Sunday, March 29, 2015

the view from sunday night


doodling in my art journal and pondering both the week that's gone and the week ahead. i love how art journaling stimulates the meditative thoughts.  my thoughts return again and again to the germanwings plane crash. authorities seem to have rather quickly jumped to the conclusion that the co-pilot intentionally flew the plane into the alps, killing himself and 149 innocent people. i do not envy those who listened to the recording from the flight data recorder and came to that conclusion. i find the articles and op-ed pieces, laying the blame on depression quite alarming. it seems to me that what merits a closer look is the practices of low-cost airlines that would cause a young pilot to hide his medical condition and not use a note from his doctor, excusing him from work on the very day of the flight. did crewing personnel from the airline bully him into flying anyway on that day, perhaps even threatening him with firing if he didn't fly? knowing what i know of crewing department bullies in the shipping industry, i wouldn't be a bit surprised if that wasn't the case. and i hope that person has a very guilty conscience right now.


today marked the switch to summer time (daylight savings time to my american friends) here in europe. it was a grey, rainy, dreary day and we didn't much notice the switch, other than that the day seemed to fly by all too quickly. i have to wonder if we still need these time changes. wouldn't it be best to just stay on the summer version, so that light is always extended into the evenings? people want the extra light when they get home from work, don't you think? shouldn't we just stay on this time instead of switching back again come autumn?

i find myself still thinking about the enormously provocative exhibition of photographs and a video installation by richard mosse we saw at louisiana last weekend.  mosse is an irish photographer who uses infrared film developed in the 40s by the american military to expose camouflaged landscapes. it makes everything that's green a bright, vibrant pink. mosse used it to photograph the forgotten (by the world) war in the congo and the effect is sobering. it took several hours for emily and i to shake it off and it has lingered in my mind for days. it's a bit of a gimmick, using such film, but the candy floss landscapes of horror it creates definitely make you think about war anew. we are so numbed by horrible images today, that it takes such a jarring shift - horrible scenes in bright, surreal pinks - to make us notice it afresh. he somehow really does achieve an art of war. they had posters there that you could take, featuring a couple of the striking images and we took them before we had really looked at the exhibition. i don't think i can bring myself to hang it on the wall. google his images and you'll see what i mean.



and now, to shake it all off again...i'm smiling to myself about...

~ bacon and eggs going for a scooter ride between showers.
~ pairing husband's socks all wrong. it started off as an accident and now it's a little game i play. 
~ how my sis and i saw aziz ansari at a comedy club in nyc and i had no idea who he was. it seems he's a rather big deal comedian at the moment.
~ the gentle wisdom of mma ramotswe. i needed some comfort reading and so i'm rereading the no. 1 ladies' detective agency series of books. it seems several more have come out since i last read them, so i've just ordered them up from the library. mma ramotswe is so gentle and wise and there is much to learn from the old botswana morality.
~ getting a rather larger bonus than i expected and how these things often come exactly when you most need them.
~ doing a job where i can learn a lot and not have to have any emotional investment or anguish about the intrigues going on around me.

* * *

creations somewhere between toys and art by the sucklord.
perhaps moving us towards an answer of why adults today still want to play with toys?
i don't know yet.

* * *

love the dear data project!
i found out about it here.

it makes me want to do a snail mail-based project with someone.
anybody got an idea?

1 comment:

Lost Star said...

I love your art journal - are you using an old book?

I saw the 'Dear Data' project too and I love the idea - makes me wish I was some kind of statistician to make pretty pictures out of data.

How about a 'currently' watching/reading/doing/thinking mail swap or a 'To-do list' swap? Perhaps breakfast/lunch/dinner menu's each week? Could do all sorts of interesting things with that comparing different days with what people cook... pondering this now!