Minding my own business and about to embark on homework, headed over to Allen's for a rockstar koffee klatsch. Sat on his/Lisa's front porch for a turbo-powered cup of tardark roasted goodness. Now I'm at the tea house. Now I'm really embarking onto readings about dead bodies, le topic du semaine. Passed on all things art opening last night. There are some tonight and tomorrow Kennedy has John Butcher playing a gig at SoundLab - Allen might be recording that for the artistes.
Got a good email from JR stating that he wishes I'm ready for a free PhD ride at the next school as he wrote me a blazingly stellar letter.
I replied with a grand Merci and told him not to fret, the spring has emerged as have the muses.
Nearly wept for JW,Esq who nearly but did not meet Bono at a swishy house party out in Cali and will not (*sniff, *sniff) be going to Coachella as, he says, how could it compare with last year's lineup that surpassed understanding. I told him to go read some law tomes.
So the pope is way dead and the new one is emerging from the conclave. I imagine it's like the Miss America pageant with scads of backstage underminings and well-placed back stabs. Emergence of cliques, factions, coteries. Them all lashed together until the big pronouncement, when the black smoke warbling out of the vaticani smokestack goes from black (working still) to white (annnnnouncement!). All so medieval, all so media-covered. I am lobbying now for the sainthood of Yours Truly. But, to expedite, I'll perform miracles (three, maybe more) avant my timely passing. We will not call these favours. We will call them miracles. Dig.

Miraculous, saintly love.

My new fav person named Valerie just did my taxes as we talked about a lot of things and the office nuisance shambled about annoying the ladies of the office and then Yours Truly. You know, the kind of office person that thinks aloud, dials phone with it off the hook so the sound of dialing and tones and such fill the soundwaves, asking annoying questions. I was just there two hours and I wanted to throttle him. Valerie and I, amongst other things, discussed life, travel, development of urban and suburban places, higher ed, people getting their GED's, etc. She was delightful. She is my tax lady and she rocks.
So no shooting officially until Sunday for Middling City U so it's time to catch up and do homework at a frenetic pace.
A new cat is back on the scene and I can't tell if it's my former lapcat and now feral Bootsie, mending his ways. For this cat talks to me, rushes up to me and would come into the house if I left him. I reassured Extra that he'll always be my favorite, always the toppermost of the poppermost. All this as Faux Extra suns himself nearby as whatever is happening to his kittie head transmogrifies into something more horrifying - think cat injuries, fights - yet he still wobbles around slowly on his own four feet, still hanging on for another season. Sometimes he's sleeping so soundly that I think Oh, NO, Faux Extra is d.e.d.
Had a swingin' time last night with Cheryl and Liz at the wine joint. No major fisticuffs or dramas or fiascoes to report.
Onwards to work, less worry.

Don't Worry Love.

Hiding out at the tea house getting work for school and freelance domain done until my afternoon shooting spree - and am relieved that Mme. Death is not here, regaling another of her unfortunate lady pals with tales unending of death, death, and more death. But I never do seem to travel anymore sans earplugs and phones for iTunes = Sanity Savers, to be sure.
Just wrote to Brian Moss, the current edifier for Parsons School of De-wonderment, replying to his wondering about his own wondering, if we grad students could/would muster forth 3K papers for his class and, to sweeten the deal, he's saying Make it oso multi-media with pictures, links, go nutz.
I just informed him Perfectly that he's the premier online teaching one to say go multi-media rather than citing online sources. The class is so wide open, about a vast amount of things Aesthetic, Beautiful, Art, Artful, contemporary and relevent to YT that there's a plethora of ops, maybe too many ops.
Slowly getting to a topic that I want to live with for paper, thesis, onwards.
Got email from RonE from the Shiney Happy Mag stating my portrait of Kennedy, to appear in full-page glory, set standards of de-zine, that my forthcoming spread/overview of the Middling City rock scene was stupendous.
But You heard all about this whilst it was in process (translation for Canadian epinw readers: pro-sess) and so You know, You knew it freakin' totally rocked.
Speaking of such, Dylan warbled into the Middling City yesterday and I imagine that Jamie Johnson and Pauly were there, front and center, awaiting and basking and waiting for tiny spitballs to hit their reverent foreheads.

You rock, I rock, we all rock for rock rock.

Collective, Chanting Love.

Just to prove to You that Perfect Me can transform any event into a madcap adventure.
Minding my own business I left the Shiney Apple, hugging Beth Dearest goodbye and meandering over to Central Park West for the C to the A at 59th, thus avoiding the horrors of the Nassau/Fulton stop of stench-ridden air where the air is three parts odour, one part oxygen and the lighting is nearly epilepsy-inducing.
Platform waiting and then on the A. Yee-Ha, things are working wondrously and nowhere's near the chaos of the last dragadocious trips back to Middling City where, let's see, a jumper (if you epinw recall) rendered a train bio-spattered and unwavering from stopping whilst authorities reckoned Yup, a jumper. Then the blizzard and the 4 train just not moving. Just not and the subsequent cab search and finding the A. So last night. A gets me to Howard Beach and I am on the AirTrain getting to JetBlue terminus. Quasi-terminus. Then an unintelligible announcement: GGEU HEJ SHEHT RESLSL.
We passengers look at each other, Did You understand that.
Another announcement.
Pretty much same as before but another man's voice. We sit for about half an hour. My plane is leaving in forty minutes. I am sitting, then standing, then walking along platform searching for clues and answers. Finally a guy with an answer. And what an answer. Yeah, they're holding us because... train... before us... problem... don't know... leaving.
So I try calling JetBlue to say HIIIII, I am enfuckin route but keep getting disconnected. I call Kennedy to say I may not be arriving in Middling City after all. We then get rolling again and I run to the kiosk for checkin and am closed out because the plane is leaving imminently. I approach the staffers, explain away, a helpful woman grabs my i.d. and RUNS me through everything, depositing me at Gate 10 in a full-body sweat. Didn't catch her name as I'd be sending her mad props and a thank you note and she leaves and some tall and obviously above-average arrogant handsome jerk looks at me and says Ohh, SMI-ILE.
Now, if you are a man and are reading this you've never experienced, perhaps, this scenario of dishevelment or hyper-introspection when a complete stranger begs you to give up your bestest Mary Tyler Moore Smile. I looked at him with the patented PaintMelt Stare© and said YOU have no idea what I've just been through and continued along the gangway. Then I'm standing in my little row (18, to be precise, you know, like Danny Gare) and some other arse looks up at me like I'm standing there just to admire him.
I mean really.
Back to Middling City reality of sorts: work-imbued, clusters of moments of adrenaline-enhanced productivity, rock on the hi-fi, moments of petting Extra the Cat and dreams of gardening.

Gardens Teeming with Love.

The elevators were golden.
-from a quote from Diane Arbus's journal at The Met in the show up there of her swingin' work.
After the NYU show that disappointed slightly, glad to see this one of several never before seen pieces, her actual cameras, her notebooks, some of her ephemera.
Also looked at the Larry Clark show at ICP that wasn't so necessary but there were some great portraits hung.
Also looked at the Buden installation in the midst of the Guggenheim and glad to have seen this conceptual piece in real life as the photos don't even begin to depict its complications.
Did some primo shooting outside of The Met again, inside the Guggenheim of blank spaces rendered lifeless for the aforementioned that takes it all up, of some odd looking trees and things.
Have been writing a bit here and there.
Time to fly as Beth has arrived at the Bryant Park where I blog. Neglected to blog from Union League Club where I witnessed Laura in action. Looked through their library for something arcane, interesting and had to settle for the latest edition of New York mag.

Mag Love.

Wow. To be filed under W - no not for Wow - but for Whew! what a timesaver.
Most Perfect little helper Celia emailed yesterday to say Um, nope, you are not reading tomorrow (now today) but on the 24th. So put that in your futuristic pipe and smoke the shit out of it.
Urban Epiphany. Oban-soaked YT showing up at a secret time to read from the poetic oeuvre. Well, it's kind of like epinw but it's all rhymey. If you believe that you are not ever never allowed to read from this well of quippity again. Bought the new Camille (as in Paglia) that whiney-ass bitch who teaches in Philly who I shot with Ginsberg back when he was alive and roaming the planet and sputtering out language poems iterating the menace behind all of life. Camile I agree with here, that post-mod and post-structuralism has sucked all or any spirit(uality) out of writing, made poetry a thing for high school girlies, New Yorker readers who dig it in the borders, for the wor(l)d-addled, the Patti Smith lovers, oh, yeah, the Urban Epiphanites to boot.
I think I nearly flunked outta sight outta mind outta Parsons School of Design-by-Committee for suggesting that poetry/life/sexuality/energy flows around us all, is as inescapable as the scent of a lover, the scent of a night-blooming jasmine tree, the sound of a Mister Softee truck trundling down the street in summer. It is like so there. But the post-mods/the post-strucs will say Death to life. Just ask theory-burdened X who had me so convinced that I hated what Academie had to offer. Au contraire, Pierre.
And, for your edifiication, Pierre is my childhood dog, departed. Thought of him this AM, how my mother had him jetted off to the afterlife whilst I had jetted off as a teen to Manhattan. And You wonder at my separation anxieties.
Time to wrestle with, of all things, my cd drive which has decided not to cooperate.

Love's Cooperative.