Excerpt Series inspired by Alejandro Cesarco

This series was created as a way to document moments of text that stand out in a body of work and tell their own story in a new context. A kind of copy and paste.

works inspired by artist Alejandro Cesarco, after a recent visit to his exhibit at le Plateau in Paris.

FROST

from The New Yorker February 10, 2014  

Bet The Farm: Robert Frost's turbulent apprenticeship.

 OA

From Harpers February 2014

The Oa: The pleasures and perils of whiskey by Colin McAdam

 from The New Yorker February 3, 2014  

Full Fathom Five: Derek Walcott's seascapes by Adam Kirsch

Going the Distance: Excerpts from David Remnik's piece on Barak Obama

This excellent article by David Remnik for the New Yorker provides a balanced and deeply transparent view into the thoughts and process and politics of Barak Obama, the 44th President of the United States. Here are some excerpts worth saving:

“The President always takes the long view.” Valerie Jarrett

“One thing that I always try to emphasize is that, if you look at American history, there have been frequent occasions in which it looked like we had insoluble problems—either economic, political, security—and, as long as there were those who stayed steady and clear-eyed and persistent, eventually we came up with an answer.”

"Obama is exactly like all my friends. He would rather read a book than spend time with people he doesn’t know or like.” Joe Manchin

“When you don’t build those personal relationships,” Manchin told CNN, “it’s pretty easy for a person to say, ‘Well, let me think about it.’ ”
Comes to a close with:

"(Obama) said he hoped that one day he might be able to take a walk in the park, drop by a bookstore, chat with people in a coffee shop. “After all this is done,” he said, “how can I find that again?”"

“He travels light.” John Podesta on Obama's circle of friends

"the nature of not only politics but, I think, social change of any sort is that it doesn’t move in a straight line, and that those who are most successful typically are tacking like a sailor toward a particular direction but have to take into account winds and currents and occasionally the lack of any wind, so that you’re just sitting there for a while, and sometimes you’re being blown all over the place.”

“I have strengths and I have weaknesses, like every President, like every person,” Obama said. “I do think one of my strengths is temperament. I am comfortable with complexity, and I think I’m pretty good at keeping my moral compass while recognizing that I am a product of original sin. And every morning and every night I’m taking measure of my actions against the options and possibilities available to me, understanding that there are going to be mistakes that I make and my team makes and that America makes; understanding that there are going to be limits to the good we can do and the bad that we can prevent, and that there’s going to be tragedy out there and, by occupying this office, I am part of that tragedy occasionally, but that if I am doing my very best and basing my decisions on the core values and ideals that I was brought up with and that I think are pretty consistent with those of most Americans, that at the end of the day things will be better rather than worse.”

And concludes with Obama's last comment:
“I just wanted to add one thing to that business about the great-man theory of history. The President of the United States cannot remake our society, and that’s probably a good thing.” He paused yet again, always self-editing. “Not ‘probably,’ ” he said. “It’s definitely a good thing.”

practicing short hand

It would be a really valuable skill for me, so I thought I'd give it a try listening to a quick round of interviews asking the pertinent question: "What do you look for in a young designer to identify a great designer of tomorrow?"

Here are some of the answers, in broken English, translated back from my chicken scratch short hand.

"faith in your own talent, love for the product, and love for your customer."
"A great designer of tomorrow has to have a vision and brilliant ideas."
"A strong design radiates authenticity
"Strong design knowledge of the past, feel for today, and vision for the future."
"Bravery that comes from love of fashion. Love of fun helps as well."
"Successful designers of tomorrow offer personal vision of beauty __ and individuality___seduce with sustainable fabrics___alluring___and subtle__of cut and color- harmony of cut and color should be a concern of any young designer___sense of fabrics that is where is all begins."
"At a time when any blogger can comment on fashion, designers have to be stronger than ever to realize their vision. The danger of being overwhelmed by the moment can be devastating for creativity."
"Successful designers of tomorrow understand design is about solving problems, in sustainability and efficient way___creative in use of texture, color, creative ceo of one's own brand."
"Young designers ___belief in self and vision- strong - stubborn ___because of flood of stimulation, information and divergent demands pouring in from all sides will constantly tempt you to be all things to all people."
"Skill and craftsmanship are as important as assertiveness and vision to successful designers."

Nietzsche on Truth

 "What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions; they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins." -Friedrich Nietzsche

hidden in the landscape...

...the house smelled earthy and moist. From the inside you could see out over the lake, vast and open to the unbounded sky, almost forgetting the confinement of your vantage point, embedded into the hillside. Protected by the stones and reinforced wood panels lining the walls. The front and back door led out to two different worlds. One to the enclosed garden and the vista of green grass and wildflowers beyond the cultivated patch, and the other towards the misty lake giving access to the lands beyond via the canoe that was kept down by the wooden dock. It was the most lush season of the year, which meant many days of cloud cover and rain. And the wait for the flowers to bloom from the bright, yellow-green sprouts that emerged boldly from the protection of their own earthy enclose...

you know what you need to do next...

...the man said.

but the world is too big, she thought to herself, lying on her back looking up at a sky that seemed either right in front of her face, about to crush her into the field in which she lay, or it was so far away that the illusion of it's mass was only a fabrication of her imagination, which, as it happens, fabricated a lot of things. I know what I need to do next, she thought to herself. And the sky diffused into an innumerable number of little invisible particles that she breathed in deep so she had a part of the big limitless sky inside herself. I know what I need to do next. The thought repeated over again in her head. After I'm done laying here with the sky . . .

journey to the lava-fall

 

...from where she stood the terrain looked lush and green, but she knew the perils of the journey. To make it back safely, she would have to take the short cut under the waterfall. Her only chance would be just as the sun set, when its rays turned the water hot orange, like lava spilling over the edge of the towering wall of rock, and the passageway opened. She saw the fading light of the sun behind the cloud cover. it was quickly approaching the line of the mountain tops on its way past the horizon into night. It was time to hurry...

Alate Wisdom

 

"...walking through the haze he saw a hopeful sign before him. a distinctive roundness at the height of a tree. The old man had drawn it at the end of his map in the sand on the riverbank. After days in the forest he had almost lost hope, the cryptic map leading him further and further into a wilderness that was less and less navigable. But isn't it often with our absolute last exhalation of aspiration, when we expect to breathe in defeat, that we realize we've reached the elusive destination? Here he felt that this was it. This was right. This is where he told me I would find the next piece and finally here I am. 

So he looked up into the tree.

There was the owl. Eyes closed, meditative. I called up to him "hello, are you the owl in the tree?"

and he opened one eye, as if he could see more than enough without troubling the other...."

SPACE- secret to success from a business expert

Satisfaction & Success
Passion & Persistence
Attitude & Action
Confidence & Common Sense
Effuse, Exceed, Enjoy

"Now as for me, I always had the funniest notion to roll stones. When I was a kid, I did it, an' the bigger I got, the bigger the stones I'd roll. Ain't that funny? Honest...even now I...often get off my hoss jest to tumble a big stone over a precipice an' watch it drop, an' listen to it bang an' boom. I've started some slides in my time, an' don't you forget it. I never seen a rock I wanted to roll as bad as this one!"
Lassiter from Riders of the Purplge Sage
by Zane Grey

An Apology for Idlers

"While others are filling their memory with a lumber of words, one-half of which they will forget before the week be out, your truant may learn some really useful art: to play the fiddle, to know a good cigar, or to speak with ease and opportunity to all varieties of men."

"Perpetual devotion to what man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things."

"There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy."

Robert Louis Stevenson
First published in the Cornhill Magazine, July 1877. Included in Virginibus Puerisque, 1881.

Saturday Quote

: "I'll tell you sumthin': a lot of stuff going on these days stinks! A lotta stuff ain't right"

-09/01/2010 Conan O'brien Interview with Donald Trump

Saturday Quote

: Kafka The Castle

"...What an oddly and very specifically shaped, agile little granule such a party would need to be to pass through the supreme sieve."

Bürgel to K.