Minding my own business, or at least attempting to with a plethora of distractions and a pending meeting and such the sump pump continued to buzz louder and louder at intervals. Until it would not stop its buzzing and closer inspection revealed a burning electrical smell and a burning hot sump pump that had finally given up its ghost.
Laughingly, I called two immediate plumbing options - TonyC and Seneca Plumbing. TonyC was unavailable and Seneca told me they could give me a hand with the sump pump fiasco in December but by then the house would have floated away.
So during the meeting Seneca did call back (shock) and said I had to measure the sump pump - how many hoses, how wide the hose(s), etc.
Measurements happened and I rushed over there.
I spotted a man floating in space holding a toilet seat and told him the woes at hand. He said I do not work here. But, I warbled, you LOOK like you are working, nodding toward the seat.
An x-biker did help and I told him this.
One hose, 4 and three quarters, as high as my leg.
He looked somewhat dazed.
I looked over their handy sump pump display nearby and discovered the leg-sized sump pump is basically a piece of unsuitable crap meant for the occasional sump pumper, not an everyday user.
The new sump pump is three-quarter horse power and I asked the x-biker how fast, were it a motorcycle, the thing would run.
Oh, are you a biker, he queried. This is how Yours Truly learned of his x-status.
No, I said most emphatically. You.
He said Yes and mumbled something when I asked if he'd been in a club.
Oh, is this a SECRET, YT pushed.
He showed off a small tattoo on his arm while saying Chosen Few and answered that this sump pump soon to be in my possession could run seventeen m.p.h.
Not bad, YT thought.
So x-biker hooks up, after my description, a length of p.v.c. pipe about four feet up into the air. After I'd told him a flexible hose is what had been there.
I thought to myself Well, he must know this will work.
I hint at the unfortunate circumstances to follow.
I make a little bed of bricks for the new pump in the well, I put it in atop. I cut some flex host from p.v.c. to p.v.c. that leads to the sewer pipe and plug it in and then witness an enourmous tsunami of brown water shooting out all over the area.
I unplug.
I run for the duct tape.
I tape like there's no sump pump tomorrow and wait and wait for the little 17 m.p.h. machine to work its magic.
Water streams out about three feet from a few spots so I get busy with the duct tape and cover and recover the spots.
Now, when I have a spare hour, I will figure out how to connect these pipes in a more orderly fashion with more pipe, some clamps, some goop, some other do-dads still unknown to YT at this juncture.
This sump pump has a lifetime warranty.
This just oozes confidence that this pump, unlike the other, will not let off periodic troubling noises and smells.
Time to gussy up and head to gig du jour, leaving the plumbing world and all its cares behind. For now.


Plumb Love.

Found myself at some point today standing within a soundproof box, if You will, a sort of portable recording room contraption, out on the muddy campus of Middling City U. Amongst others I was making some portraits of a guy who studies neurological and musical things that he explained well and I will merely paraphrase. He spoke of slip of the finger happenings, like slip of the tongue. He also studies people who cannot sing as well as those with passable karaoke voices by putting them into said booth and having them sing while they hear altered recordings of themselves singing. It was a bit over my head but I offered up my (imPerfect) voice for his study. He said Some people think they have a bad singing voice but really don't.
Oh, Yours Truly replied, believe You me, I heard mine is quite bad. I did not go on to tell him of that one night down at Winnie's with the drunk midget with YT warbling DreamWeaver. I didn't think it was all that bad. Justy had another op.
This researcher of bad singers and such says he'll email me if he needs another under-microscope volunteer.
Onwards then to a photo shoot in one of those dreaded, added-on hospitals which make no sense whatsoever as to which elevator leads to what floor and rooms seemingly numbered randomly by a dyslexic.
So I finally find the sinus/fungi guy in his strewn office and wished I had left a trail of popcorn for myself as I had joked to the helpful lady at the helful desk. Finally the correct door was discovered and I was like so out of this hospital and, while driving down the Avenue, spotted two guys messing around with red plastic sunglasses at the bus stop. I thought Oh, right, Halloween, how utterly silly of them to be putting on those archetypal wacky glasses probably with the mirrored googly eyes.
Wrong.
The one man lifted the red plastic sunglasses off the other guy's face and I nearly fainted behind the wheel, being all bloodsqueamed and all. There was a Perfect Japanese flag underneath where the right eye should have been peeping out. Swoon. Swoon. Onwards then.

Swooning, Love.

Off to points beyond.
Amongst others a shoot involving more cleaning up of fallen branches.
Spoke to Dorota last night, expecting her to have already landed out at the Suburban/Non-International Middling City Airport. She was still sitting out in the Far Rockaways, strapped in with somewhere to go.
The sound of chainsaws wafts about this fine morning and I'm watching a man out yonder with a much much bigger chainsaw than I have. It is gas powered, it is probably the Husqueverna of my dreams. Not that Yours Truly could even foist the thing more than a few inches off the ground.
Time to find the tree-related do-gooders.
Really, to reiterate, had You bought me a burro for my b-day I could be renting the little rascal out to help pay the utility bills, yes, but to also offer people the option of greater ease of branch-dragging-at a reasonable price.

Reasonably-priced Love.

+
This just in.
A small slew of email awaiting me post-mudpit/devastation image making.
One from PB telling when he'll be gigging in Chicago.
One from Literal Harold stating that he heard from some colleagues at some gaming convention in SF that the Navy Seal junket (that I desperately wanted to attend to blow shit up in the desert around Las Vegas) involved loads of shooting but only a demo of a bazooka, nobody was allowed to shoulder it.
One from Jana who sent along her review of that so-called wine bar we kind of junketed to in the Middling City's University Heights zone and how YT wished to display my pugilistic tendencies and go over to the ersatz wine bar all duded-out in sports crap and whack the crap out of a punching bag suspended, oddly, over some bottles.

I've been with Blogger since just about their day numero uno and have endured all the speedbumps along our blogging ways. I've been such a loyalist that they even sent me a Blogger hoodie years ago Just because.
So the other day, of course, as I minded my own business, they offered up a chance to switch, as all the world is, to having ties with Google. GMail, Google, GLove are taking over the world. Simple enough, a couple of keystrokes and then voi-freakin-là all goes kapoof and also voi-freakin-là the old template is like so not working (and I do miss the cartooned flames and such) and the archive, my blogging history, was nowhere to be seen. I slept on it.
And all is better this fine gray Middling City day.
A new look for epinw.
Yesterday cleared brush with Kennedy for hours, chainsawing the afternoon away - merrily. Extra watched from a distance.
We finished and had made quite a nice beaver dam in front of the property. Now here comes the surreal, otherworldly part. Twenty minutes later some trucks appeared and scooped up all the broken and shorn bits.
And, as far as I know, the MC still awaits FEMA judgement. Are we a national disaster. Or not. Any meager drive about and into the suburbs reveals what any reasonable person might toss up as a big, wrenching Yes.
A few days ago, in a grocery store, YT was in line, waiting impatiently and reading trash. A woman sort of shouted to the woman parallel with her behind me in same line OHH, you can tell who has the power and who does not, you're buying ICE CREAM and I'm buying ICE.

(N)ice, new looking Love.

topote: Here are images of Godzilla, of a soldier in Basra. What is more ferocious.
Somehow, when writing deadlines have been eyebrow deep, there have been horrific Middling City natural debacles that mean nothing can happen but writing. This to date has happened three times. Driving bans, nearly every place closed, a pervading sense of not doom as one from this region might imagine, but a resolve to get through this with aplomb - once again. And for Yours Truly it means open-ended time to write as much else has stopped.
This landscape resembles what a place looks like after a hurricane. There was a hurricane named Bob one summer in Maine when I was the arts lady at a camp for girls from the inner-city and rural places nearby. Not realizing the severity of what this actually meant, I headed out into the hurricane in my small car and somehow all the large flying parts of trees missed me. Then about an hour and a few miles later I turned back for camp, abandoning my night off and then we collectively had to abandon the camp for a closed-for-summer public school where YT attempted to jumpstart the generator for the school in a little shack with my jumper cables and the thing would not start. I did not know that the battery was missing all water. Later, someone figured this fun fact out.
So the landscape outdoors looks like a hurricane whipped through as the trees are shorn in odd ways and now branches are piled up on lawns and next to streets like snow is post-blizzard. It is sad.
Some trees might continue to live after their bad prunejobs but many more branches will fall and trees will have to be stumped.
Whilst writing last night I visited the site of Lisa Jarnot, who is an X and still a good friend of Bruce's. She is formerly of an exurb of the MC and now lives in an exurb of the Shiney Apple and works hard on a book about Robert Duncan (one of the most unforgettable readings ever seen by YT), writing good poetry, teaching, and starring in the movie being screened at Hallwalls soon - The Time We Killed.
Bruce says he's not sure he could watch it sans bursting out into laughticuffs and he means this in the best way possible as Lisa is a star.
So on her site there is mention of her 100 Hats Project so I wrote to her about it to tell her I'd like to sponsor a hat. People sponsor a hat, she says she makes about one per month, and it's meant to rep people killed during the Iraq War. When you sponsor the hat you're asked to send a jpeg to her and she lists the way the hat looks with the image and name of sponsor.
I sent her an image I found of an Iraqi man holding his dead three-year old after some arbitrary shooting about by soldiers from both the good and bad sides. Actually, as I wrote that I pondered What is the good side, what is the bad side.
Lisa has a comment on her site that she started this project to show the physicality of the war and this is very much like the ongoing project of boots that are tagged with a dead soldier's name. This turned up one day in Union Square.
Time to write. Write and wrong, good and bad. But mostly oso good.

Greenest Love, in the sense of Nature.

So guess who is chainsaw laughing now.
Just about Everyone known by Yours Truly thought the purchase of a shiney electric chaiinsaw was madness but as the Middling City has trees in heaps this record-setting day, it has become a necessary tool du jour.
First, chainsawing was necessary to get out the back door sans peril.
Next, chainsawing was necessary to get the driveway cleared out and to rid the bottom of the vehicle from some tree limbs when YT got a little risky with the gas pedal and the to and fro that all MC drivers know oso well.
Somehow I thought I could plow backwards through major brush.
Somehow this really did not work out so well.
Then onwards I drove and got petrol at Delta Sonic, as well as a petite coffee (only size available), and some cheese sticks-for sustenance's sake.
Then made a slew of images of trees everywhere.
Called to see who needed chainsaw aid and landed then at Kennedy's.
Onwards then to SPoT which is full of my restless brethren and we are all sipping and laptopping and such whilst dance hits blare from above.
It is impossible to not notice that the mural to my immediate left has been altered. Now the newspaper sitting atop the table in said image shows The Beast, the snarky newspaper intent on blasting shotgun blasts into anyone's ego, has replaced the newspaper at which I toiled for fifteen years.
Wondering how this may have transpired.
So the snow is deep and heavy and there are thousands of ruptured trees.
This city's landscape has been temporarily altered.
Trees grow back but this pruning has been quite excessive, collective.
Some radio types are already calling this The Friday the 13th Storm. It began whilst YT was lunching with Leah and Matthew at the Thai joint on Hertel, the flakes were diagonal and non-stop.
According to the Day-Timer, they are like so right.
Again, to reiterate:
I have a chainsaw, and I know how to use it.

Powerful tool Love.

This is my special day. Actually, also of niece Katharine.
This has been a most magical day. It's been a magical day in stages and the final stage is upon me, a meet-up at some joint. And then there's another celebration tomorrow night post-reading by longtime acquaintance Marten Clibbens. But that is another day, another small story.
Following is, in entirety, an email from JW,Esq. Yes, I did have chocolate cake today that could make You weep with its precision, the perfection of a white chocolate mousse centre. And I did get many fab shiny new presents. Well... just read.

Happy Birthday!!! I hope you are having a very nice restful day, and that you get a nice big double chocolate birthday cake and lots of shiny new presents. You deserve it all.
To celebrate your birthday, I am going to see Roger Waters tonight. He is performing Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety, all the way through. I could think of no better way to celebrate.
Luv,
John

1. Yours Truly is completely flattered beyond belief that Everyone, and I do mean Freakin' Everyone, knows about my SLM (seminal life moment) when Dark Side of the Moon landed in my ten-year old hands. And many Pink Floyd points beyond. I am thrilled that JW,Esq. knows this and sees the beauty of seeing Waters perform such on this most YT-centric of days.
2. I think the appropriate thing to have done would have been to jet me out to said performance for the most superb of presents.
3. I think on this most special of dates I want to, metaphorically of course, scratch out JW,Esq.'s eyes in a small stormcloud of rock & roll-related candour.
4. OK, I forgive him, re-reading point #1 and am carrying on in a glamourous vibe of grace and elegance, tottering along in my sky-high heels and captivating birthday twinkle.

Onwards to the final stage of revelry.

Love of Perfect Revelry.

Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
John Lennon came across the ocean from Europe to same destination, accidental or not - America!
Christopher Columbus searched for spices, women, high times.
John Lennon searched for drugs, women, high times.
Christopher's people killed natives who stood in the way.
John's people broke hearts of fans who did not get the game of rock & roll.
Christopher is a legend.
John is a legend.
Christopher gets a national holiday.
John does not.
Christopher, as far as Yours Truly knows, did not write music.
John wrote everlasting music that supercedes the realm of what is termed pop.
Christopher was not an artist.
John lived his life as an artist.
Christopher does not have much social, or modern relevance.
John has continued grace, relevance through his messages of social justice, and peace.
Columbus Day unfortunately sometimes falls on the birth anniversary of John Lennon. Sometimes of Yours Truly.
John Lennon was born on 10/9.
Yours Truly on 10/10.
Hooray for being in this complicated world of wonky politics, art of varying degrees of competence and genres, difficult people, dogs, stray cats, gardenias, burroes, great sound systems on dance floors, friends who make laughter possible, parents who squeezed us out into this world, siblings who make us grounded, nieces and nephews who reflect the life force, and shoes.

Love to One, to All.

So there I was, minding my own business, under the bushes, when I hear a ROAR. A ROAR so roaring that, despite the fact that I was using the sanity-saver (a.k.a. the cd walkman to blast some Nelly Furtado down into my eardrums to drum out the drumming and screaming emanating from Church of the Perpetual Disregards) I turned my head to witness Andrew, teen gang member, riding a contraption down the driveway about six feet away from me, under said bushes.
I scrambled out from said bushes and surprised Andrew, teen gang member. I am not sure why. He saw the barn door open (actual barn, not the metaphorical sort below waist) and headed over, he said. We talked, as is our wont, about the 'hood and, as is his wont, he gave me the dirt. The African refugee family has moved to Grant Street. (yikes) And more news. What was roaring was a mini dirtbike, really I think a lawn mower on two larger wheels, that he'd purchased for $80 off of some friend. So Andrew tells me there's a rallying bunch of teens who off-road it down at the end of Smith Street. We usually talk as pals but suddenly out blurted from my lips the maternal Just don't break your neck. I think this surprised the both of us. So Andrew is heading to college, a program of sorts, and I suppose this beats his usual destinations like shock camp. Andrew is expecting his first child in May, is living with his girlfriend and her two children, and is already calling in sick to his new security guard post so he can rally about on a lawnmower-type device not breaking his teen gangmember neck.
Speaking of gang-related activity, Jana and I headed to some University Heights joint that calls itself a wine bar. Upon entering what was once Blu (where Allen and I saw one unforgettable Odiorne gig), I could tell that this was no wine bar. First hint - sports regalia. Television sets.
So we get to talking to a Mommy Escapee, Nikki, who was on the town solo to celebrate the fact that she had wrenched herself away from her premier role, and her new job. Upon further noting and talking and such the drug activity became fairly obvious as it is in most night places. Jana will not, of course, be able to mention such in her newspaper overview of the place but really, is this not understood. I recall a big verbal brawl with a long-time pal who was plotting the closing of a neighborhood bar frequented by African-Americans. And some in the drug trade. I remarked that all the bars in her neighborhood had these goings-on in their dark recesses. What exactly made this place more despicable. I think We know. I did make her go into this bar with me that night and we did end up, or, rather, I did, have a fine time. People were doing a newfangled bus stop-type dance. Music played jubilantly. This place is closed now, the neighbors succeeded and now this storefront is refurbed.
Onwards to a meatball meet-up and work points beyond.
Literal Harold mentioned to Yours Truly that surrogate motherhood is très illegal in this Empire State yet I just read an article about Annie Liebovitz's pending exhibit and the NYT reporter stated that she's got two children - via a surrogate.
Now time for the departure.

Roaring Love.

Today,utterly minding my own photographic business, on the day's third or so gig, found myself holding a mandible. In a lab, a jaw formerly of a Middling City resident. Also found myself today in the jam-packed dwelling of Tony Conrad, making some portraits of him amid the collections of music, movies, canned goods. Had not been there in ages and since last there a drum kit (owned by his son, Ted) now occupies the apartment's most comfortable chair, in front of the kitchen window. I commented on some of the canned goods and we examined three cans of various items whose obscure names I cannot recall. One resembled a horse chestnut, the other a Japanese cookie.




By now, if it had been possible, I would be jetting back from Las Vegas with Literal Harold post-blow-up junket with the Navy Seals. O, well.
About to depart for another of Jana's reviews of a watering hole, replete with characterizations, quotes, cocktail scrutiny.
Little Laura and I just had our usual fab dinner out and she was awaiting a call from a famed comedian to take him to a movie - his choice. The call came, she yawned, I ordered her a cappuccino to go. Ahh, the life of us rock stars.

It is the Hunter Moon, night sky all full of light, illuminating the ground for the avenging kitties trolling the streets looking for little rodents and the like.
Extra is out there somewhere, hunting, his over-sized paws of Love turned into Objets de Mort.

Hunting Love.

This is a big hint.
The anniversary of the birth of Yours Truly is this pending 10th and YT wishes to have a burro. See illustration of Wish.
Thanks for Your attention in this matter.
OK, I just Googled said Wish and watched a short movie featuring a young person feeding a snicky-snack to a burro. Please remember, the narrator droned, these are wild animals. They like a warm climate. They originated in Spain. Perhaps my little burro will not fare so well in the Middling City.
The ring I dream about from Me & Ro is also still a nice possiblility - the green tourmaline, round, set in gold.
Last night hung with some of my favoured musicians - PB, Han, Eremite.
et al
Made a nice feast of various items that I gleaned from one of the favoured recipe amalgamations amid a gig photographing some wondrously bright young students who had been videotaped about their academic exploits before I whisked them away for some still photos and conversation.
Cobbled together was quite a lustrous menu, if YT may say so herself:
curried zucchini soup with goat cheese schmeared crostini, lobster salad in a delicate tarragon dressing, my trademarked smashed vegetable combo, Provencale haricot verts, Senegalese chicken, Asian-spice-rubbed pork tenderloin. For dessert I, despite the advice of one of the shining academic examples, attempted my premier soufflé. It was large. Then it was not. It was a chocolate soufflé shrunk large, ending up a mere 3/4" in height. With a chocolate spread atop.
I suggested, upon its arrival at table, that one of the boys in attendance rush out to one of the nearbyest stores of convenience to purchase a bag of marshmallows, that the cake be striated, boosted up by the marshmallows.
Chocolate is chocolate, how can it be bad if it is not burnt.
I recalled en route to this blogging the moments of co-written poetry with Patrick and how we created a dual alter-ego and how we entered into this alter-ego's space and wrote words very different from our own.
Lesson: collaboration, always, in oso many ways is the way to reach higher, baby.

Reached higher Love.

Yesterday's ultimate gig was following around some undergrads who were hanging how-to safety hot tips on doorknobs of the University Heights neighborhood within the Middling City's collegiate/business/neighborhood sector very much unlike the others within the Middling City. This is a dangerous neighborhood with occasional homicides and stick-ups and, while walking, the co-eds were regaling Yours Truly with enough gore to have me, post-gig, trotting as top-speed as possible back to the car. One of the co-eds told me how, in his freshman year, he'd been held up by a man with a gun who jumped out of a car. Sobering all around as no neighborhood here or in environs can be called safe. And as I walked along photographing the do-gooding students, snapping and flashing, an irate neighbor came to his door yelling Why is she photographing my house. We all kept walking whilst stating it was them I was zoning in on, not his soggy wooden house.
Onwards.
Things Seen As of Late, sub-filed under Minding My Own Business.
- Last Sunday saw police line do not cross tape around some trees alongside Ellicott Creek as I left Menne Nursery with a car full of perennials for Kennedy's garden. A few days later I heard what happened at this spot, a distraught femme drove her car into the trees and then water for a big, dramatic ending. I forget if she was successful.
- Yesterday I saw a man, very early in the morning, en route to a presentation by Middling City U at Albright-Knox Art Gallery, who I think had just taken a whizz (as they say) off of the bridge down onto the expressway.
- Much later yesterday I saw another man wandering along in the middle of a street and as I approached he motioned for me to roll down my window - an interesting, old-fashioned concept to be sure. But perhaps he's never owned a vehicle with power windows, or any vehicle. He walked toward the car as I drove along and then Yours Truly ran a very red light to get away from this man, lest he be armed.
Onwards again.

Odd, sighted Love.

Open letter to beloved JetBlue.
Dear JetBlue,
I understand you're all jazzed up about your AmEx card but No Thanks. And I do appreciate seeing all your so-called cheap fares to wherever. However, when you do write to me perhaps in the subject line it's best to not use the word falling, such as Our Fares Are Falling. Do I want to think of the word falling when perusing your sale prices between Philly and, say, PR? I think not. Thanks for your attention in this matter.
Antithetically.
Accepted and moving onwards into a new gig as Arts Editor for Buffalo Rising, for the new and improved mag to accompany the already well-hitted site.
Time to wend towards the coffee stand and make and do do do.

Do Love to Do.

The Dalai Lama events are done and I realized I had not posted any images yet from that and decided on this image of the mandala deconstruction. I am thinking of my favoured parallel to make of this gesture right now. Could this deconstruction be likened to the throwing of a party in one's home. The invitations, the floral arrangements, the spending, cooking, arriving. And then it's over and there are bags and bags of garbage to lug out to the tote and some glasses have been busted and maybe someone accidentally broke another item but all in all there is the lush memory of a great party and the glow of it lasts. Or growing a garden and all the toiling and then it's late September and the light has changed and the sogginess starts and all is getting toward the downward arc of lush.
Watched a short vid on NYT's site yesterday, an interview with very troubled Cat Power/Chan Marshall who seems to be hanging on to sanity and life by a claw. At one point in the interview she began popping her knuckles and I nearly ended up on the ceiling.
Parting thought is about honesty. Honesty is not omitting detail or fact. Honesty is open communication and there is no love or respect without that. Not telling a fact (fun or otherwise) that will be or could be hurtful is not ever my policy and isn't something I seek out in any event. It rains hard here today in the Middling City and despite all that dropping the colours in this small slice of the world are vibrant in a dusky, early morning way.

Vibrant and dusky Love.

At left are artifacts, besides a plethora of images by Yours Truly, what is left–unripped tix, and sand mandala sand from its deconstruction.
Yesterday was the day of collective awareness boosting, a large-scale teach-in ending with an hourlong, wind-swept (read difficult to hear in parts due to such) talk by HHDL. Enjoyed seeing the boy colleagues, squeezing in a coffee break with Marky Mulville, and an unscheduled stop and shoot at the mandala un-do. That was the most powerful part of the three-day affair-the making and unmaking of the mandala and its attendant ritual with music. And Philip Glass pre-HHDL was sublime and I saw him leaving with another Philip to catch a plane and told him so, awakening him out of a small revery. He did solo piano pieces and then performed with a Tibetan musician and this has inspired me to track down some Glass solowerks. Yesterday night was onwards to an 80th b-day party for Will Clarkson, and then a show at SoundLab by Kayo Dot of the Shiney Apple. An all-around, well-rounded primo day.
All colorful glass sands merged together equals gray.

Gray, glassy Love.

This was submitted to Yours Truly by one very loyal epinw follower and YT appreciates this enthusiasm greatly.
This images = super bonus points.
Not quite sure what a cruise night is but I imagine it might have nothing to do with a Love Boat. The concept of a streetcentric cruise makes YT nearly automatically think of the large photos of Lauren Greenfield of kids of all stripes and such in cars doing just that whilst oogling, googling, &C.
I sent along the following Buddhist thought du jour to both Jana and Liz (as just about the entire Middling City is aglow with anticipation of the arrival of who is now nearly always referred to as HHDL... Dalai Lama v14), an all-purpose gem. And do note that loads of the most devout of Buddhists tend toward tipplerism.

Let us live gladly! Quite certainly we are free to do it. Perhaps it is our only freedom, but ours it is, and it is only phenomenally a freedom. 'Living free' is being 'as one is'. Can we not do it now? Indeed can we not-do-it? It is not even a 'doing': it is beyond doing and not-doing. It is being as-we-are. This is the only 'practice'. 'All Else is Bondage; Non-Volitional Living' - Wei Wu Wei

Wu wei is a little flowering branch of Taoism, knowing when to do and when not. Wei Wu Wei (who preceded the other www by about four decades) is an Irish-born scholar.

Moral offering: we should all live gladly, with gratitude - and the occasional, life-enhancing mental or physical cruise.

Glad, grateful Love.

Because it is this day, a short story to tell of images.
Henry the Dog, a very large dog who exuded puppyness, lived with me for a week as Tony went out of town with his fiancée et al. Because of the 11th five years ago he couldn't fly back to the Middling City and it took quite a while to secure a van and drive cross-country so Henry and I hung much longer and I spoilt him quite a bit as I knew he missed Tony. But I also knew their days together were numbered as the fiancée concocted an allergy to Henry the Dog so it was in the air, so to speak, that I might end up living with Henry for much longer. I did not. He's large, as I mentioned, and now has sweet digs in the country.
So when things settled a bit, and Henry went home, it was time for Yours Truly to visit those in my heart in the Shiney Apple and as the JetBlue jet approached the island the pilot flew us over Ground Zero, tipping the plane as we circled around it and my side of the plane was able to look - unforgettably - down into the cavern.
Stayed at the loft and, armed with a plan and a camera, I walked to the site and blocks away the scent of burned things still hung in the air. I spent some time walking around but was there mainly to shoot the sand mandala creation in The Museum of the Native American (where I have some images on permanent display of Natives making beadwork) nearby, so I escaped the overwhelming grief for the much-darker space and became entranced by the monks's work, and the sounds of the scraping of their tools to unloose the coloured sands.
I bought a ring from Me and Ro with the Tibetan word for compassion on it.
I asked a monk if this was truly the word (thinking maybe a benchman working one floor above us on Broome Street could have had a wangin' hangover and for all I knew etched in the word bird dropping instead) and he took a while looking at it but then did confirm. Compassion.

Love, don't hate.

See this.
This is my contrib to Paint the Town, the annual Hysterical Society bennie that takes place now. Sent the parents as Yours Truly was predisposed and they so dig it.
Here is a tale.
YT sits on the Michigan Ave. bridge, lap full of sketchbook, graphite, the like.
Suddenly there's a small racket to the right and a glance yields this sight. An older guy on a touring bike. Helmet, jersey, that kind of gear that is meant to scream I AM SO SERIOUS ABOUT MY HOBBY.
He is approaching but I am merrily sketching in the gorgeous autumn light.
He passes and I hear him speak. He yells. Yes, yells.
Thanks for getting out of my way. Rreeaall polite.
Yours Truly was abso-freakin-lutely flabbergasted.
As if.
As if I'd just jump up upon seeing his eminence, scattering pencils and the like.
Mind you there is a sidewalk of sorts on either side of the lift bridge that is about four feet wide, puh-lenty of space for an arsehole on a stoopid bike with 1/4" tires to breeze by a drawer of small size.
Keep the vibes good an happy, I am wont to say.
And don't fuck with the cheritable of heart, who shall inherit the entire fucking universe.
Onwards.

Painting the Town Love.

Pop lovers, photograph makers, Yours Truly poses a question.
Can one make an image employing a background wall of cheezball 70s-era paneling and not conjure up one Calvin. As in Klein.
I think not.
Made some excellent images of a femme yesterday and amongst my pre-planned settings, venues if You will, and clothing ops, opted for this femme in throes of poring over items in an archive. I am not naming names. Dig.
So now I'm editing away and all I see, well, demi-see, is this 70s wall.
Playful, sporty, poppy.
To matters more musical.
Absolute guilty pleasure is the new Nelly Furtado, Loose, esp track 1 - Afraid. And track 4 - Glow. Always liked Nelly.
And also Cat Power's The Greatest. It is so oodles better than what the B'lyn Boys played out of hi-fi's. This is coherent. But images do waft back of Chan/Cat head on piano in a post-cocktail stupour, crying jag mid-gig - described most eloquently by Troust Sibs.
Out in moments. On the Middling City if You will.

If You Love.

At moments there are brilliant flashes of a Perfect image and there's no camera onhand so the image stays très virtually virtual.
Yesterday spotted a boy leaning on a running gas lawnmower, stopping for a break to lick one of those noxiously-coloured popsicles, azure blue. Especially azure blue in the light of dusk.
Summer is so like over and for those out in the world such as Yours Truly, the freelancers, this is back to normalcy. Less reports of everyone known trekking all over the place, basking on beaches, or wherever. As I wrote to Justy earlier today, he being another worker who works wonders of design all the summer long, I've thought of summer for these last two decades as one prolonged New Year's Eve - so much pressure to be having Fun. To be personifying Fun. Sure, there's Fun in those sneaked-in moments but summer is, in my non-humble op, one long and blazing stretch in which others perform Fun.
I was on a beach twice this summer, I think. Both occasions I was freelancing, making stunning pictures of happy people.
+
Spent afternoon with niece and nephew, who I took shopping. Chopping is always an ear-catching substitute.
Bought them each an auntie-sanctioned Halloween t, as they share my adoration of this holiday, as well as two school shirts each. Their choice on the two shirts each. Tried to steer their little minds toward the colour green, but, really, this was to be their special school shirt selections.
Time to make and do.

Ch/Sh-op Love.