http://www.witoldriedel.com/MT/ subjective thoughts and observations by Witold Riedel, a New Yorker photographer and draftsman by choice. en-us 2008-11-15T11:37:44-04:00 http://www.witoldriedel.com/MT/archives/003406.shtml not quite sure where i put this pen now. the drawing is from some meeting in the summer of 2007, i think. but i am not sure. and maybe it does not matter at all. (it actually probably really does not.)... drawing Witold Riedel 2008-11-15T11:37:44-04:00 http://www.witoldriedel.com/MT/archives/003405.shtml The clouds are in a rush this morning. As if the fog earlier had somehow created this urgency, as if some catching up were to do now. pigeons look as if they had real fun with this kind of wind. the wings adjusted to just the right angle, the birds can enjoy not just incredible speeds, but apparently the thrill of indescribable mid air acceleration. recently saw one of them almost hit the building again and again, at higher and higher speeds. the seagulls are very relaxed in mid air right now. here. and i can see jfk again. it was gone for the first several hours of my awake day. now i.m.pei’s tower sticks out of the horizon like... Brooklyn Witold Riedel 2008-11-15T07:35:47-04:00 http://www.witoldriedel.com/MT/archives/003403.shtml After reading the paper, it was time to have the second cup of tea.To my surprise the first cup had waited patiently the entire time I read the paper to be drunk. And the water I had intended to pour into the electric water kettle waited as patiently next to it. (Patient water… is there such a thing?) I could not recall the thought that had pulled me away from the activity of drinking a cup of tea. At least there is a folded paper on the table letting me know that I finished reading today’s New York Times. But did I really finish reading it? How much of the articles I read were actually read by me. How many... Witold Riedel 2008-10-02T08:19:58-04:00 http://www.witoldriedel.com/MT/archives/003402.shtml did not do so well today. and i will not get into details. was just really not doing well at all. hope tomorrow will be better. hmm… not the happiest entry somehow.... Witold Riedel 2008-09-22T22:30:08-04:00 http://www.witoldriedel.com/MT/archives/003399.shtml walked back into that small shop, calling itself a department store. it is one of two places calling themselves that, on this particular mcdonald avenue block. the other one is more of a bodega really. the newly delivered tilde 10lb bags of rice inscribed with their new price $20. this department store here sells mostly clothes and that almost orange gold jewelry that looks as if it were made of the purest, softest version of the metal. i looked at the sale items, fabrics made with varying degrees of personal attention. looked at the prayer carpets folded under a photograph of mecca. not sure what else i looked at or for. a woman with a small brown plastic bag began... Witold Riedel 2008-09-21T12:36:41-04:00 http://www.witoldriedel.com/MT/archives/003398.shtml two english muffins and a bowl of matcha at sunrise. the air warm and in motion, short bursts of motion. then the sun marches up and on. the lime trea seems to have survived last week’s radical defoliation. there will be more leaves now. smaller, yet stronger. jade trees will need to come indoors in probably a month. the mother tree is now down to five individual plants and it might be time to separate them. i should probably take the f train all the way to rockefeller center this morning. walking to the office by the lehman brothers building will most likely be a strange passage. perhaps i should not do that. perhaps it is not a good thing... Witold Riedel 2008-09-15T07:31:57-04:00 http://www.witoldriedel.com/MT/archives/003397.shtml the sky just turned a deep royal purple. and the edges of it are turning gold. the lights over king’s county hospital look like three insanely bright gems. what is it, what is it? there must be something about today. a pigeon just landed on the balcony, but not without actually hitting its head in a very unbirdy and clumsy way. really. right now. and i slept for only three hours or so. will now go and have a brief talk with that pigeon.... Witold Riedel 2008-09-11T06:11:29-04:00 http://www.witoldriedel.com/MT/archives/003395.shtml with the air conditioning on it sounds as if I were somewhere over the ocean, flying towards a distant place.. perhaps..monday? first class. the bed is soft. the other passengers are not just asleep, their lights are off as well. we are expected to arrive in about seven hours or so. there is going to be a sunrise on our right, then breakfast will be served. hmm… we are actually in constant motion, all of us, in all possible ways. there is no standing still actually. ever. will close the device now. add a title. set the alarm. then perhaps arrive about 5 minutes ahead of schedule. expecting some good entertainment program. trusting the autopilot. cheers.... Witold Riedel 2008-08-25T00:12:34-04:00 http://www.witoldriedel.com/MT/archives/003394.shtml Different languages hit me in different body parts. When listening to Polish, the language arrives somewhere almost underneath my lungs, maybe a few centimeters below my heart. German kicks me straight in the back of my head. Wonderfully so. English is turning more and more into a diving experience. It is not that the language intrudes me, it is more like I touch my way into its universe. A bit like an almost completely dark room. And I know a bit where the table is, where the sofa is, where the… ouch… what did I just kick here? Some of the other languages I speak or like to listen to work in some other magical ways. Some more pleasant than... Witold Riedel 2008-08-24T21:55:06-04:00 http://www.witoldriedel.com/MT/archives/003393.shtml so i switched to wind power about two years ago maybe? and it was incredibly easy (took about 15 minutes or so…) and it made me and the environment feel much better. now visitors to green section of yahoo have a chance to see a bit of my story (if the right ad is served.) I hope the ad makes at least one other person switch to wind power. If it is more than one person… even better. Oh, and yes, wind power does come with some higher cost to me, the consumer. In the worst case my electric bill pretty much doubled. It is not that the energy itself is so much more expensive, apparently, but the utility charges... Witold Riedel 2008-08-19T07:47:15-04:00 http://www.witoldriedel.com/MT/archives/003392.shtml the watermelons sold around here are of the kind that is much closer to what i used to eat as a child. closer than that other new stuff. or maybe they are not really similar at all. not sure if we had 16 pounders with dark skin back in the day. sugar babies? not sure what the really heavy ones are called. i got one at the bangladesh store right next to 2b-thai on beverly road. it was the last one. no price was listed. some special value was negotiated for me between the owners. the sweetest watermelon of the year. so far. next season i will need to reorganize my “garden” a bit. i am not going to grow... Witold Riedel 2008-08-10T23:11:57-04:00 http://www.witoldriedel.com/MT/archives/003390.shtml some of the walls at home look like parts of the guggenheim. sometimes before the restoration process. but there is a bit of the desert clay architecture feeling to some of the walls. that melted crust of years of thin layers of heavy metal white. saw the louise bourgeois show at the guggenheim yesterday. and it was beautiful work in a space that somehow had not been made for it. bourgeois’ work sometimes needs to be locked into a dark environment, sometimes it needs space to be approached from all sides, explored in stillness. it needs time to whisper or shout. the guggenheim sometimes feels like a parking garage for art, packed with insane masses of people who are itching... Witold Riedel 2008-08-09T20:56:17-04:00 http://www.witoldriedel.com/MT/archives/003389.shtml the insanely wired lemon tree is seemingly doing okay. it used to be a soft stick i turned into an arch using aluminum wire. the pot in which it is sitting is an old discarded wooden bowl, somewhere from south east asia. i drilled a hole into the bottom of it, planted the stick, bent it. it seems to be doing okay. it is not bonsai by any means, there is something beautiful about the little plant though. it has so many leaves now. i will need to remove the wire before the bark begins to embrace it. a tree in a wooden bowl shifting into a new shape somehow suggested by me when it used to be a little... Witold Riedel 2008-08-08T08:08:08-04:00 http://www.witoldriedel.com/MT/archives/003388.shtml hiding from the sun at the table in the living room. were i a plant i would look forward to the giant orange to turn its fire on over the roof of kings county hospital. sitting here with one eye open, the blurry screen in front of me, the air conditioner running. some strange dreams still tearing at my neck. how much more fragile could it make sense for me to be? perhaps i’ll have some water and then go right back to sleep. the screen just turned into a blob. it is getting brighter. maybe i should water the plants first. hmm…... Witold Riedel 2008-07-26T05:54:05-04:00 http://www.witoldriedel.com/MT/archives/003387.shtml into the little window, as if it were a piece of paper, as if it were a wall in the sun and this here were a piece of brush. not a whole brush, just the painted end of it. perhaps yellow and brown. and maybe there could be some numbers embossed in gold. something like that. the plants will need to survive inside. many will. some will not. for seven days. a shot glass with a few now dead wild flowers is surrounded by a circle of white pollen. the small sunflower i have recently brought in left a cloud of yellow on the table cloth. it looked beautiful and spooky. it felt like a scream, recorded in little dots... just thinking Witold Riedel 2008-07-22T22:06:00-04:00