sunday afternoon

yesterday i had school. i sat through 8 hours of the most pointless classtime ever invented. i wanted to die. so i took my computer and played with these pictures all day. below you will see what i spent my time doing. please have some happy holidays in the next few weeks. you may vote again if you would like.

communal care

bass beats

subway blues

subterranean homesick commuter lines

solemn signs

urban respite

cop nights

hipsters

lonesome railroad blues

fire in the city

the I AM tag

rooftops in uptown

airstreaks

undulating cycles of nowhere

origins of life...

Destiny’s time unraveled. Far more therapeutic are the questions that are unanswered. Where are the greatest minds of my generation? Are they riding trains from battery to van cortlandt park? Or are they underneath the glare of city lights and vagrant misfits thumbing rides on nowhere trains to nowhere?

Five dollars via paypal to anyone who can tell me what that’s about and whom I be talking about (the first name starts with a).

So, I swore that on this web log I would never discuss what happens at my job. But I’m going to. If you do not want to witness this, then please hang up and come again later. If you are reading on, then you do so at your own risk.

So we have this social studies curriculum and we are supposed to be teaching the little ones about money in the community. I was discussing ways people in the community can earn money (you know: doctors, nurses, firemen, policemen, clerks, drug dealers, and prostitutes).

Well, I asked what people in the students’ families did for work. Before they could answer, a girl asked how we get money when we are first born. I deemed it a fair question and told her that’s why we are born into families—families provide for us, etc. She still had a questioning look. “No Mr. Frandsen (can you believe I’m called Mr. Frandsen?) I mean when we were first born. When there weren’t any parents. Where did the first baby come from? How did it get money? Who made the first baby?”

I paused because I didn’t know quite what to say. “Well, Diamondnique (yes, that is really her name), that’s a very good question and a lot of people have had it. In fact, there was once a boy in the spring of 1820 who had the same questions and he went to a grove of trees to find an answer…”

After that conversation was over, we went to the bathroom, clogged the drains, and dunked all of them.

Ok, so it was all true except for the stuff about the spring of 1820 and Joseph Smith. I told her that indeed it was a good question and many people have had it. Ashley chimed in the God created the first baby. She said that God created everyone. I told the class that indeed, some people believe God created everyone. Ashley looked up at me and said, “Some people? God did create everyone, right?”

I didn’t have to answer because Nyzaiah jumped in, “No, our moms create us.” Nicole helped out as well, “yeah, we come out of here.” Before she could start showing or motioning I stopped the conversation, but I was holding back my laughter (the first time that has ever happened; in fact, it’s the first time I have ever smiled at school. That’s why I decided to write about it).

Um…I think there was something else I was going to write about but now I can’t very well remember. So, I’m going to go to sleep. If skinny reads this then that proves he has no life. You go that skinny? Goodbye all.

Oh, and I realize that these pics have nothing to do with this posting. But what can you do?

all right ya'll: vote for your favorite. just go to the comments below and let me know which one is the one.

the village vanguard


dime on a run


postbox blues


yellow is as yellow does


phone medicine


summer dreams


liberating liberty


fashionable???


hi mailbox



forbidden mist


untitled

crucible of miracles and violence and spectacular wonder

i realize now that alien robots are too heavy a subject for those frequenting this web log (is anyone frequenting this web log?). so i would like to turn to the subject of new york.

Sarah hall, in her book the electric michelangelo describes new york like this:

For whenever it felt the urge, the city itself and all its boroughs could toss up a curiosity or a peculiarity, or kilter out a hitherto unnoticed detail, or create a marvel of fiction or of fact right before the eyes to remind its residents that this indeed was new york, lest that absurd fact be forgotten, crucible of miracles and violence and spectacular wonder. These were the moments that defined the city. They were the waking dreams of a never sleeping metropolis.

so I guess I’m wondering if she’s right. Is this place really the crucible of miracles and violence and spectacular wonder? The new york she was referring to was that of 1933. Has it changed? What is this place? Or is it the tough old new york president Hinckley called it? And am I still just a visitor to this crucible, or should I now count as one of many of its residents? Does it matter that I have favorite subway peddlers? Does it make me more of a partaker of this crucible of spectacular wonder? Is washington heights, my home, burning alongside coney and Williamsburg and soho? Does it partake in the waking dream of the never sleeping metropolis?

I don’t know if I yet count myself as a participant, although I do welcome my ascent from the subway to 190th and st. Nicholas. It feels home-like as I see the addicts and vagrants sheltered in our subway entrance, their humorous graffiti welcoming me home and informing me that star is a theif (the actual spelling) and that she is privy to some other things as well. I also have a friend, Edgar, who works in the local hardware store who taught me how to say ‘make me one key please’ in Spanish because I was going in there with constant requests for him to make me ‘just one more key, please.’ Does that mean I’m part of the melding process? Does the fact that I have a regular at a deli by my school mean I have arrived? Am I an element or even a catalyst in the reactions and creations that occur in the greater boroughs? I didn’t vote in the recent elections and I have no intention to vote in any future new york related votes.



but I do walk by this fire hydrant and broken phone booth every Sunday on the way to church. And it feels like it is right and almost like it’s mine and although I don’t feel like I need to fix it, I do feel like it’s right. So what does that mean?

Right now I’m thinking to myself I should go to sleep instead of typing this because I have to wake up in the morning and go to work. Does that mean I’ve arrived? Does it matter that I enjoy seeing everything on my way to and from work, but I don’t enjoy the work itself? Does that mean I’m new yorkish? Will I ever be new yorkish? Is anything really new york? Or is it just an amalgamation of everything and to be new york you just have to be something and that is what makes this place this place? If so then I’ve arrived. I’m an element on this crucible of a city and it makes me wonder if I’m the violent or the miraculous or the spectacular wonder.