I read a story by China Miéville in which a man made his living by having conversations with buildings; he listened to what buildings told him, in order to locate such things as mildew, termites and cracks in foundations; the story exists in Miéville’s only short story collection to date. I’d purchased it in Prague. I’d read it to a Czech-local friend (one not unknown to those who know me) as he sat on a sofa with his legs across my lap. I read aloud. He smoked half of the cigarette we shared. We were both far from sober. Before my departure to Prague, I found a collection of short stories by Jhumpa Lahiri; it was my introduction to her work. I have yet to read anything else she’s written, but her short stories—one in particular—touch on something that I attempt to capture in both my writing and in my visual art. Her collected short stories are bound together in a single volume entitled: The Interpreter of Maladies. This is the title of the figurehead story: a quiet story that—to the likely shock of the author—functions well as a piece of science fiction. It defines an intimacy of a culture not native to the language in which the story is told. It is not science fiction, however, not consciously-so, but it’s written for outsiders. I thought of that, vaguely, as—once—I sat on a sofa in Prague, reading passages from “Foundation”, a story that begins, simply enough with the sentence: “You watch the man who comes and speaks to buildings.” Though I didn’t articulate it at the time, I felt a strange, ringing sort of resonance that had a lot, quite a lot to do, with “The Interpreter of Maladies.” The stories are dissimilar: one is mainstream and predictable (it doesn’t violate our expectations of accepted reality, and accepted reality lacks ambition, thus only a handful of things can ever happen) and the other is…well…it doesn’t violate our expectations of reality either: it simply invents something as complex and demanding as the real, but far, far more engaging because you can no longer accept your blind acceptance of the way things are…like all fantastic fiction, it requires that you step outside of your assumptions—at least a few of them. (I’d initially read “Foundation” to Pavel, because he wanted to hear my reading voice. I wanted to see his reactions to a story by one of my favorite authors.) As I ambled away from work, two days ago, I came across a building engaged in combat. There were shadows: deep, voracious shadows. There was light. The building—for just a moment—seemed as if it moved, as if it struggled against downward inertia to thrust itself forward. It made me think of that night in Prague, on a sofa, with cigarette smoke in the air, and Pavel’s bare toes supporting the spine of a book as I read from it. For a moment, I wondered if there was a man inside of that building, speaking to it…interpreting its maladies. I laughed at the strange connections made in the presence of an old (and refurbished) building on Chicago Avenue, and I wondered if I would have perceived what I did, had I not read the short stories that have taken up residence in my mind. This photo, if anything, is a crystallization of three unrelated stories: one concerning an interpreter in India, who translates words like “stomach-ache” from one language into another…that story intermingles with the tale of a man who speaks to buildings and listens as they speak back to him. The third story—unwritten—involves a Czech guy, smoking a cigarette, as a friend reads to him in English. And in a bit of strangeness fit for the pages of a genre story, (or Czech literature) it all comes together in the architecture of a building in Chicago, thrusting itself into a late-day blast of sunlight. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and I hope you’re all having a great week.