Spotted this on the face of a building (on 30th between 5th & Broadway) on my way to a tai chi class. The silver hand lettering transforms what was once a gas station sign into a message of peace… an advertisement for oil turned into a protest against the fight over oil. The message is outdated but I think it generally matches the sentiment of our current troubled times.
So here’s a little game a friend and I came up with when finding ourselves bored, in a car, stuck in the middle of traffic. I’ve found it to be quite relevant to honing the practice of visualization, and garnering problem solving skills that come in handy in any creative field. It’s mental tic-tac-toe. Amazing. This otherwise simple game, when played without pen and paper (and while operating a moving vehicle) can be quite the thriller… not to mention a bigger challenge than expected.
A few weeks ago I attended the premiere of Hayao Miyazaki’s latest animated film, Howl’s Moving Castle, at the MOMA here in NYC. I was ecstatic that the first premiere I’d ever attend was a Studio Ghibli creation. Maybe it was my brimming anticipation, or the expectations I’d come to hold from the reassurance that the creators of my favorite animated films could never, EVER do wrong… I was sure that night that I would come out of the theater happy and wide-eyed under yet another Miyazaki spell. I had no idea I was in for quite a different experience…
It’s not a question many people can answer, much less think to ask. The Japanese tradition of family members each owning designated pairs of ohashi (chopsticks), links different years of my life with various pairs I’ve used. It was only when I took its ubiquitous presence out of this quotidian context, that I came to appreciate the true ingenuity of ohashi.
