Sometimes you don’t realize how far you’ve gone until you’re on your way home.

A friend of mine is fond of writing while flying. It’s not a habit of mine, but I like the idea—the not here anymore but not yet there either is so much like writing itself.

There is also this: When traveling, your body usually arrives earlier than every other part of you—just how much earlier is directly related to how fast and how far you went. When you’ve put pen to paper or tapped a rash of keys (typing is, notably, much faster than handwriting) it can take awhile for your brain to process what you’ve just drafted. The physical thing happens whether or not the rest of you is ready for it—whether or not the rest of you can keep up.

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Every time I see this photo I get this song in my head.

Untitled/San Fernando Valley; from Los Angeles 07.27.05 by Michael Light

From the 20x200 newsletter:

A pilot himself with a lifelong love of flight, Light hired a helicopter pilot to lift and roam with him above Los Angeles so he could hover over a rare sort of 4x5 camera—a Linhof Aero Technika—which uses roll film, allowing Light to shoot continuously without constantly reloading single sheets. Over the course of the project, he shot 900-some photos of the lights, the buildings, the streets, the trees and river below. On the ground—in the darkroom and on the computer—Light combined traditional film processing techniques with post-production work. Turning his negatives into digital files, Light smoothed out the film grain, moderating its interference with the haze and particles of light that you see glowing around the horizon.

From there, the images are printed, editioned (as here), and some, sequenced into the book. Untitled/San Fernando Valley; from Los Angeles 07.27.05 graces the cover of the LA NIGHT half of Light’s publication—an object to behold. When open, it lies nearly flat, presenting 16”x20” images full bleed, so that the city of Los Angeles, by day and by night, from above, unfolds in your lap. The pages are brilliantly bound in a “Z”—as you turn it over, you swiftly and seamlessly (as if in fight) change directions—and suddenly face an alternate horizon.

As much as I love books, and this one in particular, I have a habit of buying them as if, that along with the actual bound object, I am also acquiring the time to read them—which, unfortunately, is just not true. This is where the importance of prints, or for that matter, anything that you hang on your walls and adorn your home with, comes into play. Prints, in a way, are the opposite of books, in that you do not need the time to sit down with them. They are like The Giving Tree (not the book but the actual tree)—you can take and take and take from them, without actually having to give much in return. While I think it’s true that the more time you spend really looking at and thinking about art, the more you will receive from it, the things you see in your periphery daily shape the way you think about and perceive the word around you, whether or not you realize or take the time to acknowledge it.