Looking for Shapes
We got some pretty rinky dink snow here in Providence Rhode Island, so to celebrate I went and got nachos. It feels silly to me to get nachos to go, because it's a platter food and you want that presentation element. Also it's a party food and I'm straight up eating them by myself. But I find that low levels of shame can really enhance certain foods, and nachos is in that class. So now and then I like to go out and get this kind of gross, suprisingly heavy, and difficult to eat dish, and get it to go. Especially if there's a storm, then I call it "storm nachos" although nothing is different about them.
Anyway we didn't get a storm, we got a very light dusting, but I got nachos anyway, and I have no regrets. I have yet to unlock the real "big snow" activities, like walking around in the pink night, having that screensaver moment in a car with the snow falling, and in the case of a blizzard, watching John Carpenter's "The Thing".
It's eerie not having the weather I'm accustomed to at this time, but I've been making use of the temperature by hitting the bike path often. Usually I ride to the Job Lot in Cranston*
The farthest I went this year so far was to the Michael's in Warwick and back. I mean obviously I came back. I don't even know why I went though, I guess it seemed abstract enough that "maybe they'll have what I need" (don't know what I need) and also it seemed dumb enough that going there felt like a transgression, see above. Well, nothing there spoke to me, I mean it's not very abstract at all, it's a lot of objects for specific purposes. I thought there'd be like, shapes? And no goths were working either... I think they've been displaced by self-checkout. Anyway the ride was nice, I waved to everyone I saw and rang my bell a lot, those are two New Years traditions for me I guess.
I don't usually go that far but that end of the bike path has my favorite graffiti right now, which is teens too high to draw a pentagram. This is a motif that develops over about a half mile, along which the teens presumably get higher, leading to substantial development of the theme on the bridge over the foul Pawtuxet River. My favorite was towards the end, it was like a little house in a circle:
artist's rendition
The X indicates "someone's home" or "this is the place" or maybe "slated for destruction". I also think of this shape as a "hatted toggle", like a toggle switch in Pure Data, in the on position, with a mischievous little gnome hat:
links/misc
- OK it's mid-January and you probably have all the inspirational calendars you need, but if not, or you want another one anyway, Flan's is on sale over at Oddities Prints - this year it's all spooky nudes. [link]
- Greg Harvester has a new photo zine out and a bunch of cool postcards too. Sending someone a postcard is so nice because it's fun to send things in the mail and to reach out to a bud, but writing a whole letter or sending a package is kind of a big production. A postcard you have like, just a paragraph, it's easy, and you can always fall back on "what do you think of this postcard, eh???". [link]
- After a holiday rush and then a few weeks of just knocking barnacles off the hull, I'm trying to crawl back into a semi-regular posting habit. If you'd like to drop me a line about your past couple months I'd love to hear about it, I'm at jacob@fujichia.com, and of course postcards are always welcome at Jacob B / PO box 29081 Providence RI 02909. :)
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