diary

friendship (1963)

in

agnes martin, friendship (1963). museum of modern art, new york.

gold leaf.

it glows. wherever the light hits. your form leaves a darkened center when you stand in front of it. a shadow.

as you move around it, it changes. changes everything about itself. colour, texture, hue, dimension.

from the left it takes on the shape of paper time cards stacked beside a clock. from the right it smooths out like an expanding field of wheat. a sea of gold. far enough back it’s smooth & faint.

up close it becomes rugged, pocked with texture & moments of almost red scratched through. the lines, etched down to the canvas, become gashes across a face or the raised scars on a wrist. the moments of red… blood?

it undulates & the gold rolls as you tilt your head. between water & oil…

something else, mercury like & waiting to either poison you or wrap you in warmth.

I close my eyes. I can feel the gold on my face like the sun.

on being seen

in ,

12:18 - 53rd street - MoMA

what does it mean to be seen but not SEEN? maybe its the difference between observation & objectification? photographs are about seeing yes, but they’re also a way of erasing the viewer or the maker of the photographer. they’re like windows with one way glass. we can see in but they can’t see out. in fact, they don’t even know we’re looking at them. I guess that’s pure voyeurism.

sometimes they do know I suppose. it’s a different kind of feeling. more about being on display for a purpose. if you can even call it being on display at all.

everything becomes a performance OR it already was one.

to be seen

an eye immobilized
against grey. a
mystery–
that’s solving itself
& never revealing
its answers.

 

on joan

in

23 december 2021 - journal

rain.

joan didion died today.

I ordered two of her books.

the cats work up at 3 am running & jumping through the apartment.

it's the kind of grey morning that hangs in the air. everything is dim — its foreign to LA. the city wears it awkwardly. like an ill-fitting coat.

it’s quiet. almost feels like a town. the cars hum at a lower decibel — more space between them — like when molecules slow down & spread out. maybe you can find something in the spaces. like she did.

I turn my little heater on & the rush of its fan soothes me. the sun is up but you can’t see it. it’s hidden. a lot of things are that way.

last night at the reservoir

in ,

“last night I walked into the hills & kept climbing. came upon a hiking trail between the million dollar houses & wandered through to lake hollywood park. looped around to walk along the reservoir as the sun crept lower & lower. came back to the paved streets & meandered through the narrow roads in the hills until I ended up back at home in the early twilight of a hot winter day.”

yellow sky diary

in
no filter, shot on iphone. 10 september 2020.

no filter, shot on iphone. 10 september 2020.

the air is dusty but after a moment you reliase it’s not dust, it’s ash.

another blurred yellow morning. I couldn’t sleep because as the sun comes up the smoke gets worse. my throat catches. I rub my eyes.

no one ever said a transformation would be easy, but I wish it wasn’t quite so hard on those of us not insulated from its worse effects. maybe this is a wake up call & the world will be better afterwards.

maybe it will be much much worse.

everything inverted in my tarot spread this morning. an indicator of confusion. everything turned upside-down & opaque. maybe searching for beauty in the middle of all this is the task at hand.

maybe small, shimmering, moments of beauty is all we have.

30 days of collage

in

Recently I decided to do a scrap collage in my journal every day for 30 days. These are the results.

also on my instagram.

the park

in ,

journal, mt. hollywood summit

IMG_4261.jpeg

if butterflies are symbols of transformation then mt. hollywood must be a place of transformation because it’s always swarming with butterflies up here. they make me nervous.

IMG_4262.jpeg

summit

I forgot

how to wear myself

comfortably draped

a swirl of cloth

tied at the elbows

& knees.

expectation of give—

I never learned

what holding firm is.

La Ville de Rêve de Ma Jeunesse

in

when I was 15 years old I went to paris. I had been obsessed with france for several years, so when a school trip appeared I begged my mother to max out a credit card so I could go. I had traveled a small amount before, but this trip launched me into becoming a person who loves being somewhere totally new. though I've returned to europe on occasion, I've never gone back to france.

tomorrow I head back to paris for the first time in over a decade, stopping over for a day in reykjavik along the way. this time, I've been dreaming of iceland & walking paris' streets testing out the travel photography tips I've been reading about in books.

& also eating a lot of bread.

-N

paris, age 15.

Exploring - The Golden Gate

in

A post shared by N. (@natalie_raymond) on

travel diary:

dawn + fog + boats + bridge.
after spending the night by the ocean I woke up at 4 am to make my way to the presidio to catch the early morning light on the golden gate. the fog was so thick I had to drive at a snails pace. the sky turned deep blue just before the sun came up & bleached everything white.

-N