blind spot

I bought it in a store downtown while in a weird mood. I needed something to replace what use to be in the spot. Something given to me by someone close to me. Something I couldn't bear to look at anymore cause it didn't represent what it use to. For too long a time I ignored the signs that things were different cause I didn't have the energy to go down that road. So confusion and fear got tucked in a corner. And then little by little I brought the pieces out and although I didn't like it I began to reflect on them and they were all adding up to the same conclusion. Then there were the clever let-me-pretend-she-won't-see signs that I wasn't suppose to pick up on but I did.

And then came the spot on the wall. The physical reminder in my face. The replacement hit me full blast in what I tried to cover for so long. So now my home is empty of all reminders. Except for the one in my chest and though I don't feel pain it hurts like hell. I guess this is the closest thing I've come to in having a broken heart and I don't like it. I don't like it one fucking bit.

Too bad there isn't a replacement for that.

two opposite ends of the spectrum

one street, sparse with people, a long iron chain fence on what was at one time a gas station and a decrepit tenement, at least it was when I was there before. Hanging vertically along the middle is a large hand painted poster, the blurry image of a man with a gun pointed at another. In middle blazing with red and white letters:

Don't shoot! I LOVE my life!!


another street, sparse with people, trees galore. A little girl sits at a table close to the ground, books scattered around her, all on the sidewalk. children's books. She smiles up as I walk by.

" Books are twenty five cents and lemonade and cookies are free with purchase!"

Mother asks her to speak up as I politely ask her opinion of the tattered paperbacks. I buy one and get two cookies while that poster is still in my mind.

tonic for the day

The start of a long weekend and I wake up early, apparently no sleeping late for me. I sat in the chair wondering what or more likely where I should go. Someplace different, the small voice said. Someplace you haven't been to in awhile. I glanced at the clock and debated for 10 minutes whether I would have time to get dressed and head to the train station and go someplace different. The good voice won and being extra early I actually made it to the station in enough time to warrant not flying up the stairs with a minute to spare.

It was nice being on a train with hardly any people on it and actually silent. Something I really needed to be enveloped in. Not city silence, where you can always hear the slight hum of life going on somewhere but the kind of silence that only happens in those far off places in the country, or for me a forty minute train ride out. Trees that rolled on hills for miles and miles and long roads that seemed to go on forever in the distance. I could mentally unwind without the interruption of an outside force infringing on it. I sat on an actual hill by myself and thanked my lucky stars that I had ventured to this place that I hadn't been to in awhile.

The return trip that brought me back was quite different. Hundreds of people tired of silence, looking for noise and making lots of it too. I had no choice but to use static noise to drown them out. But before the headphones slipped in my ears I glanced at a girl who couldn't have been more than 14 years old having an argument with her dad and using phrases I never would have mumbled at that age:

It's only a two year contract, why can't I get one?? I need an upgrade. If you don't want the five dollar bundle then just cancel it. It's not fair! If anything happens and I'm in a place where my phone won't work...."

When I was her age my parents were yelling at me cause I would spend my allowance money on books, would wear shoes and jackets into the ground and refused to ask for new ones and if I needed to reach family in an emergency I either used a payphone or went to the school office to use a desk phone. And secretly wishing that I had the means to find my own silent space from everyone. The bus outside my mother's house was not an option and the alluring train station located downtown was off my radar except for the rare instance a family member came in by train.

I wouldn't discover that escape route for almost nine years later. And thank my lucky stars that I did.

a spoon full of sugar

if my week goes as nuts as the last one I am barricading myself in here:

New York Public Library-circa 1910

and I'm not coming out till Friday. I would rather deal with the antics of The Dutchman, The Bug and Mad Dog.

Banana oil

this is me after the most spastic week I've had in a long time. Thank god it's the weekend and I can detox and go back to mildly looking like a sane person....

guess I'm not the only one who was living in lala land, there's a man singing outside my window, off key without a care in the world and it's almost midnight.

sometimes...

Sometimes I wish I could jump in the picture and follow those tracks to the end.

Elevated tracks along 8th Avenue, 1905










Sometimes I wish I could jump in the picture to see what it was like..


Fifth Avenue-Easter 1915

And sometimes, I want to jump in just because....

Place Unknown, 1941

*all photos from Shorpy

stopped me in my tracks

running around the office like a cat chasing catnip, numbers to crunch thrown at me at all angles...

lunch time...dash down the stairs into the sauna better known as the subway to my second home that I haven't been to in awhile. Guards actually smile with a greeting " Where you been?"

" Hiding"

Sourly gatekeeper still there, wearing a wrist brace to go with his already somber ensemble of plaid shirts and thick glasses. Would have time to feel a nano second of sympathy but I'm too busy fighting with a broken microfiche machine and wondering if someone else sprained it on purpose. Clock ticks by.

Back to the office when I hear from the desk in the corner as I whizz by:

" You know, for a 29 year old woman you are very unusual...very unusual. But in a good way." A wide grin is on the source's face, a woman who does not shell out compliments on a regular basis.

"Thanks, I take that as a compliment."

"As you should!"

"I wouldn't want to be like everyone else."