The 95 Herbert Street Girls

6 and 4. Pink and Pink. The kinds of kids who approach you without fear and touch your shirt and hair without really looking AT you, just sort of graze over you, like you were a new mountain with new flora and new fauna to poke at...and then, when you see them on Monday morning on the train platform with many overdressed 20-somethings nearby, their innocence is overwhelming to you in their yellow-lion-hooded-rain-coats...and when they recognize you it is a comfortable recognition and they barrel around you but without any regard TO you - even as you make awkward monday morning small talk with their equally comfortable father...this older terrain who has, clearly, for 6 and 4 years been trampled on and over and shaped by the hooves of these two beautiful, pink-haired-ponies.

statuettes in the wet

cara arbol

(in the sky above, in the tall grass, and the ones i love)

Me by Olive / Olive by My Cell Phone

...in the afternoon light, praise be there is some, me and lil' O walk around midwood, bk...today i had no camera...when i do i find myself sooooooo wanting to shoot that even shrubs are becoming sexy and i think my next roll of film will consist of every porch swing i've seen with olive during our walks from cortelyou road to newkirk and back... today we took some extra time to poke around backyards that weren't ours but that were so inviting / open i was sure if anyone HAD caught us out there playing they would have said "ohhh youuuuu guys...do you want ice in your lemonade?" knock on wood - this little lady and i get along. she knows it's a professional relationship and treats it as such. she's not clingy or teary or whiney or mean or TOO possessive. she is not a clown per sé nor does she find many things hillarious but she IS quick to smile and loves her best friend gustavito most of all and exercises her 40+ (?) word vocabulary with aplomb for most of the day...questions?! don't ask...although perhaps she's just posing rhetorical questions and I'M the asshole...i noticed last week she can't pronounce the "k" or "q" sounds and so today as we were trespassing along 17th and 18th streets i began asking her where the kitty kats were and if she'd seen any because i'm a kid too, and boy do i love titty tats.

Well All Right, Then (3/13/81)

last night, after 12 midnight, i found myself in a very small room in a very polish part of town with an exclusively irish crowd. i mean irish. the type of irish whose grandparents say "Ay-Tals" instead of "Ih-tallions" and that's ok. matty mc D was one of them, drawing on a brogue i had no idea he could do. one night he's cookin' me pesto and the next night he's talkin' about his grandparents in ireland all living to be 100+ years old. yes, genes...did he realize, at any point during the evening, that he was standing next to a darling brunette who had the exact same profile as his? it was brilliant. and i forgot to ask him...anyhow, outside it was coming down. but no need for an umbrella - you'll just end up being made the fool...after ransacking the host's vinyl collection, realizing that the irish had rhythm and soul, and ingesting something called 'buckfast,' i shoved my hands into my pockets and decided to meet the dawn, eyes squinty, hair fuzzy. i was thankful it was not yet light out and thankful i had someone to walk with. we walked against the rain along the BQE, passing through a park with an irish name (Pat McCormack park????...where are my fact checkers by the way...) that reminded me of a budget prospect park with those arches/columns that run closer to coney island avenue and lefferts, etc...you know? he was walking fast but most people do compared to me. i suppose in that kind of downpour one doesn't stroll...although i don't mind strolling...perfunctory questions ensued, but genuinely, and he soon related a story about changing a child's nappies earlier that week and not knowing anything about changing nappies but really what's to do but wipe the ass and shine it clean?! you figure out all this stuff on the job, you know? i do.

i found herbert street and the night ended and the morning came and so did the afternoon and the rain continues and i have finally found use for this photo. sarah steele neé garelle would say "your pictures never show your face...you're always hiding...." ha! there is no face here, my love...just a familiar landscape, with a familiar tone, and a familiar message...one she maybe doesn't understand because she must understand and take me as i am now, and have been for years...not as that entitity 'sahara' whose tranquility she didn't understand as a 7 year old...but it's the same, just illustrated with longer sentences...the photo is maybe too literal, i know, but what to you want?!...although the grouch prefers and maybe expects nothing but darkness or solitude, it is of course the bursts of light and color that prompt and drive everything...everything about everything...i still maintain that i was me, then - when all i drew was rainbows. never a variation on the order of the colors. it was perfect - like mathematics should have been...the same wonderful line-up, and always ALWAYS beautiful. have you ever seen a double rainbow over highway 99? mm hmm. i maintain that this is where i come from, not that other place that doesn't want to 'celebrate' birthdays...i celebrate all the time, but quietly and when it strikes me...i celebrate you when i see something that reminds me of you, i celebrate you at my own expense via nostalgia, i chortle like a lunatic on the train if i think of something you said, i celebrate that i knew you at 15, or 8, or if i met you yesterday, i pray for your happiness and that you find him, i celebrate knowing that happiness of course comes from HERE (HERE) and pray that i can actually instill that belief in my core some day...maybe not today but...and today! today today today i celebrate today as the greyest of all fucking days the year has seen, the drabbest and the bleakest, the quietest, the MOST lonely of all days, it's just me and you, borjita ----- and i can do this wholeheartedly because i know wholeheartedly that while it is usually raining outside and in -- there is actually a chance of sunshine here.

most things should be done wholeheartedly anyway. please locate yours, playboy, and let it beat...................
beat.............
................beat..............(some of us have rhythm)...

without the heart there can be no progress. mark twain said that.

The Image (Of All Time)

i don't think i need words for this photo. it is as much a memory of mine ( i wasn't even there ) as it is a very familiar piece of paper, a fantastic object, a very heavy representation of us / various seasons / seasons that haven't happened yet...i look at this photo several times a month. in my head it is an iconic image.

i think sometimes being speechless is a good thing. i imagine that when it's good...when it's good...you sometimes have less to say.

For Those Pisces, Whom I Know Feel Like I Feel

supposedly this is a good year for pisces. something about jupiter, also mars, and uranus, too... but seriously, i was supposed to meet the love of my life on the 3rd of march and that day came and went...i did meet up with jj that night so i guess the thing about horrorscopes is that there's always a twist to it...say you read: 'today will be a good day for your health...' maybe it's not that you go work it out at the gym and pat yourself on the back but rather that you'll smell a flower on the street or something, which in turn actually is, probably good for you. that sort of thing. so who knows. i read it in february and got excited but i think i'm going to lay off the horrorscopes for a minute. here are some orange pisces for you on my expired roll of film #3.

happy birfday to dani, katie, mikey, beni and matty...gemelitos, gemelitos...

Expired film #2, Situation Sort Of Newstand

RedBedRoomEyes

...la chiquitina. don't cross her. or else you never get to look at this face, which would be a damn shame, for you.

We Like What We Like

Message From A Girl I've Never Met in South America (also a Borja)

"Zuyimar Borja March 7 at 2:27am
Hola q emoción saber d ti... Mis hermanos están bien Zulynel la mayor tiene 3 hijos la mayor se llama klaudia de 12 años , alain Eduardo de 9 años y ángel Eduardo de 8 años , suyin mi otra hermana tiene 2 niñas la mayor nesielka de 10 años y victoria de un año... Mis padres están bien yo tengo 18 años, mandame tu correo y ah ya m contacte con mi tío (tu papá)"

From my cousin, who is 18.

Lou, Shiraz

Mamazotas

i seen cuter.