my best impression of boxcar bertha or notes from my business trip to cleveland, part 1

after a prolonged battle with technology and banging my head against the idiocy of copyright laws (iphoto will only allow you to export videos using music you've downloaded ILlegally--tell me how THAT makes sense), i present to you a less than perfect slide show of photos not set to the right song (though this one is beautiful), and edited choppily. at this point i just have to throw in the towel and post these....oh, and now i see that youtube degrades the quality of the images. grr...will repost elsewhere and send link!



6am friday 11th of june 2010

train stopped in rochester. first we thought we'd get caught. paranoid from yesterday's experience. yesterday we hopped the wrong train and ended up headed back toward new york. it was still gorgeous though. the four of us sat and slept on the back of a grainer car, looking down gorges to rivers below, teetering on bridges you'd think couldn't support these metal beasts. but they do, so what's four more people?

apparently someone at a railroad crossing spotted us and called 911. really? 911? big roll of the eyes to the 'if you see something say something' society we run with. or against, i suppose. and just like that, the new york state police and the ulster county sheriff awaited our arrival at the next crossing and stopped our ride. the anti-cruise.

so we packed up the sleeping bags we'd been huddling under and got out. they let us go, warning us we'd be on CSX's trespass list, and attempted to seem tough. but really they seemed embarrassed to be wasting everyone's time. the sheriff rummaged in his squad car and pulled out a laundry bag to help us pack up. and we were on our way. we walked the "three miles" toward new paltz feeling that classic disgust from all of those passing by in their empty suv's, by walking, by being dirty, by carrying backpacks, we are marked, reviled and feared. it's ridiculous, meaningless and as easy as putting on a costume to assume this role. the world is a bunch of pretense and bullshit.

but right now we are living high. four hours after our little bust, we made it back to square one. the rail workers whom we had dodged and hid from previously pulled us up from hiding on the tracks and hooked us up with our own empty boxcar. better than a room at the ritz carlton. they propped the door open for us, gave us a ride in the back of their work truck through the quiet strands of trains and we climbed straight up off their truck into the waiting car and waved good bye. they loaded us up with water bottles and rail lights. there are incredible people in this world. and then there are those who call 911.

the train is moving full speed now, hence the difficulty with the pencil. rochester rolls by. we see the old kodak building, which is beautiful, because kodak is all i know of rochester.

duke draws on the boxcar door--a full shanty town aflame. it is one of the central images of the cleveland show--the whole purpose of our trip.

sarah rests, brett plays the banjo. he's learning still but the sound is intoxicating. i take pictures. loads of them. they will be repetitive and boring but this moment is so special. which does nothing to encompass it.

last night i peed in a ziploc bag. i would have gone over the edge of the open door but duke and sarah had set up their sleeping bags there, leaving us to marvel at the stars, the hills of nighttime trees glittering with fireflies. the first of the season. fucking magic.

i didn't expect this triumph. the first day was discouraging. we got a pretty late start. it was pouring rain. duke drove us to albany in his truck. duke and sarah up front, brett and i in the back, laying on tires he'd gathered as bumpers for his sailboat--a tarp shielding us from the pouring rain--and johnny law. three hours later and miraculously we weren't drenched.

the first night, which i mentioned, was tough. we had to cross a field of knee high grass. by the end of it we were soaked toes to thighs, with the rain steadily working on catching up on top. at a clearing, i stole into an old caterpillar and changed into dry socks. not smart--because then we had to cross a deep and mucky stream and then bushwhack through some insane jungly forest. at the yard, sunset was on. we hid in the phramites before darting into the yard gravel, which are little boulders. ground unstable.

we climbed up and over the first track, but then saw a csx vehicle, panicked, and ran low. with the heavy gear i carried, i flet like i physically couldn't make it over the tracks. i had fallen to my knees. and oh, i am not a child anymore! but still, the truck rolled toward us. so i hefted myself over the tracks, ignoring the huge pain in my knees, and rambo log-rolled down the track, backpack and all. ridiculous.

the rest of the evening continued in this fashion--me pushing my body to its physical limits and having to go still further. in order to cross between trains, you cannot just duck under their hookups. the train strands seem constantly to shift. we saw creepy 'ghost' train cars rolling remotely down the tracks to join the strands. and when they did, there was huge rumbling and jostling. careless people are apparently killed this way. so you have to climb up metal rungs on the side of the cars, shimmy across, then back down the rungs on the other side and jump down to the gravel. with 30 lobs (or whatever it is) on your back. we did this no less than forty times. while it rained on us. near the end, i was increasingly cranky, internally. quiet externally. i had developed some kind of abdominal cramping. be it gas, or more likely a result of the physical straining--climbing with wight like a monkey--and being so muscle-clenchingly cold. it made me wince with every ladder step. i'd say i was close to miserable, saved only by the excitement of attempting to hop trains.

finally we found an open boxcar--a dream--and climbed inside. i remember the boxcar kid books i used to read when i was a kid--the magic of inhabiting your own world in there. it was after midnight. we'd been monkeying between trains for six hours. the boxcar started to move. we yelped with joy. it slowly moved through the yard. then back to the other side, where it sat. by 2am, exhausted, unsure if it would move again and without a clue, we crashed out for three hours, literally freezing with the wet feet shoes legs pants. the works. but actually slept a little.

more journal and photos to come...

i see a handsome check in your future.

and here i find myself dealing these cards again. it's strange how natural it feels.
once upon a time i managed a metaphysical bookstore. this has become a joke tagline. but it's true, and at the time i was very serious about it. well, not serious enough not to be able to poke fun at the crazy people it exposed me to. at some point i vowed to write a book detailing the characters who walked in on a daily basis.

there was cranston the beared copper jeweler who professed his love for me via a frighteningly sharp copper pokey necklace, begging me to come away with him and his dog and his trailer. i passed, only to be not-so wooed by the man who would come to 'clense' the shop with his didgeridoo. he was fond of 'doo-ing too close to the girls, perhaps in hopes of exciting them.
then the aliens from the vega star system just walked right into the shop--imagine that! looking totally human yet carrying a staff that touched the ceiling, they offered me a spot on their ship. among these customers, it was almost uneventful when tom waits walked in. almost. my gay boyfriend at the time jumped up to not-so-subtly change the chanting monks or tinkering fairies or kokopelli pan-fluters to the portishead cd i'd contra-banded into the changer. just so tom waits knew we were cool. uh-huh.

most of my time at the shop was spent with various forms of divination. i read astrology, drew angel cards, and dealt a whole lot of tarot cards. tarot was a language i'd learned from the owner of the shop, who treated me as her 'god-daughter'. she was my spiritual guide, my teacher, mentor, inspiration. she gave me readings, i gave her readings, and i gave the whole town of sebastopol readings at the annual celtic festival.
tarot and writing were the therapy that brought me through my adolescence and young adulthood. i consulted the tarot at every turn. unlike the hocus-pocus fortune telling reputation it garners, i used tarot as a tool for contemplation and understanding of decisions and emotions.

but then i had a strange falling out with this woman who i'd loved and trusted, who'd called me daughter. she wrote me a letter telling me sarcastically to have a nice life. suddenly, these tools seemed powerless and false in my hands. i put all of my cards away for nearly a decade.

then last week i got an email from candi. she and her husband have employed me as teacher's assistant, as expense report writer, as photoshop consultant, as photographer. so naturally when they were looking for a gypsy to read tarot cards at their 11 year old daughter's birthday party, they turned to me for ideas.

i can do it!
really?
uh, well, i think so.

so off i go, dressed in maria's impressive belly-dancing costumes, looking like a first rate gypsy. kind of funny to revive this skill in such a diminutive way. i told myself that i don't believe in the cards anymore. but i think i was just hurt and needed that decade away. i still think of the cards as a tool for self-discovery rather than fortune telling, but let's see what the 11 year olds think. nervous!

fallout! computer rage!

twice blogger didn't let me submit this comment to my last post in response to genie's comment so out of frustration i just post it as a post:

ah, shucks, genie. you're so sweet and ridiculously talented yourself!
i admit lately to being on a lazy iphone photography spree. and i don't even have any of those apps everyone's rocking to make the pics better, but i've been very pleased.
and yes, must give props to rosanne pennella. she is a great instructor! http://www.rosannepennella.com/

she teaches weekend seminars in different cities i think through nikon and pop photo. i highly recommend!!!

that magic hour

my photography teacher always said that the key to beautiful photos was to wait until your shadow stretched longer than your body. last night as jade, his brother kip and i walked by bryant park we noticed that our heads had crossed the quite broad 6th avenue before we'd stepped off the curb. beautiful magic.
then i spread my legs for dramatic flair.

unexpectedly bad smells of my life 1-4

1) dead flower water
2) sun heated nyc garbage
3) steamed brocoli water left on the stove all night, covered
4) tar

go ahead, add yours.

30 marzo: twins

on cubana air from havana to nassau.

finally, an honest statement in williamsburg, brooklyn

okay, i guess i should qualify the photo below for those of you who don't live in new york, and therefore don't understand the implications of williamsburg, and also for those who simply don't get my very underdeveloped sense of humor. williamsburg is a brooklyn neighborhood i moved into fourteen years ago after my nine-month basement hopping tour of manhattan mercifully ended. the very first stop on the L train into brooklyn after leaving manhattan's east village, there was a thai restaurant on bedford avenue and a lot of artists lurking in lofts that required a trek from the subway that at night felt empty and a bit on the edge of dangerous. my digs at the second stop on the L train felt like a moon away from bedford's mini bastion of cool. we were the youngest people around who weren't living with their parents. and we weren't italian. or puerto rican five blocks the other way. it's what i love about brooklyn--it's a patchwork quilt of communities.
but clearly, this patch has undergone a lot of changes. real estate brokers are now calling the seventh stop in on the L train 'East Williamsburg' and now the tourists and bridge and tunnel crowd come to bedford and beyond for their excitement. rents are so high that the only artists in those lofts have been there since the empty and dangerous days, or their parents are footing the bill. bedford avenue and north 7th street (at the subway stop) has become the times square of hipsterville. some days, you just need to walk parallel on driggs because you can't navigate through the bicycles, street vendors, accessory dogs and gawkers. and how many store fronts are now occupied by the model kitchens of the army of high rise 2 million dollar per apartment towers closing in on us from the bqe to the waterfront?
when this change started to accelerate, approximately eight years ago, i packed up my junk and moved just 15 blocks north to greenpoint, a homogeneous community of polish ex-pats living a quiet life on the other side of mc carren park . now, that same change is following me, but the hard core little warsaw will fight stronger not to be overtaken. it keeps a nice balance in check so i still love living here. but i bust my ass to find a low rent. people are content to move into this neighborhood and pay astronomical rents because williamsburg is a stones throw away. but not me. i will forgo the shining bosch appliances and sliding glass door balconies for a slanted, splintery wood floor and rooms you have to walk through to access the other. (memory of heinous houseguest upon discovering higher-rent apartments in the nabe: "i didn't know they had REAL apartments in greenpoint!") so i'm happy in my very charming, full of character apartment. because i've chosen to be a 'starving artist' eating rice and beans, and loving life free from the corporate rat race. so when you hear me humorously complaining about the creative ways we get by, worry not for us. it's just fun to make light of these situations.
for the others in the neighborhood in their brand-new buildings, there's mom and dad to foot the bill. this is common knowledge, yet something the hipsters do their best to veil.
which is why it was so refreshing to come across some honesty, and credit given where credit is due, etched right into that williamsburg building i came across yesterday while walking just a block from my former willy b home. "thanks dad".

for an early father's day nod (wait, didn't i do that a few weeks ago?), i say, 'thanks dad' for teaching me a strong work ethic, not to be spoiled and to make my own way through the world. i do not envy my privileged, hip neighbors.

it's bitter baby but it's very sweet...

okay, so i'll admit that i have recently found myself falling prey to a whole slew of issues i never thought i'd care about or consider relating to the process of aging. getting old, the kitty joe is. these issues manifest themselves in the most random places and catch me quite off guard. case in point: the other day when i landed in california for a family visit. standing on the sidewalk after mowing down a table full of mexican food, i noticed my baby nephew's arm scrawled with a message from his girlfriend.
understand that i still have to hesitate before i can type out those words 'baby nephew's girlfriend', much less accept them to be true.
understand that it really doesn't seem like long ago that i watched him being born.
but as i hesitated, i had time to realize that wow, my baby nephew is SEVENTEEN for chrissakes. and i was also seventeen when chris bowers wrote those red hot chili pepper lyrics on my arm and made me swoon and like a good cliched teenager, i washed around those letters hoping to extend their smudgy life as long as possible. or at least until he returned from seattle.
and this also didn't seem that long ago.
kyle was five months old.

my kind of 'welcome to california'

flying over south dakota i'd already informed jade that we would need to take 101 south and hit mission street to stop at taqueria pancho villa for a proper welcome to california. we needed to remedy new york's overpriced and under-flavored mexican food, pronto.

my sister abbie, having first made the faux pas of bragging to this ex-pat californian that there was now a local 'chipotle' in town, made a big save when she texted me immediately upon landing in san francisco, "burritos in the mission?"

hell, yeah. i said.


and like that they were gone.

luckily, there were "pudding filled churros" to introduce to jade.