grease stains

how humble the inspiration
how vivid the result.

dan seals

i fell into country music
when i fell in love with the southwest
on my first visit
more than twenty years ago.
there was the desert and
there was a cowboy
(isn't there always?)
and on the plane on the way home
the country music channel
gave me some tunes to look up.

the cassettes were piled high
back then
and there was a great
country music station
in the city
which awakened me
and sang me to sleep.

when that station stopped broadcasting
my total immersion ended but i've
retained a love of the sounds of country.

dan seals was a favorite
and this was my favorite dan seals song,
here sung live with cheryl wheeler
another favorite.

dan seals died last wednesday
at the age of 61
of lymphoma.

eggs, nothing but

slow sunday

all the cheerfulness of the last few days
(flowers, paintings, post about happiness)
may have been too much for me.

in a funk today.

i know
it'll pass
but i'll just bask in it here for a bit
if that's okay
with a dash of self pity and some
uh, club soda.
tomorrow marks a two year
anniversary: i'm two years sober.
that should cheer me
and tomorrow it will.

saturday at greenmarket

i love shooting spring
at greenmarket. tulips
swathed in white paper,
roses blurred
by crisp transparent film.
daffodils angling for a better view and
natural easter eggs.

digital pollock...ish

martini

blogging and happiness, chicken and egg?

i can be as gloomy as the next person...

wait (the voice taps me on the shoulder)

how can you tap me on the shoulder,
disembodied internal voice?

never you mind about that. (it continues)
darling, don't be modest,
you are not merely capable of being
as gloomy as the next person.
you are a guru of gloom, an empress of ennui,
an angst adept...

okay enough with the alliteration.
and dont call me darling.
your point?

...a mistress of misery...

because i was going to make a point. to wit:
since beginning this bloggish enterprise
(and despite the state of the economy and the world)
it's been notably lacking in the negative
and, as you point out,
that ain't usually who i am.

...diva of depression?...

of course i try to be upbeat here, yet
even my shadow blog, poison pencil, has wanted
for nasty, lo, these many weeks.
all it can show for itself are youtube videos of the
nostaligic (hyperdrive by the starship,
2 versions of queen's somebody to love) and guilty
(kelly clarkson's my life would suck without you)
variety.



so the carriebradshavian question becomes
do we blog because we're happy or
does blogging make us happy?

as any diarist or journalista will point out
1. writing it down is good for heart and soul

and cerainly 2. carrying the camera everywhere
in the hope of creating content, if not art,
is stimulating.

also 3. having actual readers,
few but choice and articulate,
is pretty damn cool...

(whispers)...maestro of the morose...

okay have at it. knock yourself out.

...wizard of woe
apathy artist
sadness superstar
doyenne of the doldrums...

done?

pretty much. they're getting
lame and thin...

it's the nymb's four month anniversary
and i'm still fairly upbeat so i guess whichever
came first doesn't matter as long as the
omelette is tasty.

thanks for being out there, all y'all.

on the bowery

Tenements and restaurant supply warehouses have yet to be
entirely supplanted by glass houses but the
architectural juxtapositions are startling.

some spaces seem arbitrary and artificial as film sets...

gifts

between gift and present
there's a subtle difference
i feel but can't quite articulate.
Something akin to grace,
it seems to me,
is attached to a gift.

I received one in the mail
yesterday from some folks who
know me only through my blog,
my photographs, and a string of
emails that goes back
a couple of months.

my hyper-articulate friend J
says the best gifts are those
that show that someone knows you.

and by extension, i suppose,
approves of you.

so perhaps the greatest gifts
are pieces of yourself
returned.

one of the best gifts I ever received
was a pile of wooden coins from a
coffee house i used to frequent in
eugene, oregon in the 70s.
coffee was a quarter
but you could buy these coins
five for a dollar and exchange each for a cup.
i went there every morning
for the freshly roasted brew -
your choice of beans ground then and there.

g bought me a pile of those coins,
maybe five dollars worth,
and touched me to the core.

The package i received yesterday
was such a gift.

s and i had been emailing about
travel - AAA triptiks then and now -
what do you MEAN they use google maps???
and i recounted
(in a modest amount of excruciating detail, i see)
a cross country trip in the 70s
for which i wished i had kept the triptik.

you can see where this is going of course.

an old fashioned spiral bound triptik,
the route from NYC to San Francisco
highlighted in yellow - page after page
of my past, plus a map of the USA with
a yellow line across the middle arrived
in an innocent envelope and
completely floored me.

you guys.
thank you.

fairy tale

here's a fairy tale waiting to be told...

yesterday's zen quote of the day

Losing an illusion
makes you wiser
than finding a truth.

Ludwig Borne (with an umlaut over the o)

alien shadow

another hopeful sign

a tourist in my own city

spent the morning on the bowery
shooting with a couple of photographers
i've known for years yet never met -
internet friends from the photo site pbase.
it's a treat to look at the city
with the help of other eyes.
i take so much for granted - so often
i don't see what's actually there
but what i expect to see.

i don't think i made any great photographs
but i certainly enjoyed the company, guys.

end of winter blues week blowout

these are from a year long project
with my first digital camera, a trusty
(and still great) Canon G2.
you can see more of them here
(they're not all blue...)

from point a to point b

in typography class
at cooper union
we had an assignment:
'document the trip from home to school'
this is the update
using the quote i used then.


all the interim is like a phantasma, or a hideous dream

more new york blues

with a focus like blue
i'm a huntress in the city wild,
bypassing the bright obviousness of red,
the vivid pervasiveness of yellow.
i'm vigilant for the more subtle
pleasures of blue in all it's guises.

in my blue research i came upon this
observation from raoul dufy:

"blue is the only color which maintains
its own character in all its tones...
it will always stay blue; whereas yellow
is blackened in its shades,
and fades away when lightened;
red when darkened becomes brown,
and diluted with white is no longer red,
but another color pink"