Looking Up

This is the corner of a street I cross each day.  From one side of the sidewalk to the other, buildings crawl up and I'm left below while the sun giggles in and slips away.  I stole this moment in between meetings and I thought if I captured it I could keep the sky.

I don't know what it is about looking up that makes me think I can turn the shape of clouds into dreams or find someone I've lost.  Maybe it's because our feet are rooted to pavement and concrete and grass, because the dirt of the earth is so final.  But it seems that the moment I look up is the moment I let myself believe nothing truly reaches an end.

My So-Called Teenage Life Blog Hop - FAIL

This is the post where Melissa admits that she forgot about the My So-Called Teenage Life Blog Hop, hosted by the fabulous Amy, Christa, and Andrea, and proceeds to speak in third person because of her shame and admits she can not post today because she is at the office and no where near her whining teenage diaries or awful poems and instead re-posts something she wrote when she was eleven years old because she doesn't know what else to do:

Ten is Enough

In the parting words of every terrible corporate email ever to cross a person's inbox in an attempt to make something bad okay...

...thank you for understanding.

Why I Love My Neighborhood

Because I'll walk into the local flower shop, (which I'm reminded has been in the neighborhood for over one hundred years) be told I can get whatever I want (yet, if I get anything but fresh tulips I'm crazy) and leave with, not just tulips but, four lollipops, a Saint calendar (and, really, even three months into the year, who can refuse a saint calendar?), and a very official business card.

The Artist is Present - Part II

A few years ago I had written of Marina Abramovic's exhibit at the MoMA: The Artist is Present. Knowing very little of Abramovic's work, I sat, transfixed, watching her physically sit across from strangers to share a moment of silence. Abramovic sat each day for three months as museum visitors rotated into the empty seat opposite her.  Strangely obsessed, I watched for an entire afternoon.

As I said then and will say now, I know very little about Abramovic or art and even less about performance art. But I can say with absolute certainty, that I have never had a work of art move me as this did.

Today, a friend brought this work back to my attention with a video of Abramovic's experience at MoMa.  It came with an accompanying story.  Abramovic and the artist Ulay started an intense love story in the 70's. When they felt that their relationship had run its course, they each walked the Great Wall of China from opposite ends, met in the middle, and parted for good.

This video features The Artist is Present exhibit. The first minute shows how she sat with various strangers. Then Ulay arrives without her knowing.

Watch.

(I have read some controversy as to whether or not this was staged, whether they had met weeks prior or even that morning. To me, it doesn't matter.  This is story. This is what we can reveal in a moment between two people.  This is what can happen.)

Silence That Wants To Speak

Today I walked and looked and saw these words but it took someone else to point out the rose sprouting from the wobbling jenga block building below. It struck me, how important it is that we pay closer attention. Especially to silence, to what it might shield, what it desires.

Knowing What's Next

I feel like I've been creeping under dark canopies, wanting to know tomorrow, standing, waiting, between things, beneath them. When I crossed the footbridge, I watched this encounter, and she didn't like me stealing their parting, so it blurred because I wasn't brave enough to stare straight through their splitting seam.

New York has been like this lately, skulking through each day, whispering you can't know me.  It's gathered rain and snow at our feet and sent us inside the caves of umbrellas, forced us into yarned labyrinths of winding scarves.

I've been dreaming many new things.  I've been wanting to unravel them all. I've wondered, too often, over the years, what's next for me?

Why I Love Used Books

This is why I love reading used books and library books best. Here, look...a purple question mark, left behind, tucked in the folds. I've been given so many gifts over the years, underlined sentences, wrinkled bookmarks, old ticket stubs.

I love knowing that a book has passed through different lives, that it has lived its own life too.