New novel

Adrienne the Egg, part 2

So time went on at the farm normally until the big day: first day of summer! Walter was the first one in the pond. Everyone was relaxing, even Mom, with some gin. The Lulu heard a crack! Wow!A Salamander. Bet you didn't see that coming, did you?

snow day

Adrienne the Egg, Part 1

Why did I major in Industrial Design if this was how I amused myself at RISD? To be sure I don't know. I now present, in a few installments, the tale of Adrienne the Egg. This was from November 1996 and I never finished it, but maybe I will someday.

Christmas, before email

Maybe I should get back into glitter..... Merry Christmas.

Details

This is how apartment buildings in New York used to look...not all metal and glass. Some of the new buildings are wonderful as well, but they tend to not have the attention to detail that used to exist. Life is in the details after all, isn't it?
The building I grew up in had a beautiful wooden interior like this in the elevator as well, until the late 90s, when the rippped it out and replaced with plastic. This elevator is graceful and warm. You get in and already feel at home.Imagine having paintings like this in your lobby?detail of dog from that wall piece...I am this woof.

Christmas in every crevice

Christmas can sneak up on you, from the smallest place, the poorest home or the richest. The effort and love of a snowflake hung in a dark New York hallway speaks oceans to me.

Winter In America

2 things: If you have time this week and you live in New York City, go to the main Post Office (James A Farley) at 34th Street and pick up an Operation Santa letter to fulfill. What an amazing operation they have going over there. Makes me so happy, even with all the nonsense going on today and our stumbling economy.

Also, I was listening to H2O-Gate Blues by Gil Scott Heron again today. Crazy good! Half of it sounds so current. yikes!

Tenement Museum

Today I visited the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side. I had never been there before. We went through "The Moores" tour, which highlights how a family of Irish immigrants that really lived there might have lived in 1869. I was impressed with the place. The building was built in 1867 but has not been lived in since 1935, so it is really crazy in there, you can really see how people lived, and how New York has continually reinvented itself. Our guide talked about how back in the 1860s there was a strong anti-immigrant sentiment and even a news organization and politicans that spread the ill will to the masses. Imagine that.

I love to drive

Maybe taking pictures while driving is dangerous? The smoke against the clouds is so great. Ah sweet Bridgeport.detail

holiday enthusiasm in Greenpoint

how could you walk by this and not smile. I almost didn't, but then I did.

scavenger hunt

ancient lovers. I love how they are walking together but each looking out in their own direction. kinda says a lot. did they even have language? does it do us any good? today I saw a big dog on the street wearing a beautiful cable knit sweater. this was in the West Village, which gets fancier by the moment. I was thinking, he has fur, he doesn't need a coat. we don't have fur which is why we need coats...therefor a dog with a nice sweater is just... well, he looked embarrassed. sometimes I wish I was a woof. just for a day. do you know where this picture was taken?

Maria

Angela

The Angela, or Angela, or Mrs Dezen. She's a peach any way you say it. I think she looks like a 40s movie star.
Angela texting:Angela drinking riesling:Angela & Alex in the mirror at Rockwood:

Damnwell

I've known Alex Dezen (The Damnwells) for a really long time. We met in the meadow in Central Park in high school. I was the best man at his wedding to Angela (they called it the breast-man). I have always been a big fan of his music in the many incarnations it has taken over the years, but this is different. Some of the songs are the same, but he shows them from a different place, a place of quiet confidence and strength. It was a beautiful set the other night at Rockwood and although I am slightly biased, I feel like the music was reverberating out past the doors of the club, into the unconscious, bigger than just the person singing.

manifest

The Manifestation

Many arrivals make us live: the tree becoming
Green, a bird tipping the topmost bough,
A seed pushing itself beyond itself,
The mole making its way through darkest ground,
The worm, intrepid scholar of the soil—
Do these analogies perplex? A sky with clouds,
The motion of the moon, and waves at play,
A sea-wind pausing in a summer tree.

What does what it should do needs nothing more.
The body moves, though slowly, toward desire.
We come to something without knowing why.

- Theodore Roethke

proud yankee Rooster

So fast

Today I was on the Whitestone Bridge and the sky and the clouds and light were so beautiful. I feel in those moments I am trying so much to capture whatever struck me, what stopped me, to keep it, to remember. It all goes so fast, everything. Funny to think we can stop anything, catch anything. Thinking we have control. I guess this is why photography was invented - the burning need to capture, to save. The most beautiful moments I have ever seen I had no desire to take out a camera. The best things stay with you, and if you are lucky you get to share them with someone.