seen

 

On 105th Street near Columbus Ave.

great white way

 

Yep, it's still coming down in Manhattan.

ad astra

 

This mural is from PS 20 on Essex where I taped a meeting of Community Board 3. Very curious image, the teeming immigrants of the lower east side flowing beneath the opened arms of "Mother Mary Comes to me," but it was the saying in Latin that caught my eye, a variation of my home state's motto, which Wikipedia now tells me, is a variation of the original quote: "through difficulties to the stars."

sunday

 

I feel a delicious emptiness this morning. I lean out of my window and let the sun caress my face. I look toward the park knowing I will take a walk there in a couple of hours. A lady walks by with her Sunday hat on.

This is the lightness that fills you the day after you finish a project that has consumed you for days and at the last minute you wrap it up and send it off.

I buy a hard copy of the New York Times which I haven't done in years, but I can't bear sitting in front of the computer this morning and I want to let the world in again.

nostalgique [nɔs.tal.ʒik], adj. relatif à la nostalgie. empreint de nostalgie ou atteint de nostalgie.

"L’obsession de l’ailleurs c’est l’impossibilité de l’instant ; et cette impossibilité est la nostalgie même."  Emil Michel Cioran

 

For JWCM's 40th I decide to do a video that will be a tribute to our misspent youth and the gang we ran with when I first came to New York. Like any such project, it quickly explodes into something larger and more complex. Between 1995 and 2003 there are only print photos and most of these aren't dated.

I open dozens of envelopes that have been stored in four boxes and a few rudimentary albums. I start to see a vague chronology from the various places we lived, lovers who came and went, trips we took, birthdays and celebrations. I recognize all the faces, but can't quite remember all the names. I decide to do an album as well, maybe the others will know who is who.

This trip into the past leaves me with mixed feelings. Perhaps youth is wasted on the young (now, at an age where I can appreciate the truth of that statement, even if I haven't entirely reached the wisdom behind it). Yet I want to recapture that passion when everything was new and exciting and we were, surprisingly, almost innocent.

break

 

It's that moment when the clouds pass and the sun shines through warming you on a winter afternoon, when the phone rings breaking the silence, when you look at someone and they look back.

found

 

on 105th Street near Columbus Avenue. 

It was promptly picked up by a handsome prince who rode off in the direction of Central Park. He spent several cold and fruitless hours wandering the rambles with sincere affection, searching for the soft and tender hand that would fit the ruby mitten perfectly. Then he went home to post a missed connection on Craigslist.

cha cha cha

melt

 

So it's not so cold out that your trunk should fall off, nevertheless, maybe still a good idea to put a few layers on.

day after

The storm is past, time to put on your party skirt and step out into the world again.

blow

The blizzard of 2010 blows down Columbus Avenue. UPS delivered today and if you wanted Chinese takeout, you were in luck. Personally, I was very happy to work from home with the occasional break to watch livery cabs attempt to dislodge themselves from slushy curbsides.

stately

Manhattan Borough President gives his State of the Borough Address which I taped for MNN and it was also live streamed (re-airs on Feb 14th 8pm on Ch 34). He honored the leaders of the community boards who were in attendance and seated to his right, pointing out the recent victory of CB 1 in getting the 9/11 trials moved out of lower Manhattan. Are we seeing the rise of truly local power again? Still to come, Charter revision.

found II

Ah man!

As seen on 102 Street near Amsterdam.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry