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

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

matt, manhattan chinatown. 1/09.


i wrote the mystery

i am too happy and domestic to ever write a mystery

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

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

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

manhattan, 1.09.







brooklyn, 2.09.



i have too much to say to say anything

but it is too late for coffee

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

ken, manhattan. 1/09



well what is my neck of the woods anyway

putt-putt

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

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