crepuscular

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.

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

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






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

summerhot madness

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

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.

she still lives in still lives

anna on houston in august nyc

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

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

prospect park brooklyn

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

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

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

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)

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

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

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

annalise, sagaponack ny 8/09



Walk away from the bonfire

no weekend anymore

coney island august 2009






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

O Hello Afternoon

annalise in the hamptons august 2009

last day of summer slowness

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

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

sagaponack NY august 2009


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

new york heat wave classic

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

edward someplace in queens july 2009