imaginary boy

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

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

alpharetta public park, GA. 12.08



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

empty lot blues

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

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

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

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

hudson, massachusetts. 11.08

maybe she will if you ask her

milford, massachusetts. 12.08



i took this picture out the window of my car, killing the end of the roll before the trip that took the last two weeks. i'm finally back home and i've been greeted with a night of old friends in a dimly lit room, and a foot of snow, and food poisoning. i'm homebound now. my father is shoveling the stairs and it sounds like an avalanche.

i have no idea what to feel homesick towards anymore. i miss the morning light through my window in the city and waking up to find that i kicked my windowsill herbs in the night, and the room smells like peppermint; i miss having fewer things around me. my room here has become a depot, sedimentary rock of my entire life. i've never not lived in this room. there is dust from me that is as old as me. there are books older than me. i found a notebook today that chronicled my thoughts when my hamster died; each letter is an inch tall and the paper is wrinkled by kid-tears.

the pilgrimage south was more than i could have ever imagined it to be. expect photos soon, as soon as i can leave the house to get some film processed. but two things:

1. i love america
2. america makes me love massachusetts so much more.

back soon. my sickness is channeling the weather gods and keeping me inside.

en why cee (via telephone)

big mystery city home. somehow we drove to new york city by mistake. seeing it is making me a little homesick. and i've never felt this way about the city ever before

bridgewater nj (via telephone)

the final stretch begins

appalachia (via telephone)

on our way to jersey through virginia

(via telephone)

bowling on a saturday night in alpharetta, georgia

infiltrating the coca cola happiness factory

this is a holographic map of the coke bottling plants and their racially diverse employees. the coca cola museum was one of the most strange and eerie places i've ever been- whoever said the recent lack of worthwhile contemporary art was due to all the talent and craziness going to marketing and public relations was right. after the 4d movie about how coke is a part of humanity i felt a little sick, but then again, it could have been the 64 international flavors of coke products i sampled. and the woman next to us just kept exclaiming, "so fabulous, so fabulous." i was almost moved, but by what i have no idea

from woody jones beltway (via telephone)

this fourteen foot gator was advertised fifty miles out of myrtle beach along with free popcorn and soda. it ended up being dead and taxidermied and friends with a large plastic ladybug that sat on its nose. it was our welcome and farewell to myrtle beach, the city that sleeps. happy new year, from the road that leads to atlanta- hope those resolutions are still surviving. this trip could be one in itself- i've had a january's worth of ridiculousness and joy already, thanks to the three fine gentlemen traveling with me. the raining just stopped and everyone woke up- sun is shining on the billboards that are actually advertising things again. we are finally out of the abyss- i'm only now learning that there can be so much space between towns, and i don't mean woods- it's the decrepit hair salon next to absolutely nothing that gets me. i love 2009.