And now for something completely different. A shot from Summer. Three girls. The Surf, the Sun, the Sand, the feel of cold water as it slams into you at breakwater. The softness of sand under your feet. The thrill of bobbing above a big wave. Cold drinks. Ice cream. The smell of Sun Block. Ahhhh.... It was just a few months ago. And now it is so far away. Just a memory. A conversation overheard. And you have to know what the girls are talking about, don't you? Intuitively you know. Right? Am I right?  

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It's worse than I though. Worse than I could have possibly imagined. We are living on the razor edge of panic so uncontrolled that it may devolve into an event best described by Physicists in some future decade. We are vibrating at some sub-atomic frequency. Schools are closed in all surrounding counties near Washington, DC. Everyone is talking about it, even though no one has seen it yet. We are preparing ourselves for the worst. It is difficult to continue any sort of normality on the surface when there is so much turmoil beneath. It is going to snow sometime today. Maybe as much as 6 inches! Some have heard a prediction of 8 inches. In the world of Porn, that's pretty big. If I am unable to post again, please know that I loved my family and my friends and tried, at heart, to always to the right thing. My Will is filed in a cabinet in our guest room. God Bless you all. 

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It isn't any wonder that I feel disoriented sometimes. Look at the visual information that my tired brain has to instantly process as I walk down the street. Yours too. You have to do the same high speed math in your brain too. There is light and shadow and glass and metal and doors and windows that you can see through and colors that aren't really there. They're being transmitted from other place. People laugh when they see someone bump into a glass patio window that can't be seen because it's so clean and the person doing the bumping just naturally assumes that it is open, but in fact it is not. And they thump into it and it seems so funny because anyone could make that mistake. It happens all the time. Miraculously, it doesn't seem to happen that often downtown. At least I've never seen it happen. It's never happened to me. But I feel that it could. 

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Urban life is full of reflections. Maybe there is no time for actually reflection, but there are certainly lots of different kinds around us because the urban space is made up of glass and shining surfaces. And shadows. And waste. There are, besides many reflections, many opportunities to throw away stuff on site. At my office I can choose Paper, Plastic, Trash, or Glass. I'm liable to make an error late at night, or early in the morning, when my Plastic could end up in Paper, or vice versa. I'm not certain what kind of problem this might present further down the food chain, but I don't worry about it. Any more than I worry about the probable fact that all of the segmented trash ends up in the same green dumpster in the alley behind the office building. 

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It's snowing in Washington. What that means is unbridled chaos. If certain unsavory mean spirited individuals or groups wanted to bring Washington DC to a standstill, they would need do nothing more than make it snow here. Schools close. People take time off of work to care for the kids who are not in school for the day or the week or more. In certain instances the Federal Government shuts down. The city just closes up. There is a ceremonial run to the store for toilet paper, milk, and bread. We already have the Duck Tape stored up. This city is over 150 years old and it still hasn't figured out how to plow snow. People flip out. Every snow is like the first snow ever. It's the Horror. The Horror. 

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I know that it is probably not readily apparent, but I do think carefully about what images, out of the thousands I have, to post here. I try to establish a rhythm and a flow and a kind of dialogue with the pictures. Sort of like Be Bop for the eyes as a way to deconstruct the travel photo album. It may not always make sense to the viewer, but it occasionally makes sense to the writer. This image was taken in Paris. Not, I agree, the usual image one might bring back from that City of Light. But, it's one of the ones I was attracted to. The light there is so clear it almost hurts. The sky on a late Spring Day in Paris is almost beyond color. It's more like a substance. The early morning light is soft and glows. Perfect for a picture of some street art spray painted on the side of a building that I saw on my way to get my morning coffee.  

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Sometimes you just have to put your feet up and set back and relax with a product that is meant to be smoked. Jess let your fringe hang down. Know what I mean? 

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He was alone. He was always alone. He didn't know how to communicate well with people. He was shy and prone to long periods of silence. He was just him and his horse. He was among the heros of the Old West. He had a whip and he knew how to use it. He worried about his future sometimes. He wasn't getting any younger and it was getting harder to take the punishing work of cattle herding. He smoked a lot and he drank some. Some day, he thought, he'd have to give it up and he'd have to settle down somewhere. Somewhere where it was quiet and the sky was blue and you could look around and see forever. 

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What if we just gave it back to them. Said, "Sorry, it's a little broken, but here it is. We're giving it back and moving on." Going back to the planet that we came from or something. I don't know. It doesn't sound like such a terrible idea. Would they even want to take us up on it? What with all the Super Fund sites and all. It might be more trouble than it would be worth. 

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An early morning image from the opening ceremonies for The National Museum for the American Indians

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This is about Survival. 

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This is about Opportunities Lost. 

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This is about Dreaming. 

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I am NOT gonna smile. And I am NOT gonna look at the STUPID man with the camera. I don't even want to BE here. I didn't want to come on this STUPID ride. My mom MADE me go with her BOYFRIEND. I HATE him. I HATE this stupid ride. When I get off I'm gonna THROW UP. 

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Just when you think that it can't get any stranger or more beautiful, you look at a flower. It's good to remember flowers this time of year. They're the things that are going to start happening at the end of Winter. I'm ready for the flowers. Nicki bought some bulbs to force open inside, so I know that she's ready too. It's good to remember that eventually there will be flowers. Here's some pictures to help jog the memory of what was. 

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Words and Pictures. Are they connected? Yes. And No. The words are really just a way to add space between the pictures so that they don't all crowd up on one another. The pictures should stand by themselves. Sort of like the Cheese. But then the words have to stand alone too. They can be sometimes a tool to suggest something about a picture that might not be immediately obvious to the viewer but was, at least for a fleeting second, obvious to the writer. What can the words relate about this image, for example? Is it about the loneliness of a plastic potted plant? No, I don't think so. Is it about the sleekness of metal ventilation pipes, maybe. No. Myself, I think it's about No Diving. There's something Universal about the concept of No Diving. Everyone can understand that. So, now I think, "Enough said". 

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"Wait for our call." It had rained all the day before. It didn't matter, though. The man stayed in the room all day waiting for the call. He hadn't left once. Spent the day pacing, looking out of the window overlooking an alley at the rain. The stranger had told him to stay in this hotel and to wait for a call. The call would tell him where to leave the money. After the stranger had the money he would call back and give the man information about the whereabouts of his son who had been missing now for seven months. After he disappeared, he and his wife waited for word and then began to look for their son themselves. They hired people to find him, but all leads had come to nothing. Now he had to wait in this room for the call. He pulled back the drapes and looked out at the alley. There he saw a dagger blade of sunlight slashing across the wall of windows. The windows all had their blinds drawn shut. Then the phone rang. 

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The "Gates" are grand! They are everywhere, seemingly, in Central Park. You can see them over here, over there, over hill and down in the valley. They are a color one normally doesn't see in February: a golden, crimson, saffrony orange, depending on where the sun is shining. We met friends at the Met and walked downtown to the zoo and then out of the park. It was crowded on the first day, Saturday. It was less crowded at 92nd Street on Sunday when Miles and I went back because my camera's batteries pooped out on Saturday. I overheard a lot of people questioning the "art" value of what Christo and Jeanne-Claude have put together. For me, it is obviously art. The first aspect of the art is the $20+ million that they raised to make this happen. Can you do that? I certainly can't. That, my friend, is art! Performance art, even. Another aspect of the art for me is all the people. There were thousands upon thousands of people roaming around Central Park on a cold February day looking at, touching, and talking about over 7,000 saffron drapes that looked pretty much alike; having their picture taken with the "Gates" above them; walking with tiny dogs or gigantic dogs that looked more like small cows, pushing strollers with bundled up little people in them, eating, smoking, talking, laughing, walking and talking about the "Gates". There are few people that I can think of who could make so many people happy at the same time. Bush can't do it. Kerry couldn't do it. The Pope can sometimes do it, but not too often. It was like Woodstock without the dope or music. Ya shoulda been they-ah! 

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