NEW YEAR’S EVE, SOMEWHERE NEAR TIMES SQUARE

SO STRANGE I REMEMBER YOU

NIGHT GALLERY

CROWD CONTROL

NIGHT GALLERY

THE HAUNTED AQUATICS CENTER AT BROWN UNIVERSITY

Providence’s general lack of pretension was only matched by it’s seeming insouciance to crime. Most of the police seemed to be situated at the bus terminal outside the Biltmore where we stayed; the 7-11 nearby doing it’s traditional job of being the local shit magnet. Though we wandered all over the place at night and didn’t feel particularly worried about getting mugged or hate crimed, it still was a bit strange to just wander into the unlocked Aquatics center on the holiday-empty Brown University campus. The whole center was being torn apart for a remodel, the locker rooms in particular disarray, sauna shut down, swim suits, caps and miscellaneous locker contents strewn all over the place. The pools were empty, giving the deck an eerie, cavernous quality. I never thought a pool could creep me out in such a melancholy way.

JOY

Best part of Christmas is when it’s over, but it’s not over yet until you’re heading back from the movies and try to hop an E out of 14th Street station to get to someplace warmer like 42nd to wait for an A.

“Uh Oh” says Cara as we see one, two, three, four, five, six, seven sleeping/passed out/fucked-up passengers/zombies in what seems to be the designated homeless/crack/drunk/other car we happen to get on and quickly hop off.

RINK

NIGHT GALLERY, PROVIDENCE R.I.

In homage to H.P. Lovecraft.

THROWING ICE

TWILIGHT GALLERY

THERE’S GOTTA BE A DEAD BODY IN THERE

This was some fenced of portion of some subway stop downtown I can’t recall, maybe 42nd Street. It looked like some sub-level shop that’d been shut down a long, long, long time ago. I didn’t really bother to look too closely at the time, just stuck my camera through a slot and took a single shot.

IT’S NOW AN EXPERIMENTAL FILM

A pathetic amount of time was put into this, and I had every intention of using it for some larger project but grew tired of fucking around with it, as if I could get it to conceptually grow wings and fly. It’s something like 50 still images from a couple of museums in NYC and London and pretty much exists for the hell of it.

NIGHT GALLERY

RAY’S WELDING

Having a slice at any one of the ubiquitous Ray’s Pizza joints isn’t anything special unless your location happens to have some guy doing a little arc welding behind the counter.

KIDS IN UNIFORMS

A couple of weeks ago I spent a morning with my friend Richard at a local high school in Queens, spending a couple of senior English class periods in the school library observing him drum up student participation in The Random House Creative Writing Competition, something he does several times a week at schools all around the boroughs.

He started off seizing their attention reading a particularly visceral poem on impressions he took from a past presentation of his to students incarcerated on Rikers Island. Richard’s also an accomplished actor and playwrite, and suffice to say he can really knock your socks off reading his own work. Where the kids were fidgety, dubious and impatient when they first walked in, their attention was now his. From there he immediately had them do a couple of writing exercises on their own, one of which was seven minutes writing on any particular place that had a profound impact on them, as his own example. Time’s have sure changed since I was in high school, colorful language the general rule, but I never had to live in Queens and the stuff these kids shared blew my doors open. I joined in the writing myself and did a little thing on Colman Pool in Seattle.

It was on those days no one else would come, or hardly anyone would come, that I felt most connected to the water. Those rare, cold, rainy summer days like autumn, when a storm would come over from the peninsula and sweep across the Sound. Those us who dared would swim with the rain on our backs one way and in our eyes and faces in another. Stinging, pricking poking rain that didn’t matter when most of me was submered in heated salt water, safe and smooth. Watching lifeguards stuck in high chairs trying to keep their umbrellas from collapsing and tipping over. They looked so sad and forlorn, wanting to be anywhere else but there, hoping for lightning so they could close the pool. But these were the best days: fifty meters to myself, maybe three of us in the water and nothing more important for the hour and a half we/they/I had before it was time for the warm shower and the shock of my naked self in the mirror by the sinks—a tan line on a cloudy day. Then to dry, dress and off through the rain on that path by the shore where driftwood rocked near the sea wall, or pieces of boats washed up, sometimes entire trees from god knows where.

BETWEEN BARS

BAG BLUE

SNOW THEN MELT

FROM AN UNTITLED STORY

“Maybe we should ask around some more.” When she finally spoke he wished she hadn’t. Her voice rough, wet and deep, like a hole you could fall in and never get out of. While some women sounded sexy with a deep voice Liberty just sounded fucked up. He agreed with her though. He hopped down and pointed to the portion of the park bordering the freeway. Thick with brush it was camp for about 20 regulars, some of whom like Spider Man knew just about everything that went on around here. Playtex wouldn’t step foot in there after what happened to him last summer, but he knew Liberty could care less. If she could find Spider Man then they’d find Baby Jesus.

SITTING

Sometimes it’s kind of a miracle when you get to witness some wonderful display of human selfishness. It’s almost something to compare your worst behavior to so that once you’ve seen it; you realize you’re not such a shitty person after all.

I have to admit that though NYC can be extremely self-interested, there is a kind of understanding between most of the denizens that if this freak show is to continue, it’ll require some degree of cooperation. But last night I saw one of those people who exists in one of those “unacceptance bubbles,” the kind where they want to pretend they can have all the room they want to.

It’s the A train heading uptown, 9pm, kinda empty. I’m in the outside seat on a short, three-seat bench near the door. At the 14th St. station this guy gets on and sits next to me with his duffle bag in his lap and takes out a book. I’m not paying that much attention as I’m reading myself. As the train makes more stops the car gets crowded and eventually one of the only seats left is the one next to the guy next to me. A woman wants to sit there and asks the guy if he’d make some room since his bag the bag in his lap is sticking out on her end and taking up the empty seat. He doesn’t bother answering, just keeps reading his book. She asks him again, rather politely but urgently and again he says nothing and finally she leaves to find another place to sit.

A young man sitting on one of the double seats that extend perpendicular to the bench I’m then says, “You’re not going to move over for the lady? That’s messed up.”

Still no reply from the guy and the kid continues to repeat variations on this statement at least five times still with no response, though from my scant notice, no one else in the crowded car even bothers. Eventually though some other young guy who’s been overhearing all this comes over and stands right in front of Rude Dude without looking at him and asks the other young guy “He won’t make room for the lady?”

“He won’t make room, it’s damn rude” says the first guy.

Then the second young guy says something to the effect that maybe that’s ok not to make room, which I didn’t quite understand, and when the first young guy asks the second young guy if he wants to sit there, the second guy declines. All the while the Rude Dude continues to read or at least simulates the reading of his book. There’s no violence, no threats, just a kind of low grade belittling. I can’t imagine the amount of energy Rude Dude had to exert to sit through all this when it would have been easy just to have let her sit. But maybe he’s just one of those silent but deadly types, just waiting to come unhinged and ready to destroy the world. I’m sure there must be at least a couple of these sorts of people in this city.

Eventually the both the young guys get off, and I expected the first one to say something but he doesn’t. All the Rude Dude does is move over to an empty bench across from me when he gets the chance, giving me a kind of blank look. He’s wearing everything Carhart: coat, shirt, hat and pants.

PATHETICALLY LAZY PHOTOGRAPHIC SUBJECT

JOE COLEMAN

Crispin Glover was back in town a few weeks back with part two of his Trilogy, It Is Fine, Everything Is Fine!, which was sufficiently fucked up but not as riveting as last year’s What Is It? The great Joe Coleman (see shitty photo above) was sitting a couple rows in front of us, though I think Glover was the only one besides me who recognized him, and it seemed like they were friends anyway.

The Q+A session took a strange turn that one could tell even Glover thought was more than bizarre when he took a comment from someone in the back concerning an explicit sex scene that showed some unprotected penetration action between a young woman and the protagonist who has Cerebral Palsy.

“Did he cum in her?” The guy asked, and Glover has to ask him what the question is again because you can tell he’s not sure he’s actually hearing this.

“Did he cum in her? Because it looked like something happened like that while they were having sex and I thought she might have become pregnant.”

“No, she didn’t become pregnant.”

A LITTLE OF THIS, A LITTLE OF THAT

IMPRESSIONS OF GRANT’S TOMB, WINTER

Yet another place near home I finally got around to visiting. My friend Kate’s in town, so I took her and and her friend Allison when we had some spare time. What a strange place, all morose and majestic. No one there except us and the staff in a vacuous hall with a tremendous dome ceiling and the ambient hum of fans stirring the air. One of the park people was eager to share information on the Civil War, that event most Americans forget happened or have no idea even occurred.

A LIFE IN BAGS

Living in a neighborhood filled with seniors, it’s fairly common to see ambulances on an almost daily basis making some kind of emergency call on my street. No too long ago I was headed towards the subway and passed this apartment where a crew was clearing out the contents, which was basically bagging everything for trash and tossing it out the window. It was obvious someone died, as the bags were filled with personal items, letters, personal items and slew of old medications. What was left of a life was headed for a landfill.

NIGHT GALLERY, EAST VILLAGE