the livest one (happy bday aliza eliazarov)

ilana panich took this and others one weekend in october, 2009, when we drove to CT to visit aliza for an autumnal fall jaunt. we were in a haze of post-icp everything. i remember coming back to williamsburg in these same clothes and sitting at pete's candy shop for leeor's bday. i remember shrugging off hugs and watching charlie and dieguito match each other in magic states...sarah and i slipped out the back door and sat on a bench on the corner of metropolitan and lorimer, calmly recapping the months behind, calm but angry, but calm...i remember aliza's stepfather's huge bed - have you ever seen a california king? - and i remember sleeping in quiet rooms, and i remember the massive furniture and the massive tv and the hershey's kisses in the huge living room. i remember the hike we took, the apples we bought, and the ponies we sided. relax, it's just a side pony, i said. i remember mostly though aliza's gaze and how you want to make her laugh. live from israel, her father's outline, slim hands / warm touch, the livest one. and the youngest in any room, that i've ever been in, truly.
HB, Amiga.

(A & E)

chocolate-dipped key lime pie after the worst month of 2011

cosas que me gustan del www, #25 (doty man, petiteness)

when aliza was back in israel, looking after her Pop in the hospital, doty was at home recovering. he had plans to fix up this girls' bike that had been abandoned in their neighbors yard so that aleez could ride it when she got back, but at the time both wheels were flat, the chain and pedals were rusty and gross, everything was unridable. somewhere between him making me jalapeño poppers (with chevre!?) and a watermelon + mint slushy and aliza's return he fixed up the bike. it is now a dainty tank, with shiny black wheels, and a lustrous frame...if a tank can be dainty, this is that - although imagining aliza fly back and forth to israel and in and around various hospitals in the big apple makes me think that such a petite thing could be a tank, a tank indeed...i think the basket on the front could probably fit flowers or produce from the saturday morning farmer's market at mc carren park, or maybe it should just house a whole bunch of open space; affording a weightlessness in the front that she probably needs to make it easier to get over the humps that brooklyn, the borough, presents its riders from time to time...in their apartment is a catalog of various birds accompanied with beautiful illustrations, a book by goethe on color theory, red-hued snapshots from the late 70s and 80s of blond baby boys and tan baby girls, unicorn coasters, a mini-suitcase, a horned animal skull, a guitar, a soft couch that i offend with the bottoms of my popcorn-smelling vanned-feet, and an abundance of fresh sky blue and warm, familial rose...i see and feel these colors as i hear his murmurs, the surprising nature of which ignite the brightness and clarity of her suspended, infectious, quakes of laughter.

most wonderful photograph of 9 year old in existence

evidence that one is born with or wi/o swag, before the word had even done been that.

look at my girl, 1

she the youngest one here.