It may be grad school but there are field trips. However, no bus, box lunch nor over-sized name badge in the shape of an animal. To see August Sander's spot-on portraits of types at The Met and then on to Metro Pictures to see (again for me) Cindy Sherman's self-clown-portraits. Barbara Gladstone next door had the day's greatest surprises, a sculpture show that skewed one's depth perception with work that delves in unexpectedly on itself, in cast steel and fiberglas. Anish Kapoor.
Boarded the 6 to 72 and right about 23 in came what was the day's first surprise, all 5'8" of her, about 55 and dressed for dancefloor success.
Paying little attention Yours Truly was thinking, thinking, thinking when I heard Her say to no one in particular, well, a seated no one, Let me sit down before I break my ass. I thought Ah, here's the 6 Train Oracle to greet me, guide me. But then.
She sat and then a few stops later I sat next to her. She was busy, reaching and sorting on her lap an extensive array of makeup that she was slathering (hold onto that word, make it last a good three seconds) colors all over her face. Red Nike swooshes on cheeks and forehead and chin. Then blended in. Eye liner, shadow and then... navy blue and silver sparkles tossed on top and underneath her eyes with abandon. Across from both of us were two 12 year old girls and a woman about the same age as the makeup lady whose faces at turns expressed humour, horror and then sorrow at the sad and careless/free exploitation of the sparkles.
She toddled off at 59, giving herself the sign of the ol' cross four times before detraining, perhaps to apply for a job at Scores, perhaps to meet her lover.
She left us plain faced riders feeling grateful we had not personally, mentally chosen to board the P or the I.
Painted Lady or the Insane trains.
Trained Love.

Cadillac need space to roll.
- The Roots, "The Seed"

This is what I prefer to see, a band (The Neighbors, band of adept guy rockers with ever-shifting cast of players save one Allen) that takes the time – the time! – to espouse the rock aesthetic and m.o. of Yours Truly. Just back from an Oban foray (see, Blogger is a left coast operation so blogging after midnight means that you may not be into a new day, but hours behind in a Cali last day) with two rock & roll pals in these SoHo parts.
And what a bar it was. If the lights were not all about resembling shortie condoms dangling in circles I may have sworn the theme was Ye Olde Wild West, via 1985. If you catch this drift. I had flashbacks to clubs full of bad haircuts, shoulder pads, and not a touch of irony anywhere except in an occasional snark rock classic.
There was a non-drinking couple so resolute and silent, staring straight ahead that I was certain that this couple was mis-directed, believing that they were in a train station, awaiting the late-night arrival of a handy train.
But caveat, riders.
The 1 had a random act of not kindness but the opposite, unnameable and unforseeable, yesterday as it wheeled to a Chelsea stop.
A pop, a spurt, a stiff.
Frail biological love.

Meandered over to the nearest French joint for turbo-powered coffee and an American Splendour (as Kennedy calls them) this AM, for another early-AM gander at the asphalt triangle that is Lt. Petrosino Square and to send me on my reading way.
Had a strong visual dream this AM that awoke me at 6.
My hand was holding a very simple and monochromatic bouquet which I kept waving slowly in front of me.
Perhaps inspired by my walk back to SoHo last evening when I stopped to buy lilies and lisianthus and these flowers hovered near my head all night, filling my head and mind with pollen molecules and perfumed flavour and scent crystals. Not to get too technical for You.
In mere moments it will be time to meander again slightly north, near the French joint of turbo-powered coffee, for the 6 up 3 to school, where I'll meet yet another new instructor who I'll be regaling with my hot plans of most ambitious and perhaps eccentric variety, for the summer's public art project. It involves the demi-heritage of Yours Truly (the Italian portion), badass attitude, making a place really lusher and the celebration of the Underdog.
All dogs is good dogs but the underdog gets my hardest bite.

Love bites.

+
this just in:
No Lollapalooza. Poor Perry. But really, Morrissey as a headliner in this day and age. Meat is murder... to concert tours. Too bad for Sonic Yoof and PJ Harvey, however, no chance of corrupting younger minds with their audio this time around.

Green Line Oracles, 6 Train up and then 6 Train down, first and last ride of the day.

1.
Woman walking with purpose, belly out:
You got to be careful, he got the pills, she got the pills.
Not entirely sure who she was speaking to, too affixed on the Oracle.

2.
Yours truly, after a full night of grad school imbibing with colleagues old and newbie, watching three trackmen working on the quiet 4 Train tracks, flashlights out and down about 100' from where I am impatiently awaiting the 6. One man walks along and over the top of the third rail, without fear.

Deducement:
1.
You never do know what lurks in the pockets, the secret compartments, of others.
2.
You don't always need to fear the third rail. The reaper, yes, the third rail, no.

Love Oracles.

Stuttering and faltering, like a Middling City car engine mid-January, my memory caught up with a recent past happening, at this weekend's CT wedding.

This morning, as I was reading the required readings for grad school, and with my brain looking for a hale escape strategy, I recalled one of the weekend's most interesting conversations - a primo blend of fiction (via Yours Truly) and a man named Obediah (the non-fictive part of the blend).

I thought of his full name, something biblical, and how he introduced himself as Obie. Over a dozen years ago I met this guy who was then a kid in tow with his hippie parents working where I was working in Maine - at my third month of summer camp art teaching, at Samantha Smith Peace Camp after my usual art teaching gig for Summer Camp, Inc.

Obie then was a lanky teen with wild hair. Today he's a full-bodied guy but with more tamed hair, and a tiny wife.

He told me and some random gay male wedding guests a hilarious (well, we made it hilarious) tale about his do-gooder hippie mom who was at one point a Black Panther (is this possible) and how she dragged her brood off to the local prison to visit a woman incarcerated for life, a woman who killed (or possibly did not kill) her lezbo lover. The lezbo lover was beheaded and a gang of teens and 20-somethings somehow, the story gets a little convoluted here, pointed fingers at this woman. Who swears, I think the story goes, but then again I had had a heap of white wines (replete with sulfites), that she is INNOCENT.

Before the tiny wife joined our tell-tale circle I told the group that I, too, had been incarcerated before, for killing a man. Actually, I called it circumstantial homicide. Is there such a thing. I said I killed a man, but it was not my fault. They asked my method and I replied that it happened with a pair of shoelaces. In some confusing twists and turns of happenstance the man had bent over to do something with shoelaces and somehow I had caused his untimely death as I knocked into him, perhaps somewhat with purpose, resulting in his falling into oncoming traffic. Circumstantial homicide.

When the tiny wife joined our circle she was being caught up on the story that her hubbie was telling and then one of the gay men said She (pointing at Yours Truly) killed a man. I said That's right, I am a former convicted felon. The gay man, Tommy, chimed in But you were a juvie, you were only in for how long. The tiny wife's eyes widened unbelievably and, revelling in the feeling that those who have been rehabbed but yet still encounter the suspicious eyes of others, I went along with it, basically, to fuck with her and her suspicions, preconceptions of a Criminal, rehabbed or not, and her tidy littleness.

So now I think I have to contact the B&G (the groom, I delightedly found out, is a Bonesman) to see how to contact post-hippie-mommed Obie and say Hey, I met you way back when in the woods of Maine.

Maine Love.

One worm, a dead fly and a bunch of small spiders.

So said the uniformed man on all fours, muttering into his walkie-talkie, in the middle of Yale's Museum of Art, in the Asian/African sector - an inventory of their lower-order interlopers.
The smattering of Asian art in the house was non-impressive, especially not the silk scroll painting fading out from bad lighting. The Yalie curators might consider visiting the Asian art collection of Cleveland Museum of Art, as I reach for my imported and stylish art snob cap.
And the prints and photo section of the Yale Museum is open only after a rez is made. And I thought And this is the joint famed for its photographic offspring and faculties.
The African section featured a wall of masks that simply did not rival the collection of the Clarksons but one, Hook spirit mask, was mesmerizing with angular deep sensory organ recesses.
New Haven also offered up a shop that had such great shoe wares on its shelves that the choices were overwhelming and I was turned on to the Austrian shoe line Think! as well as CYDWOQ, created by an American architect.
Needless to say, I have samples of both lines's product. A triumph!
Within an hour of being in New Haven stumbled upon my art target, Skull and Bones's h.q., The Tomb. Too dark at night for filming but gathered up the camera, an Americano and my senses for some morning shooting.
Onwards now to Cubanesque food, Canadian film, art reading.
Sensory Love.