Girl with Puma, no. 1

"Travelers return from the city of Zirma with distinct memories: a blind black man shouting in the crowd, a lunatic teetering on a skyscraper's cornice, a girl walking with a puma on a leash. Actually many of the blind men who tap their canes on Zirma's cobblestones are black; in every skyscraper there is someone going mad; all lunatics spend hours on cornices; there is no puma that some girl does not raise, as a whim. The city is redundant: it repeats itself so that something will stick in the mind...Memory is redundant: it repeats signs so that the city can begin to exist."
- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1972

My friend Dave Sulewski gave me this book as a gift when I was visiting my sister Julie in Boston last Christmas. Thanks Dave, it was a perfect gift. The Italian author describes about 30 fantastical vignettes, many in a similar style to that shown here, that attempt to describe the experience of being in a city. I guess one could categorize the book as "creative non-fiction" because it describes Marco Polo's reports of the empire's cities to the emperor back in Rome. At first reading I immediately thought that it would make an incredible film, then realizing that I don't have many millions of dollars to recreate the scenes, I got the idea to do some photographic interpretations of the scenes described. The picture above is a half-assed attempt at one small part of one small vignette...hey, it's a start. I got the toys from the Santa Cruz flea market, at which the most boggling sight was at the chainsaw vendor. He just let people fire 'em up and let 'em rip right there, so there was this collection of redwood tree farmers with their overalls on waving loud and rusty chainsaws in the air.

The photos below are from Los Angeles, and for some reason remind me of the repetitiveness that Calvino speaks of in this passage.








In other news, to show what a complete dork I've become: My "fun" reading right now is a book about the history of prices from the 12th century to the 20th century. It's called The Great Wave by D.H. Fischer, and tells the story of the 4 great moments in history when the prices of things increase dramatically. The reasons are always related to population growth and resource scarcity. He claims it's the longest possible continuous history to write because the only surviving written records from many diverse times and places have been receipts. Needless to say, we're in the steepest hike right now. Sadly, following each great wave, there is a great crash...

Home Stretch

I returned yesterday to Santa Cruz after a super fun weekend in L.A. I went to participate in our department's annual distinguished lecture and dinner party. I'm only here for another 3 weeks, then it's back down to SoCal for good. As nice as it is in Sta Cruz, I can't wait to move back and be with friends and in the big city again. I'm in the writing phase of the quarter, so my books are stacked high.