If I got to choose what I would do on my last day, there is a good chance I would ask for three hours at a good flea market on a sunny day with friends, because that is just about my idea of heaven.

One of my favorite quotes is from director Robert Bresson: “Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen.” For me, a flea market is not about shopping per se but about a feeling I sometimes have that something – in this place where there are worlds inside of worlds jammed up against other worlds and time is all over the place – is waiting for me to find it: to make it visible.

Because while Bresson is clearly speaking of the act of creating, this can take many forms. It might be film, drawing, or artistic endeavours, but it can also be cooking a memorable meal or putting together an iconic look or saying or doing the needed thing at the right moment. It can be the ability to look at a jumbled-up box under a messy table and see the one piece of treasure there, the one thing that needs to be found.

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I have been lucky enough to visit art museums in many cities. This is consistently one of my favorites. There are other museums that have more, but in a way that is the point. The Louvre, the National Gallery, and their like are amazing, but they are too large to really take in and emotionally digest what you find there. This is where Zurich’s Kunsthaus is different. Yes, it has relatively little in the way of old masters and prehistoric whatnot and many of the things that make other world museums so dynamic, but what it has is truly choice and can be experienced in an afternoon. It is just the right amount of beauty to be taken in, felt, remembered, and treasured.

Van Gogh, Rodin, Chagall, Picasso, Monet, Beckman, Ernst, Kandinsky, Giacometti, Klee, Rousseau, Matisse, and on and on. Just as important is what it doesn’t have: a mad crush of bodies getting between you and the experience. Most museums in major cities are in a constant state of crush, with flashing cameras and hordes of tourists mobbing a handful of well known works, making it very difficult to savor any of the experience. In Zurich, there is dignity, [read more]

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This is a first try at a book carving technique. It can be either a wall hanging or displayed on a counter. It is wild and dramatic, yet evokes all that a map should: mystery, adventure, and exploration.

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