It’s been weeks, five, in fact, since I last wrote, for which you have my apologies. Suffice it to say I’ve been in transit, from Berlin to Salt Lake City via Amsterdam, London, and New York, and circumstances have, if not conspired against my commitment to keeping this public notebook, then passively frustrated that commitment.
I can say, though, somewhat to my surprise, they did not frustrate my practice to continue making marks, so today, in lieu of a proper edition, I bring you a series of sketches from the past five weeks. You’ll observe I’ve changed format and ink — on the Zebra G we’ve got Dominant Industry’s Winter Wood (I’ve tended to be chary of warm colors, and I thought a morose compost brown would be a way to ease into the reds and yellows, but it turns out it’s a great color for drawing dying-back ferns too). At either end of the series you’ll see those old Sailor finger nail nibs — the first is the 21k no. 3 (circa 1971?), the second a 1967 14k no. 2 that I’m still getting the hang of — it has a very precise sweet spot, and if you try to use it with the nib at an orientation other than what it likes, it comes over scratchy … which is a useful experience in itself. The 1967 Sailor is loaded with Shikiori Miruai, a black-green that’s become my favorite cartridge ink. The paper is Yamamoto Ro-biki in their oddball vertical format … the plains are on backorder, so enjoy the meshwork-of-the-peeled-back-reality vibes of the 2mm graph. Scrub to the end for a special bonus.
::Aï, the drawings made with the 1967 pen are not yet photographed, so those will have to wait.::
Forgive the absence of accessibility metadata on the above. By way of compensation, I offer early pages for where all this might be leading, building on a bit of weirdness to appear next month in Res.
1
Have I ever tasted sriracha? Likely but uncertain. I have but a vague sense of what sriracha tastes like, and no comparative basis, no sense of what it should taste like of the sort that can only be informed by extensive experience, discussion, etc. Sriracha lies beyond the compass of my experience, or, at best, it occupies a penumbral zone between that which I know by experience and that which I know from others’ accounts. And yet there is no question that the word sriracha has meaning for me.
2
Contrast broccoli. Here there is no question: I have had ample experience with broccoli, enough, in fact, to last a lifetime, and while I can imagine knowing a vegetable by description, having never tasted it, my history with broccoli seems to inform the meaning that the word broccoli has for me.
A better contrast: tamari, or genmaisu, or—a penumbral case—nattō. Perhaps there is something distinctive about the experience of condiments—distinctive even within the comparatively compact remit of gustatory experience. (Would it be less meaningful to contrast, say, my knowledge of sriracha to my knowledge of wearing clothes?)
To be continued, next week if possible, now that I’m in one place. When I’ll try to share thoughts on the place I’m in, too, along with its plant and animal life.
And, as ever, if this thing has made your day marginally less lonely and nausea-ridden, I bid you to SHARE IT.
jb