Books. Books. Books.

"The great thing about reading books is that it makes us better than cats. Cats are said to have nine lives. What is that compared to the girl, boy, man, woman who reads books? A book read is a life added to one’s own. So it takes only nine books to make cats look at you with envy.

And I’m not talking here only of “good” books. Any book—trash to classic—makes us live the life of another person, injects us with the wisdom and folly of their years. When we’ve read the last page of a book, we know more, either in the form of raw knowledge—the name of a gun, perhaps—or in the form of greater understanding. The worth of these vicarious lives is not to be underestimated. There’s nothing sadder—or sometimes more dangerous—than the person who has lived only his or her single, narrow life, unenlightened by the experience, real or invented, of others."

-Yann Martel in a letter to Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada

Sunset...Sunrise

October 9 to October 10, 2007
(On the flight from Chicago to London)
The sunset blazes on the horizon as we cruise over Lake Michigan. The orange meets the steel blue clouds as they ripple out over the water. The orange melts into a buttery yellow and then the yellow fades to a whispering hue of gold. A luminous blue hovers over the gold, threatening to swallow the saturated splendor into the night. The colors have become electric as teh clouds blow them morph into thick grey hills of moisture. The blue above the warm rainbow of light has begun to glow. As we move East the colors lose their luster. Together they lay...a greenish glow remains.
. . .
The sunrise is so different from the sunset. While the West is still sleeping the sun is pale as it rises over England. A touch of pink lights the sky. Patchy silver clouds dust the blue silk horizon line. The yellow of the warm sun is a shy, milky color. Beneath me a bit of land appears. The world at once looks round. A champagne sky becomes a rose sky, becomes a salmon glow, becomes a yellow light. The sunrise is calm. Rather than blazing the last bits of color out of the sky it slowly, almost lazily sets the horizon aflame.

The man seated next to me on the plane.

(October 9, 2007)
On the plane from Des Moines to Chicago (on the way to London) I sat next to a guy. He had a softly receding hairline with a pointed nose and small glosy dark eyes. He asked lots of questions, including but not limited to, "Did you go to college?" He reminds me of a bad movie. I don't really know why. He sells things. "Insurance brokering," he tells me. His watch is one of those hi-tech ones that is surely waterproff and rarely taken off. He went to Vienna back in February. "Awful flight," he says, "just couldn't get settled." His shoes have beige stitching and thin black soles. He crosses his legs often. "This heat is killing me," he says, legs crossed, beige-stitched shoes close to my hand, receding hair fluttering in the breeze of the air vent as we wait restlessly on the runway. We take off. 30 miles from O'Hare he calmly clasps his hands together, resting them on his un-stowed tray table, closing his eyes almost reverently. As he sleeps, a sleep I know is a light nap, his adam's apple moves up and down to the tune of his breathing. The man across the aisle from my prayerful, sleeping seatmate strains to read an issue of Hemisphere. He and his wife just finished their complimentary drinks: one tomato juice and one bloody mary mix, both canned. He laughes with her. He compares the labels of their beverages while they wait for the attendant to collect their trash. My seat partner insurance man naps for real this time. We prepare for landing.

A room full-a-Rothko.

Written October 15th. At the Tate Modern in London.
Dimly lit grey room. Big enough to only hold the 9 giant paintings. I can barely see the paper I write on. Wooded floors with track lighting and two curved benches. I teared up upon entering. The soft, almost sad mood of the room and the sheer joy of this many Rothkos at once swallowed me. Gray. Grey. Mauve. Deep Purple. Maroon. Black. Scarlet. Rust. Red. Black. Crimson. Violet. Two tall rectangles as you walk in to the left. Mauve squares with purpled lines. Edges are feathered. Solarized. Depth of color. Fields. Strength of hue. Enveloped. Lost in the Rothko.

Here's one of the Rothko works that covered the room.
Here are the others. (Only the dark ones)

I scribbled down my thoughts as fast as I could in that room. It was amazing. Simply awesome. More of my London notes soon...

Long time no blog.

It has officially been one month since my last post...time certainly flies!
Let me run down the last four weeks:
-wedding in Chicago to see the lovely Dana marry Alex
-wedding in Minneapolis where two of my most wonderful friends married
-fancy-black-dress-tuxedo-dinner at work
-LONDON with Jen
-BARCELONA with Jen
....whew...home.

The next couple weeks will be much of the same...lots of weddings, traveling, miles on the good old Focus.

In the meantime, I vow to be a better blogger.