E. 12th, facing West, head slightly back, upwards

Spring is stirring. One Way.

New York is a wonderful place to experience it. The color temperature suddenly compliments, where recently there was only the harsh, gelid light. New York's winter has famously long, cold and recognizable shadows, they are widely known to narrowly lean away from the sun, as if by choice.

Today the world seems rich in promise, with forgiving embraces.

Millions of yes.

Yes. yes. yes...

Winter is neither hell nor death, but only inasmuch as it is buttressed by that distant autumn and this, this yes, yes, yes's.

walking the dog in the rain

(picture taken the night before the rain started)

We awake to cold rain where we must walk the dog. It has rained for days, it will continue for days. It is to be avoided, but there is little way to do so. It hangs over everything, always coming down, though seemingly never complete. It reminds, always. Even the dog seems pensive when entering it. The playfulness is there but not in full. There is an eagerness to return home.

There is an eagerness to return home.

merely a question of life...

"When it is a question of writing, one is scrupulous, one examines things meticulously, one rejects all that is not truth. But when it is merely a question of life, one ruins oneself, makes oneself ill, kills oneself all for lies. It is true that these lies are a reservoir from which, if one has passed the age for writing poetry, one can at least extract a little truth." - Marcel Proust

her former bodyguard, Bernard Shaw

This picture reminds me of Patty Hearst, Tania, The Symbionese Liberation Army, the M1 Carbine, etc., etc.

"...she ultimately joined her captors in furthering their cause. " from the Wikipedia article on Patty Hearst

"She was later granted a presidential pardon by President Bill Clinton in his last official act before leaving office." - Ibid

"the SLA demanded that the captive's family distribute $70 worth of food to every needy Californian." Ibid

"Among her few close friends she counted Patricia Tobin, whose family founded the Hibernia Bank, a branch of which Hearst would later aid in robbing." Ibid

"Tell everybody that I'm smiling, that I feel free and strong and I send my greetings and love to all the sisters and brothers out there." A prison communique from our beloved revolutionary sweetheart

"Hearst's actions have also been attributed to Stockholm syndrome." Ibid

"After her release from prison, she married her former bodyguard, Bernard Shaw." Ibid

"...she refused to give evidence against the other captured SLA members." Ibid

(SLA publicity photo)

Poughkeepsie

This can be seen out the train window on the way up the Hudson to Poughkeepsie from Grand Central.

3-6-10, we went.

Google History

I wish that Google Maps had a feature that would allow you to also see the history of a location, if not in time-lapse images, then at least in text, or a link to any relevant info. There are so many places that leave me wondering. I have lived in the East Village for more than 10 years now and there is an area of vacant lots that always brings me curiosity. These properties must be hung up in litigation, but it's as if a time capsule to the graffiti era of the mid 80's exploded there, sort of. As I was taking the picture above and below somebody asked me what the deal was with that property. There clearly was a structure there at one point but all that is left is evenly distributed rubble. There are quite a few buildings like that in the neighborhood, valuable properties suspended in legal limbo. Law makes all things possible, no?

Among my other Google wishes.... I wish that it was able to save your browsing history so that you could re-visit any of your previous searches. All that it would take would be to have a cache file designated to the searches made when you were logged in to either your Gmail or any other Google account. Though I suppose at some point safety and privacy concerns become paramount. For the traveler though it would be quite a clever addition, especially considering the societal trend towards extreme subjectivity as evidenced by Facebook, Twitter, and the like.

Why is most graffiti so terrible? It's tyrannical in its unrelenting assertion of the blandness and unoriginality of the individual. Like most current "hip-hop", it's always in the time signature of: I/u

Most of it simply fails in the meager goal it sets for itself.

The hemisphere that sees

This picture reminds me of a bull moving in towards a matador, seen from his retreating perspective, his tenuous stance. It has a near-frantic feeling of imminent danger, a diminishing circularity, though without as much threat of unpredictability, of horns, of goring; the cheers and then sudden gasps of such a thing. Modern city life is dull and flat when considered thusly. "No bulls would die today..."

I wonder what long term effects, if any, drugs have on the mind, or the mind's desire to see a certain way. I like some of the photos I take that make little or no sense. The chaotic dance of urban lights, caught only in partial and at a pace. Blurred, distorted, out of focus glimpses of a world that is always there, though the eye retreats from it under most given circumstances, the mind defers. Looking back through the 20th and 19th century there is much evidence to support the idea that the mind had a desire to see things differently long before drugs produced the effect.

Ah, the momentary view of youth... the spring glimpse.

My days of doing drugs are mostly over, though I fondly remember some of the things I saw there, the unique way of leisurely distorting the senses, just for fun. I question many, if not all, of the "truths" I found there, but I still sometimes long to view the world through that wonderful barrel of distortion. To enter that unique magical landscape where much is marvelous and weird. The mistake was believing that the landscape there was ever-changing, it turned out to be quite the opposite.

Many of the pictures that I find fascinating are so because the camera has caught some mystery of light, unattainable to my mind in its current condition. Perhaps they actually are tedious or uninteresting, like other people's dreams. Such is the power and indifference of subjectivity. Such is the power of sight...

Then take me disappearin’ through the smoke rings of my mind,
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves,
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach,
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free,
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands,
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves,
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.

-Bob Dylan, Mr. Tambourine Man

ripened with legends

My heart of silk
is filled with lights,
with lost bells,
with lilies and bees.
I will go very far,
farther than those hills,
farther than the seas,
close to the stars,
to beg Christ the Lord
to give back the soul I had
of old, when I was a child,
ripened with legends,
with a feathered cap
and a wooden sword.

- Federico Garcia Lorca

Produce

I walk home from work every night - up from Soho, into the East Village, past many deli's and shops. This one grabbed my attention. They were bold enough to put produce out early, in the cold. I only took one picture. I enhanced the colors and adjusted it here and there but this is how my mind saw it, I promise. Longing for Spring and everything the tilted earth promises, all the fruits the world can bring, angels of frivolity, bring them.