rose colored iphone

slowly making my way back to reality after two months spent mostly in shanghai.  re-orientation to new york has included several walks to the river and much gazing at the sky.  despite the fact that the weather since my return has been described as 'mostly cloudy', i've still seen more blue sky in these few days than in two months in china.
i feel guilty being so negative about my experience in china, but the truth is, the apocalyptic level of pollution thoroughly colored my time and mood there.  call me country girl--i couldn't deal.  i felt like i'd visited the future of our planet.  and it was scary and depressing.
so this photo seems like it's supposed to relate, but really it doesn't.
ever get excited about the sky and clouds then realize it's just because you're wearing sunglasses, and the person next to you thinks you're crazy because all they see is grey?
to remedy this, i held my sunglasses in front of my iphone to take the above image.

america's most wanted passport thief

i knew that i couldn't access facebook from china, but i hadn't realized that blogger would be off limits too.  so i fell into an internet black hole, despite my ambitious plans of blogging my riveting thoughts from china.

how about stale journal entries then?

02 march 2012
london.  sixteen years old.  thought i had my shit together.  i had, after all, spent my free period for an entire semester researching and planning this odyssey, this gaggle of teenagers who would descend on ireland for a month.  i was the president of model united nations.  we were pretending to represent ireland.

clearly i was already the person i am today.  in charge of every detail, except loose when it came to me.  but we'd made it, miraculously, intact--minus me having an allergic reaction to an antibiotic in kilkenny (a vacation standard for me) and andrew getting conned out of some cash on a black market doc marten scam in galway.

but nonetheless, a month had passed mostly successfully and we wandered london for a bit before flying back to the states.  i reached into my money belt (oh so prepared and safe!) for a reserve of cash.  that's when i noticed it.  or the lack of it.  my passport.  that precious document that i'd just received a month prior.  my key to the world.  and it was noticeably not present in my sweaty, month-worn tan pouch.  where could it be?!  i'd SLEPT with the damn thing strapped around my waist like any good, wide-eyed youth hosteler.   but logic or not, it wasn't there, and there were two days till we got on the plane.  or they did.

so i spent that last day in london rushing around from the consultate to the embassy, being scolded but also priding myself on traveling with a photocopy of my passport, two fresh passport photos, and an emergency fund.  go youth hostel!  they issued me a one year temporary passport and that was that.

or so i thought.

more than two decades have passed and here i am blazing through the toronto airport with a tsa escort, shoelaces clicking underfoot, pants hiked up over neon green and black striped socks, my name being called over the loud speaker (at least i'm in canada, the only place they don't fumble over the STE in my name) because i've been pulled into an interrogation room for the umpteenth time to explain my foolish youthful mistake.

thailand
turkey
qatar
colombia
cayman islands
bahamas
switzerland
mexico

on the way back into the us from all of these places I've been stopped.
i've been 'flagged', 'watched', 'on the lookout list', detained,  questioned, delayed, luggage searched, strip searched, shoes torn open, and tonight, after already traveling the better (or worse) part of twenty-four hours, my stomach in knots, so desperate to get home, i rush to the plane just as they are closing the doors.

and the brilliant, classic kitty joe thing?  i never really lost my passport back in london.  as i unpacked, sixteen years old, along with the contraband cans of hard cider i'd accidentally bought on the train from dingle, then panicked and hid in my luggage to bring home to my 'wild' sister, i opened up a shopping bag with my treasured aran sweater.  and there it lay, nestled in the wool.  my original passport.

twenty one years later...and i'm still running through the airport.  

a gem of a conversation

pete:  you can use some rusty washers from my personal stash...

boss: you have a stash of rusty washers?!  

pete: of course.  when i'm out walking i just can't help myself from picking them up off the ground when i see them.

boss:  you've got problems.  

me:  ...and you're one to talk, mr. dead dog!   

boss:  so i own a couple of dead dogs....so what?  

festive ramblings

if you know me you know that i'm loopy for holidays.  when i was a kid, despite not having a christmas tree in the house (and I promise that will be the only ex-jovie reference in this post!), come december 1st, i would wage my own subversive holiday by switching to red pen in my journal for the duration of the month.

it's that daily spirit, that anticipation of something (and yes, i know, something so arbitrary and meaningless, considering i am not religious and also considering i haven't the budget for lavishing gifts on people) that warms my heart throughout december.  it's walking through the red and white striped tents of the christmas fair at union square on my way to class from the subway (i'm speaking of a few years past on that one), it's buying hot apple cider instead of coffee, it's trekking out to far-flung brooklyn neighborhoods that go crazy with lights--and for the past seven or eight years it's been hearing the holiday music and the sound of a quick electric saw when one of my neighbors bought a christmas tree off the sidewalk opposite my apartment.

for all of those years i have been charmed and appreciative of the toothless french canadians who come with their truckloads of trees and strand of lights and camp out in their little security outhouse.  i buy a charlie brown tree from them early on and always cross the street on my way out of the house to walk through the smell of christmas.  that little stand has been a steady, underlying source of my christmas cheer.  when christmas is close and it gets really really cold, i bring them loaves of pumpkin bread and gingerbread still steaming from the oven.

i feel giddy with anticipation on the morning after thanksgiving when their 2x4 tree pens appear, ready to receive the trees.  and so it was last friday night that i felt concern when the pens weren't there by bedtime.  jade comforted my anxiety--or attempted to--by insisting they never came that early.  and i got crazy righteous and indignant, counting on my fingers the years that i have heralded their prompt post thanksgiving day arrival.

and here it is, december 1st, and still no toothless french canadians.  still no trees!  jade, with the concern and discomfort of a parent watching their child lose, inquired at the local bodega (that's deli for non-new yorkers), whose sidewalk the trees customarily grace.  dispute with the landlord, was the report.

my holiday spirit crushed over $100 in unpaid electrical bills and a mess of stray pine needles?!  say it ain't so!  but even more sadly, i think the economy plays a bigger roll in the decision not to return.  i noticed considerably fewer cuts on the electric saw in the past couple of years.  a christmas tree is a luxury item that's pretty easy to trim from your overextended budget.

and yes, i'm speaking frivolously here, i recognize that.  there are a lot more important things to be concerned about even in relation to this story than my childish desire for festivity.  but we think about those things all the time.  for now, i'm taking my distraction in a plaid santa mug full of trader joe's gingerbread coffee blend.  welcome december!

don't i feel like a heel.

i was joking yesterday when i told the tattoo artists at the shop that i was probably high from breathing primer all day.  kind of.
but apparently i lost more brain cells than i realized.  see i spent the day as i have the last many, coordinating the renovation of a new tattoo shop.  it's wildly exciting and all, and i've been happy to log extra hours watching this space which had formerly been brutalized by bad color choices transform into ours.

yet all day i felt vaguely that i was forgetting something.  i chocked it up to the overwhelming list of things to be done and proceeded to pinch my finger in the door on the way out.

any plans tonight? my friend who'd hung new sheetrock asked.
oh no, just this.

and after i finally closed the roll-down gate and looked back at our progress, feeling a great sense of satisfaction, i dropped some artwork off at the studio, swung by my friend's place to give hugs to counteract her blues, wandered aimlessly into target (yes, my wild 11pm on a saturday night outing to target), then got hit on by the guy in a truck on atlantic avenue making me the best falafel i've ever had.

while ALL THE WHILE, friends who i really care about were toasting their birthdays!   it started at 6:30 while i was still huffing primer fumes, with ben, who usually receives a loaf of fresh-from-the-oven pumpkin bread from me (i even bought the pumpkin earlier in the morning!).    then continued at 8:30, probably not too long before i closed up the construction site for the night, with dear barbara, who i haven't seen in god knows how long.  damnit!!

and the only way i realized my mistake was to see barbara this morning on facebook.  here is what prompted my 'oh shit' moment:

back to the shop today.  if you are my friend and i've committed to some kind of plans, clearly my leftover brain cells need a reminder!  

12 april 2009 easter sunday: keith

11 april 2009: heather loop

10 april 2009: abi

click to enlarge.

two years later and i'm still posting '98 pictures of 98 people'.  it's interesting what distance from a project will do.  i'm startled to look back on it now and realize how unfinished i was when finals came around.  so many of the images, like this one, never got text.  in my memory it was only a few, but now it's showing to be quite a substantial chunk.  i vowed i'd come right back to those neglected "few", but now it's just how they are.  maybe a welcome breath in a long rattling story.  some of the text was successful, some just long winded.  

you miss spackleshot? how about some ranting?!

i miss blogging.  i miss the pre-facebook world when i read people's blogs and they read mine.  i'm not saying it was better.  i think it's terrific that everyone participates in the micro-blogging of facebbook.  i just miss it.

so i resist the urge to post the following rant to facebook and instead will post it here (this post will automatically post there anyway--not than anyone even clicks away from facebook to read a blogpost anymore...).  even though it is absolutely as exhibitionistly public as can be, somehow it seems more...privately mine.

so here i wind up.

dear man in line behind me at the bodega,

can you please explain to me what exactly you hope to accomplish by arguing with me "last word in" style that chicken stock tastes better than vegetable stock?  are you really all that concerned that i'm missing some nuanced flavor difference?  did i even ask you?  did i, a voluntary vegetarian of 23 years, seem like i was wavering and you thought you'd put your two cents in to help me with this tough decision?

this is a really stupid thing to rant about.  it just gets so exhausting to talk about it EVERY DAY.  


and while i've got the petty gloves on, let me address another daily conundrum that seems to be of utmost importance in these trivial, nothing-to-talk-about times.  if i didn't have lady parts, would you feel the need to ask me WHY i buzz my hair?  think of how ludicrous it would seem if a man had to answer that question 10 times a day, or if a woman had to explain her bob or ponytail...  

and by the way, man in line behind me at the bodega--i double dog dare you to make a butternut squash soup that tastes better than mine.  

like dominos they fall...

it is true that i have finally mostly transitioned, though kicking and screaming, into the digital realm of photography in my general practice.  it is true that my entire darkroom set up currently haunts, in boxes, every spec of storage space available in my small brooklyn apartment.  that is not to say that i don't fantasize about letting it breathe again in some mythical blacked out barn on some imaginary property in the country i'll have when i win the lottery.  but for now, yes, i acknowledge that digital has taken me over.
  
i know it's the way the world of photography has gone, but i enjoy partially blaming some of it on the New School.  for two years leading up to my enrollment at said university, i flipped through the course guide and circled countless darkroom classes i planned to take.  although i expressed these intentions in my application, i embarked upon my first semester clueless to the fact that the darkroom where these fabled classes would occur had been torn down. when i finally became hip to this change, i was told that all of the equipment from the new school darkroom had been donated to the parsons darkroom, where i would be allowed to take classes.  but when parsons figured out ways to get around that promise i was funneled to the Educational Alliance, an incredible community force whose art school boasted alumnus such as Barnett Newman, Adolph Gottlieb and Mark Rothko.  it was at the Educational Alliance, not the New School as I'd imagined, where i found a home in a darkroom.  


now the Art School at the Educational Alliance faces a similarly vague and sneaky fate at the hands of a building renovation.  


To read a very thorough explanatory article by the Lo-Down:  click here

To Sign a petition of support:  click here

My petition comment below: 
I came to the Educational Alliance in 2005 when the New School University replaced its historic (built during Berenice Abbott's reign as instructor) darkroom with a wide hallway. The betrayal I felt by the mindless demolition of the very reason I enrolled at the New School has not faded in the passing years. I was lucky at that time, however, to be welcomed by The Educational Alliance to finish my current semester at their lovely darkroom. I had such a great experience that I continued for several semesters at the Educational Alliance, despite continuing my full course-load at the New School. Michael Macioce was one of the finest and most inspiring instructors I have had the honor to learn from. It makes me very sad to contemplate the thought of the endangering of another historic and important art program due to thoughtless plans for renovation.



and finally, me standing proudly by my work displayed at credit suisse, an opportunity brought to me by the educational alliance--not the new school.