Foliage Weekend

Living in Pennsylvania for six years made me a fall-foliage addict. Although Ohio lacks the hilly topography which creates dramatic views, I still found favorite foliage places such as Hocking Hills and Highbanks soon after the move. This year we have to skip the long ride to Hocking Hill and took Chloe to the three beautiful metro parks: Highbanks, Prairie Oaks and Battelle Darby Creek.

Yestersday was actually our first time going to both Prairie Oaks and Battelle Darby Creek and we were really impressed. Prairie Oaks has three adjacent lakes with Big Darby creek running in between. We walked on a beautiful trail with a lake on one side and the creek on the other. Since most trails are pet friendly, we saw many happily walking dogs. Next time we'll bring Rexie for sure despite his car sickness!

Prairie Oaks

Driving south about 15 minutes, we arrived at Battelle Darby Creek. The two parks are linked by the same creek: Big Darby. We found a gorgeous view overlooking the creek as well as more colorful foliages in the woods here which recalls Highbanks.

Battelle Darby Creek

What we explored in either park is only a small portion of the entire land - more to discover in the future!

The Book Loft

Reading my friend's negative comments on the Book Loft made me want to write something about this unique bookstore. To me, the Book Loft is more than just a bookstore. It stands as a living example of dynamics in architectural space. Firstly, it blurs the boundary between public and private space and reverses the normal condition: a public bookstore in the setting of a private house. Isn’t the reversal of dining room and bathroom in Buñuel's The Phantom of Liberty an extreme case on this subject?!


One of the bookstore’s charms lies in its linear courtyard as the main entry. This serenely beautiful courtyard immediately turns the street scale into a personal scale, brings one’s mind into a peaceful retreat. Further down the path, the display windows on your right side create another type of storefront which is immersed in the domestic atmosphere rather than a commercial street feeling. Bathed in the warm yellow light at night, one can easily have the sense of going home on a cold winter night.

The linear courtyard reminds me of a charming little community garden I once visited in Philly. It is a water garden on the side of an old building, about the same size and shape as the one at the Book Loft. A ‘beer barrel’ at the corner collects stormwater from the neighboring roof which is reused for irrigating the garden. Three correlative murals depicting water cycles were done by the kids in the community.



Secondly, the Book Loft stands as a proof that getting lost is not necessarily a negative quality of architecture. This old Victorian house is a labyrinth that consists of 32 rooms of books, endless passageways, and staircases leading into new dimensions. However, this place is meant for wondering, exploring and getting lost only if you enjoy such a slow-paced and adventurous shopping experience. Associated with the quest for knowledge, isn’t the labyrinth a perfect metaphor for a bookstore? I still get lost after being there quite a few times, and each time I discover some new territories in both the architectural space and book collection. It is a similar experience every time I revisit a favorite film, picking up some unnoticed details.

Unlike box-shaped chain bookstores where one is always under surveillance, this maze-like space offers a perfect hiding place among the book jungles, which is rarely found in contemporary architecture. The Book Loft is probably a place Mr. Hulot would love! Anyone who is familiar with Tati’s Playtime knows that a large minimal glass cube is no more directional than the Book Loft, needless to say the lack of spatial interest or human attachment people can get out of.

I agree with my friend that their book selection needs to be improved. It would be great to include rare books and used books. Amazon is definitely the best place if you only care about selection and price. Nevertheless I still find Book Loft a hidden gem in this suburban city especially considering the fun experience it provides. Looking forward to my next half-day retreat, Hmmm…

Such Great Heights

I had to save this photo when I saw it on NPR this morning. Unbelievable, isn't it?! Found in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, this tree is at least 1500 years old and 300-foot high! The climbers' tiny bodies in the photo give you the best sense of scale. National Geographic photographer Michael Nichols spent a year photographing the giant redwoods in California. The process is quite interesting: he devised a way to do redwoods justice. It involved three cameras, a team of scientists, a robotic dolly, a gyroscope, an 83-photo composite and a lot of patience. The largest tree elevation is thus assembled! (see the video on NPR)

Hopefully I can travel to that State Park someday. My fascination with giant old trees originated from the forest scene in Hitchcock's Vertigo. I've traced the footsteps of Madeleine and Scottie through the redwoods at Muir Woods. The cycle of life and death, the cycle of death and rebirth, the poetic melancholy, the enigmatic beauty, will haunt me forever...

Garden of Hope

I'm reading an interesting and thought-provoking book China Road by NPR correspondent Rob Gifford about his 3000-mile road trip along Route 312 from Shanghai to the Chinese border with Kazakhstan. The author is quite knowledgable about Chinese history as well as the current Chinese society. The book combines his personal accounts of all sorts of people he encountered on the road with his critical opinions as well as some historical backgrounds. After watching several documentary series about China (such as China from the Inside and China Rises), I found the social phenomenon portrayed in this book not unfamiliar at all. However, I was still intrigued by Rob’s writing since the power of words offers more sensitivity in story-telling and more depth of thinking.

At the end of the chapter on Nanjing, he described an unexpected sight of a nice garden for the blind people located inside the Nanjing Botanical Garden. He was quite amazed at this humanized design in China as he had never seen anything like that even in the US or Europe. To me, such an ordinary garden is truly extraordinary, especially considering the weak in China today still has no voice in the society.

I became very curious about this garden and found some info from this online article: http://www.bgci.org/resources/article/0140/. The garden opened to the public in 1998, with an area of 12,000 m². Here are some details -

Over 150 species of plants have been planted within the Garden for blind people to touch, smell and feel ... Sixty species of plant in the Garden have labels in braille. Thirty of these also have a small speaker attached to the label and a recorded message with detailed information about that species' name, features and usage can be heard when a button is pressed.

Special design features include: using gentle natural slopes without steps, placing cobbles in the footpaths in front of plants that are meant to be touched, including a 400 m long stainless steel railing, building toilets specially designed for blind people and having corridor pillars with smooth edges.

I tried to get some images of the garden, but found only one picture showing the entry. When I get a chance to visit Nanjing, I'll make sure to stop by this heart-warming place. And hopefully I can take a road trip across China someday to get my first hand stories.

Salar de Uyuni

When planning my upcoming Mexico trip, I happened to see these amazing pics of Salar de Uyuni, the world's largest salt flat in southwest Bolivia.


The salt mounds reminds me of Andy Goldsworthy's "ice cone". When covered with shallow water, Salar de Uyuni becomes extremely reflective. The human figure in the middle recalls the atmosphere in Antony Gormley's work Another Place (1997).

Bolivia is already on my travel wish list!

千树万树梨花开

Marble Cliff must be the prettiest area in Columbus at this time of the year for its heavenly beautiful pear blossoms!

SprayMania

Two months ago I was spraypainting a lot of "treasures" I collected during some previous trips until I was completely repelled by the toxic smell of the paints. Those treasures include the unknown fruits I picked over a year ago in South Carolina. I finally found out the name of the plant: liquidambar styraciflua (American Sweetgum, Redgum) and its lovely fruit's nicknamed "space bug", "monkey ball", etc. A more exciting discovery was that there are actually such trees in my neighborhood, so I can collect more this year!

Being a North America native, sweetgum has been introduced to many parts of the world. In Gus van Sant's My Own Private Idaho, sweetgum ball is seen at a farm in Rome, where a native girl holds it in her hand and speaks out its beautiful Italian name.


Pine cone, is the other major "victim" of my spraypaint. I love these small-sized cones gathering on a branch - just like dried flowers after being colored!

Now I need to find "greener" ways to color them :)

Today's Ice Sculptures

artworks in my backyard from today's freezing rain!!

The Wind Will Carry Us

The Wind Will Carry Us by Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami is a unique movie where landscape plays a starring role, from the unique Kurdish mountain village, to the stunning fields of gold. Trees are referred as landmarks for directions in such a barren landscape. Inside this terraced village, you always have people above or below you, overseeing and overhearing the lives of your neighbors. Roofs are part of the living surface. Your horizon is vertical. There is not a single portrait of the interior of the houses in the entire movie. The only interior scene shows a dark cave barn where a girl gets milk for the engineer. Judging from the outside, we can guess the inside would not be comfortable.

The plot is minimal: A film crew visits a tiny village to document the local mourning ceremony of an anticipated death of an old woman. However the women remains alive for a while which turns the crew into wanderers. There is a mysterious dimension in the narrative, for the viewer is never given full knowledge: the real identity of the crew is kept in secret almost throughout the film; the main character is called by villagers “engineer” which is also misleading; the acousmatic voices of the engineer’s colleagues and several villagers the engineer encounters. The viewer has to fill the gaps with his imagination.

The engineer’s cell phone is the only connection between the remote village and the outside world. Everytime he has to drive out of the village to a cemetery on a highland to get signal. Following this repeated path with his unexpected interactions of local residents, we get to learn the daily routine of village life. During the waiting period, the story is diverted into questions on a series of relationships: between life and death, between old and new, between insider and outsider, through many idling moments. As the title The Wind Will Carry Us suggests, the film has a drifting and mesmerizing beauty in it.

There are noticeable recurring themes in Abbas's films such as driving scene, barren landscape, reflections upon life and death, esp. in A Taste of Cherry. A Taste of Cherry has a simple and obvious structure and concept, but lacks the richness The Wind Will Carry Us offers us. Another great Iranian life/death themed movie is Smell of Camphor, Fragrance of Jasmine by Bahman Farmanara.

Golden Iris

I missed taking a picture of the gorgeous pear blossoms at Marble Cliff this year, but caught another seasonal favorite - the golden irises by the boardwalk at Creekside Park in Gahanna, the most beautiful and lively park I found in Columbus ^_^