forty-nine

Clerkmanifesto is going context free for 100 days!

While I retire from 31 years at the Roseville Library, sell nearly everything I own, fly with my darling wife to Japan for 40 days, and then move together to France to start to build a life there, I present a less explained clerkmanifesto, a clerkmanifesto of snapshots and time travel. Below you may see old posts without introduction from my 4,750 post collection. You may see random photos, brand new or years old. I may write a passage about Japan as if of course you know I'm in Japan, I may make a simple observation or joke, but whatever it is, I won't be explaining it. You'll have to take it as it comes.

For more context you are welcome to read this longer introduction.

And if this is all too confusing I welcome you to investigate our thousands of fully explained historic posts from the past 12 years, though I'll be the first to admit, hours later, you may still come away a little confused.

Here, however it works, is what clerkmanifesto has for you today:

I'm not likely to get tired of these videos of old drawings of mine brought to life, thought this may be the last one from 85 and up, my show of Jewish people who were 85 years old or older. 

If you don't know the drill: click to engage the picture, enlarge it, and then click once more to play it.

forty-eight

 

Clerkmanifesto is going context free for 100 days!

While I retire from 31 years at the Roseville Library, sell nearly everything I own, fly with my darling wife to Japan for 40 days, and then move together to France to start to build a life there, I present a less explained clerkmanifesto, a clerkmanifesto of snapshots and time travel. Below you may see old posts without introduction from my 4,750 post collection. You may see random photos, brand new or years old. I may write a passage about Japan as if of course you know I'm in Japan, I may make a simple observation or joke, but whatever it is, I won't be explaining it. You'll have to take it as it comes.

For more context you are welcome to read this longer introduction.

And if this is all too confusing I welcome you to investigate our thousands of fully explained historic posts from the past 12 years, though I'll be the first to admit, hours later, you may still come away a little confused.

Here, however it works, is what clerkmanifesto has for you today:

Continuing along from yesterday, these are the paintings version of the recent alien invasion pictures of Saint Minneapolis. Thank goodness my wife and I are safely in Japan now!

And then here is a video version as well. I think it even has accompanying music!

If you don't know the drill: click to engage the picture, enlarge it, and then click once more to play it.

Typing on my phone is a pain, so here’s a quick intro I’ll reuse. These photos are from Kyoto, where my darling wife and I are staying. It’s sweltering, beautiful, bewildering. I take a few photos each day and edit them later while recovering at our quiet house here. No commentary then for today, I will let the pictures speak.

forty-seven

 

Clerkmanifesto is going context free for 100 days!

While I retire from 31 years at the Roseville Library, sell nearly everything I own, fly with my darling wife to Japan for 40 days, and then move together to France to start to build a life there, I present a less explained clerkmanifesto, a clerkmanifesto of snapshots and time travel. Below you may see old posts without introduction from my 4,750 post collection. You may see random photos, brand new or years old. I may write a passage about Japan as if of course you know I'm in Japan, I may make a simple observation or joke, but whatever it is, I won't be explaining it. You'll have to take it as it comes.

For more context you are welcome to read this longer introduction.

And if this is all too confusing I welcome you to investigate our thousands of fully explained historic posts from the past 12 years, though I'll be the first to admit, hours later, you may still come away a little confused.

Here, however it works, is what clerkmanifesto has for you today:

Not to belabor the point...

Wait!

To belabor the point, as you read this my darling wife and I have long gone from Minnesota (assuming all has gone normally) and will now have almost been in Japan for two weeks. But as I write I am filling clerkmanifesto in well ahead of time. We still live in our mostly empty apartment. I am retired (no library strories today!). And we even sold our car this morning. And since I have been showing pictures taken out our apartment window (of birds lately), today I was inspired to take a few more pictures, or make them.

I got carried away.

I don't even know what to do with all these pictures. I think I have about 30 or forty of them in various versions. I have been rereading the incredibly enjoyable Andy Weir novel "Hail Mary". So it is possible that planted in my mind the desire to photograph an alien visitation. 

These are alien visitation pictures.

We'll start with this robust selection of the scene captured out my window and a couple more from our walk into town.

 

I’m now the up to date version of me, sitting in a small house in Kyoto looking at this post (that seems so long ago) wondering if I should put some aliens into my Kyoto pictures. 

Maybe later. 

Now I am sending out my photography of Kyoto by way of scroll paintings inspired by a museum from several days ago.

The change in tone is not lost on me.

forty-six

 

Clerkmanifesto is going context free for 100 days!

While I retire from 31 years at the Roseville Library, sell nearly everything I own, fly with my darling wife to Japan for 40 days, and then move together to France to start to build a life there, I present a less explained clerkmanifesto, a clerkmanifesto of snapshots and time travel. Below you may see old posts without introduction from my 4,750 post collection. You may see random photos, brand new or years old. I may write a passage about Japan as if of course you know I'm in Japan, I may make a simple observation or joke, but whatever it is, I won't be explaining it. You'll have to take it as it comes.

For more context you are welcome to read this longer introduction.

And if this is all too confusing I welcome you to investigate our thousands of fully explained historic posts from the past 12 years, though I'll be the first to admit, hours later, you may still come away a little confused.

Here, however it works, is what clerkmanifesto has for you today:

Yesterday I showed you a highly zoomed in picture of a bald eagle that I took recently from inside my apartment. This is a pretty fancy way to do one's wildlife photography. Very... comfortable. It put me in mind of an older picture taken in an obviously different season, also from out the window of my apartment, of an owl. This is very cleaned up with AI, let's say a three on the scale to ten, which means, for those of you scoring at home, that this is definitely the owl as it was, and all the trees are in the right places, but if the owl's sister were to look at the picture she might say "I don't know, it looks like him, but it also sort of doesn't? Something about the ears or forehead?".

Although the owl's sister might say "Who?" not even recognizing her own owl brother! In which case this would be an alteration level of at least five out of ten.

Or it might possibly just reflect on an owl being an owl.

forty-five

 

Clerkmanifesto is going context free for 100 days!

While I retire from 31 years at the Roseville Library, sell nearly everything I own, fly with my darling wife to Japan for 40 days, and then move together to France to start to build a life there, I present a less explained clerkmanifesto, a clerkmanifesto of snapshots and time travel. Below you may see old posts without introduction from my 4,750 post collection. You may see random photos, brand new or years old. I may write a passage about Japan as if of course you know I'm in Japan, I may make a simple observation or joke, but whatever it is, I won't be explaining it. You'll have to take it as it comes.

For more context you are welcome to read this longer introduction.

And if this is all too confusing I welcome you to investigate our thousands of fully explained historic posts from the past 12 years, though I'll be the first to admit, hours later, you may still come away a little confused.

Here, however it works, is what clerkmanifesto has for you today:

So for those of you playing along at home, let's see where we are in all of this today.

As I write I have been retired for four days. Because there are months and months of work involved in breaking apart our lives and leaving the country (with just several shirts on our backs), possibly forever, we are pretty busy. 

But it's a relaxed sort of busy!

I'm super relaxed! 

Not long ago I looked out the window and saw an eagle sitting on top of a tree over the river. This is a wildly zoomed in picture with maybe a three or four out of a ten on the AI alteration level to make it all as clear as this image is:

I will miss the River.

And the eagles...

As you actually read this we should be ten days into our time in Japan and Kyoto. Whether I am posting things from there would be known to you more than me, since if I am posting from Japan occasionally then most of it would be showing up at the bottom of these posts.

And what is in these posts?

Mostly I am showing old artwork, some from 30 years ago, and explaining complicated things about how time works here over and over.

I'm just saying this is all normal.

Today I would like to show you the last of my paintings from "The Horses in Trouble" series. These were more small watercolors from the nineties. Though these have gone through an AI pass they are barely a two maybe up to a four, in alteration level out of ten, depending on the picture.

I’m continuing to post mostly my adapted pictures of Kyoto in these extra, below-the-fold blog posts, the ones that are up to date, rather than scheduled ahead like the posts you may have read above this one.

I still haven’t taken out my computer, though technically I have it with me. I’m taking the opportunity to dictate when I can, so even though these posts are edited pretty heavily, please forgive the occasional lack of articulation or elegance I might otherwise manage with my fingers.

That said, today I’m bringing you some more pictures of Kyoto from my small storehouse. I only take a few each day, usually in short, spontaneous bursts, so they don’t quite add up to a full picture of what things are like. Today’s collection may be a little more restrained, so it might give more of a sense of the place than the ones where I appear as a cartoon character.

I’m not exactly sure what I’ll be including here, but I’ll try to dig around for some of the quieter ones. And also, please forgive me if, as the days go on, you notice repeats, either sections of images or full photographs. I don’t have the means right now to keep track of everything clearly, and as I layer edits and versions over each other, it’s hard to stay organized without a better setup. So yes, you may end up seeing the same picture more than once. Maybe don’t expect it, but I do hope you’ll forgive it, or even enjoy it a second time.