Tracking the Postcards

So after convincing the lovely staff at the US Postal Service that I was not a crazy person they told me that basically the postcards on route to the East Coast would be traveling via truck. All other US bound destinations would travel by airplane as would the cards going to Taiwan and Portugal except for Portugal which may or may not go by boat, the woman did not know. All the cards are still currently in New York but as of tomorrow morning their adventure will begin.

Writing Postcards in Astor Place

Approaching New Yorkers with a clipboard and a smile......if New Yorkers have accomplished anything it's the art of ignoring the clipboard people! I became one of the clipboard people and got ignored, a lot! I approached New Yorkers as the worked, sat, talked with friends, waited for the walking man light, and drank coffee in Astor Place. My method was simple. I approached people who looked friendly, people who weren't carrying a lot of things and people who didn't look like they were in a rush.
My line: "Would you like to send a postcard to anyone in the world for free" I tired out a variety of opening lines and this was the one that got the most takers. I then went on to explain the project and that if they wanted to write a postcard I would drop it in the mail for them. I think I approached 100 people and got 45 postcards which I feel is pretty good. Of those who wrote cards they thought it was great and not to give myself too much credit, I think I made some peoples days. For those who said no, some were polite, others, well just downright mean. I got quite a few "No, I would NOT like to do that." Polite but also a bit harsh. Most of the postcards are staying in the country but one is going to Taiwan and the other is on its way to Portugal. A lot more people would have written internationally but they didn't know the address of the top of their head. These postcards are another 45 reasons why I love New York and the people who will stop for the clipboard people!

Where Are We Going? Where Have We Been?

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Postcards From New York

Astor Place Manifesto

Postcards from New York: Past, Present, and Future

One hundred and fifty nine years ago 22 people were killed and at least 38 were injured on the corner of East 8^th Street and Astor Place. In 1849, the Astor Place Riot was the deadliest civic disturbance between the poor and the upper class in the urban United States to date. This history was unknown to me. However, it fueled my thinking of the New York history that is buried beneath Starbucks’, parks, and glass condominiums. The opening line of Michel Foucault’s “Of Other Spaces (1967), Heterotopias” reads, “The great obsession of the nineteenth century was, as we know, history.”[i] That may have been the case in the 19^th century, but in the 21^st century, history seems to be nothing more than the past, a mere afterthought.

In 1847, the Astor Place Opera House (now home to a Starbucks and an upscale residential apartment building) opened to serve as an outlet for wealthy theatergoers who wanted to avoid the immigrant clientele of the East village and the “Five Points” section of lower Manhattan who frequented the Bowery Theater (located at Bowery between Canal and Hester). The new Astor Place Theater, with its high ticket prices and dress code, became a symbol of classism and Anglophila to many working class New Yorkers.

On May 10, 1849 a crowd of 20,000, predominantly Irish immigrants and working class first generation born Americans, crowded into the Astor Place streets to protest English actor William Macready’s appearance in Macbeth. The residents of the Bowery, the Five Points, and the East Village had their own leading actor in mind, American born, Edwin Forrest. Incensed by Macready’s appearance and the encroachment of the “upper class” into lower Manhattan and fueled by tensions between the Irish and English, the crowd of 20,000 stormed the Opera House. The police arrived but could not quell the riots so the National Guard was called in. The New York Tribune reported, “the Opera House resembled a fortress besieged by an invading army rather than a place meant for the peaceful amusement of civilized community."[ii] The soldiers prepared to fire and when the rioters did not disperse, the order was given to fire directly into the crowd. The quote from the Tribune makes me question the roles we attach to certain physical spaces. And what happens when that role changes and becomes something else, how do we reckon with the new identity of the place? In the case of the Astor Place Theater, it closed six years later because the riot was unforgettable and the theatre went bankrupt. A place for art and drama had become a war zone and subsequently a graveyard.
Astor Place Riot: NYPL Digital Library

I came across this history while researching Astor Place as the location of my project. I was initially drawn to Astor Place because of its crossroads of streets and neighborhoods that predate Manhattan’s city grid. As road’s criss-cross each other, and traffic, both vehicular and pedestrian converge in a messy battle over who has the right-of-way, Astor Place, to me, has always been a place where one can truly get lost in the city. Geographically and architecturally, Astor Place represents the old and the new and both its 19th century and 21st century architecture have become monuments of the city. Astor Place is famous for its three Starbucks’ and it’s recently finished undulating glass apartment building designed by Charles Gwathmey.
But equally famous is the dingy opening to St. Marks Place, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art established in 1859, and the Astor Place subway station which, completed in 1904, is one of the original twenty-eight stations in the subway system.

Charles Gwathmery’s glass apartment building



Cooper Union

Astor Place is not as monumental in the same sense of Times Square or the Empire State building, locations recognizable to those outside of New York; however, Astor Place is a landmark to New Yorkers. As one walks through Astor Place, the buildings stand in opposition with each other as history is torn down with each new renovation, razing, and new construction. One’s senses are on overload as the visual mix of architecture and the converging streets and people bombard you. Men and women in business suits carrying Starbucks coffee cups collide with students carrying Mud coffee cups from the Mud truck dutifully parked on 4^th Ave. and 8^th Street. Skateboarders meet residents, and men selling pipes rub elbows with book sellers and artists while the smell of falafel coming from St. Marks and Halal street vendors makes your stomach growl. Car and taxi horns are used in abundance and cell phone conversations are heard in stereo from every direction. The vibrant crossroads of Astor Place give way to the collision of histories and identities; thus, allowing itself the opportunity for people to open a dialogue with their pasts.

History and identity have always gone hand-in-hand in my mind. As someone unsure of my own identity and history, I am drawn to places rich in history but where identities become muddled and histories collide. My first idea for a final project was to do something in my 125^th St. neighborhood in Harlem. A historically rich African American neighborhood, the community continues to grow as West African immigrants move to New York and African hair braiding stores share walls with soul food restaurants. Krzysztof Wodiczko’s writing in Critical Vehicles had a strong influence on my desire to explore issues of the immigrant, identity, the voiceless, and history in New York. In “Designing for the City of Strangers” he writes about the immigrant experience in the urban city and the history of the “victors” and the “vanquished.” He writes, “The city is reconceived with each new immigrant, assuming that an open communication exists between the immigrant and all others.”[i] I began to think about what open communication truly means, what role the immigrant plays in shaping the city, and questions of authority. In Astor Place the working class immigrants, the “vanquished,” rioted against the upper class “victor.” The “vanquished” challenged authority and many were killed because of it. New York has many examples of authorities overstepping boundaries and literally opening fire on people inhabiting public spaces. How do people continue to interact with these spaces? Most of the time people don’t know the history of what has happened there. The protests of the “vanquished” communities in lower Manhattan led to the closure of the Astor Place Opera House. The “vanquished” protested and they won but not without a reminder of who still has the power. I wonder if the riot had not occurred, would the opera house still be in use today and how would the geography of Astor Place differ?

Later in his writings Wodiczko refers to specific “communicative instruments” that could be used to both heal the immigrant’s trauma of resettling as well as act as a conduit between the immigrant, “the vanquished,” and the “victor.” This hit a cord with me because this is exactly the thinking I am trying to work out as I teach photography and video to the “vanquished” and subsequently, the “voiceless.” Simply put, how do, and how can, people talk to each other?

As my thinking process continued and I decided on Astor Place for the location of my final project I began to question how I could relate these questions of history and immigrant identity to my Astor Place location. Researching the history of Astor Place informed me that it too is a neighborhood of immigrants and untold history. Wodiczko writes, “‘where are you from?,’ should never replace, ‘in what way can your past and present experience contribute to everybody’s well-being today and tomorrow?’”[ii] This led to questions I personally ask myself often: before I work with others to make their voices heard, I first need to know who I am, where I come from, how my past is contributing to today, and perhaps most importantly, where my voice is?

I thought, what if I gave people the opportunity to write to their past? To remind themselves where they came from in order to think about where they are going. With this question guiding me I began to question more and more the issues of communication: speaking, writing, the Internet, email, letters, postcards, telephones, webcams, and speakerphones. Issues of time, space, and place arose as I questioned the difference between writing and sending an email and writing and sending a letter. One can physically touch a letter, turn it over, feel it, and smell it. It is left with the marks of its travels, stamps, creases, ink smudges. While email is certainly faster by collapsing international time zones and the days it would normally take for a letter to cross the oceans, an email still remains intangible. As we write something it immediately becomes past, this sentence is now history. In an email you can get responses in seconds while in a letter it may take days. The history of a few minutes is far different than the history of a few days. While the Internet collapses time, “snail mail” extends it by allowing the present to be remembered days after.

I wonder how many of us have written a letter or a postcard in the last week, month, or year? With email this method of communication appears to be outdated and yet nothing quite compares to opening your mailbox and seeing a letter or postcard addressed to you. But I don’t mean to evoke a pre-Internet nostalgia, I for one could not say when the last time I used “snail mail;” however, I am interested in both the tangibility of the postcard and the ability for people to write postcards in the middle of the street.

My project consists of present day postcards of New York City. The postcards depict the immortalized monuments of the city: Central Park, The Statue of Liberty, The Empire State Building, Times Square, etc. Postcards are typically associated with vacation and tourism. They depict pictures of city monuments and landmarks and allow the writer a limited amount of space to write. My aim is to take the intangible, impersonal scale of “monumental New York” and bring it down to a tangible personal account, a message on a postcard. While tourists frequent Astor Place, I am interested in approaching residents of the city and asking them to write a postcard that I will then mail to wherever the address is in the world. Tourists are not excluded however. I want to give people the opportunity to write to their home town, the house they grew up in, or their parents. People can also write to old friends, old loved ones, or even to themselves. My definition of “old” is not limited. If people want to write to a friend they haven’t talked to in a day, a week, or a year, that’s fine. Ideally I would like the opportunity to be able to track the postcards and create a Google map indicating all the locations the postcards will travel to. I imagine a web forming as planes criss-cross each other delivering mail across the oceans. New York is a city of immigrants from places throughout the country and abroad. Not only will this map show where people are coming from but will also show all the places they could potentially go. By building an online map I am utilizing both “historic” methods of communication, handwritten postcards, and more present methods of communication, the Internet.

The writer can sign the postcards or they can be anonymous. The anonymity allows for people to share things that they might not share otherwise. As Wodiczko speaks of a communicative device to act between the “victor” and the “vanquished,” a postcard could serve as therapy, to get something out in the open, or simply a way to say hello.

Foucault writes, “We do not live inside a void that could be colored with diverse shades of light, we live inside a set of relations that delineates sites which are irreducible to one another and absolutely not superimposable on one another.”[iii] This resonated with me as we are products of our own pasts as well as the pasts of those around us and the actions of those who came before us and before them. We are products of what happened five minutes ago and what happened five years ago. As the postcards take a few days to reach their destination new history will have happened in that span of time and the postcard will become outdated.

Postcards, unlike sealed letters, are public. Not only will I be able to read the postcards but the post office staff will be able to as well. I can, if I so choose, to share particularly interesting postcards with friends or with the class. People who choose to write a postcard do so knowing that their privacy might not be upheld. Postcards however are still private. They are a letter from one person to another and people can choose to disclose what they want. The streets of New York are both public and private as well. People joke that New Yorkers don’t smile at each other or say hi to one another on the street. People are in their private spaces: headphones on, head down, eyes straight ahead. However, nothing is seemingly more public than the streets of New York. By engaging with my fellow New Yorkers and removing them from the privacy of their own thoughts and actions I am contributing to the democratic nature of New York streets where on any given day and on any given street corner you can be talked to, yelled at, given a leaflet, asked for money, spat upon, laughed at, or ignored.

In this project I am acting as a conduit between people in Astor Place and their pasts as well as their futures. Sometimes in New York it’s easy to get caught up in yourself, your work, and your daily interactions with the city. At most I want to give people the opportunity to take a moment and say hi to someone they haven’t talked to in a while. By tracking the postcards, the project will culminate in an online map of moving history as it travels throughout the world. As Foucault suggests, we don’t live in a void without history. By remembering our own history we are better prepared for the future.

Astor Place Mapping

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Yay history!!

death of hard drive number 2

so this morning my computer decided to die. the end of sophomore year my hard drive died right before finals and today it seems only fitting that i have come full circle to have my hard drive die again right before the last finals of my educational career. the wonderful people at TechServe are replacing it so i'm holed up at the 3rd North computer lab amused by the wardrobe choices of our peers. i'm writing my manifesto and felt inclined to write a post since its been a while. hi gang!

Mapping links from CNN segment

http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/2006/12/50-things-to-do-with-google-maps.html

http://oilmoney.priceofoil.org/federalRaceGraph.php

why the Tenement Museum in NY is the most popular place in the world...

Answer...I don't know, I couldn't get in it was that popular! Emily and I went today only to be met with a big Sold Out message!
We took pictures of us looking sad but they wont turn vertical :( We ran into Jesse who must have gotten the last ticket, he is on the tour as I type this...hope it's great Jesse!
While I was waiting outside for Emily this old German man from Delaware struck up a conversation. We talked mostly about the weather but then we started talking about old buildings in NY. I kept turning my head away from him evidently when I was talking because he kept grabbing my arm and telling me that I have to talk facing him otherwise his hearing aid wouldn't work. I didn't realize I had been turning away, it was kinda weird. We talked about the oldest Italian restaurant in NY which is close to the theater district, we both decided that old things were cool! Getting to the Tenement Museum is going to be my quest...I want to know why the lines wrap around the corner...

Where's Erin...the online version

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so i don't exactly know what we were supposed to do because MyMaps is really bare bones but also kind of a pain to use. I thought I would do an audio thing with pictures because everywhere I go there is music associated with a place or memory. So I wrote about that but I couldn't put the song in the map which was my original intent. I also started off thinking I would link to places I'd been recently which is I guess what I did but I didn't really put a time bracket on it. Hannah you said last week you wanted us to dive right instead of just sticking our toes. I feel this week I stuck in my toenail and not much else. I've been thinking of ideas I want to do but they don't seem possible to execute without a lot of fancy gadgets, time, and money. But i know i'm also copping out.

MyMaps Help

Hey gang. Does anyone know how to do anything cool with Google My Maps for next class. All I can do is make points and write comments. Is there a way to add pictures or audio?

Food Court Musical

Ok I swear this will be the last one of these I post but I love these people. As for the conversation about putting something in the public sphere......



Here's the link to the website that has a bunch - http://improveverywhere.com/

Yuta's photos version 3.0

Glass of Water

So I'm learning a lot about the state of the world's water and it's kind of freaking me out. I'm reading this book "Blue Covenant The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water," I recommend it. Anyways, there was an article in the NY Times on the 8th about drug traces in the nation's drinking water.

I decided to use excerpts from the article for this assignment. I printed this on a water glass.

An Associated Press investigation shows a vast array of pharmaceuticals -- including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones -- have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans.

The New York state health department and the USGS tested the source of the city's water, upstate. They found trace concentrations of heart medicine, infection fighters, estrogen, anti-convulsants, a mood stabilizer and a tranquilizer.

Yet officials in New York City did not go on to test their drinking water.

“Drug Traces Common in Tap Water” The New York Times. March 10, 2008.

I went to Union Square during lunch time on Monday and put the glass on one of Lawrence Weiner's Manhole Covers which say, "In direct line with another and the next."

Quite a few people stopped and read the glass. After about 20 minutes a teenage girl knocked over the glass and a group of people crowded around looking very distraught and seemingly looking for the owner of the glass. The glass was put upright and the group scattered.

adventures in stalking

So I've tried a couple different strategies of stalking. On Friday i got on the train and decided i would just pick someone out and follow them. i spotted a woman in a bright red hat because i figured it would be easy to keep an eye on her. we were on the A-train and rode it downtown from 125th (where i got on, she was already on the train) to 34th st. at this point we got off the train and started walking towards the empire state building. after about 3 blocks she went inside an office building. i went to follow but got stopped by security. i needed an ID to get into the building and the woman with the red hat was out of my life forever.

i still had some time so i decided to pick another random person off the street. this was a guy who might possibly have been 7 ft tall. i followed him to Starbucks where he emerged with a large coffee beverage. he too then went into an office building and security shut me out once more.

i decided stalking in midtown on Friday mornings is not a good plan

so on Saturday i was at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens for the Making Brooklyn Bloom day of events. It was pouring rain and as I waited for my partner to arrive I decided to stalk a couple walking though the park. It was cold, windy and gray and I felt like I was in a movie playing the role of the cheated on girlfriend, 007, or the creeper stalker. I felt really weird taking pictures but i snapped this one on my cell phone I guess just as proof that i did this. I was really nervous that they would hear my phone take the picture because its obnoxiously loud. I was nervous the entire time that they would get wise and figure me out as we were basically the only people in the park and I had a giant umbrella so i wasn't exactly dressed in camo. i stayed maybe 20 ft away (i have no idea really, i'm bad with guessing distances).

I felt awkward because they were obviously a couple being "couplely" holding hands, stopping to kiss at a particularly attractive tree and i felt like i was totally violating their private space but they were in public so then i thought its free game. which freaked me out to think of people who watch me in public. i think what this assignment did was to make me feel incredibly paranoid that maybe i have a stalker! i think i'll become a hermit.

Gabcast is kicking my butt

so i cannot for the life of me find my "BlogID" so i cannot get Gabcast to work....is anyone having any luck??

An Ode to Lost Items of Clothing

Kabakov beat me to an idea that I've always wanted to do. In NY I feel at least once a week I find a lost item of clothing, a hat, a glove, a jacket. I've always to photograph them and then display them publicly throughout the city in places you might find the item like a photograph of a glove laying on the sidewalk. I always think of the people who lost an item of clothing and wonder how much time passed before they realized it was gone?

Kabakov and the Antenna

I'm kinda in love with this installation. Grass laying is by far one of my favorite past time and some of my life's best moments have happened laying in the grass on a sunny day watching the clouds go by.

This installation is of an Antenna. In between the antenna wires are the words,

"My Dear One! When you are lying in the grass, with your head thrown back, there is no one around you, and only the sound of the wind can be heard and you look up into the open sky --there, up above, is the blue sky and the clouds floating by--perhaps this is the very best thing that you have ever done or seen in your life."

In the explanation of the piece the words are supposed to glitter in the sun similar to a spiders web when the sun hits its silky threads. I can picture this clearly and it sounds quite beautiful. I like the play on nature vs. man made structures and how a man made structure like the antenna interrupts the skyline but then tries to make up for it by imitating nature. Like spider webs that cannot be seen well without light reflecting off it, I imagine the words in between the antenna's wires cannot be seen well if the sun isn't hitting them just right. It's almost a secret that only those who are patient enough can share in and enjoy.

An antenna is an icon of modern communication except this one is in the middle of nature and is designed to "speak" to one person and one person only, the grass layer. I love this twist on communication and makes me think that even though we are all connected by the Internet, cell phones, satellites, antennas etc. when I'm on my phone or on my computer I feel like it's just me talking to one other person, maybe two if I'm "gchatting" but either way it's an extremely personal thing.

I really wish Spring would hurry up, I miss grass.

spring cleaning came early

So the room switch has happened and then gone back to normal. I decided about half way through unloading my room that rearranging the furniture to a configuration that would be livable was not going to happen based on the size of my room. So I decided it would be more amusing to set up a modern art inspired installation that could sit at MOMA and people would ponder for hours what the significance of a stack of empty Shredded Wheat boxes beasted by a Grape Nuts box is. My roommates and I came up with various different anecdotes the winning one being:

The installation captures natures constant battle with confinement and metallic urban sprawl. This parallels a persons struggle living within the city which makes the bedroom location extremely profound. The reflection of consumerism outside natures barren cell suggests consumerism is mocking nature in triumphant but has a darker insecure side that is reflected. The mattresses against the wall conclude we are all living in an insane asylum and are a node to padded walls.
I think we are on to something here.....

But overall I actually really enjoyed this project....I think mostly because it gave me a chance to clean my room which brings me great joy. Although finding a cockroach was less then ideal and I will admit I freaked out for a good ten minutes!

I found this to be very therapeutic in a way. And while I put my room back exactly how it was before it was really nice to have to go through everything and clean and trash things. My room feels lighter now.

The Transformation

Old Room



New Room


The Process

the things you find in your room that you didn't want to know existed and now will prevent me from sleeping in this apartment comfortably ever again

ok wait, some more procrastination

Nicole sent me this link in a response to the NY Grand Central Station Freeze that I posted. Is it wrong that this amuses me so much!

it begins

so i have to start messing up my room.....i've been avoiding it until now. i keep changing the colors of my blog instead, i have commitment issues.......

in case you need another reason to love NY

Is a photograph a space?

hmmmmmm my first instinct is to say no. a photograph is a 2-D object, a piece of paper really. but then i think well if a photograph can evoke some kind of feeling or transport the viewer into a space of thought then maybe the image its self could be considered a space......actually i'm still thinking its not. maybe its just a mechanism to get into a space. is a novel a space, or a painting? the actual tangible object i don't think is, but the feeling one gets from it could be considered a space, a mental space. because i think spaces are more abstract and photographs are abstractions from reality then maybe a photograph is the closest thing to a tangible space. maybe a photograph exists in the realm of language which i believe is a space. language is not tangible or geographic or physical but it's real, it connects people to one another, its abstract, and it transports people. shared lingual spaces exist and different languages arise but those who speak the same language share the same communicative space. because you don't need to be able to speak or hear in order to look at a photograph, photos are spaces on their own that transcend all language.......ahhhh i still don't know if they are spaces and all this is making my head hurt!!

X/Y

It's 10 am on Sunday and the church bells are ringing, a signal that at this time one is supposed to be in a certain place and time and place are tied to each other. In the question what is place? and what is space? I feel like place is a geographic location ie. home, school, church, the sidewalk. Space is something less defined. But all places are spaces as well. Kind of like all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares. An apartment or store is a space as well as a place. But spaces can also be intangible. One can feel like she is in a "good space" or a "bad space." This claim may be based on energy flows or karma. You can also share space with someone. For example living with someone. Physically and geographically you share a "place": furniture, plates, the bathroom. But you also share "space" with each other which is something much more complex. When you live with some one you know their habits, what they like, how not to piss them off, you exist in a shared space where two individuals have to exist together on a plain (side note I just had to look up if it should be "plane" or "plain" in this context but couldn't find the answer) elevated from the physical. If a roommate leaves and a new person comes there is an undoubtedly an awkward transition period where even though the place and physicalness of it has not changed, the space has changed. Now you have to learn all over again how to function in this new space with a new person.

When you add the equation of time then your mind is blown all over again. Right now its 10:26 am Eastern Standard time. It's also 5:26 pm in South Africa or 17h26 because they use the 24 hour clock. My mind exists in both spaces. I am always consciously aware of what time it is in South Africa and what the people I care about are doing. I imagine schools, apartments, roads, parks that I know exist on the other side of the world and can transport myself not to the geographic place but into the space that I remember feeling there. I go back and forth wishing my mind wasn't split into these two time zones and loving the idea that a part of me still longs to be someplace else and working to fulfill that longing and return. This gives me a sense of balance but also a sense of instability and open-ended confusion.

I think people can find stability in spaces and places but can also feel instable and off balanced if a shift occurs. NY I think is a place where people find great comfort and great fear. It's also a city where everyone seems to be in transition from one place to the next. When I leave the city and then return I feel a sense of comfort returning to a place that I am familiar with and also the space of the ciy and the energy that comes with it. I was at Whole Foods the other day and a man in line behind me struck up a conversation about the Soy milk I was holding. We ended up leaving the store together and walking to the subway (the greatest example of a transitional place) talking the entire time about Soy Milk! After we parted ways I felt the space around me was altered. Everyone seemed to be smiling. Do you ever notice that all of NY shares the same mood. On the subway people are all really pissed off, or happy and polite and this sets the tone for the rest of the day.

.............I don't think this makes any sense at all!

countless numbers of beds

From moving to NY in August 2004 until now I have moved 11 times and slept in more beds in more places than i can keep count of. It occurred to me about two years ago while sleeping on a floor in South Africa that i should take a picture of all the beds i have slept in even if for just one night. I have not done this and its a regret of mine. I am OCD about my bed. I shower every night because the thought of getting into bed without being clean unsettles me.

I feel like the last 4 years of my life has been one transitional space to the next. I have this dream that one day I will be able to fit all of my belongings into a backpack and be able to get up and go when the moment takes me. I still have quite a bit of downsizing to do but I think I will get there.


My parents live an hour and a half outside the city. I didn't grow up there but I did some years of my high school career there. I really disliked the town. When I would be bored or hating life as many 16 year olds do I would paint on my wall. But now they are planning on moving and my bedroom just got painted. I will see it in a week when I go back to visit for a weekend. I had to take everything off the walls. My bed in their home is a water bed. Most people think this is weird mixed with cool mixed with comments about getting seasick.












My room in NY right now is perhaps the most transitional but also the most comfortable I have ever felt in any of my NY homes. I have no idea how long I will be here but I know it wont be long before I move on again. This makes me sad because it's an apartment and room that I actually feel is mine. Even though I have only lived here for 6 months I feel like a lifetime of events have happened and my apartment and my bed have been a solace as well as a discomfort. I am obsessed with my bed here.

I've always been nomadic to the point that living in one place for longer than a few years makes me a bit uneasy. I don't have a home town, a neighborhood street that I grew up on. I think that's why I am so obsessed with my bed and my rooms because I make them into homes that I get attached to for the time I spend in them and then I move on which oddly enough is not too terribly hard to do. It is a bit sad that my room at my parents house is no longer there. And I'll be sad to let this one in NY go.

Meditate on Whatever Causes A Revolution in Your Mind

I'm cleaning my room and I just found that line scribbled on an Apple Soho Store business card. I remember reading it somewhere and scrambling in my room for something to write it on and the Apple card must have been the closest thing. I was in the Apple store yesterday getting my computer checked out and my "Genius" is an electro-pop musician. He thinks Daft Punk might be the worst band ever.

on writing

an article I find particularly great

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/magazine/13Israel-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&sq=david%20grossman&st=nyt&scp=5ell

pretty background picture?

hey gang. i noticed some of you have pictures behind your title or don't have a title and just have a picture in that top section....can someone tell me how to add a pretty picture behind my title?
thank you kindly

i told my roommates we played "tackle the teacher" in class today, their facial expressions were pretty priceless

technology: friend or foe?

it took me 2 hours to post 6 pictures three of which are supposed to be vertical but refuse to be so. i thought this was supposed to simplify my life.......

NY Reflections

What I Carry With Me

Different Size Bags fill my room. Hanging on hooks on the wall of my bedroom different colors, textures, and sizes await to be picked for the day. Depending on whether I have class, if I'm going to the gym, how long I'm going to be away from home, how heavy the things I need are, how fragile, all these things determine which bag I use. Each bag has in it ready to go, chap stick, Kleenex, Ibuprofen, and pens. I place bags inside my bag. Gym bag, lunch bag, bag for my gym bag. At the gym this morning two women were talking about Hillary's comments after the State of the Union and how they wanted so bad to support her but then she made a comment that sent them over the edge. Something about Cheney shooting "some guy" in the face. They were upset because Hillary called him, "some guy" so they no longer support her. I wasn't quite sure what to make of this. Clearly Hillary could have used better terminology but to no longer support her because of that is a bit bizarre for me. I could understand not supporting her because of the baggage she brings with her but sometimes I think people just choose to like a candidate based upon really mundane things like their tie choices or what their voice sounds like......and yes, i know people who support Obama because they like his ties, and another who really likes the sound of McCain's voice. This gives me great fear come election time. It also makes me wonder what people found to possibly like about Bush because he has neither good ties or a nice voice. It's the last time for a Bush State of the Union it really is fantastic how all things come to an end.

First blog

sitting in the classroom, with everyone watching