débarras

400

Fear and Loathing at the Taco Stand

I stared out to sea and said nothing for a while. But somehow I knew she was right. Yes sir, I said slowly to myself, I have the soul of a teenage girl in the body of an elderly dope fiend. No wonder they can't understand me.
This is a hard dollar, on most days, and not many people can stand it.
Indeed. If the greatest mania of all is passion: and if I am a natural slave to passion: and if the balance between my brain and my soul and my body is as wild and delicate as the skin of a Ming vase -
Well, that explains a lot of things, doesn't it? We need look no further. Yes sir, and people wonder why I seem to look at them strangely. Or why my personal etiquette often seems makeshift and contradictory, even clinically insane... Hell, I don't miss those whispers, those soft groans of fear when I enter a civilized room. I know what they're thinking, and I know exactly why. They are extremely uncomfortable with the idea that I am a teenage girl trapped in the body of a sixty-five-year-old career criminal who has already died sixteen times. Sixteen, all documented. I have been crushed and beaten and shocked and drowned and poisoned and stabbed and shot and smothered and set on fire by my own bombs...
All these things have happened, and probably they will happen again. I have learned a few tricks along the way, a few random skills and simple avoidance techniques - but mainly it has been luck, I think, and a keen attention to karma, along with my natural girlish charm.

pp.54-55

Hunter S. Thompson

départ

nothing to give

coming up for air

K

week starter

et le loup

Pierre et le Loup - Miguelanxo Prado, 1995

Peter & the Wolf - Suzie Templeton, 2006
the film can be found on youtube in several parts. the ending is different.

l'autre jour

à la verticale

indélébile

a blotter. drawing by André François.

a candid david hemmings

week starter

because of the host, i never watch this show. but, thankfully, videos of the songs only are available.

K

"yeah, but you didn't..."

... or maybe romy schneider did.

some pablo guy.

Good Neighbor Sam (1964)

gary

brave bête

à la maison

alison friend

deer teacher

Hiroshi Tanabe - Deer, 2003

Institute Benjamenta - Quay Brothers, 1995

K

hard to stick to 50 when doing caps of my favourite film.

algèbre

New Math by Craig Damrauer

rideau

All wound up - Jordan Crane



Ratcatcher - Lynne Ramsay

i loved to do that when i was little.

dear mister . . .

Bill Geerhart's correspondence

marie prevost

i didn't know anything about her life when i found the still. i'm glad i got interested in her thanks to this image, and not out of morbid curiosity.

early morning

this is were we live

immersion urbaine

les baleines publiques - frank & bom - 1987





the red tree - shaun tan - 2001

(photos, not scans, hence the curvy borders)

"Oh, Harold...

That's *wonderful*. Go and love some more."

à la bretonne

girl. you've got some 'tude.

she cracks me up.

you've got the surface and substance confused

sound/music, words, images, bluriness/sharpness, light, colours, speed...
inside -
silence, racket, guts, brain, dreams, confusion/sharpness, fire, colours, speed...

no more conversation

no words while walking through this park yesterday. except a smiling "bonjour" to the only person there. a man who takes care of the place and knows about not talking. why aren't there more of this species?

ars est celare artem

... art is to conceal art. i wish it was also sharing it and not lecturing you on it.

reading this reminded me of an exhibition i saw in 2000.

catherine jansens

i don't have any intelligent thing to say about her paintings. only that i still remember the surprise when discovering they were not pastels but watercolours, that i felt terribly lucky to be able to look at them, and that it was perhaps much more about discretion than about secrets.

the colour of spring

Forget our fate
The pedlar sings
Set up to sell my soul
I've lived a life for wealth to bring

And yet I'll gaze
The colour of spring
Immerse in that one moment
Left in love with everything

Soar the bridges
That I burnt before
One song among us all

mark hollis, 1998

a favourite

i once posted this little film in an other place... but it should really be here too.

de la panne à ostende

yesterday, i went to the sea. it's less than a couple of hours away but i had not been there for three years. much too long. i don't recall having spent so much time without seeing it.

it was a beautiful tiring day. with long nearly desert beaches. a wind so strong that it makes your ears ache. many detours because of roadworks nearly everywhere on the belgian coast. farm animals in the green green grass. fog wrapped around ostende's buildings.

and the pleasure to know, the day before, that i was going to make this little one day trip. to have something to look forward to.

it's just fleeting glimpses

this makes me feel good.

for the birds

in the first days of august 1908, a mother sent all these to her son Jean who lived in bruxelles.

some technicolor

to lightened up the grey days...

le perroquet du vendredi 13

i was out on the balcony, taking a polaroid. i had been freezing for only a few seconds when i spotted a very colorful bird moving on the lawn. right under where i was. a little bigger than a pigeon. very green with a touch of flaming red. my first thought was "but, but, it looks like a parrot!". being so very red and very green...

i moved closer to the banister and made myself so sillily noticeable that it flew a little further away, showing a lovely bright yellow above its tail. it stayed in the grass for a while, giving me the eye. then chose to hide in a tree about 50 meters from where i stood, wondering what kind of bird it could be. (i had come to my senses and dropped the escaped-parrot-theory.)

after a few minutes, during which i ran for my camera and its unefficient lense for this kind of photography, it came back. i tried to capture it and obviously failed (~evidence below). the bird kept looking up to make sure i would not jump from the third floor, and finally decided to move a little, towards one of the small trees trying to grow in the lawn. as if it wanted me to make sure it wasn't exotic at all, it landed in this very special way, on the trunk and... pecked it.



later on i searched for a woodpecker in a book (~scan) and was made sure that i had indeed met one (~middle, right). i felt very silly (parrot-wise), lucky (in this urban environment) and happy. this was my first encounter with a lady woodpecker.

quick snap

it is very odd for me to walk in the neighborhood.
i drive too much.

but it's also quite amusing to feel like a tourist when taking a picture less than a mile away from home.

there there

Whenever I’m in the doctor’s waiting room, the most restless person there will be next to me. Whether this person arrived after me, or I chose to sit at their side.

The more I get still, calm, patiently waiting, reading (if I didn’t forget to take a book with me), the more this person will be agitated. She will go through her purse. He will fiddle with his phone. They will painfully sigh each time a door opens for someone else than them, rummage through their bag for this huge agenda and its pages covered with big letters hastily written for so many important appointments.
One (apparently also including every-one-else) has to be sure they’re at the right place, at the right time, on the right purpose.

Then again, maybe I am not really patient, because not really waiting. Some appointments are indeed worth being nervous. But, most of the time, for me, they only mean getting a prescription renewed. One minute, looking at those old posters on the wall in front of me. The next, reading a sentence for the second time because this little boy three seats away, after inspecting these images and their lecture on a healthier you, made a comment on how damaged they are and, turning to his mother earnestly added: “I didn’t do it”.
Not much of a waiting room for me. It’s more about being here now than about getting “in there” soon.

shiny new

his name is roméo.
because is young... virile,
and i happen to be very much in love.

All right, close your eyes. What do you see?

Principles of Uncertainty

maira kalman

and the illustrated woman. random. confused.
making sense.

the visit of the landlord

he talks loud. avoids specific subjects – that have to do with his apartment / my home. makes comments about the cats. asks if there will be others. asks about my job. wants to know about situations. inquires. talks and talks and talks… asks and asks and asks…

she listens, approves the claims. has common sense. uses it in the conversation. not only at her own advantage. seems interested in what is going on. not only in who you are. sounds determined to have some things actually dealt with, even though they won’t change anything in her life nor improve her husband’s bank account…




i feel
like i went through a good tenant interview (paid the rent without any delay for 13 years).
like it would have been oh so much better to only meet her.
like my home, my habits, the way i live has been judged.
glad they fly back to la réunion soon.

stain

ogawa

20... Et le fait que je ne pouvais les voir ailleurs que dans un miroir me troublait encore plus. J'aurais tellement voulu les regarder directement, les poser sur ma paume. Je ne comprends pas pourquoi. A cette époque, j'étais loin de me douter que mon mari allait quitter la maison. Nous n'avions aucun problème. Simplement, j'avais quelque part en moi ce pressentiment concernant mes oreilles.

. . .

46... Toutes les choses de la maison avaient été séparées entre celles qui restaient et celles qui partaient. Le choix avait été parfait. Les choses dont j'avais besoin étaient toutes là, celles qui ne m'étaient pas nécessaires avaient disparu.
J'ai trouvé ça à la fois agréable et cruel.

. . .

121... - Non. J'étais adulte quand j'ai vu la neige pour la première fois. Je devais avoir dix-neuf ou vingt ans.
- Eeh. Qu'est-ce que vous avez ressenti à ce moment-là?
- Cela me faisait de la peine de la salir avec mes chaussures. Alors je suis resté toute la journée à la contempler de l'intérieur.

. . .

125... Elles étaient très silencieuses. Le calme autour d'elles contenait une douceur qui m'attirait. J'avais l'impression que ce calme n'était pas ordinaire, qu'il enveloppait soigneusement les nerfs. Je compris aussitôt pourquoi je sentais cela. Elles parlaient avec les mains.

. . .

169... Ensuite, je fus un peu perdue en me demandant ce que je pourrais faire pour eux. Parce qu'il ne réclamaient rien. J'étais inquiète, car j'avais l'impression d'avoir peut-être oublié de faire ce qu'ils attendaient de moi. J'avais un peu l'habitude d'être aimée, mais je n'étais pas du tout habituée à aimer - des doigts, en plus.

. . .

186... Exactement. Tu t'es égarée dans les méandres de ta mémoire. En réalité, ta mémoire devrait s'entasser derrière toi. Mais, par inadvertance, elle s'est frayé un chemin à travers tes oreilles et elle est passée devant toi. A moins que ce ne soit toi, au contraire, qui aies fait un pas en arrière.