can’t wait to sit with Ari as she works to learn all this cool stuff!!!

2. I am applying to an art school in the area, and want to include something of The Dacha Proj proj in my portfolio and hoping this will give context to the photos of our projects there.

Also something to look forward to is the transformation of all this into a 3d model to be added to google earth (thanks Katya for idear), and then printed on a 3d printer in chocolate as a big birthday cake to the dacha on its next birthday.

yes,
Lea

Fractal Cauliflower, originally uploaded by Lea LSF.

My housemate Melanie was keeping this in the refrigerator planning she said to eat it for dinner this very week!

I of course stole it for worship purposes. It’s been sending me incredible dreams of weird beasts on their ancient migration paths (more on that later) ever since.

Enjoy,
LSF