lornamatic

“What kind of circle packing algorithm are you going to use tonight?”

“Right rectangular lattice.”

youtube is SO not ready for that video.

One of the funniest things about watching babies grow is the squash / stretch effect. Suddenly the baby starts looking REALLY pudgy, and you know it’ll only be a few more days before the next growth spurt. Round and fat gives way to tall and thin, and before you know it, you’ve reached another milestone. And then it happens all over again. It’s all a big growth curve.

One of the most painful things about making art is the squash / stretch effect. You’re working along, doing fine, and all of a sudden your work starts looking, well, kind of pudgy. Squat and flat, metaphorically speaking. And you hope it will only be a few more weeks before the next growth spurt, where squat and flat gives way to long and lean, and before you know it, you’ve had a breakthrough. And if you’re lucky, and you keep at it, one day, eventually, it might happen all over again. It’s all a big learning curve.

Another way to look at this is rise over run. Remember algebra? Graphing was always my favorite. One step over, two steps up.

You’re speeding along in your world, having a grand time of it, and suddenly you’re face first with a big wall. All you can do is scale the wall. But sometimes, it’s too high, there’s no end in sight, you haven’t got the right tools, or maybe you’re just tired, so you just stay put, for a while.

Oh, the nice graphing programs anti-alias it, so you’ve got a lovely ramp to stroll along. But, usually the real world isn’t quite so polished, and you’re stuck. Rise or run.

Art and algebra, same thing. In my curve, improvement in skill is the rise, and emotional context is the run. If things start to stall, that means it’s time to get to work.

Back to basics.

Rise.

Chip away at what’s wrong, improve those skills, refine that technique. Then run with it, as far as you can.

And if you work hard, and if you’re really lucky, maybe the whole thing might happen all over again.

Today was a good day: I slept in, woke to perfect weather, had a fantastic lunch, bought some coffee beans, and kicked back and thought about art. But a year ago today, that was among the Best Days of My Life.

July 21, 2005, was way, way up there.

A trip deep into a secret world, nesting grounds, alternately lush and desolate landscape dotted with dessicated corpses, yet somehow teeming with life too.

Scaled things, feathered things, things with flippers, things with no backbones, things with fins. Frigatebirds stealing food from blue-footed booby chicks. Herons fishing. Brown noddies stealing food from pelicans. Tropicbirds wheeling overhead.

North Seymour Island, and South Plaza. My last day on Las Islas Encantadas, the Galapagos Islands.

Everybody finding a mate, building a nest, or feeding their young. Skyline of Daphne major and Daphne minor. Exquisite. At least 15 of my all-time best and favorite photographs are from that day.

Life, death, rebirth. Millions of years worth of it. Everything they tell you about nature, all the stuff Darwin wrote about. So much more than you could ever hope to understand, but you can see it. All of it, in just one day. Just a day there changes you forever - we got to spend an entire week.

No matter what else I accomplish, or experience, that day in July will remain one of the Best Days of My Life. It was the kind of day that blows the scale. The kind of day that helps molds you into the kind of person that you’d always hoped you would one day be lucky enough to be.

This is pretty great - LA County was just named the “birdiest county” in the US. It’s a fun and informal count of those things with feathers, and we have got a lot of ‘em. Good news, especially considering the past month: the devastation of two Tern colonies, and then there’s still that whole thing about the plans to build a freeway overpass through one of our most beautiful wildlife refuges.

I participated (just the tiniest bit) in this bird count, so I’m really thrilled to see LA County won the title.

It is, as they say, a good start. But there’s a lot more work to do.

So recently we’ve been getting a spate of scam calls. I just took the third one in two weeks, and this time they hung up on me.

I think that’s an improvement.

The caller always has a heavy Indian-sounding accent. They want to let us know that we’ve paid our taxes on time, so we’re eligible to receive free grants. See, they’re calling from the Government of the USA.

So the first time it was kind of funny. We went around in circles for a long time, and I kept telling the guy I wasn’t interested. I finally raised the tone of my voice to kill, and he got the message.

“You are not interesting, then” he said.

“That’s right,” I said. “I am not interesting, at all.”

They’ve called twice more, and this time it was a very pushy lady who insisted she was calling from Virginia. Rather than harass her by telling her some story about being from Virginia too, and going on and on asking if she always shops at some imaginary made up store too, I just said, “Great -what’s your website?”

“I’m calling from the USA government.”

“OK, right - so what’s your web address there?”

“It’s for a grant, because you have paid your taxes.”

“Ah, yes, of course. So your homepage address, what is that?”

silence for a moment… “I’m with the government. You won a grant because you paid your taxes.”

“Right, that’s wonderful. So how can I see your website? it’s w,w,w, dot, what?”

“Double-you, double-you, double-you, dot, *mumble mumble mumble* dot, com”

“Ooh, I’m SORRY! I didn’t quite get that. Could you say just the middle part again?”

Super fast:“WWWDOTGRANTUSADOTCOM”

“Hmmmmm! www.grantusa.com is a distillery! They make liquour! Are you calling me from a distillery? Did I win some liquour?”

Emphatic: “I am calling from VIRGINIA!”

“There are distilleries in VIRGINIA?”

silence… CLICK

I am disappointed - she seemed like a nice lady, and we didn’t get to discuss Hendricks’ Gin or anything. I guess I’ll just have to wait until they call again. Maybe next time I’ll make her send me a friend request on Myspace.

Meanwhile, it should be obvious but, beware people calling you with free grant money. Here’s the story on Snopes.

Normally I’d say, beware people who show up uninvited at your front door and try to give you a medical exam, too, but it seems like that’s all the rage in some places. What could possibly go wrong with that one?