more describing as he describes himself

he describes himself as searching for peace, trying to exercise patience, trying to find language that is real for a world of grieving beauty and beautiful grief

he describes himself as a combination of good and bad judgment, good taste and kitsch, astute and dull, quick and dense, fleet and phlegmatic, ardent and diffident, prone to being one way when he thinks he's being another, conveying one message when he thinks he's clearly saying another, sometimes adrift with an inverse reverse barometer on a sea of certainty, surviving disaster like buster keaton, oblivious to the zugzwang of life, where every day is a new day

he describes himself as someone who cares too much about the outcome of certain teams games and who looks forward to the day when relievers blow a three run lead by walking three batters and giving up a grand slam to a .128 hitter or a football team loses in "miraculous" fashion, carving out a defeat that will live for decades in the mythos and lore of some opponent, and he just won't care - college football team, professional baseball team - lose away, lose in such arcane and obscure ways as to baffle and befuddle sense and wonder - he just doesn't care anymore: emotional capital is limited, and all that is available for you is spent

he describes himself as loving books, the general codex form, some with leaves slightly deckled or with pages still uncut, with bindings of sewn signatures all tied together, placed in a case of cloth over board, with slight embossing from the type on all the pages and slight embossing of the plates for the images

he describes himself as an unreliable narrator through faulty memory, as he recalls

he describes himself as an all too imperfect perfectionist

 an unknown third person. Some months ago, hearing a speaker introduced with the phrase "he describes himself as", I was struck with how the person introducing the speaker gained some distance from the speaker - and it also seemed odd to me, though I've heard it before, this quality of being able to describe oneself is a privilege. The oddness could be phrased like this :"the person speaking tonight, who I'm introducing, speaks about himself in the third person with confidence and vigor, using adjectives and phrases that would cause the most garrulous individual to blush."

he describes himself as telling a story with narrative fractures, incisions of vignettes, knottings of unravelings

reflections on group fantasies

When the Braves announced they were moving to Cobb County - really just outside the city limits of Atlanta (perhaps so they could be close enough to Atlanta without being in it), I felt that the scales had been lifted from my eyes. I was reminded that a baseball team is, in this case, a business model. Every thing about the move makes business sense - in fact, seems ordered according to market forces. I understand from this, that regardless of my thoughts and emotional attachments with this team that the business model comes first - the team, it might as well be mayonnaise or vacuum cleaners or cruise ship travel: simply a product - imagine my embarrassment. I beg forgiveness. 

Anyway, I set about my artist's description of their coming digs. What is the most salient aspect of this little corner of I-75 and I-285? The gridlock that has made Atlanta traffic famous throughout the Southeast. Say what you will about Atlanta's "next great international city" aspirations - Traffic is our great achievement. The bottom half of the drawing below is taken up with depicting this traffic, all the buses, trucks, cars and vans that combine to form the goulash of gas guzzling that most impresses the minds of visitors and most elevates the heart rate (our twice daily aerobic exercise) of us locals. The top half is taken up with my idea of the new stadium: it seemed logical that the new stadium's design should be based on an open magnolia blossom. In the event of rain it's pointy leaves will curl up and shelter the 42,000 paying customers.

Traffic dominated my first drawing. In my second, I wanted to flesh out the developments that can take place on the property. Forming a rough V are the multiple lanes of traffic with some envisioning of future expansion.  To give a sense of scale, note the open magnolia blossom - that's the stadium! Overshadowing it is a large pig-shaped building of as yet, indeterminate use. Next to it is a large residential and business tower shaped like a ionic-Corinthian column. On the right, a bit further back is a 1200 ft tall tomahawk - because, why not! On the horizon please note: the cooling towers for a power plant that will belch out blue and red steam after every Braves victory.

I continue to flesh out how the stadium area and interchanges will evolve over time to meet the pressing needs of pressing needs. I added a Coke bottle - it would be a shame to leave out our identifying brand.

I continue to work over how all these objects might fit together. I upended the Coke bottle, because what is more refreshing than a fully emptied bottle? I tried to indicate the enormity of the parking lot by drawing in lots of median strips with hundreds of cars between each strip.

What might the experience be for the typical family exiting their minivan on game day. I clinked the tomahawk and Coke bottle together to form an arch hovering over the stadium. Perhaps they can move back and forth, urging the fans along in the tomahawk cadence. I brought the cooling towers in closer to increase the nuclear family's sense of intimacy. 

Finally, from a lower perspective, what might the average pedestrian's view of the complex be. Here I've indicated what view might obtain when the necessary lanes and interchanges have been added.

keeping up with my material

Me: I like being Maestro, being Reverend Maestro is even better:

 a sign of distinction.

Jami Moss Wise: Or pretension.

Me: No. My blood pressure's always been low

he describes himself as someone who's coming around and discovering his focus after too many years listening to other voices and weighing competing options, giving ground relative to his desire -

he describes himself as an indistinct age group

he describes himself as a participant and as a spectator in farce and tragedy

he describes himself as prone to anger, impatient with himself, projecting that impatience onto others, and generally in need of a sabbath from himself qua ego, qua needs, qua anxieties

he describes someone who had to learn how to grieve and what grief means over time, not all at once, but slice by slice

he describes himself as comfortable in his skin, at home in his body, on a business trip with his thoughts, a sightseeing excursion with his aura, a fact finding mission with his soul

he describes himself as continuing through all the griefs of life: those that engulf as well as wash up on shore

he describes himself as a memory or series of memories of something that may have happened

he describes himself as a re-description of a reflection upon himself as seen from a different perspective, as how he would describe himself if such description could account for some understanding outside himself; he understands that he demonstrates himself, that description entails a vantage point of time or space, that even in its objectivity, distorts any description of himself or others he might make; thus he describes himself as kind in expectation of kindness, disavowing information as encumbered with judgments problematic and misrecognized

he describes himself as waiting out into the surffering au courant under toed you sew, like Odysseus : where noman had gone before

he describes himself as in need of a spiritual retreat in order to make a spiritual advance - but the words: retreat, advance - they're all wrong - as are growth, understanding, insight  

he describes himself as the consummate master of comedic technique: material, delivery, craft honed over the decades - bon mots, witticisms, word play, observation, vignette, narration, pathos, bathos, farce - the sturm und drang resident in the human condition.

he describes himself with an intricate set of antique calipers, weights, scales, slides, formulae, pigments, chronometers, etc as ardent in his ardency, mercurial in his mercuriality, and celerous in his celerity; post dispatch in his journaling, with a timed picayune in his stammer, an a blind argosy in his ruminations