anti fakers club

crepuscular

2010-04-28T17:52:00.005-04:00

outside d.b.a. brooklyn 8/09

Different from the Nocturnal, or the Diurnal,
there is a shy, little known third sleep-habited sibling,
the awake in dawn and dusk,
those who live in the gloaming, only
twilight, Mourning Doves, that nameless rat and deer.
How strange that they have twice as many
days as us.
What will happen
when dystopia finally rolls around, huh?
In that constant grayed dim,
moths beetles guinea pigs
and cats will rule over everything
and be dayless,
sleepless and powerful a giant particulate
Leviathan in the translucent darkness.
And now,
this tangerine tastes alcoholic like a cider
and dusty like moths and garages, and I think
of fathers, yours and mine,
getting troubled in the twilight,
using days up twice as quickly after all,
theirs and ours, and those of many other
Diurnals (now insomniacs) that we love.

Crepuscular is a term used to describe some animals that are primarily active during twilight: at dawn and at dusk. The word is derived from the Latin word crepusculum, meaning "twilight." Crepuscular is thus in contrast with diurnal and nocturnal behavior. Crepuscular animals may also be active on a bright moonlit night.
The patterns of activity are thought to be an antipredator adaptation. Many predators forage most intensely at night, while others are active at mid-day and see best in full sun. Thus the crepuscular habit may reduce predation.

&&&, #1

2010-04-21T12:54:00.008-04:00

hopkinton state park, MA / 5.09

I’ve been living hedonistically.
But I’ll always love shade plants more than sun plants,
their humble leaves rounded and tougher, duller darker
nothing showy like those dry bright noisy spangled
sun plants.
I prefer shade plants in the same way I will always prefer
The East Coast.
And still,
for someone who loves weird screensavers the way I do,
I make a good try at being useful.
Post-apocalyptic skills list into the double digits.
I don’t even run from bees anymore.
The houseplant has much in common with the shade plant
And is often a shade plant itself,
taken out of the ground with a little bit of dirt
to help us out up here.
Thanks Spider Plant.
My alley cave seems nicer now.
The day was so dark that the morning birds
never stopped calling. They
faded right into the evening birds.
The one that goes,
{Play or Sing: E sustained, B, B sliding to B flat}.

There’s only so much you can do
with what you get,
a broken chair,
a can of crushed pine-apples.

I Propose A Toast -

2010-03-31T15:51:00.005-04:00

knees, mine / central park NY 8.09

Here I am finding myself wishing I’d have made something
and not wanting to make something. This happens to you too, right,
When Son House presents the Pony Blues,
When you hear the insects recently born in your alley,
new empowered party crowds arms bared
legs allowed by the new air’s slow
warmth, when radiostation is being created
somewhere close to you and you know
(because you and radio both agree,
you say Yes, exactly, to it)
and who could know about how here feels if they weren’t here now.
Radio and I should talk.
Someone tell them to say their phone number slower between songs,
like they would if they were expecting someone
to actually call.
There are more electronics home than people right now. When did it become like this?
To Do:
Sleep again
Wake again
Close the windows
Ask the city politely to stop pressuring me to participate
Participate
Pick up laundry.
My spicy breath feels seasonally inappropriate now. I must add
to my list,
Eat a cucumber.
And,
Buy a box of Sun, like the one Cara sleeps with, on like the day, plug
for indoor use only.
Set it on a timer to give the real Sun
a good example. Good examples always help
like the answers in the back of an algebra textbook help lazy students.
I ate the apples you left here last month.
They were gritty and old like the city and fermented like you.
Gritty and old like you too come to think of it.
You too had the chance at those new seeds but I ate them and have shitted
them out generously to this city’s soil,
made previously only of dead squirrels motor oil and newspapers,
now made also of cucumbers, this afternoon’s tacos
and the appleseed’s future apple-trees that should rightfully be growing from
your dead posthumous humus-dirt chest
sprouting in the center of your fertile pickled heart.

To Spring---

school's out for the winter

2010-02-10T14:24:00.000-05:00

edward and jenny on our roof / manhattan 2.10

TODAY IS GREAT
SNOW IS GREAT
LUV U GLOBAL WARMING SEVERE STORMS
COME ON BEBE LETS FROLIC
AND THEN DRY OUR BOOTS BY THE RADIATOR
AND HAVE A NICE NIGHT IN YOU AND I ON THE LOVE SEAT.

Unsure of your position in human history?

2010-02-08T12:00:00.000-05:00

hopkinton state forest, mass.

There is very little that you can do to comfort yourself.
At best, find someone to love, read Carl Sagan, and get out of your house before 10 AM every day.
At worst, sleep.

It's okay.

It was a bird in a cage

2010-01-27T16:37:00.002-05:00

cold war bunker / nantucket MA july 09

warm war bunker / nantucket MA july 09

I just had the most refreshing sleepless lay-down I've ever had. I feel so good, and new. Lesson learned: embrace your insomnia.

HELLO AGAIN, EVERYTHING

I have not felt this sad or lonely in a long time, and now I have both

2010-01-25T21:28:00.006-05:00

somebody with god & candle @ kent box / brooklyn dec 2009

But it's been so long that I forgot how to fix it

summerhot madness

2010-01-21T14:48:00.000-05:00

this summer's tomatoes on the fire escape august 2009

went over to cara's new apartment last night, she's got exposed brick walls and a back porch with broken down chairs. i read a psychological study years ago that stated a high correlation between cityfolks with exposed brick in their apartments and overall feelings of contentedness. but correlation aint causation.

still, though, she's got a back porch with a sky in it, places for us to all sun our bones when this place starts to thaw (and it will)

after dinner we all started watching music videos with high school party scenes, feeling happy and like we had a past, and eventually we came upon will smith and dj jazzy jeff's "summertime"

that song makes me want to wear belly shirts and hang out on stoops and on cara's new back porch with the BBQ going all smoky and arnold palmer in my glass.

i'm realizing a function of my switching from digital to film: all my summer photos are coming back now, and i can't write about anything recent anymore. i look through my boxes and get pictures of tomatoes and tan faces and beaches.

so let me tell you a little something about my winter

it's cold, it's good, it's a little nervous. someone said the theme of this year should be decadence and i agree. i want to sit with all of you in warm rooms and revel in it. drink hot drinks out of nice glasses and wear impractically fuzzy socks that you can't even put shoes over, that's what i want.

i like winter best, i'm a winter creature, i like wearing more clothes and i hate sweat. i like seeing my breath. wearing big coats makes me feel tough and eastern european, i like to think of everything in cyrillic and all us humans just crazy enough to brave it these few months. i like how awake the cold makes me feel. i like how the city smells clean this once each year. i like the dry sidewalks like we're in the tundra, in a cold desert where everything just rattles and everything is hard surfaces. cities are meant for the winter and so am I.

i even like when the cold drives people inside, like any other condition new yorkers can't handle, like any time before 8 am. the streets get desolate like morning and walking around in my two pairs of pants and hood and black jacket, boots and flannel, long johns and blanket, i'm alright.

three cheers for winter shivers &
three chills for winter cheers

one girl girl-gang

2010-01-19T16:49:00.006-05:00

meyer hall of physics/stuyvesant street garage/phil & john wayne at the kent box, nyc

as lil' kim would say, i was gone for a minute now i'm back at the jump off. (goons in the club 'case somethin jumps off.)

so everyone who's reading this is alive which means that we all made it through the worst of the winter darkness from hell, hope you're all at your artificial sunboxes basking and smiling because it only gets better from here. maybe vampires will finally become less popular. sunsets later and sunrises sooner folks

got a mason jar in my hand, some ones in my pocket and a sandwich in my stomach and it feels good to be back, i forgot how much my gang here loved to laugh loudly in restaurants, i forgot how good it feels to walk. forgot what a luxury the subway is, running all 24 hours (even the ungodly ones) and forgot how that agency to move is. no, i'm alright, i don't need you automobile, i've got the leaky tunnel and the plastic seats and the blackened tracks from here to anywhere. and im'a go.

what it really comes down to is why not

what it really comes down to is when, and let's

don't ask me what's happening because it's happening now so let's go.

to you straight from the cascades access road

2009-12-29T17:29:00.001-05:00

I'm on the road with Rose on the West Coast. We reached Bend, Oregon and Cody's place last night, and climbed to a frozen waterfall this morning. Life is so fine. Motown on the car radio and soup in the near future and more cities and mountains and forests and grasslands ahead. Over, and out.

she still lives in still lives

2009-12-18T18:52:00.001-05:00

anna on houston in august nyc

oh god now i'm making animated gifs for fun like a hermit

2009-12-14T15:13:00.002-05:00

jarvis yawns eternally @ the apartment

in addition to becoming one of those people who takes pictures of their cat i guess i've also become one of those people who makes GIF animations

gif + cat + elise = casualty of the internet

real post probably in 5 minutes
love elise

if you don't have anything to say don't say anything at all

2009-12-01T19:36:00.000-05:00

prospect park brooklyn

what is DEAD SERIOUS

2009-11-25T02:11:00.000-05:00

1. sociopaths
2. "liking someone" a la 4th grade
3. staying up all night to make sure you don't miss your 7 am bus

4. killing yourself over liking someone from 7 am til 12 pm on your way home (this is presumptuous)

i am a gigantic
wimp

g'night happy thanksgiving

things are getting a little haunted and strange in ways i don't like

2009-11-02T14:49:00.001-05:00

annalise on the beach by sagaponack this past summer

possible causes:

1. reading too much science
2. reading the wrong science
2a. reading science
3. sand in camera
4. halloween not tired
5. bad vision/need lenses
6. living in nyc
7. living in 2009
8. the internet exists
9. something tipped over my cup of nervous and it's all over the place
10. bad at doing schoolwork and good at misconstruing badness-at-doing-schoolwork anxiety for a more cosmic-beastly-godly-ghostly anxiety
11. installation of death clock on desktop
12. impending return to land of memories (mass.)
13. 13
14. 14 is terrifying in China, look it up, also for teenage girls and boys, also for parents

Some of these I can't fix

Others I won't fix

Phew
Aaghh
Love
Elise

sometimes i want to live with these folks so i'll make more things

2009-10-31T14:19:00.002-04:00

bonnie ken rishi & tambourine @ kent box, bklyn oct 2009

no but seriously i need to make more things
maybe i need more floor space
that means i have to leave manhattan (there are only closets left here in this borough)

OH WAIT and HAPPY HALLOWEEN

what is everybody being tonight?

by popular demand/complaint

2009-10-29T12:32:00.003-04:00

cara & jarvis 10/09

so i've been getting some complaints about all my photos being from summer and none being from now

so

since i'm too broke to process my film

here are some bad digital photos of cara harassing our three footed four legged cat jarvis

i guess i'm turning into one of those people who takes pictures of cats

(NO NO NO NO)

home alone

2009-10-28T18:07:00.004-04:00

nantucket island, mass.

how did you get here

2009-10-26T16:54:00.003-04:00

nantucket island, middle of july

well, we used a car, a bicycle, and our feet

it's funny how i wanted to go to The Promised Land (new york city) and now that i'm here i want to go to The Promised Land (new england)

i wish new york city hadn't gotten so heavy and immovable or else i'd dig it up and move it to somewhere in the berkshires

wish i could stop thinking about the particle accelerator
wish i knew html as well as i did in 8th grade
wish i had answers for everybody
wish i could make paper snowflakes as well as him
wish dancing was less socially conspicuous
wish multivitamins worked
wish i had more time to listen to jay-z

massachusetts + nyc = ULTIMATE PROMISED LAND

LETS DO THIS folks come on, gather your caterpillar owning friends and lets dig this damn city up

when i get to boston i'll send a postcard
To: The City of New York
Wish you were here!
Love: Massachusetts

I never was a listmaker until my brother told me he was a listmaker

2009-10-20T16:28:00.001-04:00

sagaponack, another family's, ny

This is the first year I've spent in New York City without a south facing window. It's taking a toll on me, or it might be that all of the plants died. Maybe it's that the nights have grown taller than their parents (the days) and now the nights bend and loom over all of us nightly when we take our seats in the pews at church.

Perhaps it is that we use coasters now. Possibly it is that I need an electric sunlight box. I can see myself sitting & warming my head in front of it in the dark (but not curtained) room while it's daytime outside.

Yes! Or
Could it be that I decided to stay and (therefore) need to leave? Maybe. Maybe it is that I have sweaty palms and need a way to type that isn't so hot. Perchance it's that I haven't been taking my multivitamin, which doesn't have enough calcium or iron for vegans anyway, and makes my piss the color of a.) highlighter fluid or b.) cheap white wine by the name of Wally's Hut. I could posit relatively reasonably that it's the decline of my eyesight into complete and total oil painting oblivion and my residual former grade-school mortification coming into full bloom (again, like a pushy garage amaryllis or some shit) from the mere thought of wearing my magnifying glasses on my face and in public, therefore preventing me from reading anything (or even seeing anything particularly well) in the sunlight ever again, because in this city you can never be outside and alone, you have to pick one.

For all one knows it's that we forgot to pay the laughing gas bill and the landlord shut it off, or that there's a television in our apartment now that is mostly black-screened and frightening, or that it lately has been making that noise that the obelisk made in 2001 A Space Odyssey but our cat can't hear it, or that we have a coffee table and I'm often concerned about it, concerned about its well-being, not concerned that we have one.

Conceivably it is the giant wooden sailing-ships arrival of spell check, and nootropics, and digital point and shoot cameras, and digital watches, and protein bars, and cliffnotes, and energy drinks, and anything that makes people like me feel bitter for making things easy that shouldn't be easy because it makes people who can do hard things less special, or maybe it's the shame I feel when I misplace the I and the E except after C and take a sip of my red bull and look over at the VCR clock instead of my wristwatch and realize that it's been saying 12:00 --- 12:00 --- 12:00 --- 12:00 --- 12:00.

But the fact of the matter is, my cat keeps taking off his collar and hiding it (congratulations cat), the neighbors haven't knocked on the walls in a while, it was warm enough to let the breeze on your arms today, it's 4:24 pm which is a good time and I need a haircut which means I'm still alive. Dinner's tonight. Dinner's every night. And I've got a long long line of dinners stretching out forever into the vanishing point until I won't need dinners anymore.

all-weather home

2009-10-12T16:13:00.009-04:00

my room in our nest in august (the light! so different now)

Back in the days of hot breezes, no comforters, no sheets, jars of water, cold showers, open windows, sidewalk rain from the air conditioners, wrinkled air above the pavement, heat exhaustion, heat sleep, heat insomnia, the days shut in, the nights as escape, the reeking city, the boiling reservoir, the hot trash, the trashy shoes, the blackened soles, the sleeveless shirt, the laundry line, the pink haze, the brown haze, the wet fog, the thick kitchen, the slow waking, the sweated shoulders, the wiped brow-

Back in those days I didn’t like any of it.
This is what we have seasons for.
(so we have the time to miss everything)

Thanks Fall

(& summer)

we walk away from the bonfire

2009-10-07T21:11:00.001-04:00

annalise, sagaponack ny 8/09

Walk away from the bonfire

Reasons

2009-10-05T23:42:00.003-04:00

Assorted Stars Of The Sagaponack Sky (In August) (In 2009) (Above Us)

Embroiderer for the curtains that go behind people in photobooths
because no cameras in the outside world
Also, rhythm of the church bells chiming five w/ the sirens.
Someone took a photo to save you.
And your blushed face from being drunk in wintertime.
Things want to exist.
Things have been so been persistent about existing.

happy birthday, big brother

2009-10-03T17:37:00.003-04:00

nate & robin, nantucket island. july 2009

today is dedicated to

NATHAN LARGESSE,

the best brother of all time,
now twenty three years of age,
who i love with all of my heart,
who will do beautiful incredible things and make daring attempts and successes and have immense happiness as the giant squid of the largesse family.
happy birthday, nate. thank you for being my brother.

love,
elise

Ouch Ouch, That's So Important

2009-10-02T14:12:00.003-04:00

matt and nantucket massachusetts 8/09

Well my computer was broken for a week or so, and it reminded me to tell you to take extra effort in not spending 3 years of your life watching commercials, because apparently, most of us do by the end of it.

And by "it" I mean the end of your life.

Sincerely and Hopefully,
Elise

no weekend anymore

2009-09-21T08:54:00.004-04:00

coney island august 2009

this is what i get for having so much fun for so long.

been missing porches, real mailboxes

2009-09-18T14:45:00.002-04:00

long pond docks, nantucket massachusetts

it's really hitting me now, that this is the final push towards the Rest of my Life, i have a couple weeks til the GRE's, have to write my rationale, my IAPC, present my colloquium, get fluent in those 25 books, figure out if those teeth growing in can stay there, get some lenses because i can't see anything and stay healthy stay sane stay good stay kind.
some days i wake up and walk in the city and know i could never leave it
and some days i wake up and think i could never stay here
can i just take you all with me, we'll have a house with a veranda in iowa city or oaxaca,
i just don't know if i can trust a small town again after a big town brought me you.

O Hello Afternoon

2009-09-14T17:43:00.001-04:00

annalise in the hamptons august 2009

starched collar girls

2009-09-09T11:18:00.003-04:00

matthew on smith's point july 2009, mass.

summer was beautiful but school is just feeling so good. there's nothing quite like a goal, or that lovely illusion of working towards a glowing noble purpose for us goal-oriented animals. when it's not about finding and killing your food, when it's not about a safe place to sleep or staying warm anymore, it has to be about something else. we'd all go crazy and destroy ourselves from a lack of a goal if it wasn't for Learning. or i would.

getting up early and having just enough time for an apple feels good. empty pretty friendly-city-looking streets in the morning feel good. yawning in class feels good.

i'm an okay waitress but a better student. i love the restaurant but it challenges me in ways i know i can't answer, like high school phys-ed, like working at that donut shop, things i feel like i should be able to excel at since i can do these other supposedly important things, like school and books. but waitressing and schooling inhabit two different worlds of ability and i'll always be the fumbling waitress who cannot ever remember where the peach mint sangria is or how to void a credit card.

so i suppose i was born a little malevolved, little baby brain thinking oh well okay i'm fed and happy and warm and not in the rain or in the stomachs of terrestrial superfauna so maybe i can just disregard all of those necessary things, things like attention, memory, sight, acting without thinking, running, a grasp of numbers and distances and time and an ability to devalue lacy silly things like emotion and big Cosmic Crisis in order to function as a cog, a useful gear, because things still need working to produce the fantastic world i was born into and i haven't quite yet earned my vittles to the extent where i could just sit and learn and worry and love and have the world trust that this was how i fit and work into the gears of the machine of the earth running from approximately 1989 until 2079 A.D.

No,
I need to learn some real earth skills. and i can cook and clean and sew with the best of them, i can grow food on the little pots of dirt i own since i don't have any claim to dirt on the ground. i have some post-apocalypse end time skills.

but i could never be the best waitress, i'll always be silly and ridiculous to the good ones i'm sure. any register job i've ever held has concluded with my boss thinking that i'm an idiot, and they ask the grades i earn concernedly.

so i'm glad i spent the summer as a waitress feeling incompetent but the sort of incompetent you know is internal and unchangeable,
but damn it feels so good to be back in little rooms with big books silenced by the total concentration and love for what you are thinking about and knowing that this, maybe, is the part of you and life and skill that you are able to become better at.

it feels a little too cozy but i'm okay with that for now.
there are things i'd rather be
and i could never deny my admiration for the incredible people i worked with, so high functioning, how does a person even become that perfectly sensible, perfectly working. i want to be that serious, i wish i wasn't embarrassed by my silliness, my impractical and unnecessary skills and loves. i wish i didn't feel the guilt that makes me call them impractical and unnecessary and silly, and i wish i knew if that guilt came from me or from the world i've grown up in and known.

someday maybe i'll smash all i've learned and all i've thought and amassed and combed through into a large level brick and something can actually sit on it, be elevated by it, because if i don't do something concrete before i die it'll just kill me.

I'M IN MY NEW DECADE NOW. let's get going elise.

last day of summer slowness

2009-09-07T10:54:00.003-04:00

jess @ coney island july 2009

school tomorrow, i'm excited like a misfit middle schooler

august and september are really far away from each other

2009-09-02T13:57:00.002-04:00

coney island brooklyn 8/2009

so september has rolled around and we all know what that means,

it is time to straighten our laces

(they've been loose all summer)

so much to love lately it hurts me

2009-08-23T00:24:00.003-04:00

sagaponack NY august 2009

been doing a lot of thinking, not saying much these days

small red woman walking away

2009-08-21T11:40:00.004-04:00

madaket, nantucket MA july 2009

summer is slowly closing and i don't know how i feel about it, like any other year

edit: but i definitely feel about it

new york heat wave classic

2009-08-20T13:37:00.003-04:00

elise & annalise, august in manhattan @ otto's shrunken head

there is a unique understanding of the word
HEATWAVE

living in an old old northeast city
with stoops and fire hydrants instead of air conditioning like those fancy midcountry desert cities prepared for this sort of thing

and all you can eat is drink

i feel like smiling at everybody out of our common experience
still hits me as special these pavement weeks nearing 100F
still makes me feel special
and reminds me where i live
as i sweat it all away

i guess the question now is whether or not i should move to iowa city

2009-08-19T12:16:00.004-04:00

edward someplace in queens july 2009

i can see my breath it's the cloud around the city

2009-08-18T18:53:00.002-04:00

sociopath dan and that guy he brought along somewhere in queens in july

Well now my brain's on gas stations

Gas Stations Forever

the heat

2009-08-17T12:03:00.003-04:00

sagaponack NY in august

no one even wears clothes anymore and this heat is still melting people and the sidewalks are all sticky with it and the air is thick with it so much that they issued an air quality alert telling us well okay we know you have to breathe but it's bad to breathe right now so maybe just stay inside or something,
and we do and we pull the blinds and drink jars of water and eat bowls of fruit and sit as still as possible but then the white noise of the heat gets to be too much in all that stillness
and even in the night it doesn't let up because the buildings and the concrete saved it, and the heat just hangs as if it was heavier than the air above it
but since it's not, you know that it's just heat all the way up to heaven and god

and in the nights we convene in little basements stupidly windowless trying to hear some music to drown out the heat noise
but since we're all melting and can feel the little rivulets of sweat down our sides and are almost blinded by the shine of lights from the droplets of sweat falling off our chins
we all leave and sit on the curbs of the gas stations drinking 99 cent cans of arizona iced tea as brooklyn literally dies all around us

and then i smile to myself and think
no matter how far i travel
there will never be a summer where i will avoid hanging out on the curbs of gas stations

this cold front is so welcome so loved

2009-08-13T15:54:00.003-04:00

matthew - smith's point nantucket MA 7/09

YES

2009-08-12T21:59:00.002-04:00

self @ moonrise madaket MA 7/09

I am in love with my EveryDay
And it is all the romance i will
ever
need

ninety

2009-08-11T10:46:00.004-04:00

jim 6/09

ninety-five, five away from 100 degrees it was and I saw an older man so bored he was playing with the garden hose. hosing in the alley at the tiles. drawing on the aluminum siding like a child but gray and top-bald.
that kind of day with the air again. thick like a soft pillow all around you pushing in so that all your movements are slow. the light tags behind the sound now, its first embarrassing loss in its race to you in Ever.

home life

2009-08-06T16:29:00.002-04:00

annalise and jess on our roof, manhattan. 6/09

women with swords

2009-08-04T11:50:00.003-04:00

annalise & jessica, manhattan june 2009

new: homecoming everywhere

2009-08-03T16:34:00.003-04:00

madaket, nantucket MA july 2009

rose leaves ohio tonight
rose arrives in manhattan in the morning
we'll eat breakfast and smile
bake bread for the evening
toothy grin like the friends we stayed
and stay up late
and get up early
amen

climbing out the weekend

2009-07-28T19:46:00.001-04:00

madaket, nantucket mass. july 2009

hot city

2009-07-26T15:40:00.002-04:00

manhattan's little italy june 2009

because it's a lot but at least it's not all i've got got got

hope as emergency prayer

2009-07-25T16:45:00.004-04:00

rachel on smith's point, nantucket MA july 2009

i woke up this morning valuing my life. as i really always should. Because Damn the world is a dangerous place and we get so dangerous to each other

so much it hurts

2009-07-24T08:55:00.003-04:00

jess & i, east village roof manhattan july 2009

i love my life here - how did this happen to me

a summer of welcome backs

2009-07-23T20:08:00.001-04:00

annalise, manhattan july 2009

Okay okay i love manhattan again

there's sand on you let me get it

2009-07-22T17:04:00.005-04:00

madaket, nantucket MA july 2009

so i'm back from my one month leave which was so much quieter and so much more exciting than the new york city
things are loud and slow now
things are manhattan now
eighty degrees and the hot sun air puts me to sleep but i'm rested
i'll get back to the rhythm i promise.

summer began for me today

2009-06-26T17:19:00.003-04:00

cara, visiting us from the district of columbia. manhattan june 2009

new york just you walk around and it insults you like you're nothing you're gonna die and then you're going to have to leave.

BUT THEN YOUR FRIENDS EMBRACE YOU

a man of fiction reads the bible

2009-06-24T12:10:00.002-04:00

long island railroad at sunrise, ?, 2008

ripe youth

2009-06-23T22:46:00.002-04:00

valentines day, manhattan 2009

this is exactly how i feel right now

1916

2009-06-22T12:20:00.003-04:00

matthew, nantucket massachusetts. june 2008

how has it already been a whole year since this exact moment

the world outside new york city, here i come

funeral bouquet

2009-06-21T02:26:00.002-04:00

nantucket, massachusetts. july 2008

two girls from faraway states descended on us like a blessing from God and now one of them is sleeping on our couch. the two girls i've been missing most lately falling from their coach buses as if it was unimportant, as if it didn't make my summer

oh you two, the rain today was so good because of you

a certain street in another state

2009-06-18T17:41:00.005-04:00

nantucket, massachusetts. june 2008

i'll never be able to escape being from massachusetts. i was born there and began these last two decades there. i began there.

i will be a shrine to what i love.

on my street in manhattan there are leaves, the same exact leaves as in town on nantucket and when it's just sunny and still enough it becomes so fragrant exactly like the last twenty summers of my life

i'm getting a bit homesick and it makes me so happy
that i have a home

bicycle love

2009-06-12T19:55:00.003-04:00

nantucket, massachusetts june 2008.

i've got me a bicycle crush and it's got me giddy

everything there's no room for on the form

2009-06-03T20:39:00.006-04:00

brooklyn flea, may 2009

most of what i've been savoring are the kinds of things you leave out the second time you tell a story, it's better this way, i'm quieter in general

city's getting friendly again

2009-06-02T10:18:00.002-04:00

cara & brian, tompkins square park. may 2009

take down all the hems from your clothes, you're taller now

2009-06-01T10:21:00.003-04:00

ms cara earflowers. hare krishna celebration in manhattan may 2009

happy june

Good bye

2009-05-30T12:48:00.004-04:00

cara darlin, east river park nyc. may 2009

back from Istanbul, back to a city lacking my favorite faces in the world. give them back, DC and Ohio and Oregon and Texas and everyplace. Even with the sirens it's quiet.

human nature walks

2009-05-15T16:22:00.004-04:00

prospect park, brooklyn may 2009.

my life falls together
then falls together again

i feel good calling the living room a family room

2009-05-10T10:39:00.004-04:00

annalise at the new home, manhattan. may 2009

our new apartment is perfect. i am living a charmed, albeit insane, life

it is hot and raining outside

2009-05-07T14:04:00.004-04:00

annalise under wisterias, manhattan may 2009

it is dry and tired inside
dark approaching academic thesis-disaster always exhausts me more than athletics

there's actually a town called tuxedo, new york

2009-05-07T00:06:00.003-04:00

harry at the ashram, manhattan 5/09

my life's so good it makes me feel selfish sometimes, in the high moments

DON'T YOU WISH YOUR TIME WOULD JUST STAND STILL

2009-05-01T11:34:00.001-04:00

easter sunday, yair and molly jo. park slope bklyn 2009.

easter sunday

2009-04-26T13:12:00.003-04:00

molly jo's, brooklyn 4.12.2009.

dedication

2009-04-23T14:08:00.005-04:00

mike crowley, sudbury mass. november 2008

it is a beautiful fifty-three degrees of warm fahrenheit here in manhattan, a beautiful fifty-three there over my massachusetts love. the clouds look like a new england spring. no spring at all. my mind is back home. our air is the same, except mine has pollution from light and noise (which is really magic when you think about it) and theirs has sea salt you can taste 30 miles inland and the smell of thawing leaves and bad car radio blasting from high schoolers graduating that i've never met (which is really sad when i think about it.)

i love it here. manhattan is a home.

but talking to my roommates last night, one an tough army brat and another who's lived all up and down the west coast, i realized that my word for "home" means something different and impossible.

i've lived in the same bedroom for 18 years. my body's dead skin settles like sedimentary rock in the carpet with the wrinkles i've memorized. i know all of the pictures i saw in the plaster when i was six years old by heart. there's a witch and a prince in the upstairs bathroom wall, a sneezing man in the family room. at three thirty pm in the summer rainbows appear on the wall in the foyer. there are hidden rips on the lower left corner of the blue and brown rug my brother and i used to pretend was full of rivers and islands. there's a plastic swiss-army toy in the left-most drawer that's full of bubble wands instead of knives and corkscrews. i didn't grow for four years and the kitchen wall's pencil marks tell all of our guests. i am always embarrassed and always glad they're there.

to know a place, to have every inch memorized, has only recently revealed itself to me as a gift. stagnancy only gets more and more rare. it was like falling in love too early in life, you know you can't marry, you feel so lucky and so murdered.

so today is dedicated to massachusetts. i only write to you. my life, my past 18 years are a memoir of a place. i'm the lucky secretary to the most beautiful place in the entire world.

sometimes i wonder if i was just born an empty shell, waiting to be filled with a place. that i would have loved wherever i was born so deeply because that was how i was born. but then i realize: no. i feel like a psychologist accepting that i love someone and ignoring necessity and proximity. but it feels so real, this must be how psychologists can manage to have friends.

happy massachusetts day,
happy 53 degree fahrenheit day
happy wednesday
happy memory day
happy hands in old boxes of photographs day
happy moving day
happy missing day

because really my birthday is just the anniversary
of my first time in massachusetts.

love elise

a city where the man in the hat in the shadows still kills

2009-04-21T12:28:00.005-04:00

manhattan and brooklyn, march 2009. mutual 3 am

i'm so lucky and scared to live in a city ruled by whatever stories the shadow people want to tell- they could all be paperbacks and police beats every night, no one ever had any time to become nostalgic. the dark is still the same, quiet is the same quiet, i walk the new york trilogy's city of glass streets in new decades fearing and loving the trenchcoats behind me

my jacket this morning was still wet from the rain. i got in the fog, i went to work, i wrote my papers, i sat at my desk, barnaby and quinn and garcia lorca smiling beside me and i am blessed

cornbread, collard greens

2009-04-20T12:44:00.004-04:00

tompkins square park, manhattan. 4.17.2009.

i'd forgotten how easy it is to walk when the wind doesn't hurt you. last night the breeze was warm. warm- i went for hours and blocks and miles. i need new city summer sneakers. young soles that aren't scared of these new night walks.

as time passes it's harder to break my time up into swallowable pieces. i can't tell if that will make adulthood faster or slower than the last 7,000 halcyon days. my future years endlessly fall ahead of me like a bad painting with no vanishing point.

it is warm. my legs are brown. i am getting nothing done.

soon but not urgent

2009-04-16T13:59:00.003-04:00

manhattan 4.2009. a bou-quet for you lov.

BE my faith versus science, darlin.

elise goes to ohio, or, do You believe in God? Really

2009-04-09T18:33:00.005-04:00

a story about ohio with hardly any words at all

8:17 pm. 3/16/09 rose's roof still. during house meeting. oberlin, OH.

this is a town you're not meant to spend your life in. you start here, and you might end here, but you're supposed to escape sometime in the middle; “the ones who are still here are quietly thought of as...those who failed to take flight-”
it smells like woodsmoke and late summer. turn of the season birds, turn of the season late afternoon light. we've gotten evening back from the clutches of winter and its 4 p.m. darkness. it is eight at night and the sky still has a little fight left in it. birds do. I do. and wow, I do- it must be the quiet. even though this is a new place it's set in a shell of the familiar. it is beautiful and exciting, in a comfortable way. like a dad getting a nice new armchair, secretly for sleep.

I could learn to love myself here, it would be so much easier.

There's a political map in pastel colors in my head and it won't get out. I'm on a pushpin in Ohio. landlocked in the gentle middle. the edges got so roughed up, of the US of A- rockies and appalachians and all that mess and here ohio is like the few good pieces of bread in the middle of the crushed loaf. the sidewalk in front of the tank is a perfect intentional curve. there's nothing for it to avoid like in the northeast. the streets make sense even though this isn't a city. there are rules to the numbers of houses. there's a theatre for three dollars.

it makes me wonder what I did by moving to The Place during those years where it's still alright to make excuses, still alright to live in the places people shouldn't spend their whole lives in. I gave something up and gained something and i'll probably live not quite as long. i'd never sleep here, i'd just walk the streets because my head wouldn't have used up all of its tolerance for noise, and light, and navigation.

what did I do

i'm looking down at a little town that looks like a flat benign hometown. full of kids I would have loved to know in grade school. people are passing by in their cars just bassing. it vibrates out and up to me like jam'n 94.5 FM did to me all those years back, when God did I have to search for people to love. thank God I learned that love has nothing to do with anything I thought it did. I remember all I wanted when I was a freshman and a sweet 14 was a boy with a car to drive me around in, listening to the radio and spending time at the Gulf station and on 495. the loveliness of that situation would have filled in the holes where the loveliness in him should have been, I told myself without knowing I was telling myself. I fell in love with ugly boys thank God. the sparks. the special I found in the sea of hometown doldrums.

here almost fooled me. I would have loved this. everyone dresses in my favorite colors. no one washes their hair. and i'm sure that there's a particularly special population-
but i'm so glad I learned to love the ugly ones, the unsavvy because they have been the only ones i've ever loved.

7:27 pm 4/9/2009. Manhattan, the apartment.

i learned a lot of things in ohio. i learned that i like quiet. that i enjoy cooking food to feed twenty or more. that some people find me handsome. that some find me pretty.

that comfort isn't as hard to come by as i once thought,

that i love my small-town memories for a reason,

that i can write when i'm content too, that i shouldn't panic, that i'm not behind. that i wasn't making it up in my head that new yorkers were kind of mean. that there are some sweet, sweet people on this rock of ours.

i was reminded of a lot of things as well. like how much i miss rose, and how much i miss the smell of dirt, and being outside, alone.

every day, even if i'm sad, i wake up feeling luckier, luckier luckier luckier- my summer life is taking shape, i have a place to live, i have a place to work, and both are beautiful beyond measure. i have a quiet roof, outside, a place to be alone. i have fire escape room for a garden. i have windows with sun, and real, old wooden floors. there are no right angles in the entire apartment. i have a job with no dress code, an incredible salary, free vegan food, no air conditioning, and with a built-in reason to smile at everyone i see.

i think that rose may have packed some ohio in with my dirty clothes. and i suitcased them back to the city and washed them with everything. and now ohio is everywhere, even rubbing off on my tomorrows and next years.

so thank you.

elise goes to ohio, or do You believe in God?

2009-04-03T21:10:00.002-04:00

train to oberlin, ohio. 3.2009.

just imagine that i'm still traveling, so the slowness with which i put up the remaining 70 photographs makes more sense.

i don't feel at home anywhere in this world anymore.
tomorrow, the apartment search.

what am i saying. i am still traveling

good kids

2009-04-01T12:02:00.003-04:00

tank kitchen rainbow, oberlin ohio. march 2009

i hope i'm not frightening you

2009-03-30T11:28:00.006-04:00

stella & o'connell, oberlin oh. 3.2009.

because i hope you hang up your coat and stay a while

really

hüzün

2009-03-26T21:04:00.002-04:00

hudson river, manhattan 1.09.

somehow there seems to be a word in every language for that feeling no one has quite the right word for

hüzün in turkish
ennui in french or college

i want to know every word for that particular feeling we just can't understand
if you know,
please,tell me

a good place's love

2009-03-26T01:25:00.000-04:00

self, madaket, nantucket. july 2006.

old halcyon days hurt like healed bones, telling the weather.

memory happiness lingers around in the people with the same skeletons still in my life
their new faces speak the old life-saving words in times when i don't need saving, when i can just smile and know that they would
and i can thank them before anything happens at all

never have i ever

2009-03-21T14:58:00.007-04:00

matt and sam, rose's web camera. oberlin oh. 3.2009.

ohio is keeping me up deeper into the morning than manhattan usually does.

the nearest 24 hour diner is a twenty minute ride away. the road looks like route nine. the restaurant looks like a Restaurant. the clock looks like it has bad news.

we woke up in the morning and went to the oberlin market, drank tea and sopped our sorry stomachs with bread that still had oven heat. gray sky came into the window. this town knows how to pull all my heartstrings, make me homesick for massachusetts-

three go-to towns for the night, for not-our-town.
parties with people you already know and mostly love.
bottle rockets
roofs
blades of grass snapping in half underfoot in the 4-am cold frost
five-person-cars.
all of us standing in the middle of an intersection because it's okay, because roads just turn to giant sidewalks after this town's bedtime.
big sad star sky.
sleepy loving saturday breakfast for lunch.

but most of all,

friends leaving one by one, every day a goodbye, okay, alright, be well, have a great time, catch your bus, there's always one leaving when there's more than one of us.

i guess i forgot that part of small town life, that people don't stay. they'll all come back, of course. oberlin's spring break is next week. but that doesn't keep oberlin from feeling like a stop on the way to somewhere. for better or for worse or for better. for everyone.

i will miss it. i already do. one of the most familiar and reliable talents of small towns, that longing

ohwowio

2009-03-18T14:50:00.003-04:00

no photographs. they are all film. so here is an old postcard that feels exactly the way this town feels.
lunch at the black river cafe this afternoon with rose's incredible kin. life here is too good. it's one of those places where you hang your hat. and you never. pick it up. again.

i'm writing too much to write here. but in short,
this is so thorough a vacation it's reaching into the deepest wrinkles of my gray matter. every day has tiptoed a little closer to 70 degrees and i have my first blush of an almost-sunburn. people are so kind here. they've swallowed me into their porch life and we drink and eat on the veranda and roof, having spitting contests and working our smile muscles. my stomach is full of co-op food and my heart is full of ohio. and my hugs are full of rose!

i am so lucky to know the people i know. they are too good to me.

wait: do this with me.

Breathe in big. In yr stomach.
Now:

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

isn't that better?

love, elise

on rose's painted roof (via telephone)

2009-03-16T15:49:00.004-04:00

the tank, oberlin OH. 3/16/2009

my favorite poem is about ohio.
my favorite song is about ohio.
my second favorite book is about ohio,
and the main character was overeducated at a place called Oberlin, in ohio

and now here i am 16 hours on train tracks behind me at a co-op called the tank sitting with rose on wood that has been painted and repainted longer than i've been alive

it is 60 degrees fahrenheit
sunny with a chance of early dinner
spring break 2009
party in the flatlands
with only the best

love elise

old timey cathode ray nites

2009-03-10T23:28:00.003-04:00

matt's chinatown, manhattan. 3/09

the diamond sharp night eyes of old have returned. i can stay up all night. forever again. broken sneakers slap comfortingly block crosswalk block crosswalk block corner block. night guard is familiar. waves a familiar hand. and the few dreams i have in the few hours of sleep connect with where the night left off. it takes hours in the morning to separate them from what happened-

when i recall that he turned into a dog and ran home with me, or that she was made of terra cotta. the oh-wait, the that can't happen: that must have been where the real stopped. thank god we know. thank god this is the sort of loopy that i welcome.

the kind of happiness that could drive a person completely insane.

the kind of interest that could keep me listening to your words until i died of exhaustion and a gigantic otherworldly hemorrhage of knowledge and the sounds of the ecstatic

thick in the fog of americana

2009-03-07T20:34:00.004-05:00

the miss freedom ferry, hudson river NY. 3/09

good morning, new spirit.
new spirit came back to me
when i wasn't thinking of him,
same as always...
-j.i.

some people have loved me for so long and it makes me want to cry how kind they are, i'm a person that doesn't water and sun others' faith in me, but tough and loving roots survive and i'm still held by the sweetest of branches somehow, soft as the youngest, holding me as if i was kind, as if they confused me with them,

just have to keep afloat these last few days of work and then i'll be free to go back to the homeland, to new england, and then go to the state that my favorite song and poem are about, since i've never, ever been there, to see one of the loveliest women of all time, to see what my ohio life could've been, had i chosen to grow my knowledge there instead, instead of here, where the air means a short life but a full life.

the wait

2009-03-04T11:34:00.004-05:00

self, manhattan 2.09.

waiting on the one-hour-photo machine to be fixed. for once i have more writing than photographs. just waiting on it. it's as if i don't have to strain to hear or know anything anymore. it all greets me all good morning elise, nice to see you today. let me tell you about myself. i'll make it easy for you to listen. and i say thank you

after you have a bad time together, you will never have a good time together ever again

2009-02-25T18:03:00.002-05:00

central park 2/09

studies show that girls who grow up with green courtyards do better on standardized testing than girls who grow up with gray courtyards

studies show that spring has consistently beat winter to a pulp since about 18,000 years ago and now it's getting a little too excited

studies show that some people can't afford to travel

studies show that central park was sold to the public as a lung for the city's respiratory system a few centuries ago but they didn't know the sickness was actually in the water

studies show that central park is a lung for the city

studies show that i should leave clean plates often, floss every day and write letters instead of emails

greens instead of grains
mud instead of pavement
problems instead of equations
glass instead of plastic
sad instead of nothing
lonely instead of crowded
young instead of old
dim instead of bright
mug instead of shot
bare instead of clothed
savory instead of sweet
always all the time
never not at all

chinatown afternoon

2009-02-25T10:59:00.002-05:00

matt, manhattan chinatown. 1/09.

i wrote the mystery

i am too happy and domestic to ever write a mystery

2009-02-23T09:38:00.006-05:00

these are my grocery store daffodils

this is my massachusetts

this is our pet pig, who is sick

this is our windowbull

this is the room we reserved for love

this was the woman she found in a book

this is where my annalise lives

this is where we keep the undercouch secrets

these are homonyms

this is our bookcase built without a hammer

this is our cookbook shelf

these are our security guards and happiness guardians

these are my feet and my photographs

these are dead plants jealously sitting next to a living plant

i was supposed to have already written a mystery for my class, by midnight last night, and my problem is that i am too content. how do i put that in an note-excuse?

sorry my assignment is late, i couldn't muster the pain.

i am still trying and this is probably going to fail. i need to just do it. i was watching out the window all last night for crime to happen. nothing. just that note on the Gothamist that someone got shot outside the cozy soup-and-burger a few weeks ago, nothing more nothing more.

who am i kidding, what do i know about shots fired. or even burgers.

that goddess of soul put a spell on you, because you're mine

2009-02-19T20:58:00.003-05:00

you gotta do what you've gotta do, chelsea, manhattan. 1.09.

love is choral gospel on the sidewalk on the way to morning duties, skipping with your best friend, oh love and here comes ten o clock in the a.m., i'm happy and nina simone is singing with me and you too.

God the sun is so shining on broadway it keeps me from recognizing faces, my heart gets so open it hurts, sunburn and rugburn and loveburn

when the things i know and the things you know become the things we know

2009-02-18T12:53:00.003-05:00

dan at the kent boys', brooklyn. 1.09.

last night i saw a documentary about an elderly person's home in florida. a 19 year old convinced them to let him stay and get to know the residents. their genius and kindness and selflessness flattened his vanity.

when he visited them a year after the documentary was finished, two of the brightest had died. eleanor, sharp witted smoker with a voice like a diner waitress. bill, diluted by dementia the tiniest bit but you could still taste the wisdom. how could they have? they were alive five minutes before, in my life, i was watching them being brilliant and more aware of the human condition than i'll ever be. before he came in and told us they were gone.

this morning i looked up a book about how to live to be a century old. my obsession with staying alive is going too far. the calculation table told me that if i keep going the way i am, i'll live to be one hundred and one. that's until 2090. that doesn't seem long enough.

i'm banking on science to keep us going, to figure it out before i die. i want to keep my marbles, i want to grow incredibly shrunken and wrinkled and still be there, and these are the days i wish i were religious.

seeing an old silver woman rocking on a florida veranda smoking long virginia slims talking casually about how she hope's there's a heaven, that's for sure, and oh she'll be so busy shaking hands. but she's not scared. that just takes my heart. why can't i have that kind of sense to not be scared? i'd probably live longer.

the weekends feel more important with each passing weekend and that old paradox from childhood, whether to stay up as long as possible and never sleep -because how could i ever waste time- or to sleep in and maybe prolong my life is haunting me again; i end up in the middle, lying in bed trying to sleep, feeling like i should be doing something else. something else like being out on each important weekend passing by.

gramercy green

2009-02-10T01:07:00.003-05:00

manhattan, 1.09.

brooklyn, 2.09.

i have too much to say to say anything

but it is too late for coffee

2009-02-07T11:32:00.003-05:00

free greek coffee from nadine at the peter pan, greenpoint brooklyn 1/09

i realized the other day that i am not a true new yorker yet. because i still get excited and feel tough when i say i'm spending the night in brooklyn. but really, isn't that still exciting

tough brooklyn skin

2009-02-06T14:12:00.002-05:00

ken, manhattan. 1/09

well what is my neck of the woods anyway

putt-putt

2009-02-04T15:42:00.005-05:00

atlanta GA and myrtle beach SC, 2/09.

at mt. atlanticus mini goff[sic] in south carolina there is a wall of polaroids of people who have won a free lifetime of mt. atlanticus mini goff.

most aren't from south carolina, and most seem to be from Connecticut.

congratulations!

finland

2009-02-04T10:09:00.003-05:00

finland, as seen from above on google maps

since this is all about true things,

here is a photograph of finland that was so collaborative that even the seasons worked together. this is how it actually appears on the big global quilt. there is a shipwreck nearby.

here is the shipwreck

for something like four years now all i do when i should be doing work is wander around as close to the ground as possible through satellite images of places uncomfortably near the arctic circle and find unlabeled towns

it makes me happier and sleep easier

imaginary boy

2009-01-28T10:53:00.004-05:00

henry and ken, manhattan. december 2008.

there is something absolutely crazy going on. newtonian physics and the color wheel and the grammar books all got together and jumped town.

sixth and shevchenko

2009-01-24T18:49:00.004-05:00

cara, manhattan. december 2008

work jumped on me like those hungry dogs in cartoons. i've been sleeping with the window open by my pillow, so my face always feels the cold and being awake isn't so much of a change.

every day is a new day here, which you can say for anywhere, but new york just makes it so easy. it isn't a question. it is immediately the elephant in the corner of the room, every morning staring at you as you sip coffee with it and all of the other ones you've met before.

yesterday was too warm to do anything real. sometimes i forget that there's as much difference between 15 and 30 degrees as there is between 65 and 80. after a while my cold hands just stop discerning, and it all is just simple cold. but the 45 degrees of yesterday was really something, and i walked to tompkins square park to listen to the pigeons coming closer as they forgot that i wasn't part of the park bench; i scared them away every time i turned a page. four different children said hello to me. but the thing that made me warmest was hearing the birds; i forgot that you need a park for that, here. you don't have that quiet bus stop wait before school on the corner of nothing road and nothing road.

leaner love

2009-01-18T16:22:00.003-05:00

alpharetta public park, GA. 12.08

for how much noise is in the city, it's wonderful how quiet i feel

empty lot blues

2009-01-16T10:41:00.004-05:00

manhattan, 12.16.08

it's looking like i left the city in a snowstorm and that's how i'll come back to it. i'm so busy with all of the dissatisfying events that come before moving. things that feel like they were for nothing because you just end up where you were before.

but wow will i miss new england. i already am. i can't even look at photographs i took a day ago.

heavy heavy

2009-01-13T16:12:00.003-05:00

kevin; alpharetta, georgia. january 2009.

that last thought there was getting a little too heavy for comfort so here's a teddy bear on a grown man's face in the afternoon

ghost town

2009-01-13T15:32:00.003-05:00

alpharetta, georgia. january 2009

the whole world works together at the end of january to make everywhere as empty as possible. every year it resurprises me when winter cleans the woods. the sky is ground colored. the ground is sky colored. it's so cold that the streets are dry.

and caught in limbo between the old and the new homes the mass exodus begins leaving in their dust the few of us going back later, myself and a couple others with no one to fill our passenger seats left with the road salt they tracked in just a few long days before. it is four and almost dark, i have fewer people i still need to see than days left in this state, and that kind of blue i'm feeling is the one they discontinued a few years back: crayola's "cadet blue." it was a gray blue. winter is one of my favorite things in hindsight but in the now it just can get so so sad

home life is window light

2009-01-12T17:22:00.003-05:00

home, 1.11.09

a summer's worth of tips, finally rolled and sleeping in the bank. one hour photo's machine broke, another day for photos from the right coast. every day this week has been a goodbye to a friend. the move-out countdown number is starting to get significant. always does, once you reach the single digits

november ground

2009-01-11T12:59:00.003-05:00

hudson, massachusetts. 11.08