Tree Walker.

Christoph Both-Asmus had a daydream one day about walking on trees - so he's taken steps to learn the best climbing techniques, has commissioned a giant helium bubble to carry him, and plans to film the results for a project he calls The Tree Walker. Makes you think: how often do we pursue fantasies - the most outlandish ones, especially?

Says Christoph of his vision: "In my imagination, I saw myself like a projection balancing weightlessly on the highest and most fragile branches. Sinking deep into that dream - reeling, afraid of falling, pushing the thought away - I moved forward over the canopy's thinnest branches." Here he is, in action, below.

 

See more at The Tree Walker, here. Happy daydreaming.

Grandpa's Photos.

Dave Tomkins launched his beautiful website Grandpa's Photos in the hopes of helping his aging grandfather, Stephen Clarke, remember where he shot the photographs he'd taken over the course of an adventure-filled lifetime. Clarke had just been admitted to a nursing home when the photos were found and had trouble remembering the stories behind them - so his grandson decided to post one hundred of the images online and ask the public for help in pinpointing their locations. "The hope is simply that people will appreciate [the photos] and share them, making him, if only in my book, great at one more thing," he wrote.

Sadly, Clarke has since passed away, but Tomkins is still on the hunt for hints, and plans to visit the locations he finds to pay homage to the past in person.

As the granddaughter of three amazing individuals who spent the last years of their lives with Alzheimer's, this project strikes such a personal chord. Visit Grandpa's Photos, here, and lend clues if you can.

Photos by Stephen Clarke.

POV: Here.

POV ("point of view") is a series that addresses many of the same themes covered in my Equals Record column: growing up, saying yes to adventure, learning to embrace a quarter-life crisis. Each POV entry will include a photograph and a short reflection based on what’s pictured. While my previous column focused largely on ideas, POV focuses on moments - glimpses, glances, tiny stories. 

My six-year-old niece likes to play a game when I come over, during which she hides (usually in a way that leaves part of her visible - toes exposed under a table, fingers from under a blanket) and I wander the apartment, trying to find her. I make guesses aloud. Is she in the closet? Is she at school? Did she go to the beach and forget to tell us?

One morning recently, she stood tall against a tree trunk in the park, frozen, hiding.

"Where could she have gone?" I wondered, and she responded the way she always does, with high-pitched glee and nose scrunched in mock confusion, as if it was clear all along. "I'm here, silly," she said.

Happy Fourth.

Wishing you all a wonderful holiday weekend. My friend David moves to LA on Saturday, so we're crossing items off his New York City bucket list: pastrami at Katz's, a trip to the Cloisters, rooftop fireworks on the 4th (weather permitting, of course).

I'll be back on Monday with a new POV; in the meantime, reading material for the weekend:
-The concept of home.
-Coffee Cups of the World.
-Reading lists inspired by different modes of transit.
-Tolstoy's macaroni and cheese / Vonnegut's spiked candy bars.

And this again, from George Saunders, because it's good to be reminded: "Do all the other things, the ambitious things — travel, get rich, get famous, innovate, lead, fall in love, make and lose fortunes, swim naked in wild jungle rivers...but as you do, to the extent that you can, err in the direction of kindness. Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial. That luminous part of you that exists beyond personality — your soul, if you will — is as bright and shining as any that has ever been. Bright as Shakespeare’s, bright as Gandhi’s, bright as Mother Teresa’s. Clear away everything that keeps you separate from this secret luminous place. Believe it exists, come to know it better, nurture it, share its fruits tirelessly."

Have a great one. Photos by Max Wanger.

Everyday Thunderstorms.

I'm convinced I never heard real thunder til I moved to the East Coast. A summer storm here is theatrical and earth-shaking, often blowing in out of nowhere on a clear day. With The Cloud, designer Richard Clarkson has created a portable mini thunderstorm for the indoors - a lamp that comes with speakers and sensors, and conjures a storm in concert with its viewers' motions. Amazing.

More on Richard Clarkson's website, here. Happy Wednesday.

Related: frost flowers; cloud gazing; tiny earthquakes.