It seems that approximately 6 years ago an anonymous citizen gifted the then fresh and fancy-free president George W. Bush with an 1888 edition of the book The Orthoepist by one Alfred Ayers, Nom de plum of Thomas Embly Osmun. (Osmun had devoted himself to orthoepy - the art and study of correct pronunciation of words - and elocution. The Orthoepist was the first of 8 volumes he published on the subjects.) We must assume that the gift was meant as a jibe at the President whose pronouncements, noteworthy for all the wrong reasons, had already begun to be referred to as Bushisms. (A double-jibe perhaps in that the word “orthoepy” has long since gone out of use and its pronunciation is itself a source of debate.) This little joke may have begun a chain reaction, the unintentional consequences of which would remove any whiff of the initial humor and leave in its stead the effluvium of a transformed language.

Bush received his copy of The Orthoepist just this year, after the screening process undertaken for all whitehouse mail in general, which was followed by the even more involved vetting for printed matter in particular, which it may interest you to know includes but is by no means limited to the following: author background checks, ideological screenings, NSA wiretaps of author / immediate family / descendant’s phone lines, CIA / FBI records cross-checks, Black-list cross-checks, Cryptographic screenings, print dusting, value appraisals, gathering of existent critical analysis, pre-reading by no less than 2 aides, highlighting, and intern-typed summations (all of which often result in packets of accompanying information as long or indeed longer than the item in question itself). After being tossed through these various hoops for nearly five years the volume, accompanied by a 209 page report and related materials, landed on The Presidents desk.

Now we have heard a great deal lately about the President’s surprisingly energetic reading habits. 60 books thus far this year including Shakespeare and Camus. That’s a lot of reading (not to mention thousands of man-hours wrapped up in the vetting process outlined above) so it’s no wonder that, according to my source (whom admittedly is not infallible), Bush didn’t actually read The Orthoepist once it finally made it’s way to him. He was busy, obviously, catching up on the his highschool reading list. He did, however, flip through some of the accompanying material during a commercial break in the WWE’s SmackDown wrestling telecast. As it turns out a certain bit of highlighted text from an 1882 issue of The Century caught his eye.

Whether these lines caught the President’s eye because his aides are so well trained at picking out and highlighting exactly the words which might interest him or whether a lifetime’s worth of constant correction and lampooning have given him a “pronunciation complex” we can’t be sure. From His first words as a child of 6 right up until the day he was sworn into the office of the presidency George W. Bush had been corrected on his use of the english language by every G.E.D. level smart-ass he’s come across. Even his most ass-sniffingly accomplished sycophants snicker occasionally. That kind of thing does something to a man, and it does something even worse to a damn near retarded man. The fact remains though that reading these two lines initiated that rare event which passes for a shattering epiphany in our president’s mind, an idea.

As best as my source can make out, seeing, for the first time, in highlighted text no less, (and in very close proximity to the words “holy grail”) the sentiment that language is not static and that there is room for interpretation - a sentiment which flew directly in the face of every childhood taunt and every Presidential-wedgie he’d received since taking office - well… It was tremendously exciting for him. So much so that after no more time than it took to drink 4 Hard Lemonades he’d re-envisioned not only his his Presidency (as one which might in fact make it into the books as something other than a destructive string of utter failures) but his already famous Bushisms as well. Perhaps, if he used his final two years well, he could be remembered as “The Great Orthoepist” rather than the “Incompetent Destroyer” or the “Lenny of the American Presidency?” 

The logic goes something like this: why, if “the pronunciations given are not the only ones in good usage” as fine, noble Mr. Ayers says, couldn’t America “teach the controversy” in Grammar? It had worked in the Sciences. Today a majority of American’s polled no longer believed in that confusing Evolution stuff! Why couldn’t the same transformation be visited upon the English language itself?! He, George W. Bush, the average Joe’s President, the President guy’s all over the country wanted to share a few brewskies with, could be an admired coiner of words rather than a retched mangler of them. He could take the podium with confidence and speak in the manner the good lord impelled him to! He could take some liberties with those damned foreign names. He could speak in tongues if the spirit moved him. He imagined comic book versions of his own great moments and public addresses, peppered throughout with “Bushisms” now cherished by the children and deep into common usage! How wonderful it could be.

Having, since that great day of realization, brought his idea to friends in high places via aides in high places matters have mutated. A close advisor explained to the President that the idea could be taken even further; that throughout the ages alternate language systems have been developed which were less complex, less obtuse, and free of all the strange rules and exceptions which always seemed to trip him up. In point of fact there were a great many of them to choose from, any of which might, through a little palm-greasing and favor-granting, eventually supplant the reigning American english as the official language of the greatest nation on Earth. Not only could a radical new orthoepy be brought to bear but so too could orthography itself be rewritten, liberating lazy 3rd graders and lifetime-long poor spellers as well. It would be quite a legacy for a President so often “misunderestimated.”

Hearing murmurs of this language creators across the country have begun rallying their troops and pinching their pennies. Word on the hill is that before long the “language lobbies” will be a new force in American politics.

It may sound hard to believe but the truth is that by appealing to his base on this issue (which is comprised largely of people who wear monocles and have others do their reading for them, or alternately, people who don’t read because… well… they are unable. Not to mention the sizable portion to whom logic and reason are no great shakes, and hence, no boundary) a new national language might be closer than you think. And no, I’m not talking about Spanish.

According to my source some of the many alternate systems vying for favor at this very moment are:

Globish
Anglish
Basic English
Easy English
Klingon
Esperanto
Ido
Simlish
Idiom Neutral
lojban
Ceqli.

In truth the list offered to me by my source was just too long to reproduce here, but this page is a decent start.

What I can say is that though the President has not read about it in any great detail whatsoever, word is that he is strongly favoring Stephen Chase Houghton’s constructed language based entirely on its name, which he thinks “sounds pretty bad-ass.”

I can’t say for sure how this will shake out but obviously the President only has two years to make his lingua-dreams a reality, and according to my source he will do everything in his already sore and chaffed power to do exactly that. So if you open the New York Post one day and find a headline which looks like it ought to be on the front of a child’s Lemonade stand, remember, you heard it here first.

I for one am gonna try to grab a piece of the pie for myself! C U Laytr Sukus!

The Artist’s Dilemma

By Mark Rothko (probably written between 1940-41)

What is the popular conception of the artist? Gather a thousand descriptions, and the resulting composite is the portrait of a moron: he is held to be childish, irresponsible, and ignorant or stupid in everyday affairs.

The picture does not necessarily involve censure or unkindness. These deficiencies are attributed to the intensity of the artist’s preoccupation with his particular kind of fantasy and to the unworldly nature of the fantastic itself. The bantering tolerance granted to the absentminded professor is extended to the artist. Biographers contrast the artlessness of his judgments with the high attainment of his art, and while his naivete or rascality are gossiped about, they are viewed as signs of Simplicity and Inspiration, which are the Handmaidens of Art. And if the artist is inarticulate and lacking in the usual repositories of fact and information, how fortunate, it is said, that nature has contrived to divert from him all worldly distractions so he may be single-minded in regards to his special office.

This myth, like all myths, has many reasonable foundations. First, it attests to the common belief in the laws of compensation: that one sense will gain in sensitivity by the deficiency in another. Homer was blind, and Beethoven deaf. Too bad for them, but fortunate for us in the increased vividness of their art. But more importantly it attests to the persistent belief in the irrational quality of inspiration, finding between the innocence of childhood and the derangements of madness that true insight which is not accorded to normal man. When thinking of the artist, the world still adheres to Plato’s view, expressed in Ion in reference to the poet: “There is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him.” Although science, with scales and yardstick, daily threatens to rend mystery from the imagination, the persistence of this myth is the inadvertent homage which man pays to the penetration of his inner being as it is differentiated from his reasonable experience.

Strange, but the artist has never made a fuss about being denied those estimable virtues other men would not do without: intellectuality, good judgment, a knowledge of the world, and rational conduct. It may be charged that he has even fostered the myth. In his intimate journals Vollard tells us that Degas feigned deafness to escape disputations and harangues concerning things he considered false and distasteful. If the speaker or subject changed, his hearing immediately improved. We must marvel at his wisdom since he must have only surmised what we know definitely today: that the constant repetition of falsehood is more convincing than the demonstration of truth. It is understandable, then, how the artist might actually cultivate this moronic appearance, this deafness, this inarticulateness, in an effort to evade the million irrelevancies which daily accumulate concerning his work. For, while the authority of the doctor or plumber is never questioned, everyone deems himself a good judge and an adequate arbiter of what a work of art should be and how it should be done.

Let us not delude ourselves with visions of a golden age freed of this cacophony. This gilding is an artistic falsehood. We deal in fantasy ourselves and know how alive dreams can seem. And an age like ours, which demands so clear a facing of realities, will not allow us the pleasure of narcoticism. With the knowledge that man’s tribulations, at least, are always with him, we can safely say that the artist of the past had good reason, too, to play the mad fool—so as to salvage those moments of peace when the demands of the demons could be quieted and art pursued. And if nature, in fact, contrived to give him the appearance of a fool, so much the better. For dissimulation is an exacting art.

Ill hath he chosen his part who seeks to please
The worthless world,—ill hath he chosen his part,
For often must he wear the look of ease

Assent with lying tongue.

The lament is Michelangelo’s (a translation of this madrigal can be found in The Life of Michel Angela Buonarroti [1807]). Even this great man—who lived in an age when the rapport between the artist and the world seemed to have been ideal, and when fetes and processions celebrated the completion of works by the artists of renown, for whose services dukes, popes, and kings fought — even he bore his full share of calumny and disapproval. The principles of his art were constantly assailed; and, after parrying those criticisms, his morals were found wanting. Aretino attacked the nakedness of the nudes in the Last judgement as inconsistent with Christian piety. The reasonableness of Aretino’s point cannot be denied. Michelangelo’s vision of the Celestial Court can be easily mistaken for an orgiastic bout. These doctors and moralists, they are always right! Like our own social moralists and critics, their facts are so neat, and their reasoning so pretty: but what disastrous falsity to the cause of truth!

Most societies of the past have insisted that their own particular evaluations of truth and morality be depicted by the artist. Accordingly, the Egyptian artist had to produce a definitely prescribed prototype; the Christian artist had to abide by the tenets of the Second Council of Nicea or be anathematized or, like the monk of the iconoclast age, work in danger and by stealth. We should note that Michelangelo’s nudes were forced to wear, in the end, the appropriate panties and drapes. Authority formulated rules, and the artist complied. We shall not speak here of those whose daring periodically revitalized art, saving it from its narcissistic mimicry of itself. We can accurately say that, within these periods, the artist had to submit to these rules or simulate the appearance of submission, if he were to be permitted to practice his art.

It will be pointed out that the artist’s lot is the same today, that the market, through its denial or affording of the means of sustenance, exerts the same compulsion. Yet there is this vital difference: the civilizations enumerated above had the temporal and spiritual power to summarily enforce their demands. The Fires of Hell, exile, and, in the background, the rack and stake, were correctives if persuasion failed. Today the compulsion is Hunger, and the experience of the last four hundred years has shown us that hunger is not nearly as compelling as the imminence of Hell and Death. Since the passing of the spiritual and temporal patron, the history of art is the history of men who, for the most part, have preferred hunger to compliance, and who have considered the choice worthwhile. And choice it is, for all the tragic disparity between the two alternatives.

The freedom to starve! Ironical indeed. Yet hold your laughter. Do not underestimate the privilege. It is seldom possessed, and dearly won. The denial of this right is no less ironical: think of the condemned criminal who will not eat and who is fed by force, if need be, until his day of execution. Concerning hunger, as concerning art, society has traditionally been dogmatic. One had to starve legitimately—through famine or blight, through unemployment or exploitation—or not at all. One could no more contrive his own starvation than he could take his own life; and for the artist to have said to society that he would sooner starve than traffic with her wares or tastes would have been heresy and dealt with summarily as such. Within the dogmas of the totalitarian states of today, you may be sure, the artist must starve correctly, just as he must paint by the dictates of the State.

But here, today, we still have the right to choose. It is precisely the possibility of exercising choice wherein our lot differs from that of the artists of the past. For choice implies responsibility to one’s conscience, and, in the conscience of the artist, the Truth of Art is foremost. There may be other loyalties, but for the artist, unless he has been waylaid or distracted, they will be secondary and discarded in his creation of art. This artistic conscience, which is composed of present reason and memory, this morality intrinsic to the generic logic of art itself, is inescapable. Violate her promptings and she will ferret out the deepest recesses of thought and conjecture. Neither sophistries nor rationalizations can quiet her demands.

What did those artists of the past do about their conscience? The Law of Authority has this saving grace: it can be circumnavigated. One can pay lip service to the letter and with equanimity violate its spirit. One bows to necessity, then schemes to defeat it. We are told that there were times when the Truth of the Law coincided with the Truth of Art. Granted! But when the divergence became too great, what ingenuity the artist displayed in disguising one to have the appearance of the other. What guile and shrewdness in this seeming moron. One needs but but recall the great Apollo. How easily this Hellenistic deity, with all his draperies and trappings, was slipped into the niches of the Christian saints. He had merely to change his name, and to look much sadder than he really felt.

What abetted the artist in his little game was the dogmatic unity of his civilization. For all dogmatic societies have this in common: they know what they want. Whatever the contentions behind the scenes, society is allowed only one Official Truth. The demands made upon the artist, therefore, issued from a single source, and the specifications for art were definite and unmistakable. That, at least, was something: whether submission or deceit were intended, one master is better than ten, and it is better to know the size and shape of the hand that holds the whip. In a master, definiteness and stability are preferable to caprice.

Today, instead of one voice, we have dozens issuing demands. There is no longer one truth, no single authority—instead there is a score of would-be masters who would usurp their place. All are full of histories, statistics, proofs, demonstrations, facts, and quotations. First they plead and exhort, and finally they resort to intimidation by threats and moral imprecations. Each pulls the artist this way and that, telling him what he must do if he is to fill his belly and save his soul.

For the artist, now, there can be neither compliance nor circumvention. It is the misfortune of free conscience that it cannot be neglectful of means in the pursuit of ends. Ironically enough, compliance would not help, for even if the artist should decide to subvert this conscience, where could he find peace in this Babel? To please one is to antagonize the others. And what security is there in any of these wrangling contenders?

The truths of India, Egypt, Greece spanned over centuries. In matters of art our society has substituted taste for truth, which she finds more amusing and less of a responsibility, and changes her tastes as frequently as she changes her hats and shoes. And here might the artist, placed between choice and diversity, raise his lamentations louder. Never did his afflictors have as many shapes or such a jabbering of voices, and never did they exude such a prolixity of matter.

-

Hope you enjoyed.

The lyrics are as follows:

————————————————-

Take take take take take it off…
Take it off, take take take take it off
Take it off, take take take take it off,
Take it off, take take take take it off,
Take it off,
Take it OFF!
Take that suede-front off
Take it OFF!
Take those contacts off
Take it OFF!
Take that horsemeat off
Take it OFF!
Take those shell-toes off
Take it OFF!
Take those track fleas off
Take it OFF!
Take that doo-rag off
Take it OFF!
Take that moth-rag off
Take it OFF!
Take those fat laces off
Take it OFF!
Take that bomber off
Take it OFF!
Take that BVD off
Take it OFF!
Take those Converse off
Take it OFF!
And those Gazelles too
Take it OFF!
Take that Kangol off
Take it OFF!
Take that Jordache off
Take it OFF!
Take that Afro off
Take it OFF!
Take that jheri curl off
Take it OFF!
Take that Le Tigre off
Take it OFF!
Take those acid-washed jeans, bell-bottomed, designed by your mama…
off? Please? Please…

————————————————-

So, where do these street-pariah’s stand today? To find the answer I tapped a fashion designer who, wishing to remain anonymous, we will call “Da Brat.”

Da Brat and I conversed briefly on the subject and the results are as follows…

Suede-Front
We were almost, but not totally, in agreement on this item. Da Brat said “I like a suede-front on a man” to which I would have to qualify, “a man over the age 60, with a shuffling walk, maybe.” The populous at large don’t wear them, which would seem to point to a ruling of whack, unless you are forward-thinking and assume that if no one is wearing something it’s cool, in which case the suede-front is pretty fly. Ya heard?

Contacts
Da Brat and I were in total agreement here: Even for fake-tanned, dyed-blonde asian girls who want to look like they are fresh from a crashing Malibu surf colored contacts are whack with a capital, Billy Joel style, ack. ack. ack. ack. 

Horsemeat
Horsemeat? Da Brat and I were similarly mystified by this one. “A Leather product of some kind? Pleather? Fur?” In so much as neither of us were up on our 1989 slang enough to positively identify this item we will have to say whack, if only because it sounds gross and we both like horses.

Shell-Toes
Da Brat had a definite opinion on this one which sprung forth without hesitation, “they are only cool on people who never stopped wearing them in the first place.” I myself recognize them as classics but also recognize that they have too much baggage to be fresh again any time soon. So we are gonna have to go with wic-wic-whack. 

Track Fleas
Track fleas? Again no clue. Da Brat and I decided to approach this one as though what they are referring to is a track suit of some kind and go from there. Under that assumption the consensus is that though you still catch a D-Train straggler wearing a pink velour Juicy Couture number the plain fact is they are whack. That being said, they sold a shit-load at least twice in the past 20 years so expect them to make a return before too long. Not that that return will nullify their whackness. 

Doo-Rag
The doo-rag is back in a big way with all kinds of loser celebrity-types rockin’ them in both the classic over-the-noggin style, as well as the Dexies Midnight Runners’ loose-around-the-neck style. Once Nicole Ritchie and other deadweight c-listers have been caught in the pages of In-Style magazine wearing something, well, word on the street has to be that that shit is WHACK!

Moth Rag
I had to seek a third and fourth opinion on this one but none of my sources were able to positively identify what exactly a “moth rag” was. The best guess we heard was possibly a wig or a weave. If that is correct then it is perfectly relevant to todays rampant celebrity fakery. Remember crack is whack, and so are weaves, wigs, and extensions. Da Brat’s final words: “Sounds pretty cool whatever it is.”

Fat Laces
The simple answer here is that unless you are a member of a japanese break dance crew or an aged b-boy being wheeled around a cardboard-floored nursing home then you have no business wearing fat laces. Just say no.

Bomber
Da Brat seems to think baggy oversized bombers are cool again. I haven’t seen one anywhere, not with an 8-ball on the back, not with top-gun style patches, not Bruce Sterling “pattern recognition” style, not even an embroidered Avirex (course, it is summer) so I’ll go ahead and agree that they must be dope again. 

BVD
Hmmm. This one has me somewhat mystified. Underwear? Giant white XXXXXL tee shirts that end somewhere below the knee? I don’t know. I have to beg off on this one. No clue. Da Brat concurs. 

Converse, Kangol, Jordache
I have decided to group these all together because they are all pretty much in the same boat of relative whackness. All these brands have been trying really hard at making a resurgence, to regain even a milligram of the coolness which once swirled around them like a swollen, money-bearing cloud. Problem is all three were so successful in their respective moments as to have become very nearly cliche. Converse and Kangol are perhaps a little better off in that they have been adopted by so many different subcultures of people that they are very nearly meaningless at this point, the first step toward injecting them with new life. Jordache, however… well, one word: wiz-ni-iz-nack! Especially, as Da Brat points out, with Elizabeth Hurley as their spokes-meat.

Gazelles
See the entries for both shell-toes and fat-laces. It’s just too soon. Why do we have to so mercilessly pummel the b-boy fashions? Can’t we let them be for a while? Go grab up some Kangaroos, K-Swiss, Diadoras, or hell even some Doug E Fresh style gucci loafers. Give the b-boy sneakers a rest… A’ight? 

Afro
Da Brat seemed irrationally exuberant in her approval for afros “on blonde girls.” I myself am almost completely ambivalent toward them. I think the afro is a style which needs to be taken on a head by head basis. ?uestlove’s fro for example: fresh. Yo mama’s fro: Whack.

Jheri Curl
I am convinced this one has hit the mat for good. The jheri curl has been so mercilessly lampooned by everyone under the sun for the past 15 years that I just can’t imagine anyone trying to rock it again. Unless it’s some ironic Williamsburger of course. I won’t put anything past them. Then again you’d think the same would be true for the mullet, and yet it lives on totally without irony. Da Brat’s take on jheri curl: “Only cool in a London nightclub.”

Le Tigre
See Jordache comments above. Not even that cool in the first place. Off-brand Izod wanna-be whack-attack now and forever. (Even if I do have a 7th grade class photo of myself wearing an turquoise Le Tigre polo shirt with a bangs and a black rope necklace. Aw shit!)

Acid-Washed Jeans, Bell-Bottomed, Designed By Your Mama
Clearly these are the freshest of the lot. Or the whackest, depending on your outlook.

So overall of the 16 our 2006 revised judgement breaks down to 11 still whack, and 5 fresh or indeterminate. Course, that’s only our take, your tally may come in very differently. Beyond that you can be sure that in redoubling the overall whackness of the Take It Off list nearly 20 years on there will be those who instantly regard its items as doubly cool. Such is the precariously subjective round-a-bout of fashion. Please feel free to enlighten us if you have any further insight into the matter. Pos, Dave, Maseo, and Paul included. And thanks to code-name: Da Brat for participating.

Signing off.

In any case I recently picked up a truly beautiful book put out in 1966 called The Biography of a Painting. The text is originally from one of six C.E. Norton lectures Shahn gave at Harvard (the most famous being The Shape of Content, which is still in print). In this particular volume Shahn attempts to trace the internal and external forces which shaped his painting titled, Allegory. It might, on the surface, seem an odd thing to devote an entire book to exploring the inspiration for a single painting. Non-artists would no doubt assume that the ideas and circumstances of a painting’s creation are right there on the tip of an artists tongue, ready to be accessed, and that exploration aimed at rooting these out is a self-involved exercise at best. The truth is not so black and white, and in the case of Allegory there were extenuating circumstances which sparked the search.

As it happens a critic named Henry McBride, who was writing for the New York Sun, misconstrued the imagery of Allegory as being symbolic and sympathetic to Red Moscow and ended his column by saying for this painting alone Shahn should be deported. As Shahn put’s it in the Biography of a Painting:

What follows is a fascinating, far reaching, and often touching examination (all printed in a handwritten style, whether authentic or simply a device I’m not sure) which as it so happens is copiously illustrated with Shahn’s own print-work as well as some reproductions of his paintings.

The truth is, with a few exceptions, that before picking up this book I was not very familiar with Shahn’s work (nor his artistic philosophies) but I truly enjoyed it, his print-work especially, and under the assumption that there are others of you unfamiliar I’d like to share a cross section of pieces I particularly liked.

Well there you have it. Hope You enjoyed.

For more on Shahn try the following:

Interview with Ben Shahn from the Smithsonian’s oral histories.

Ben Shahn. Passion for justice presented by PBS.

Ben Shahn at Harvard.

Common Man, Mythic Vision: The Paintings of Ben Shahn.

Ben Shahn: Picture Maker.

Ben Shahn’s art and His Mission From George Kresky Gallery.

On Ben Shahn’s Roosevelt Mural.

Andy Warhol’s Red Beard - influence of Ben Shahn and Shirley Temple on Warhol.

Yesterday I came across a truly gorgeous book of photographs by Candida Höfer titled, Libraries, a title which pretty much says it all, because that is just exactly what it is, one rich, sumptuous, photo of a library interior after another. It’s like porn for book nerds. Seriously. They are gorgeous photos, nearly all without visitors and just begging to be entered. (ha. sorry.)

See below for 14 examples which I particularly liked, but keep in mind these 500px wide version can’t really compete with the big, glossy, real thing.

Hope you enjoyed… but not too much… you filthy, beady-eyed perv.

You can pick up your own copy here.
(I’m sure they will ship in a plain brown paper-bag if you ask really nicely.)

Alternately, since I didn’t offer much by way of reading in this post I offer the following supplimentary material:

The obligatory Wiki round-up on the subject.

A history of private, royal, imperial, monastic and public libraries

Survivor: The History of the Library from History magazine.

Libraries & culture from University of Texas Press.

And hell, though it’s only tangentially related The Briar Press page:
Eleven Presses That Made History (Via.)

Click all for larger versions.

Hope you enjoyed.

I give you:

GET OUT OF IRAQ A public service handout, in which the example of a small group of seemingly pinned-down soldiers is used to illustrate the complex machinations of the administration’s war policies on the whole.

Click each Image for a larger and easier to read version.

See? Simple as that. Makes you wonder what we’ve all been so worked up about doesn’t it? Can you believe some of us actually thought these guys didn’t have a plan? That they were incompetent and dangerous?! Shows us. And just let me say, though the adorable Rummy spokes-head may say it isn’t magic it certainly is magical.

For those of you wishing to use this as a teaching tool, who would like to run through these brilliant machinations yourself, or who simply want to extend this knowledge to their neighbors and disseminate it further, I am making a downloadable pdf available which will print on a single letter-sized sheet of paper. All you need do is fold it in the middle and tape or glue the two sides together. Good luck and happy learning.

Download the pdf here.

You are descended from mortal men whose mortality can be glimpsed beneath all the fresh coats of enamel and giant pixelated printouts which seek to guide your purchases and reassure your mind. You are mortal as well. You know this. Walking the grid you can feel time as if it were a physical force, a gusting wind or a punishing wave. You look at the strange messages left by your ancestors, the ads, the architecture, the signs, the photos, the tints, the scrawl, the sum-partial of their choices, and you realize that though they are familiar they are at the same time foreign, and you, the modern mover-and-shaker, can never really understand their meaning.

The beauty of the eroding, the fading, the disappearing is that of reinvigoration. As counterintuitive as it sounds, things which are half-lost, torn from their original contexts are in a certain way given new life. Stripped as they are of their intended meaning and divorced from their real purpose they are open to interpretation. In reclaiming obscurity they reclaim mystery, and hence, beauty for those with eyes to see it.

In New York when something dies the corpse is often left out to rot, slowly and fragrantly, in the public eye and nostril. The American ideal of progress overrunning all sentiment. No time for mourning or last rights! A penny kept from an eyelid is a penny saved! Left out and ignored long enough these things become strangely vital again, moving in their death-throes, with none of the living remembering quite how they came to be, or why. 

If only my own remains could be left out on the street, to first bleach in the heat-wave sun, and then blacken in the taxi-exhaust. To be kicked into some corner and piled willy-nilly for passersby to wonder at; a hundred years from now becoming fodder for the imagination of observant romantics with an abundance of internal chop and too little weight to their anchors. I would smile at them and wink from a forgotten hollow, a ghost sign of bone, signifying nothing.

(The image for this post was adapted from the beautiful ghost signs flikr group.)