Holly Northrop Blog

Jasmine and her friend Weber came home for three nights and two days and my god I am exhausted. As is always the case with Jasmine I did more in two days then I do in a week. Sometimes I do think that she is trying to kill me although not intentionally more like on a subconscious level. Weber had the sweet set up. She got the upstairs, the queen size air mattress and the studio to hang out in. Jasmine got the red couch in the living room with two cranky women in the next room.

The first day they were here, we toured the spooky Hudson Library, went to the mall, Home Depot, walked around Olana and ended the day with a sushi dinner and a trip to Happy Clown for some soft serve.

Day two Weber drove into Jersey City, (two blocks from where we used to live) so I could pick up my 15 x 40 print. About every hour or so on the way down the Thruway, I would coat up with Tiger Balm in Weber's car. I am so good at applying Tiger Balm that I can even do it while crossing a street, never missing a step. So the all day glazing went on without a hitch. My back only started to really give me trouble about the last two hours of the ride home. Considering how things used to be, I'll take two hours of a little back stiffness any day.

After picking up the print, we drove on over to Newport Mall and witnessed all the horror that is Newport Mall and parked the car. We jumped on The Path to the World Trade Center where there we 'ran into' Weber's sister. New York is like that, you just run into people all the time. It's super weird.

Anyway, after that we went to lunch and dug around in the dirty vinyl bins of record stores; where I would like to point out here that I was in three record stores and did not buy a single thing, even though I have been wanting to buy more vinyl. But the prices on new vinyl is through the roof. $30.00 for Nick Cave, $20.00 for The Black Keys and on and on.

After the record thing, we walked down to the Asian Mart on Broadway and Canal; pushed our way around the store and then out Canal street to the subway. We then reversed the order of the whole day by jumping back on The Path. It was at that moment that I realized that my deodorant had given up and I stunk. Actually all three of us were kind of ripe but I was by far the worst.

We rode The Path back to the mall where we hurried back to the car before 6:15 because the price of parking went from $10.00 to $22.00 if we didn't clock out after six hours. After some ridiculously tense moments at the parking machine, we made it with roughly fifteen minutes to spare.

Once in the car we crawled our way through Jersey City to Hoboken to Edgewater, (stopping at Whole Foods naturally) and then on to Fort Lee, under the GW Bridge and onto the Palisades Interstate Parkway. I was eating sushi in the backseat when we merged on the I-287 which fed us onto the New York Thruway were three hours after leaving the mall, we finally pulled into our driveway.

Jasmine brought with her from school an enormous painting (4ft x 3ft) of two cherries on a black background. There is really only one place it can go and that is over my photo table. No place in the house can you get far enough away to appreciate it. She did it in squares, not as crazy as Seurat but more of a cubist grid thing. It's all pretty cool and I love to see her painting, plus she has one of the best signatures I've seen in a long time.

Zoe was a complete and total bitch cat the entire time Jasmine and Weber were here. Not only did she attack Jasmine on the stairs with some kind of midway standoff; she attacked Weber when she bent over to pet her. That monster cat smacked me with multiple jabs and then bit me when I was petting her in the window. Jesus Christ she's a drag and I will NEVER have another calico no matter what. All that red hair just makes them crazy.

Moving sucks. No real surprise there. No real surprise when the thunderstorm came blowing through Jersey City, dousing my filing cabinet and no real surprise that the movers had already blown their total time budget before we even got to the new place. So the yelling at the end of a very long nine-hour-move, between the movers and Martha was totally and in an curious way, expected.

Zoë almost had a seizure and I really mean that. No shit. Move day was super long and hard for that cat. It started out for her by spending over four hours locked in the bathroom with Lily while the movers carried all of our stuff out of the apartment. She meowed like a colicky baby. I sat in there with her for 15-minute intervals, spraying Feliway cat spray on my hands and then petting it into her fur, just shy from spraying her directly, which the label warns against doing. But, I could see why an owner just might go on ahead and spray the cat. Anyway, after the first hour of her pissing and moaning, I left her alone. (There is only so much I can take.) Part of me wanted her to blow just so the rest of the day she would be a zombie. Selfish, I know but best for all involved.

When it was time to go we shoved her in a Kennel Cab with Lily and hit the road. Staring at a three-hour drive from Jersey City, I was concerned that she would flip out in the cage and pee all over Lily. I could almost see the pull over to the side of the road anxiety but she seemed pretty doped up and able to deal.

The drive was uneventful, except for the phone call from Jazz letting me know that she had missed her flight to England. She was supposed to have flown out on Friday, not Saturday. She didn't figure all this out until she was at the airport and freaking out on some airline staff. The tension was high as she navigated and forced her way onto a flight to Philly with a connecting flight to Gatwick airport. We agreed to have her call me when she was at the gate (with boarding pass in hand) for the flight to England. It concerns me that she fucked up her itinerary like that. I mean what the hell, Jazz?

We got to the new house, locked the cats in the upstairs bathroom, and proceeded to help unload the truck just so we could get the hell away from the movers and be done before dark. Our shit is a wicked combination of volume and weight. Takes forever.

We let the cats out after the movers left and that is when Zoë went into overload. She seemed all right when she was walking around on the second floor but it was shortly after the big scary all by herself walk down the stairs to the first floor that she started panting. Cats don't pant. Oh god it was ugly and Martha and I were convinced she was going to blow. I kept spraying my hands and then petting her very slowly, trying to get her to calm the fuck down. Finally, she seemed better, sort of. The pacing and the panting stopped and she just wanted to lie in the hallway.

It then occurred to me that it had been several hours since I had spoken with Jazz and she should have called by then. I picked up my cell phone and called right into Jasmine freaking out. The Philly airport had been closed earlier due to storms and when I called her, she had been sitting on the runway for over an hour waiting to de-board the plane. The pilot had turned off the air conditioning and the passengers were not allowed to get up to even use the bathroom. Jazz was stuck in a middle seat on a full plane, sweating and crying. She had flown out of Pittsburgh, went to Philly, circled around Philly for twenty minutes, flew halfway back across the state of PA only to land in Harrisburg to refuel, and then took off again, flew back to Philly, landed in Philly and then everything came to a dead hot stop. Wow that is pretty fucked up. I did my best version of Calm Mom and managed to get her to at least sound better.

It was around that moment that I paused and thought it unusual that both Zoë and Jazz were almost on the same page.

After all that, Martha and I went out for sushi. What the hell, there is really only so much we can do for that cat or Jasmine and besides, we needed to eat.

I spoke with Jazz one more time while she was at her gate. Her flight to England had been delayed but not canceled so she was able to eat, charge her cell phone and get some cash before she flew off across the ocean and arrived in England at 4 am, (our time).

Jazz is in England, and we are in our new house. Wow.

Things I am going to miss about hi-rise living:

People have started looking at our apartment. That means I have to let folks in. God how I hate that. Of course, I'm not going to be there when it all happens but I hate the idea of breeders with kids or trust fund snots walking their dirty city shoes all over our apartment. We are a no shoe home and it's just disgusting to think about what other folks might drag through here when I'm not around. If I keep thinking about it, I'm going to make myself crazy.

Anyway, we got a mortgage. Amazing. I'm in dept up to my eyeballs with student loans and a bank wants to give me more. And I say hell yes, that's the American way! So it looks like we just might close mid-month, two-weeks from now. The loose idea is to start spending weekends up at the house, you know, painting cleaning and moving the small stuff, getting ready to live there. It is easier to rip up carpet and paint a room with nothing in it, oh and rip up carpet we are so going to do. The living room has a nice mauve thing (We have a red couch.) that is so out the door once we buy masks, gloves and a crowbar. I don't care what is under there because we are going to put this down. Martha and I have been eyeballing the Flor product since the design show at the Chelsea hotel a few years ago. We had wanted to put it in that condo we tried to buy up in Union, god I am so glad we walked away from that deal. $325,000 indeed. It would have sucked and that monthly mortgage payment would be killing us by now.

The things I will miss about this apartment are very, very simple and obvious. I am three blocks from the subway and seven minutes from Manhattan. Can't beat that. But the real thing is this. Living eighteen floors above it all, every room has a wall of windows so the real reason that this apartment is awesome is the view.

Specifically on mornings where the fog has set in and the city is a ghost out my window. Before the rest of Jersey City gets up and makes it so noisy I have to close the window, I can hear the blow of fog horns from the cruise ships floating up the Hudson from out of the harbor. I've seen the QM2 a few times and I can't believe it floats. That thing is huge. So it the QE2. Even from my window those ships are so large that they block certain parts of the Manhattan skyline as they drift by.

But this place has never been very peaceful. There is always noise, construction, children, jackhammers or beam pounders and the sirens, Christ the sirens. The whole city around us is constantly humming. Last night fireworks went off just a few blocks from our building and lit up the whole sky. The view was amazing, front row to a great show. I have no idea why there were fireworks but they seem to have them quite a bit over here.

But honestly, aside from the stench from the neighbors cooking floating through the bedroom every now and then I really liked living here. It has been a good run of it.

IF YOU CAN'T SAY ANYTHING NICE
Work is weird, a new guy started and honestly I can't imagine what it must feel like for him. All around our department is just emptiness. It is almost like the scene of a crime, only well after the entire crime scene has been cleared. All that is left is that icky feeling that something bad happened in the spot you are standing in. I don't know, I'm just trying to be nice and not bring up any negative crap in front of him. So yes, I do spent a lot of time at my desk with headphones on avoiding eye contact.

Well it looks like Martha, Jasmine and I survived five days of some intense girl power in our little three-room apartment. All I can really say is "WOW".

Keri managed to commute from here to DC and back without too much trouble other than sleep deprived delirium, but after a few coffees and a nice walk down 5th Avenue she got her third or fourth wind.

Sheri is so lovely and having her near always makes me feel better no matter how sick we both are. She came with a cold and we kibitzed over medicinal herb and Sudafed Cold Medicine. Of course, not to be outdone I kicked up my buzz a notch by drinking Vicks NyQuil Cough syrup straight out of the bottle like it was Southern Comfort. For two days, I carried it with me in all around apartment seeing as how I didn't really go anywhere else. Too sick and full of cold medicine to run amok like normal, I did manage to get out and go to dinner with everyone one night and Martha, Sheri and I went shooting early (crack of dawn early) over at the Fulton Fish Market and then on up to Time's Square. At eight o'clock in the morning, Times Square was already a buzz of nutty. Not as bad as normal but that whole fucking area has a pulse, I swear to god. It is kind of bothersome because it feels like a corporate monster pulse instead of the vibrant creative pulse like other areas of the city.

But that was it. I stayed home almost the entire four days. I have a cold that will not leave me alone. My voice is just now coming back but the constant coughing night and day is maddening.

Jasmine's friend Courtney is a nice little hippie chick from Jim Thorpe and is, at times, the polar opposite of Jazz. I suppose that is how those things work sometimes. Jazz had someone (other than us) that she could boss-around. Martha called it "Jazz Lite: Just as Filling but Half the calories".

Courtney is very, very laid back and I know she had a great time because she made the announcement that "this was the best New Year's of my life." It is always funny to hear something like that coming out of the mouth of a twenty-year-old. She has a good decade ahead of her filled with retarded behavior and complete New Year's Eve debauchery before a statement like that can carry some weight. But I have no doubt that Jasmine is a most excellent host and besides, they got served in a Chelsea bar on New Year's eve and hooked up with two boys from school. Boys, beer and balls dropping; sounds like an ideal time.

Jasmine, ever in tune with my neurosis and listening to the place in her brain where I have taken up permanent residence, also known as "the Mother Zone", made sure she was home by midnight on New Years. I have been in New York at midnight and it is kind of crazy on the street so I wanted her here. Yes, I can be a drag but I only had to ask her once. Besides, at midnight if we all cranked our necks we could see the fireworks in the harbor from the comfort of our big fat lesbian bed. Who would want to miss that?

My office had become the dressing room for Sheri, Keri, Jasmine and Courtney. Girl clothes, jewelry, strange bath pellets and hemp oils sat next to my Holga camera. Silver chains and finger rings curled around bottles of perfume on top of my filing cabinet. There were three stacks of clothes. Sheri's pile under my photo table; Jasmine's pile, stacked against the closet door and one of Courtney's luggage (the other one was in the living room) next to my chair/Lily's ottoman. I think Keri had a small pouch in there somewhere but it was lost to the room. It is so jammed full of stuff that even the cats stayed away, too dense for cat play.

Sheri and Keri shared Jasmine's twin bed, (they are either more cat-like than Martha and I or are just plain crazy) while Jasmine and Courtney slept on the air mattress in the living room.

For the most part it all seemed to work and there were only a few moments were I felt trapped without a place to go. New Years Day at 7 am was one such time. Everyone was sleeping so I made coffee, sat on the kitchen counter, and waited for Keri to come home from work. She was due around 8:00 so I though I would write a little and hang out on the counter, something I haven't done since I was a teenager.

Our red kitchen is around 12 x 7 and that's about it. Jasmine, blessed with the curse of not being able to sleep more than four hours no matter how drunk she was when she fell asleep, woke-up and joined me. She and I hung out in the kitchen for an hour and chatted about everything. It was so cool. We caught up on Courtney's visit, the up coming weeks activities and doctors appointments and the general state of the household.

Keri came home and then Jazz and I went for a two-hour walk around the water and canal in Jersey City where I took photos and Jasmine bitched about the sun. Every now and then, I took photos of her bitching about the sun. We talked about everything from boys and school to her cancer and my tumor stuff and Jasmine is quite possibly the coolest person I have ever known. Oh yes, she is lazy and makes all of us crazy and yes, there was a small conversation about trading her in for Courtney but that was just because we were all wooed by Courtney's usage of the dishwasher and the folding of clean clothes. Jasmine rocks and I would never trade her in. I would consider selling her but I would never, ever just trade her in.

So we made the move and we are in. Woo hoo! We love it and we never want to leave, at least that is the word on day two. It is quiet and the cats are totally flipped out. They are so flipped out that untouched Fancy Feast sits in a bowl just waiting for a cat to take notice of it.

Amazingly, it did not rain and the movers did not suck. It took longer than we thought but it was well worth it. Overall, there was minimal bullshit. The cable person even showed up an hour early and we have had cable since before we were finished with the movers. There were only a few scrapes; Martha cut her finger and dropped my old office chair on her foot while taking it down to the trash. My legs are bruised and I look like I had to fight off an attacker and Jasmine seems to have hurt her shoulder but overall we are pretty tiptop.

Jasmine and I now share a room. Her bedroom is also my office. I don't think she is too happy about it all but she DOES go back to school in four weeks and she will have her VERY OWN dorm room to decorate with all of her fine tuned angst. The bill for her sophomore year of college came right before we moved. Talk about a buzz kill. Jesus Christ, I'm going to be long dead before that shit is paid off.

This apartment makes me feel like I am on vacation. I know that will pass, within time but honestly, I don't think I have ever lived like this. Except for when I was on the company dime. It makes Martha and I somewhat uneasy but that is just because we are waiting for the crap to start. It is a pathetic view of the world but one she and I have sadly, grown used to.

Ah yes, work. I didn't win the lotto, I just moved. Work is still work and I have a good two-week run of it until I can completely fuck off for seven sun-filled days. My vacation is going to consist of reading, sleeping and seeing how fucked-up I can get. We bought a beach tent, a beach towel, and summer reading books for all. I personally bought a big floppy blue beach hat and matching blue sunglasses. I am totally working the Sophia Loren, Jackie O thing with these glasses. They almost cover my face from my forehead to my mouth. I look like an aging movie star and some days, in my head I suppose I am.

I wrote this at the Laundromat down the street from our apartment. I was at the Laundromat because all six of the washers AND dryers in our apartment building are broken. Martha did not discover this until around five o'clock Sunday night. Now, the super is gone because his mom died and he has my sympathy but what I cannot for the life of me understand is why, in a block-long, 80-unit apartment building when one person leaves for a family emergency the entire system falls into catastrophe. Why things here are held together with a pubic hair tolerance for error is beyond me and I suppose, in a nutshell, why we are leaving. Hopefully, the fucking elevator will be working by Saturday when the movers arrive.

What an amazingly frustrating weekend. All we did was pack and watch shit break around us. The weather was beautiful and I could think of about fifty other things that Martha and I could have been doing. Trying not to be too disgruntled we resided ourselves to a weekend of cleaning, packing and last minute phone calls from the landlord wanting to show the apartment. I gave up trying to make it look nice. Fuck it we are in the middle of moving and he is just going to have to parade these folks through our filthy, boxy mess. Sunday was worse because they didn't call us until very late in the day and things were already a total disaster. The landlord had set up three showings all within a three-hour period.

Yeah, Sunday was the worst. Hell, by noon there had already been tears and that happened well before the parade of Jersey renters and the laundry thing. Martha had taken her "Joyfully Subversive" button off that she had been wearing all day Saturday. This, of course, being the clear indication that all of her fun was done.

Anyway, the first contestants were a very attractive early 30's gay couple. I had to suppress my overwhelming desire to tell them to run away. This place is chalk-full of cranky uptight breeders with strollers where the word family means very different things. The second couple was a young soft-spoken family from India. The mother was in her full dress, including dot, and while she was simply beautiful it kept getting snagged on our boxes as she tried to navigate the labyrinth. Their child was so quiet and well-behaved that I had forgotten they came with one. I have been telling Martha for months that I believe that the only thing that could stand to live in this apartment, (once they fix the heat, that is) and not only live but possibly thrive, would be a loud, young couple with children. Kids - plural. Something that would naturally raise the noise level from this apartment in an attempt to drown out the stomping crazy-man from above and the door slamming bitch from below. Loud children in a loud children tollerant apartment building would be a natural thing. So with this in my head here comes the third family. A nice young Jamaican couple with a 3-year old terror named Justin who loved to run, cry and cough (mouth: wide open in perfect circle, projection: straight into the living room, hands: flailing around at sides) while running up and down my hallway, knocking shit over in the bedroom and screaming at an incredibly high pitch. I think we have a winner. Everyone say "hey" to Justin.

The Laundromat, interestingly enough, it is just as noisy as my apartment when everything there is firing on all cylinders. When Jasmine is watching TV in the living room, crazy-man stomping back and forth at rapid speed over my head and the jackhammer kitchen renovations from the apartment below all measure up to about the level of a crowded Sunday night Laundromat. Ah well, I kind of needed to be here anyway. LALA*LAND's theme next month is Laundromats and I was wondering how I was going to meet that. I didn't just want to bust into one and start snapping photos. I could and would have but this is much easier - would be one way to look at it. Everything is a photo-op once you get up and over it, I suppose.

So yes, let us see... Miss Jasmine has been bitching at me for the past month or so about not being able to see very well out of her right eye. Now, understand that Jasmine does tend to bitch about everything and yes she does come by that honestly, but when she would complain about her eyes she did so late at night AND after she had been reading all day in the cold, dark apartment, or after she had been playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City all fucking day. Okay? Well maybe I'm just a little distracted and her eyeballs are not on top of my list of things to flip out about right now. Whatever. Sunday we finally drove our lazy asses five blocks to the mall where she had an eye test and guess what? Peanut needs glasses. Reading glasses, but still. Who knew? Well technically, she knew. Upon hearing the news that she gets to wear specs she immediately came at me wanting more bling-bling than the insurance will pay for. She WANTED $200.00 Vogue frames; her new, very smart looking silver no-name frames will be ready in two-weeks.

Packing and more packing, it is truly endless. We keep putting out knick-knacks and oddball furniture and folks keep scurrying out of their apartments to collect it. I have not actually witnessed anyone slithering away with my old candle holders or Martha's sixteen-year-old magenta bowling ball, but hours after we put something out there it is gone. We are putting out good knick-knacks that's for sure. Even the pack rat in me knows this. So far, we have managed to give away Jasmine's dresser, Martha's desk and my credenza. The dresser and the desk went to the same woman who kept calling our furniture "appliances" on the phone. I don't think she actually meant "appliance", but that's what she kept referring to it as. I wasn't very hopeful but when she showed up with her seventy-year old asthmatic father, her daughter-in-law and her three-year-old granddaughter (they were the muscle). I new they were very serious about free furniture. Martha helped carry both pieces to their van and the woman was so happy she gave us hugs. Twice. I told her to "have a beautiful life" not with the least bit of misery or sarcasm in my voice. Straight up. I'm thinking that this is the best thing I have done in quite some time. It makes me want to just give it all away for a hug.

So this Tuesday is the 35th anniversary of the moonwalk? Jesus, I am old. I remember that day. I remember my dad standing on the back porch calling me in from the sandbox-swing-set combo and into the house so I could watch the moon landing on the black & white TV console in the family room. I remember at the time I felt as if I was being stared at or watched, kind of like a guardian angel in the sky above me. Not watching just me, but all of us. The PLANET I mean. It was weird. There were people walking around up there, and from that moment on, I never looked at the moon the same way again. I also totally bought into the Jetson's way of living and that by now, 2004 thank you very much, that we would be living on ALL of the planets, and not only in OUR solar system, but the whole big damn deal. I believed that we would be living AROUND the universe. I would have a dog with a space helmet bubble on its head and a powder blue bubble sky-car that made a really cool zippy sound. The whole thing made me actually give a shit about science, technology and fashion even at that pre-elementary age. I wasn't Sci-Fi so much as I was a romantic. I guess I still am.

The hardcore packing has begun and I must say it is liberating to throw shit out. If I could I would just hurl it all out the windows but instead I gather up piles of crap and make Jasmine drag it to the basement. I have to say that this is cathartic in ways I could not have imagined. The apartment is officially trashed and as if I needed further proof that my shit is shit and I can't even give it away, Martha has placed an add on CraigsList.

FREE FREE FREE FREE FREEEEEEEEE
(1) Sofa
(1) Chair
(1) 7-drawer Desk
(1) Antique Credenza
(1) bedroom dressing table w/round mirror

The couch is going to our landlord's father and outside of a small interest (one girl who lives down the street) in the desk that has been it. Goodwill has yet to call us back about picking ANYTHING up and the one donation place Martha called wanted only full dining room sets. I just do not understand this. I have a dining room table that I use as a work/photo table. I have never had a dining room set except for when I lived with my parents and we all know that none of that shit was ever mine. Our dining room is my office. Who lives like that or more to the point who lives like that and shops at donation centers? Who the hell around here has the space to live like that?

Oddly enough if we leave crap out in the main hall, by the laundry, after a few hours (in some case minutes) it disappears. Things like; a small metal chair; a huge plant; pots for planting; a small metal table; you know, crap that if we had a yard to have a yard sale in I would put a sticker on it asking for a dollar or two. But, if Jazz leaves it out in the hall, folks scurry out when the coast is clear and drag it off to their place. It is official we hate our neighbors and they hate us. Awesome, the circle is complete.

Not only is Tuesday Miss Jasmine's 20th b-day but we all three of us are going to see Prince. What buzzy thing that is. I haven't seen him in; God I don't how long it has been, fifteen-eighteen years.

Jasmine is hell bent on doing the South Beach Diet and I'm game only because it actually is a better meal plan then the one that I have been on for the past two and a half years. My diet consists of coffee, salad and yogurt. Two to three times a week I eat tuna sashimi and once a month I plow through a bag of lime chips. Anyway, we bought the diet book and the cookbook just so we could maybe start eating right.

My hard drive crashed. The new photo one. Yeah, right. Click, click, clicking, fucked. I felt like puking.

As it stands right now I am unable to access March, April and the majority of May photos. Oh yeah, and my website. The only copy of this here thing is well, this here thing, which is actually in California - dude. Scary isn't it?

I have a call into Western Digital and I will so attempt data retrieval. If they can dig around on a wiped clean computer to try and figure out who is a pedophile or who killed who, (combination CSI Crime Scene Investigates and Investigative Reports working my mind) if they can do that then can they help a girl out with some pretty little New York City photos eh?

Funny. I was just talking to Martha the other day about how I wanted to start shooting more film again. Mostly Polaroid but now... I mean really, fuck all this, who needs it? I bought the external 200-gig drive FOR A PIECE OF MIND. Okay, I should have probably been burning more CD's but Jesus. It is very simple the other way: shoot film, have neg., archive neg., move on. All this linger, linger tinker-tinker bullshit code. I am an artist (?) and this medium is choking my creativity –sometimes. Mostly, it feeds it but when it decides to have a bad day, it is a real bad day and THAT I could so do without.

Start packing up the trailer 'cause we have rented an apartment in Jersey City on the 18th floor of a snooty hi-rise with a view of Manhattan. Yes sir, we are moving on up to a deluxe apartment in the sky. It is smaller but we have too much shit anyway. We have to move; this apartment has no heat. I bring this up because...

Later on in the day of my hard drive crash, I was at the bank filling out paper work to get a certified check for the new apartment. The lease signing was later on that evening. As I am digging around in my wallet, I notice that I do not have my ATM card or my driver's license. While I am at the teller's window, I call Jasmine at home and ask her to check my camera bag to see if my ID is there. For the first time in over two years, I did not take a camera with me when I left the apartment because, well fuck, I was somewhat disgusted with all of it (see above) and I just walked out the door without it. Jazz tells me that my ID and ATM card are there and upon hearing this I screamed, "FUCK!" and then immediately started to cry. It was so uncontrollable that tears were actually jumping out of my eyes instead of the usual depressing creep down my cheeks. The tellers there kind of know me. I am there every week and it IS our branch. They know me but they don't "know shit about me" and now I am projectile crying in front of them. In a nutshell, I cracked in public and I cracked hard.

Yeah, right. But hey, I actually did manage to get a cashiers check with nothing more than my Village Voice Photo ID and a bucket of tears. Well that, and a great deal of insanity, I suppose.