The agreeable eye

an eudæmonistarchives

More specifically concerning: oregon

5.08.01

5 August 2001, around 14.44.

It all comes down to a matter of contrast (if one wishes to deal with certainties). This dislocation springs, no doubt, from the abrupt difference of colors, the infinite bright variety replaced by a limited palette of infinite subtlety; a harsh chalk (or pastel) quality to the lines converted to a skillful watercolor. Even so, […]

Treasons, Strategems, &c.

22 December 2002, around 13.40.

‘Most of the people I like,’ she said, ‘listen to the same sort of music I do—it’s how we find out what we have in common.’ Most of the people I like do not listen to the same sort of music as I do—mainly, I think, because the sort of music I really like is […]

alma mater

18 August 2003, around 20.10.

Dogs aren’t allowed on the trail without a leash, both to prevent them from harassing other hikers and to keep the dogs themselves out of trouble. In places the sound of the river rises up the gravel slope, and thirsty dogs rush down for a drink and cannot reascend; should the owner go down to […]

inquiry (1)

22 August 2003, around 0.55.

Indigenous people fishing at Celilo Falls on the Columbia River, 1950 (dammed 1957). ODOT Historical Travel Photos

inquiry (2)

22 August 2003, around 19.27.

William J. Faubion House Zigzag, OR (built ca. 1908) [June 2002]

inquiry (3)

23 August 2003, around 15.44.

It is a long story and a sad story, not yet complete and not entirely knowable – mainly about the past and how to deal with it. For lack of evidence, I’ll skip the beginning, though the middle is hearsay and the end has not yet arrived. Starting, then, in media res: the old man […]

inquiry (4)

30 August 2003, around 4.18.

William J. Faubion House Zigzag, OR (built ca. 1908) [August 2003]

inquiry (5)

30 August 2003, around 21.15.

Game was plentiful and at times a drove of elk could be seen on Hunchback mountain which at that time was bare of timber. Food consisted of fresh meat they could kill, beans, bacon, potatoes and dried fruit. Together they cut all trees in the valley, mostly alder. One year late in August, they set […]

inquiry (6)

22 September 2003, around 14.13.

Historical inevitability.

inquiry (7)

22 December 2003, around 16.19.

‘La Casa Monte’, ca. 1914 Faubion House, ca. 2003

nostalgia (again)

8 January 2004, around 18.20.

inquiry (8)

22 January 2004, around 9.33.

These people have excellent sculptors and professional designers. Their pipes, tomahawks, sticks, spoons carved out of horn, etc., embellish our ethnographic collections. —Marcel Mauss (2004.11, p. 43f.)

lines written in Oregon

14 April 2006, around 10.54.

by Nabokov

have a rest

13 September 2010, around 12.00.

Tuck the blanket around your feet, lean back in your deck chair. Go and have a rest.

pointed

31 July 2012, around 9.23.

It’s nice not to have to focus on anything.

out and about

27 July 2013, around 7.03.

from that other place

17 January 2014, around 20.58.

If one grows up in Oregon, one hears a lot about William Stafford. Always being the sort of person to avoid what other people are talking about (with no regard for its merit or interest), I never read any of his work until just a few months ago – and I expected to sneer even […]

punchbowl

20 September 2014, around 9.35.

grates

27 November 2014, around 15.30.

Evidence of a brief excursion outdoors. There’s a fire in the fireplace. There are books on the table. It’s misting outside in the true Oregon manner.

caravanserai

29 March 2015, around 17.02.

up to nature

4 September 2016, around 6.02.

Mirror Lake on an overcast day Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore unsuitable. [ . . . ] If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love you very much. –Mary Oliver, ‘How I go to […]

A view (47)

9 March 2017, around 15.53.

midday, Newport.

out for a walk

23 December 2017, around 10.40.

at hasard

29 September 2020, around 5.00.

on dogs, walking, running, Mongolia and nature.

the forest path

23 March 2021, around 5.38.

Sometime near the end of last November or beginning of December I managed to hurt my left heel. For the first two weeks or so I didn’t allow myself to think too much about it and kept my daily routine of walking (usually some three to five miles, depending on the weather and my inclinations), […]

high places

22 September 2021, around 10.47.

They have started to appear along the forest path. First there was one, and the precarity was amusing; between one walk and the next the stack usually would have toppled, either gravity or other passers-by objecting. Now they line the path, darkling signposts, and the sight unnerves me – one such is charming, but seven or […]

mellowing

24 November 2021, around 9.47.

Knowledge of values, in fact, is a matter of direct insight, like seeing that the sky is blue, the grass green. It does not consist of pieces of information that can be handed from one mind to another. In the last resort, every individual must see and judge for himself what it is good for […]

quired

1 December 2021, around 8.44.

Looking up on the morning walk.

A view (56)

3 January 2023, around 9.29.

beacon

1 February 2024, around 17.51.

For the composition and writing of this or my other works, I did not prepare a draft on the wax tablets, but committed them to the written page in their final form as I thought them out. —Guibert of Nogent (Memoirs, 1.17) Even though it is vacation, one still wakes up at half past four, […]

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