how did you get here

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

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)

been missing porches, real mailboxes

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.

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

the heat

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

new: homecoming everywhere

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

i feel good calling the living room a family room

annalise at the new home, manhattan. may 2009


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

there's actually a town called tuxedo, new york

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

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

easter sunday

molly jo's, brooklyn 4.12.2009.

cornbread, collard greens

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.

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

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

tank kitchen rainbow, oberlin ohio. march 2009

i hope i'm not frightening you

stella & o'connell, oberlin oh. 3.2009.




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

really

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.

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

holy days

home, 12.08



happy holidays, everyone. that means your holiday, too. i hope everyone's days are going as well as mine. times like these make me feel like the luckiest person i can imagine. and luckily enough that sort of thing is almost limitless-

love,
elise

stomachache

manhattan 11.23.08




full body stomachache is when i take the walks

it's one of those things where i only like other people who take walks
by themselves

night regulation

bushwick, brooklyn. november 2008.







it's hardly easy to live in the city
it's easily hard to live in the city



making a long list of how to connect to the humans