walking = synchronicity

training for kisokaido, speed is not up, endurance not there, so have been taking the subway less. well, you see a lot, when you walk, things you wouldn't notice otherwise. but there have been several encounters over the past few days which - it's tough almost to say how bizarre (in a good way) it feels - ok no point in going on, just what happened - so, wednesday, 2.4 mile stroll:




















meet les for coffee (intentional) and it turns out this is another person who lived in tokyo in the late nineties, who lives here now, not so strange, but get this, is really into traffic cones. has exhibited traffic cone art before.

do you know how many times i have asked another person "do you consider yourself to be one of the foremost experts in the world on traffic cone aesthetics?" not once, i don't think. to have the answer be "yes" and illustrate an obvioius appreciation a few minutes later as we happen across a particularly special cone and utter the words "sublime" - ok that was quite unexpected.

next evening finally heading up to meet ira for coffee on way home from location one (8.6 miles walking for the day):






















and hear "erik" and there, in a large vehicle, are aaron and satoko - so the thing is, i don't see ira often. and i pretty much never see aaron and satoko. but i met them all at pretty much the same time, back in the day, and they belong in that temporal clump in my mind, those people i knew at that time, like susan and kanji and matthew and keiko - really, to see them a block away from meeting ira, after all this time, was a big connection-hammer.

that's a lot - finding out you share something in common which is exceedingly rare (traffic cone appreciation), running into old friends after ages - ok so the next day walked over 6 miles, here's some of it:






















and along the way start calling people, because yeah i'm in training, physically, but have put the taking tons of photos for the collages trying to match things i see up with elements of hiroshige's prints on hold for a little while, as think harder about video etc., and want to do chess, in the park, this weekend (tomorrow actually) because all of a sudden the weather is warm and beautiful.

so i call rob. and he doesn't answer. which happens, right? and i keep walking. and twenty minutes later, there's rob. on a bench. by the river. in intense conversation with whatsername. (of course he didn't answer his phone). after the other stuff this felt distinctly weirder than maybe it merits. on the other hand, he works about three blocks from my apartment and we never run into each other in midtown. now i'm down in tribeca and call him and he's not there and i keep walking and hey, there's rob, down here in tribeca, while i want to talk to him.

oh and whatsername, by the way, our first conversation ever, here's how it goes, pretty much:
me: do you paint?
her: yeah, i do.
me: do you like chess?
her: it's my favorite game.

ok so how many girls have you ever asked "do you play chess," first meeting ever, friend-of-friend, and they say "it's my favorite game?" frankly this has never happened to me before. i hope she will participate in the chess project. really.

so this would be plenty of synchronicity. plenty.

so i'm standing there trying to recover from the "favorite game" she paints and plays chess and i was trying to see if rob wanted to paint on chess boards together, and i hear "erik?" and there's allison. the deal with allison is, i really never have contact with her, and surely part of the reason for that is she has lived in austin for the past year, but i did actually email her a few days ago because i couldn't find owen's email address. she emails back she's in a uhaul returning. but this is by the river, days later, unplanned, me having stumbled across rob, and met the chess-loving girl who paints, and here's allison with her dog -

so this blog really my purpose is to keep track of art projects, if anyone wants to know how i think or what i do, it's not all instinct but a lot of it is - anyway not about personal blah blah blah necessarily right? not "you'll never guess who i ran into at the grocery store today." but so much of this, these people, i want or wanted to involve them in these projects - i mean, the reason i was meeting less was because he had written that using black and white paint (chess project) sounded interesting - yet he's into traffic cones. and traffic cone observation is definitely going to continue to appear, in various forms, in my art, as it has for about a decade. nothing to do with chess, very relevant (especially with the lmcc open call mentioned a few posts ago).

one last map, today (6.8 miles):




















nothing too weird happened, i mean alisa who lives in georgia called and we want to collaborate so maybe chess is a first step for us, she's in town, but maybe the holy-moley this feels a bit surreal this particular coincidence, maybe that's over for the moment.

excited, though. i mean, what more do you want? i figure i know maybe 500 people in the world - ok maybe it's a lot more than that - still - in just a few days - to see these particular people, at these goofy times... just awesome.

looking forward to chess tomorrow.