I recently listened to an interview with Jonathan Safron Foer- candid, entertaining, verging on brilliant- in which he said that he would not have become a writer if it were not for the inspiration of the visual artist Joseph Cornell. I can think of a few other creatives who seem to be benefitting from Cornell's influence, i.e. Damien Hirst and Wes Anderson.

A SUMMER HOME from Justin Kane on Vimeo.

A movie I wrote with my mom on the back of an envelope while sitting on the side of a pond. Justin started filming the next day, and now its a Vimeo staff pick. Big ups to all involved!!!

Louise Despont, created while on Fulbright in India

Photos by Humoldt Freedom Family member Tibora Bea. I'm usually, maybe unfairly, dismissive of Humboldt county artists, but I dig these images. The first is from a series on NorCal wood workers, the others are from a series on life growing through the cracks of civilization.

Found this inspiring conversation between Willem Dafoe and Michael Ondaatje. Great insight into the creative process.

WD Is there anything you consistently notice about a piece when it’s done? How do you know when to stop working? I read your novels before your poetry, and when I went to the poetry, it was so precise. When you talk about this long editing process with the novel, I can’t imagine it.

MO I do take very much care. Once I finish a story, which takes around four or five years, it’s all over the place. The order is not necessarily the order it ends up in. So the editing stage then begins, shaving it down, until you’ve got a cleaner line of the story. What more can you remove without losing the story? I have a tendency to remove more and more in the process of editing. Often I’ll write the first chapter last, because it sets up the story. The last thing I wrote in Coming Through Slaughter was “His geography,” almost like a big landscape shot, with buried clues you can pick up later.

WD As you edit, how much does it shift around? Particularly The English Patient where you’re dealing with so many points of view. How much do you fall in love with different characters? Or do you discipline yourself to maintain an overview right away?

MO I go wherever it takes me. I try everything. I completely test it, jostle it, so I’m not locked into the rhetoric, or the order I wrote it in. In a way this is what Anthony and Walter Murch did in the last stages of the film, taking a visual from one scene and putting it in another scene and creating something different. It is collaging and piecing.

WD Do you usually start out with a few rough ideas, central images?

MO I don’t have a rough idea. It’s usually an image.

Read the whole conversation here at Bomb

Kelly McLane, from angles gallery

Not going to get the land. Figured we need a first home before building a retreat. It was fun to fantasize though. Now we're thinking of moving to Portland in the spring. My mind is swirling with visions of tearing down interior walls in old fixer craftsmans in the NE. Developing an addiction to Zillow, which is torturous since we can't afford anything yet.

Despite all the fantasizing about material, I was able to make a little fantasy into material last week when Justin Kane shot a movie I directed and wrote with my mom on Cape Cod. Here is a teaser trailer.

A Summer Home

More cabin dreamin

more fantasizing...this one in northern california

LundbergDesign: "Most of the project has been built using reclaimed materials from various projects over the years. The windows are all steel sash from at last count 5 different remodel projects. The pool is perhaps the most notable example; it used to be a water tank for livestock. At 25-feet diameter and 14-feet deep it provides a wonderful black hole of water, particularly in a full moon."

Already fantasizing

small redwood grove near homesite

The organic farm on lower half of property near the river. Specializing in peppers sold at the farmers market.

Alternate view of home site looking up from guest cabin.

Beach, shade, and sweat lodge structure.

Another view of building site

Today Kristin and I went to look at a property for sale. 1/6 share of 300+acres on the Mad River

Inside the unfinished guest cabin

Lush garden area just below cabin

Swimming hole 1.5 miles down from home site. Good steelhead fishing.

Panoramic view of building site

Guess who this young fellow is. Hint, this photo was taken 30 years ago. 

The Colonel by Carolyn Forche

What you have heard is true. I was in his house. 
His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His 
daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the 
night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol 
on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on 
its black cord over the house. On the television 
was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles 
were embedded in the walls around the house to 
scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his 
hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings 
like those in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of 
lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for 
calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, 
salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed 
the country. There was a brief commercial in 
Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was 
some talk of how difficult it had become to govern. 
The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel 
told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the 
table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say 
nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to 
bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on 
the table. They were like dried peach halves. There 
is no other way to say this. He took one of them in 
his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a 
water glass. It came alive there. I am tired of 
fooling around he said. As for the rights of anyone, 
tell your people they can go f--- themselves. He 
swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held 
the last of his wine in the air. Something for your 
poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor 
caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on 
the floor were pressed to the ground. 

May 1978

word satori #2

XL. PHOTOGRAPHS: ORIGIN OF TIME

It is a photograph of four people sitting around a table with hands in front of them.

The pipe glows on a small clay bowl

in the middle.  Beside it a kerosene lamp. Monstrous rectangles flare up the walls.

I will call it "Origin of Time," 

thought Geryon as a terrible coldness came through the room from somewhere. 

It was taking him a very long while

to set up the camera. Enormous pools of a moment kept opening around his hands

each time he tried to move them. 

Coldness was planing the sides of his vision leaving a narrow canal down which 

the shock- Geryon sat

on the floor suddenly. He had never been so stoned in his life. I am too naked,

he thought. This thought seemed profound.

And I want to be in love with someone. This to fell on him deeply. It is all wrong. 

Wrongness came like a lone finger 

chopping through the room and he ducked. What was that? said one of the others

turning towards him centuries later.

Anne Carson, from Autobiography of Red

Ori Gersht

word satori #1

The woman is cutting carrots. Each carrot is split into 6 or 7 pieces. The knife slides through and hits the wood table that they will eat off later.  He is watching the coincidence of her fingers and the carrots. It began with the color of the fingers and then the slight veins on the carrot magnified themselves to his eyes. In this area of sight the fingers have separated themselves from her body and move in a unity of their own that stops at the sleeve and bangle. As with all skills he watches for it to fail. If she thinks what she is doing she will lose control. He knows that the only way to catch a fly for instance is to move the hand without the brain telling it to move fast, interfering. The silver knife curves calm and fast against carrots and fingers. Onto the cuts in the table's brown flesh.

-Michael Ondaatje