For those of you who are wondering if you can have it all. The answer is yes, but there’s a catch. The arc of life is long, so don’t expect to have it all at the same time.
—Valerie Jarrett: Be Flexible. Be Resilient. (via khuyi)
(via dpstyles)
Floyd Bennet Field by FreeVerse Photography on Flickr.
We took an overnight camping trip to Floyd Bennett Field. A small campground in Brooklyn that’s near the old runways and some old aircraft hangars. I forgot my camera, but I found some good pics on flickr.
Love Takes Hostages
Came across this treatise on love today.
Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up a whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life… You give them a piece of you. They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like ‘maybe we should be just friends’ or ‘how very perceptive’ turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It’s a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love.
-Neil Gaiman in the sandman
Rene Gruau
rientro notturno on Flickr.
abbiamo fatto un’ po’ tardi …
Beck’s “Song Reader”
If you don’t know, Beck is releasing an album as sheet music.
The opening up of the music, the possibility of letting people work with these songs in different ways, and of allowing them a different accessibility than what’s offered by all the many forms of music available today, is ultimately what this collection aims for. The songs here come with piano arrangements and guitar chords—as well as parts for brass instruments, in one case, and ukulele chords, in others—but personalizing and even ignoring the arrangements is encouraged. Don’t feel beholden to what’s notated. Use any instrument you want to. Change the chords; rephrase the melodies. Keep only the lyrics, if desired. Play it fast or slow, swung or straight. Take a song and make it an instrumental or an a cappella. Play it for friends, or only for yourself. These arrangements are starting-off points; they don’t originate from any definitive recording or performance.
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/11/beck-a-preface-to-song-reader.html#ixzz2CE19GAHz
The idea of an album released as sheet music really grabbed my attention. So needless to say, I’m excited about the project and looking forward to seeing interpretations on the internet (and attempting my own). The marriage of the traditional “song book” with the distribution and organic growth that can occur on the internet could be a fascinating union.
My Hurricane Sandy
My friends live in an apartment building in Williamsburg on the East River and as residents of the “Zone A” flood region had to evacuate. They would be allowed to return after Hurricane Sandy, when the city said it was safe. So my friends, now evacuated refugees, arrived at my apartment just before 7pm, right around the time the MTA closed subway transportation in preparation for the storm. The buses would run for another 2 hours.
I didn’t do much in terms of preparation. I didn’t even hear that Hurricane Sandy was coming until a few days earlier, and even then it didn’t register as important. As the news coverage increased and the city issued more warnings, I begrudgingly made some half-hearted preparations. On Sunday morning, I went to the dollar store to purchase batteries, candles and a powerless drip coffee maker. Going days without coffee sounded unpleasant. I filled plastic bottles full of water from the kitchen sink. And I took a trip to the grocery store to stock up on non-perishables, which in my case resulted food for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
Ironically, a month before the storm, I was doing a lot of planning regarding this very weekend. Some friends who can rarely find a free moment to get together, arranged to meet for drinks and we weren’t about to postpone. So after I finished my provisioning, I went uptown for a couple pints, to catch up, and hear about my friends’ preparations for the Hurricane. Everyone had storm anticipation, so we made hurricane jokes and talked about evacuations. Some friends who also lived in zone A were late as they were busy evacuating. Humorously, my zone A friends who stayed with me were convinced that their building did not have to evacuate. They believed that their building’s management would tell them of the evacuation well in advance. About 30 minutes later, they saw an email from the building’s management informing tenants of the evacuation. That somewhat ended the get together as they left for home to pack a few things. I left to go home and clean up as I suddenly had house guests for the foreseeable future.
Ironically, a month before the storm, I was doing a lot of planning regarding this very weekend. Some friends who can rarely find a free moment to get together, arranged to meet for drinks and we weren’t about to postpone. So after I finished my provisioning, I went uptown for a couple pints, to catch up, and hear about my friends’ preparations for the Hurricane. Everyone had storm anticipation, so we made hurricane jokes and talked about evacuations. Some friends who also lived in zone A were late as they were busy evacuating. Humorously, my zone A friends who stayed with me were convinced that their building did not have to evacuate. They believed that their building’s management would tell them of the evacuation well in advance. About 30 minutes later, they saw an email from the building’s management informing tenants of the evacuation. That somewhat ended the get together as they left for home to pack a few things. I left to go home and clean up as I suddenly had house guests for the foreseeable future.
After my friends arrived, we bar hopped for a bit and called it a night around 11pm. From my apartment, the storm still didn’t seem scary strong, some wind and a little rain, so we went to bed expecting the weather to worsen on Monday. In the morning, the weather still didn’t appear that bad. I started working from home around 9am, and Jake and Caroline took food matters into their own hands and went to the still open super market for better provisions. From here on out, the rest of our time was spent cooking, drinking, watching bad movies, and waiting. The storm continued with blustering winds, but we never lost power and were largely unaware of struggles in other parts of the city. On Tuesday, the storm had lifted, and my friends were able to return to their apartment.
After the storm, I went to survey my neighborhood’s damage. Some trees fell down, a sunken boat sat idly in the Gowanus canal, and some basement flooding occurred in buildings near the canal. Much of Manhattan was without power and the city doesn’t know when the subways will return to normal. Looking forward, the most concerning issues are appearing a few days after the storm. Gas is in limited supply. The stations that are open are controlled and regulated by the police, and there is growing concern of an approaching winter storm coinciding with a heating oil shortage.
In my neighborhood, even the Halloween decorations survived Hurricane #Sandy.
