Underground Submarine

This morning like every morning, I was fumbling around in my ritual: keys, wallet, phone, birthday card to Dawn, and my Netflix, and drop off my rent check to my landlord. OK, Get metro card out, so as not to go fishing for it while train is pulling up. I drop of rent check, deposit 2 pieces of mail into mail box, and head for the subway, hear train screeching into my station, run downstairs fish for Metro card, no Metro card, not in front pocket of bag or main compartment, nor in my jeans pocket, ugh mailed my Metro card. Fuck, the day I pull up with an F train running and I don’t have my card, need to purchase one, still have time, old man had notifies me that neither of the 2 Metro card machines are accepting cash or credit, but if I give him $2.00 he’ll swipe his card for me. Awesome, a scammer the moment I need him. I make the train and we thank each other.

poem "on the train"

Transport me, transfer me
Serrendiposuly, lovingly
In this vessel, this silver submarine
Sleepy and serene
With out an exterior scene
We are forced to look with in
With those we share this 60 feet tin
A temporary place with our urban kin

United we stand
United we claim our place in this 20 minute space

Us lucky ones sit

Unyielding
Colors in dream
redeem a seat or a lean on the door


Now 10 hours later, on the way back home. poem "Back on the train"

Ladies and gentlemen
I’m hungry
A dollar
A nickel, a penny, anything would help
Maybe a piece of fruit
And if you are feeling up to it, a hug

Heads shift up out of habit
But then retire back to their book
An outcry of averting eyes

Same ol song and dance
For some, this F train
has been their performance space
for years

No woman, no cry no woman no cry
I remember whenna we used to it…

In between, fade out of public speeches and unwelcomed entertainment
The remainder of us sit, unfazed or at least sport a mask of sub-emotion
Fade back in, and become the clinking, the clattering of the train amid a fog of conversations in Spanish, Yiddish, Brooklynish

“Delancey, East Broadway next stop”

Trains escorts us along
Paranoia, of my fellow, intimately situated stranger
reading my most private of thoughts
I look up to determine that he is quite submerged in his own reading
My narcissism, such self-importance to assume this stranger is just aching to share in even just a glimpse of my profanity on paper

A palette of fluorescent light and mundane hues, not too foreign from the office I just escaped
We ride this familiar interior for minutes and more a day
strangers to one another
we are the pole holders, or the lucky few who are the seat dwellers
we are each other, we are new Yorkers.

whilst in my laziness and my heading out the door to another state, the Upper West side, I leave you with this until I resume.

Starn Twins and the South Ferry terminal

Starn Twins and the South Ferry terminal

Tara Donovan

While I am preparing my next post, I thought I'd fill the page with imagery that I find so beautiful and organic, porous and feminine, the works of Tara Donovan. I had to see if she was of Asian decent as these spoke hints of fish and flora life, hence she is not, and actually looks a lot like Bridget Fonda. People have told me that I look like Bridget Fonda, so in a sense she looks like me, my artistry kin.

She is the one in the middle. (all photos have been pulled off the web and are not mine)

Tara Donovan

While I am preparing my next post, I thought I'd fill the page with imagery that I find so beautiful and organic, porous and feminine, the works of Tara Donovan. I had to see if she was of Asian decent as these spoke hints of fish and flora life, hence she is not, and actually looks a lot like Bridget Fonda. People have told me that I look like Bridget Fonda, so in a sense she looks like me, my artistry kin.

She is the one in the middle. (all photos have been pulled off the web and are not mine)

Coney Island, Cyclones game, fireworks on the beach, and beer at Rubys.

Coney Island, Cyclones game, fireworks on the beach, and beer at Rubys.

No, this is not Hawaii, it's Wildwood Crest

After seeing a blog that highlights a gem of a film, by Ruthless Films titled, Wildwood , I had to post. My brother sent this to me on Thursday, and it was so worth it. Not only is it spot-on. It ties into my theme of places in which time stands still, and stagnancy is seen at it’s finest. Wildwood is the epidimy of that.

My family and I summered here in the 1970’s. To me, it was my wonderland, my Disney World, my American Dream to vacation in such the splendors of Wildwood Crest. We stayed in the Compass Hotel, and our cousins stayed across the street at The Shalimar was a step up from the Compass, garnished with purple paint and a pool that included caverns and bridges. The Compass was more humble. It was a nice orange themed motel with shuffleboard, a pool, and rooms equipped with kitchenettes. All the rooms had a shared balcony, and the high light was getting a bucket of ice down the end of the hall for our folks’ gin and tonics and sodas for us. At night the lights situated on the balcony would shine down upon the pool illuminated our vacation pod with a stunning view of the long stretched beach over the parking lot. We ate breakfast in our our kitchenette; cereal from the individually wrapped boxes where you cut the top open to the cardboard and pour the milk right in. Apple Jacks for me, Froot Loops for my brother, the Rice Krispies were always the left over boxes in the mix. After a long day at the beach, we’d come back to cook spaghetti and meatballs on the stove top, and again retrieve ice from down the hall, and over look the lit pool. Aaahhhh. Honestly, what more could a person ask for. Maybe it’s just nostalgia, but as an adult I yearn to head back there for a weekend vacation with some girlfriends in hopes that these small things will still excite and thrill me, and honestly I believe it will.
If you have any Wild Wood stories yourself, I’d love to hear your comments.

No, this is not Hawaii, it's Wildwood Crest

After seeing a blog that highlights a gem of a film, by Ruthless Films titled, Wildwood , I had to post. My brother sent this to me on Thursday, and it was so worth it. Not only is it spot-on. It ties into my theme of places in which time stands still, and stagnancy is seen at it’s finest. Wildwood is the epidimy of that.

My family and I summered here in the 1970’s. To me, it was my wonderland, my Disney World, my American Dream to vacation in such the splendors of Wildwood Crest. We stayed in the Compass Hotel, and our cousins stayed across the street at The Shalimar was a step up from the Compass, garnished with purple paint and a pool that included caverns and bridges. The Compass was more humble. It was a nice orange themed motel with shuffleboard, a pool, and rooms equipped with kitchenettes. All the rooms had a shared balcony, and the high light was getting a bucket of ice down the end of the hall for our folks’ gin and tonics and sodas for us. At night the lights situated on the balcony would shine down upon the pool illuminated our vacation pod with a stunning view of the long stretched beach over the parking lot. We ate breakfast in our our kitchenette; cereal from the individually wrapped boxes where you cut the top open to the cardboard and pour the milk right in. Apple Jacks for me, Froot Loops for my brother, the Rice Krispies were always the left over boxes in the mix. After a long day at the beach, we’d come back to cook spaghetti and meatballs on the stove top, and again retrieve ice from down the hall, and over look the lit pool. Aaahhhh. Honestly, what more could a person ask for. Maybe it’s just nostalgia, but as an adult I yearn to head back there for a weekend vacation with some girlfriends in hopes that these small things will still excite and thrill me, and honestly I believe it will.
If you have any Wild Wood stories yourself, I’d love to hear your comments.

Deerfield North

I spent the weekend In Bucks County, Pennsylvania for Father’s Day. Bucks County is a place in which I can count on most things and people to be in place as they were since I was a kid there and its landmarks can sometimes depict that stagnancy. And this sign is a prime example of that. I can still always be a kid, or a teenager when I go ‘home’

A few months back, in order to break in a new camera, I decided to document the Deerfield North sign. I have always loved its aesthetic charm, and the fact that it has been there since 1976. To me, the sign is representative of how time stands still there in more ways than one.

Deerfield North, a typical suburban division of Richboro and its welcome is this blocky, stone wall with a wooden sign with the title of our development etched into it, and unbelievably held up pretty well considering the weather in Pa. It has never been updated or replaced in all these years, and just a few months I finally decided to document this sign before the township awoke up one day to say, Wow, that sign is going into another decade and it wrecks of 1970.

Well, as time has it, two weeks ago the sign was uprooted by a drunk driver and has since been replaced with a modern sign. I didn’t notice this until I passed it this weekend with my Mother and was horrified to see in it’s place a ‘modern’ at least by Richboro standards, a brand new thin metal frame with the words Deerfield North in cursive on frail base, and so unappealing. It made me so sad to see, but so relieved that I took a piece of that memory with me before its fall to modernity.

images on the inside

Deerfield North

I spent the weekend In Bucks County, Pennsylvania for Father’s Day. Bucks County is a place in which I can count on most things and people to be in place as they were since I was a kid there and its landmarks can sometimes depict that stagnancy. And this sign is a prime example of that. I can still always be a kid, or a teenager when I go ‘home’

A few months back, in order to break in a new camera, I decided to document the Deerfield North sign. I have always loved its aesthetic charm, and the fact that it has been there since 1976. To me, the sign is representative of how time stands still there in more ways than one.

Deerfield North, a typical suburban division of Richboro and its welcome is this blocky, stone wall with a wooden sign with the title of our development etched into it, and unbelievably held up pretty well considering the weather in Pa. It has never been updated or replaced in all these years, and just a few months I finally decided to document this sign before the township awoke up one day to say, Wow, that sign is going into another decade and it wrecks of 1970.

Well, as time has it, two weeks ago the sign was uprooted by a drunk driver and has since been replaced with a modern sign. I didn’t notice this until I passed it this weekend with my Mother and was horrified to see in it’s place a ‘modern’ at least by Richboro standards, a brand new thin metal frame with the words Deerfield North in cursive on frail base, and so unappealing. It made me so sad to see, but so relieved that I took a piece of that memory with me before its fall to modernity.

images on the inside