Missing

This guy.

I got a camera

So I took some pictures.

Attempts

It is somewhat difficult to draw a feather.

But it is important to try.

Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes

'As a child, I was often and intensely bored. This evidently began very early, it has continued my whole life, in gusts (increasingly rare, it is true, thanks to work and to friends), and it has always been noticeable to others. A panic boredom, to the point of distress: like the kind I feel in panel discussions, lectures, parties among strangers, group amusements: wherever boredom can be seen. Might boredom be my form of hysteria?'

Whippoorwill

I'm not sure why people think they sound lonely. They don't sound so lonely to me.

Urban Excavation

I went to Urban Ore today. Maybe to look for a chair. Maybe for teaspoons. I ended up mostly just looking through a drawer of photographs. How do a person's photographs end up in a drawer at Urban Ore?

There were pictures of little kids.
A high school reunion.
Vacation.
The beach.

Some Places I Like

I don't even remember where these came from anymore. But I keep lots of images of rooms and houses I like in a big file on my work computer, and my last day of work is tomorrow. So they are getting dumped here. Those four look nice all together.

Rural Fantasies

The weather was beautiful yesterday, and so of course we went to the park. What else would we do? Sitting on a blanket in the grass, watching people play with their dogs, thinking about the parsley seeds I'd just gotten, and seeing, out of the corner of my eye, E playing wiffle ball I thought about this idea I've always had: That if I could live somewhere or somehow closer to plants and animals, and be a little bit quieter and more patient, pay more attention to a few people I know I love, this would be a good life. This would make me happy. And I wondered if I am moving closer to that life, or farther and farther away from it. Maybe I'll never really live that way, but the thought will animate the things I choose to do, or think about.

Maybe it will always be my idea of escape; the refuge I could take if I wanted to, but that I will always move away from in the end. Maybe I'll just keep it in my mind.

Or maybe I'll end up a goat farmer.

50 Things Before I Go, 1-10

1) The New York Public Library. For reading, for studying, for thinking, for taking a walk, for visiting my dad, for seeing a beautiful building, for being in the presence of books and books and books.



2) The Bohemian Hall and Beer Garden. I didn't go to the Astoria Beer Garden at all last year. I will not make that mistake again.

3) The Catskills. My favorite little big mountain range.

4) Celebrate Brooklyn. When I was a kid my parents would bring me, and they would sit on a blanket and drink beer while I ran around and danced with other kids I had just met, and would never see again. When it gets dark there are fireflies.

5) Magnolias at BBG. For me, magnolias aren't the plant whose flowering signals the start of Spring, but the plant whose flowering confirms that we are really in Spring. It's not just starting; it's here. The Brooklyn Botanic Garden has such spectacular ones-- especially the star magnolias, which you don't see people growing in their yards very often.

6) Brooklyn Brownstones. Not really something to do or see. Just something to pay attention to.

7) My Parents. I've never lived so far away from them in my entire life.

8) The Cloisters. This place always felt transformative and magical to me when I was little. They have a great garden, too.

9) Root Vegetables. I know-- they aren't in season now, and you can get them in the Bay Area, but still... They make me think of the Autumns I will be missing from now on.

10) Coney Island. My favorite place in the world, or one of them.

Sunnier...

...but conflicted.

Moody

Maybe it's pretty there...

The Chicago Conservatory

Chicago Sunset

Chicago Cultural Center

Toothache

Why do my lower teeth hurt after I have been coughing for days? Why is the coughing for days not enough? Why is everyone sick right now?

No reason, I know.

Soon we'll all be well again, and it will be even sweeter because we were sick. Soon it will be my birthday, and after that it will be Spring, and then it will be green and blue and yellow and not gray and gray and gray. Soon, soon.

Hallelujah!

"The Inaguration. At Last"

by Maira Kalman.

Thanks for books, thanks for the shrinking dot, getting smaller, and smaller...

Gampo Abbey Baseball

Vs. the fire-fighters.

I just find this so charming.

Glass Sponge

In modern times, the delicate animals were thought to exist only as fossils until explorers in the 1990s discovered large reefs of living relics.

Impeachment Odyssey

Blago is one classy motherfucker.

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.


I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers;
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.


This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle —
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.


There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me —
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads — you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew


Tho' much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

- Alfred Lord Tennyson