The city has been cutting trees around Brooklyn Heights at a scary pace. Three 50-100 year old trees have vanished just on the route I use to get to the subway. I asked a city worker why they were doing this (assuming the answer would be disease). His reply, "I don't know. They tell me to cut them, I cut them. Maybe the roots were hurting the sidewalk, but it could be anything."
It's gotta be disease, nobody would cut down a tree just because the sidewalk was a little uneven... would they?
I vary my route now to avoid the corner. Makes me sad.
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My dad and stepmother are back in town. As Frederik of smudo.org said the other day, "the goal in life is not to be a parent, but a to be a grandparent."
I picked up some big prints for a client today from Gabe Greenberg. Gabe runs the 20x24 Polaroid studio as well as a high end digital print service. I can't say enough good things about the entire experience of working with Gabe as a printer. His attention to detail and knowledge of digital process is top notch. I was very happy with the results.
You can see a small online version of the print shown right here.
I found this picture today of my grandparents, my dad and his sister on vacation in Tampico. Nobody looks like they are having much fun, but I remember my grandmother talking about this trip with great fondness despite having to endure many meals with the smell of fish. My grandmother, a product of the desert and inland ranchers, was a great hater of fish.
Does anyone else find it sad that these types of photo places with painted backgrops are dissapearing? Like drive in movies and a good malted they are tokens of another age.
Here is another one of these images, one of my favorites, a famous one featuring Lorca and Buñel. Lorca appear to be rather serious. Perhaps Buñel bullied him into posing.
There is a poet I like named Kenneth Koch. He has a long series of short poems called Aesthetics. They are all just a few lines... for example:
Aesthetics of Saying Goodbye to a Friend
Walk her to the place
Where she can get a taxi
And say good-bye
If she is wearing
An overcoat
Place one hand
On her shoulder-or if she is not
Shake hands, embrace
or
Aesthetics of Harshness to a Horse
You should never be harsh
To a horse. A horse is always doing
Its best. Otherwise it is a bad horse
And harshness has no effect.
anyway one is titled the Aestetcs of Lorca and I rather like it:
Aesthetics of Lorca
Federico Garcia Lorca stands alone
Luna, typewriter, plantain tree, and dust
The moon is not just watching him, it is watching over him.
Why does Raul love the Japanese? This is why. Read it quick as the link will expire in a few days.
I direct you to this NASA photo of one of the Mars rovers stuck (for good it seems) in a sand dune. It was on it's way to Terra Nuevo, but it looks like this is the end of the road... and from the looks of the dunes, I imagine it will be swallowed up sooner than later.
Today, April 27th, would have been my brother Christopher's 35th birthday.
As he's been gone for a little over 15 years this fact, the idea of him as a 35 year old adult is hard for me to wrap my head around... He is always 19 in my mind or even younger.
He comes to me often in dreams and we talk about the issues of the day (actually talk is a mild way of putting it, we often debate as he was something of a contrarian). Christopher was passionate about politics and science and any number of other subjects from photography to ethology. We were often at odds, but only because we were so similar to one another. Sometimes in the dreams he just sits and watches silently from afar as Jenn and I play with our young son. I always call out for him to join us, but he always gives me a sad smile and walks away out beyond the far distance.
My wife and baby are in Philadelphia this weekend and the silence in the house is loud. I spent much of my life alone and it never bothered me. I had no problem eating alone at restaurants (always a chance to catch up on reading!) or being in a quiet house... but today I felt their absence with every bone in my body.
All this said, I was able to catch up on some sleep and crank up the stereo which is something I haven't done in a long long time so it wasn't all doom and gloom (New York Dolls, Television, Ramones, Germs, Peaches, Los Crudos, Velvet Underground, Camper Van Beethoven etc if you care).
The rain and cool have returned. There was exactly one lightning flash followed by a single thunderclap. Thunder is another thing I missed in LA. There it is so rare that on the rare occasion when it happens all the dogs in Silverlake would bark for a good 20 minutes.
Feel like seeing some great photography? Head up to The Museo del Barrio for "Mexico: The Revolution and Beyond, Photographs by Casasola 1900-1940" It's at Fifth Avenue at 104th Street, (212) 831-7272, through July 31.
These photographs are especially interesting to me because my grandmother's father was one of those guys in hats. He was a major in Pancho Villa's army and was famous (infamous?) for his sword work.
Jenn and the baby are asleep. I hear them both on the monitor-the reassuring repeat of dual breaths over staticy air. Today it was hot for the first time. People were out in shorts. I broke a sweat.
The windows are open and the sounds Brooklyn are wafting in. The room is dark save for the computer light. Music arrives on the breeze, Hayden I think. More music somewhere further away. Radio in an unknown language. A couple talking. TV sounds & blue flickering light on the brick wall in the back yard. Rain keeps threatening but right now there is only silent mist. Best of all: the breeze is full the first smell of a summer night. It's not actually a full summer smell yet, but it is so mixed up in 100 memories that it overwhelms. In an instant I am in Texas stargazing, wandering around a Beijing hutong finally anonymous in the dark, getting into trouble at Princeton, out in Amagansett on the beach... I missed this smell in LA. LA is a desert and even on hot summer days it is usually cool at night. There is the over sweet smell of palms and green and dew but it doesn't smell like summer, it smells like LA, and it's a year round thing. So I will enjoy the dark for a few moments. Take a quick picture of the flowering tree lit from below and say goodnight.
