Mr. Waits is a Real Person,

and it blows my mind.

hot box

last night i turned my air conditioner on, and let it get nice and cool.
later, when i reached into a drawer for a spoon, it was like a sauna inside.

Heaven In the Canyon

Last week, we drove up into the canyons in Montecito,
and visited Ganna Walska's LotusLand.

It was good, it wild, it was perfect.
It was like walking through Midsummer Night's Dream.

In regards to Friday night with LB at the Guggenheim.

I haven't bothered to go since the Matthew Barney spectacle in 2003, which (like Iron Man, or some other big cheesy summer blockbuster) I couldn't resist.

This show pitched a woo that I could not resist. The juxtaposition of Bourgeois' supercharged objects against the gentle, curved Frank Lloyd Wright interiors is a brilliant success. There is a tension, a conversation between them. The work looks natural in the space, instead of forced or flailing, as so much has before. While the Guggenheim's winding walkway lends itself to retrospective, it is perhaps the most difficult exhibition space in the world, and I think it's met its match.

I liked the new-ish cells very much, and I think Louise Bourgeois has found her inner Bower bird, as have I of late.



www.fritzhaeg.com


my studio yesterday (Blue Luxury, in Progress)



www.guggenheim.org/exhibitions/exhibition_pages/bourgeois/exhibition.html


my studio, last week (Red Luxury, in Progress)

buffalo stance

trying to soak it all in

I walked through Soho, I talked on the phone. I drank too much iced coffee, too fast. I saw two little red-haired boys talking to each other via imaginary cellphones (their hands) while they walked down the street. Comedians. I went to the bank. I opened a savings account. I ate some chicken on the street. It was New York. It was thrilling, and banal, and insanely muggy. The people were knocking me out. And knocking me over. I was sweating around the edges of my waistband. I took the subway, I let Century 21 send me into a frenzy; as soon as I was inside, I was lost. I wandered the escalators, arms suddenly laden heavy with items I had chosen in the heat of the moment. Handbags! Wallets! Sandals! I lugged these things and more, knowing full well I would do as I'd always done - quietly put them all down near the cashier and make a run for the door...empty-handed.

I walked down to Battery Park and let the gloaming take me in and comfort me. I watched the last Liberty Ferry come back to shore. I sat under an old tree in a dark patch of grass behind some sort of shouting pick-up Shakespearean types, and I tried in vain to photograph the fairy-land of fireflies while they floated, blinking languidly all around me. Finally it was dark, just the homeless men on the park benches and me. I ambled into an unknown part of downtown, found some random deli to sell me cranberries and iced tea, and got on the nearest Brooklyn-bound train I could find.

(I was gambling on this unknown train that it would take my tired flat feet within walking distance of Union Street. For once, the gamble paid off.) I walked home, past the darkened and be-gardened building where Jonathan Lethem writes my favorite stories, and across the Gowanus Canal. All quiet in South Brooklyn tonight.

it's all coming to a close

i keep pushing it away,
and then pulling it close.

brooklyn.