I breathe all the way in and all the way out. Upper part of my brain runs full speed ahead.
Taking the foot off the gas pedal I realize there had been a cinder block on it all along.
On the train, a woman all in black her shoulder bag nearly pulled apart the seams stretching like threaded claws—for dear life. The extra attachment of a patent leather strap over her shoulder: I know she put that there because it keeps the bag a bag but mostly because the shine feels fancy.
Upon return: deposited my closed suitcase in our building hallway for an hour, tucked away under the staircase near the mailboxes. Came downstairs to find it flung open, its contents strewn everywhere nothing stolen. A new kind of unpacking.
The unforgettable sequence in Varda’s The Gleaners and I when she goes from filming a village interview to relishing overripe figs to a monologue by a robed judge standing in a field reading aloud French laws allowing gleaning after the harvest. Next shots: driving through a landscape, arrival at home, comparing the ceiling mold to art, unpacking from a trip, reviewing Rembrandt postcards she gathered in a shopping mall in Tokyo, then finding her aged hand in front of the camera. Looking dispassionately, looking with horror and surprise at the what is visible and the experience in self of what is invisible.
Finding that sequence in my own hands now.
Recalling seeing Yvonne Rainer’s Privilege shortly after it came out and not really understanding it and now understanding it better.
An anxious urge to practice what I have heard described as “having fun.”
The feeling of crunch of damp and re-frozen snow underfoot, testing to see how much weight it holds, falling in up to the mid-thigh and laughing.
Laundry.
On disparate, scattered days. A day-glow orange hat matching the traffic cone.
Feeling around in the dark for Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems to reorient. Like a miner’s dimming headlamp or eyes readjusting.
Names, lists, notebooks of forgetfulness.
A door with a window that looks over empty chairs to another window that faces more windows.
The purpose of filling.
Abraham Lincoln’s 1838 speech as a young lawyer about how the country was going to rip itself apart if people didn’t adhere to laws and just tried to get ahead no matter what. Poe alive then. Melville alive then.
“As a subject for the remarks of the evening, the perpetuation of our political institutions, is selected.”
Poe and Lincoln born three weeks apart in 1809. They were 6 when Hawthorne and 10 when Melville came into the world.
Washington Irving (also alive then) clinging to an invented memory of the bucolic Dutch colonial period in New York. His estate, “Sunnyside,” in Tarrytown, an old manse with 1656 embedded in wrought-iron letters way up top near the roof showing the stubborn number to every visitor.
C.L.R. James writing a book about Melville from his political imprisonment on Ellis Island in the 1950s. He writes a world encompassing the world of Melville’s then and of his then and of now.
Old files from previous student field trips to Philipse Manor Hall in Yonkers. A British-Dutch colonial family, loyalists who built the home in both styles starting in the 17th century. The family inhaled miles of Munsee and Lenape land (now known as Westchester County and Manhattan), constructing several estates and farms up and down the Hudson River. They enslaved hundreds of people. Philipse and family bet on the British winning the Revolutionary War. And retreated to England after losing. Remnants: a grand staircase. An original papier-mâché ceiling. A Dutch-tiled fireplace. Kind local ladies giving surprisingly reflective tours. After the field trips, student assignment: write proposals for theoretical video installations responding to the site. And discuss.
The three-year-old on the train with the cardboard box toddling down the swaying aisle. He is calling out for people to buy candy. His mother follows with another cardboard box of candy. An infant in a blanket is swaddled to her back.
A desktop folder titled Read These 2022-2023 and another folder titled read more.
Alabaster: an Emily Dickinson poem with that word in it.
Supposed to be.
Playlists.
Thanks for reading.
—
Note: I learned of the above extraordinary Lincoln speech via Letters from an American, a Substack I read regularly, written by Heather Cox Richardson.
BUNKER news: my film is available to stream at Amazon Prime, Mubi, Metrograph-at-Home, and Projectr.tv. The film will also have a Norwegian premiere at the Oslo Architecture Film Festival in March, with festival exhibition and additional screenings in that fair city.