Work is keeping me very busy, but here are some new photos I’ve been meaning to put up:
Also, today I happened upon a large stuffed tiger. Just about every week around here I find something quizzical in my path.
It’s cold out, and I need to save money, so I only left the house once this weekend, and that was to go to the grocery store. It’s only a few blocks away, and yet I kept finding things worth photographing. The sky was clear, the light was perfect, and the dreary neighborhood just seemed to come alive. I started to notice the subtle differences between my neighbors’ doors; each one told a different story: one classy, one grumpy, one…trying too hard? I even noticed the peculiar remainders of windows past above the dentist’s office. Even the overbearing condos seemed pretty.
My neighbors are a widely varied bunch. Elephant figurine collectors live alongside people with unfortunate dietary habits. And of course, the recently departed eccentric Vinnie Russo, with his Styrofoam crosses, I Love Hawaii stickers and peculiar taste in yard ornaments.
Down Smith Street, even the scrapyard held my interest. I found a happy fire hydrant and an unhappy phone cradle living along the Gowanus Canal, in the shadow of the mighty green Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.
I have to say that I was quite proud of my work that day.
Stop using the word “bear” in your bands’ names. I was just perusing a recent issue of The Deli, and there were two features right next to each other of the young bands Bearclaws and Bear Hands. A few pages later a two-page spread on Lucinda Black Bear. And there’s a band from New England called Big Bear, in addition to Brooklyn’s Grizzly Bear, who I think can safely be credited with starting this thing. Stop the madness!
Interestingly enough it took an Arkansas band to make me sensitive to this trend. Bear Colony, whom I’ve written about for Localist, chose their name after their previous moniker, Brothers + Sisters, was already taken.
The Atlantic is now free online. There are popups now, of course, but if you’ve got Firefox, that will hold them at bay. I highly recommend you start investigating their site with this article, “First, Kill All the School Boards.” It’s an eye-opening proposal that sheds some light on why American schools are the way they are, and what might be done to fix them.
Sometimes a song helps build your resolve, reminds you that there is more than your daily life, and coaxes you out of your comfort zone. One song in particular that has recently helped me in times of nervous retreat is Mute Math’s “Typical.” I would play it while driving around Little Rock, I played it when I drove across the Verrazano-Narrows bridge into Brooklyn, and it came up on my iPod the other day as I walked up the final flight of steps to my local train platform overlooking the city. It made me realize…I did it. I’m here.
I’m sure this will sound corny, but here are the lyrics:
Come on, can’t I dream for one day
There’s nothing that can’t be done
But how long should it take somebody
Before they can be someone?
‘Cause I know there’s
got to be another level
Somewhere closer to the other side
And I’m feeling like it’s now or never
Can I break the spell of the typical?
I’ve lived through my share of misfortune
And I’ve worked in the blazing sun
But how long should it take somebody
Before they can be someone?
And here’s the video:
Secret message to those I’ve told this to: I’ve said before that a particular task that took me several years to accomplish only 2-3 times in Little Rock took one week to accomplish in New York. Well, I’ve been in New York just over two weeks now and that task has been accomplished AGAIN.
Two days on the job now. Yesterday was mainly acclimation and getting set up. Today was a meeting all day in New Jersey with a big client. I’ve been hired to head up the website portion of a larger marketing account. Tomorrow I get some more orientation in the office. Here are a few things that make this job awesome:
Currently I work on the top floor of a 12-story building, occupying a corner office with two other guys, but I’m sure they’ll move me to a cube soon. The view and the neighborhood are great. Union Square is a block away – including a Whole Foods, Circuit City, Virgin Megastore, and across the street is The Fillmore at Irving Plaza. DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist are playing two nights there this weekend, but it’s sold out, naturally. Oh and there’s a Farmer’s Market most days during the summer. It’s only a few blocks from my F train, but I need to find a good transfer to the Union Square stop. Speaking of which, since I had to meet my group this morning at 8 a.m. for the trip to New Jersey, I thought I would get to work early, but I ate up the time by accidentally taking the G train from my stop, which meant I had to make my way back to the F line. I made it to the rendezvous point right at 8. Phew.
I walked around Green-Wood Cemetary yesterday. I wish I had made a better effort to find famous graves, because they don’t give you much of a directory at the gate. Naturally I wanted to find people like Bill “the Butcher” Poole and Edward R. Murrow, neither of whom I found on the map. It was still a nice walk, and a nice view, given that it’s the highest point in Brooklyn.
What’s sadder than a cemetary? A cemetary dumpster.
Afterward I stopped by Arika and Chu’s to visit.
Friday I walked around Red Hook, and between the fishing bait, defunct moonshine operations, abandoned cars, it felt like Arkansas isn’t so far away anymore. And at Fairway Market I found Frank Zappa beer, and while I did not it find very tasty, it nevertheless seemed appropriate for Frank. It was bitter and a little prickly.
And I made tea with my old-school carton of milk. That made me happy. I was going to go out again today but the wind chill is 11 degrees. I made it as far as the subway before I just turned around and went home.
I’m almost done digging through all of Atticus’s images on Flickr. Sometimes his image titles are more revealing than their pictures. This one sent me to Google and I found this excerpt from The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams:
“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
It’s good to be reminded of what is Real.
Atticus Wolrab is a figure shrouded in mystery. All that I really know about him is that he is an artist who does all of Mike Keneally’s album art. I just discovered his Flickr stream today, and it’s one of those goldmines of creativity so deep and brightly lit that I have to tell everybody about it. Check him out.
Here are some of my favorites: breakfast face (one of several), dumped, and Bernal Hill (which I myself have photographed, although in somewhat less flattering light). But his stuff is endless, really. And he likes to put song lyrics in the descriptions and write strange, lengthy tags (see the right column of this picture).
Oh, and he just sent me a message. Isn’t that nice?