Square Corner with Humbleness

The building at one of my favorite corners in Brooklyn, Bergen and Underhill, was recently cleaned up, but graffiti, like a weed in the driveway, is making a comeback.  This is a 12x12 oil.

From In Motion: The Experience of Travel by Tony Hiss:  "The willingness to have been mistaken, the wish to absorb further, the sense that there is something still to be learned steals over us only when we consider what is in front of us valuable and worthy of our respect.  Inwardly, this attitude has another name: humbleness, a willingness to think that what we know about the people and things and places and all the aspects of creation we encounter during the course of a day can still be added to and has not yet been perfected."

Another Corner and Habitual Indifference

A 9x12 oil on panel of another corner at Bond and First in Brooklyn.

Tony Hiss, in his book In Motion: The Experience of Travel, writes: "Knowing from repeated experience that we can count on the stars to be there and that their continuing presence is not an immediate threat, we begin to think we can say with the same level of confidence that we know what they are.  Attention is withdrawn and moves in a different course.  Some people know a great deal about stars, others next to nothing.  There is always more to find out.  But habituation--not noticing something that seems unchanging and harmless--can cloak both knowledge and ignorance with the same mantle of indifference: 'Oh, yes, the stars.'  Something we have a word for."