Holly Northrop Blog

I just love the general oddness's and flukes that can happen within roughly a one-block radius in Manhattan. Sometimes it is as though a whole day is contained with in an hour.

Last Wednesday I stumbled upon the tired old bones of the Cheyenne Diner on 9th and W.33rd street located across the street from B&H. I was just up there in the spring when it was open, and at that time, it looked just like any other railroad type diner in Manhattan. So as I was walking across 33rd not only did I notice that the door was oddly propped open, it appeared that the building was in the midst of demolition.

I asked if I could come in and photograph it. They didn't care one bit. I wasn't able to poke around as much as I would have liked but I think I might have a few shots that are pretty interesting. At least right now in my head they are interesting, we'll see what happens when I develop the film. One guy mentioned to me that the Diner was moving over to Brooklyn. Probably Williamsburg in some bastardization of hipsterness.

Right after shooting ½ a roll at the Cheyenne I walk further down 33rd to Saint Michael's Academy where I shot a super weird photo of an all white Jesus. While walking near AP I was almost hit by Lincoln Tunnel traffic because I was too busy gawking at all the folks standing around outside smoking. At first I thought they were having a fire drill or something. We used to have them all the Voice. Stupid things. I'd usually walk out and go to lunch although many folks would just stand in the street, stare up at the building and wait to go back in. After studying the Associate Press folks for a few minutes I realized they were all on a break. Further along the road, (technically ½ a block down on 34th street) as I was shooting the New Yorker sign I looked down and saw someone I used to work with at the Voice.

We both looked at each other and smiled that big happy-to-see-you smile. "I was just standing there when out of the corner of my eye I saw this fuzzy red-headed chick with a camera pointed up at the sky and I thought to myself, NO WAY!"

Good to see good people and I do miss working with good people.

"I'm moving back to Greece. I'm keeping my apartment though, sublet it out I tell ya. That landlord can kiss my ass I tell ya, fuck him." —Greek diner on 23rd

The Horizon 202 Camera is officially back in the hands of the owner. He was to use it over the weekend and report to me how it's working. I'm just glad it's no longer around me. I didn't even want to hand it back to him, instead I displayed it on the center of the kitchen table. If I would have had a cake plate I would have put it on that. The technical report of what all was wrong with it: (Said in heavy Russian accent with a slight shaking of the head ending with a small puckering of the lips.)

"It was all screwed up. Berry, berry bad."

Every now and then, I remember that instead of wandering aimlessly around New York, there is stuff I want to do instead. I managed to see the When Color was New Show at the Julie Saul Gallery. As side from the rudeness of a Chelsea Gallery, the show was motivating in so many ways. Photography is luck, lighting and timing. I stood in front of one the most inspiring photos that I've ever seen. There are three things that work together perfectly with this shot.

The man is staring out into infinity with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. The woman is looking at her wedding ring. There is a plate of white bread with a few pads of butter around the edges.

Man. Woman. Butter. Perfect.

The whole show was encouraging and many of the prints I've seen before in publications here and there. A few of them are in postcard form hanging in my studio. Just a subliminal reminder to myself that I need to look around more when I'm out shooting. Every shot is there, I just have to see it.

I got into an argument with a neighbor about noise. Now to be fair, his timing sucked for I wasn't really furious at him, (that's a whole OTHER story) but he took the brunt of my anger.

He and his fat fuck of a buddy were working on a car across the street. They had a volume control issue with their voices, deciding to shout normal conversation at each other while standing only two feet apart. After about 15 minutes of that horseshit I walked out of the house and across the street where I, in a rather calm tone, asked them if they could stop shouting at each other. No big thing right? Well while walking back to the house, the fatter one, started trash talking me the minute I was behind the hedge line, only he's an ass see, and he trash talked me loudly.

I turned right around, marched across the street, and got all up in their faces. I stood there sandwiched between too rather large and bulbous bellies with a combined weight of well over 400 lbs, bitching at both of them for saying shit behind my back. According to Martha, who by now was standing on our front stoop, I called one guy a jackass. I do remember being in his face and pointing a finger at him so it is of no real surprise that the words, "Listen here Jackass," came out of my mouth. But really isn't that just my way of making friends?

Jasmine has asked me to burn all my Joy Division for her. She swears she's not depressed, that she just likes the music and I do believe her but part of me did pause when she asked me. It's one thing when I decide to 'go there' but it's a whole other can of worms if your child 'goes there'.

"Mom, I also listen to Tool, but that doesn't make me want to go out and kill myself."
Although she was making a point I never got past the "I listen to Tool" part of that sentence. Tool makes many people want to go out and kill themselves.

She's coming home for her birthday and I can't wait to see her. She's driving and the cost of gas alone is going to be as much as a night at the Waldorf.

Can I just say that the West Fourth Street subway station is a total pit of shit? I hate when I have to use it and will walk the extra blocks just to avoid the damn place. Every time I'm down there I feel like I'm either going to be mugged or shoved in front of a train. It's one of the few stations in Manhattan that makes me feel that way. Even the station in the South Bronx didn't make me as uncomfortable as West Fourth Street.

I don't know why but that station just creeps me out, the vibe is all wrong. It's super spooky when you're all dressed for an interview, (or a job on Wall Street), you become a target for bullshit. I've seen it with other people and I've seen it with me. Dress like any other scourge of the earth and no one looks twice, but slap and pair of dress shoes and a Fossil Red Leather Business Tote on your ass and well, here they come.

Again with the dental visits, another Wednesday, another filling. I am seeing these people on such a weekly basis that I'm starting to know their lives, you know how their weekend was, etc. I could be an employee, except there is no way I could stick my hands in another person's mouth. I can barely tolerate the sight of my own horrible teeth let alone the fucked up crap of someone else's nightmare.

Funny, my dad was always trying to get me to go to dental school. That's all he used to say to me all through high school. "You know Holly, those dental hygienists make damn good money."

He'd always say that after he'd had a dental visit, which if I recall was with about the same frequency that I have. I get my shitty teeth from his Irish/German side of the family tree. Come to think of it, I get a lot of shitty things from that side of the family. Interesting how he never thought I could actually be a dentist but that I just might be smart enough to handle teeth cleaning.

Speaking of stupid, for two days last week, I periodically watched two guys from National Grid dig a hole in our front yard.

Union Street is undergoing a MAJOR construction project, in fact all of Hudson is but now they have started on our street. They are replacing all of the gas lines, the main one and the one that feeds into each and every house. So the drilling, tarring jack hammering, and general jackassiery should be a good time for all of us. It wouldn't suck so much if everything wasn't in the front of the house. My studio, the living room and the bedroom all have direct viewing of the construction. The only place I can hide out in is either the kitchen or Martha's office.

They have marked up the road in front of each house with colorful orange, blue and white spray-paint. It looks like HTML markup. I do notice that our house seems to have quite a few more notes then either one of our neighbors. Not sure what that means but I'm sure it sucks. It's been my experience that anything that has more code around it or special notations is most likely problematic.

The first day of the project is when they started digging the hole. They were looking for the main gas line. They found our pipe with out any real trouble. It's only about two feet down and right in front of our driveway, but the main line was a mystery, wrapped in a enigma that was stuffed inside a Triple Whopper^TM with Cheese. The magnet that they use to find pipe indicated that the main line was in our yard, so they started digging. Digging, digging and digging. End of day one: nothing so they covered the hole up put a bunch of orange cones with yellow tape around it and went home.

Day two. They dug out the hole that they had just filled fifteen hours before and then they dug further. By now, this hole had interested a neighbor, he came over to stand there, and watch Darrel and Darrel dig a hole.

He stood there for over thirty minutes, looking down at the hole. Amazing. I don't get it, I don't understand what part of the brain wants' to watch someone dig a hole. This is such a man thing. Is this the same thing as when we watch each other put makeup on? Just stupid brain shit, kind of like the power save on the computer.

They finally found the main line three feet over and under the road instead of in our yard. So they filled up the hole, and dug a new one, out in the road.

Saturday morning I woke up at 7am to the sound of aluminum ladders being extended and the general clanking that aluminum can cause. The weather has been so nice here that for over a week we've had the windows open and I'd like to keep it that way. Air conditioners cost money and seeing how I'm unemployed and the entire country is in some form of biblical disaster, (flood, fire and food are all attacking us), I figure the less I can crank up the air the better.

After a few clanking moments, I hear a weird noise coming from across the street. I look out and see a man standing by the neighbor's big tree in the front yard. He has the ladder and is looking up at the tree.

Ok whatever, the neighbors are having something done to their house, painted, shutter stuff, whatever, don't care I move on, pissed that I'm awake so early on a Saturday. But this weird noise keeps drifting over. I think it's either a treed cat or one of those crazy squirrels. I figure whatever it is, it's some kind of animal that is caught in the tree and because the workers are right there, it's freaked out. I know a woodpecker lives there but I wasn't sure they make a growl-moan sound.

Finally I figure it out. One of the workers is a mute. He's not deaf because there isn't any signing going on, just loud moaning sounds after everything the other guy tells him to do, which like normal conversation is every few seconds. He sounds like Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein.

"We don't have enough errands to be away from that all day." I said to Martha.
"Well, we're just going to have to take the long way." She said.

Sunday was rough. I have no idea why but it was rough from almost the get go. Sunday was flea day. I hate the day when we give the girls flea treatments. We never had to do it until we moved up here and I just hate it. Zoe always acts like we've stuck a piece of tape to the back of her neck, staring up at the ceiling then flipping her head from left to right in a vein attempt to lick the back of her head. She looks like she is hearing voices. She can do this for hours and she makes me nuts. She drives me crazy, which drives Martha crazy and before too long, one of us (me) is sleeping on the couch with a little prescription overdose. I hate flea day.

In the middle of talking to Martha about how fucked up my head was (and chewing gum) my temporary crown fell out. Like right in front of her. I wish I could say that this was the first time she has ever seen this but alas I have had many a temporary crowns in my mouth and she is way over the shock of seeing something fall off my body. Sixteen years is a lifetime.

What can I say about a week that started with a grand wedding in Manhattan with a deluxe suite at the Waldorf=Astoria, and then ended up with a 4am visit to the Emergency Room of Columbia Memorial Hospital?

Talk about a slide.

Thursday, Martha came home from work early complaining of some serious stomach pain and body aches. By 3am, things had deteriorated so horribly that we went over to the hospital. Ok, here is where I will admit that I suck; she drove herself but, but, but, I DID DRIVE BACK.

I know, I'm horrible but if it's anything, I think I'm getting it. My glands are swollen and I feel like ass.

Once at the hospital they took a bunch of her blood, hooked her up to an IV and gave her three shots. Blood work came back with nothing out of the ordinary and after three hours, they sent us home. Friday sucked, Saturday pretty much sucked but by Sunday she was on the couch, surfing the web and waiting for me to make her breakfast, seeing how she hadn't eaten anything outside of Gatorade, toast and rice since Thursday night she was pretty hungry. I think she just might make it.

In the 'I can't stop laughing at you' department, the last man standing on Survivor Island: Voice Edition, quit last week and who could blame him. The Voice is such a sinking ship that I'm amazed he found a life raft. The department has now shrunk to one person who hasn't even been there a year. In two years, there have been fifteen people who have left the web department.

It's funny after the wedding last week and seeing a good chunk of everyone I used to work with, I realized just how horrible the last two years my life at the Voice were. I used to work with some truly awesome people. Somehow by the end, I had to deal with a know-it-all from Boston who really didn't know too much at all; a total (and I do mean total) jackass who was never really able to make it in New York but seems to be flourishing in Phoenix; and the final entry in the trifecta of shame, a backstabbing two-faced son-of-a-bitch.

Anyway the wedding and a weekend in Manhattan were both fantastic. It was Martha's birthday and we decided to live a little and get a room at the Waldorf for two nights. But alas, the Waldorf did not impress Miss Harvey. She started making a list almost immediately.

Right out of the gate the big screen LCD Samsung TV didn't work. Only one channel came in but at least it was golf. While waiting for the TV guy, we lost our minds, eating $14.00 cashews from the mini-bar and $8.00 mini sized Evian. After that, if I even went near the mini-bar, Martha yelled at me.

In room internet was not free but $10.00 a day. The Waldorf is part of the Hilton Honors Program, which is what The Hampton Inn in Winston-Salem is and where they have FREE in room internet.

We could get free internet in the lobby with all the other travelers hogging up all the plush seating and electrical outlets. This idea sucked and we only checked email once over a three-day period. Kind of freeing actually. We squirreled away around a corner and sat on an eighty-year-old marble step that leads up to the Grand Ballroom, right before we left on Monday morning.

We ordered room service only once and after $30.00 for a pot of coffee and a bakery basket for breakfast, that too went on Martha's list.

But the real unpleasant thing was that our air conditioner did not work. The first night there was rather stuffy. Upon leaving in the morning to run errands and walk around Manhattan, we stopped off at the concierge to ask if someone would look at it.

"Which room? The living room, one of the bedrooms?" he asked.

We just looked at him. Martha laughed and said. "THE ROOM. There's just one room."

We walked out of the hotel into the beautifully sunny, cool and breezy day of midtown and not even twenty feet from the doormen a homeless guy walks up to Martha and asks her for money.

"No, sorry." she said.
"Hey, I went to Kindergarten with you." he replied laughing.
I laughed too, because it was kind of funny. He then looked at me and we both laughed.
"That's just great." Martha said.

We ran errands, picked up film, stopped at Blick, had a little Mudd Truck coffee, and walked up to A.I Friedman, before returning to our stuffy hotel room.

"That's it; we are going to open the window." I sighed. It had the suicide locks on the sides so we could only pry it open the allotted seven inches. The fucking thing was so heavy and awkward that it took both of us pushing up while clamping down on the locks.

"Jesus Christ, the only way anyone could jump out that window is if they were anorexic." I mumbled.
"...and if you're anorexic you're not strong enough to open the window." replied Martha. We both busted out laughing as the breeze and sounds from Lexington Avenue filled the room.

The Waldorf is ridiculous in all the wrong places. Clusters of tourists, (some fat as fuck and some just rich as fuck), wandered around the roped off area of the Famed Sunday Brunch in the lobby. A brunch we only walked by, tickets were $100.00, but strolling by I did manage to see a tiered liquid chocolate fountain. Sliced fruit was displayed around it like a living fondue alter. There was an enormous leg of a lamb the size of my own leg, resting on a wooded slab, nicely lit by the heat lamp. Unidentifiable pastries, some sprinkled gold flecks, filled three large tables and there was something that I'm considering to be a wall of bread. Various bread products stacked in such a manner that when combined they formed a three foot high wall that separated the vegetables from the meats. So much food, so much of it was bagged and tossed out.

From the minute we got off the elevator on our low-level floor I was reminded of the Overlook Hotel; the hotel from The Shining. The long halls with rooms on either sides, the red carpets, the Deco interiors. Our room was three long hallways and two blind turns from the elevator. At every turn, I expect to see The Twins or a door ajar with some weird woman in the bathtub.

Before we went to the wedding, we had some time to kill so we took a ride up to the 18th floor to the Starlight Roof. The 18th is a maze of hallways and various size rooms. Some rather large for meetings and presentations and some smaller for well, smaller things. Let me tell you, the walls up on 18 are pillow-paneled with a pastel tan and mauve pattern.

When we were wondering around up there, we were alone. Totally alone. We walked into the Starlight Roof and my jaw hit the floor. This room is a Deco Dream and the view from the windows is breathtaking.

"We have to come back up here tonight after the wedding!" I said.

And we did. Somewhere after midnight, we rode the elevator back up to 18 and immediately walked over to the mirrored French doors of the Starlight Roof. The room was dark, the only light in the room came from lights of Manhattan through the floor to ceiling windows. The Manhattan skyline from inside Manhattan is stunning.

We shot a bunch of photos and after a few minutes, we walked out of the room and we were instantly twisted around. Things has changed since we had been up there in the daylight. A few doors to darkened rooms that had been closed were now open. The path back to the other set of elevators, the ones that go to our floor, was different, or at least looked different. Combine this with the fact that most of the lights were off, so if you looked over to the right or left, all you saw was darkness it started to get a little spooky. We knew we were the only one's up there and that made it worse.

This is when I started shit.

I stared talking about how spooky this whole place was, with its hundreds and hundreds of black and white photos from the 30's, 40', 50's and 60's lining the walls. The downright disturbing ones were the photos of the Starlight Roof taken around 1934 during certain galas, such as New Years Eve, society dinners, etc. All shot with a long exposure so some of the folks faces are blurred and some are looking right at the camera. When you stop and think about how everyone in the photo is now dead, well then in your head, the ghosts appear.

"Shut the fuck up." Martha said as she started to walk faster and faster away from me down a long twisted hallway.

"I'm telling you all I can see are those twins. Come play with us... forever and ever and ever."

"Holly, fucking stop it!"

I was doing the thing with the finger but she didn't look back at me. Honestly, I even scared myself.

So far, unemployment is going well; keeping my head on straight and all. I figure, this one will suck, given the current state of the economy going to hell in a hand basket. It does no good to flip out about it all. In one of those 'little things you just happen to see' category, I watched a neighbor walk out of her house and shakeout a large 3 x 4 wee-wee pad in the bushes by her front steps. I think I need to make a concerted effort to get out of the house more.

My goal is to at least once a week devote the whole day to shooting in Manhattan. Picking an area or two and just focusing on a ten-block radius. One of the areas that I've been wanting to reshoot was down at the very tip of Manhattan, near the Staten Island Ferry.

I took the Path to WTC and scurried through that mess as quickly as possible. It's still fucked up, only now it's louder with all the construction. I walked up and over towards Liberty Park where I noticed that Double Check is back.

For a while, he was sitting over in Jersey at Exchange Place, just down the street from where we use to live. Martha and I stumbled upon him while out shooting one day. He was sitting right next to a huge clump of twisted metal that had been an I-beam at the WTC. All very bothersome.

Anyway, last week after zooming right by him, I stopped, took a big sigh, turned around and walked back over to him. The artist (J. Seward Johnson) as chosen to leave all the dents and scratches on him. I think I took a photo but I can't remember. I guess I'll have to wait for the film. That hardly every happens. I usually know whether or not I've taken a photo. More WTC art lives down at Battery Park. Unbeknownst to me the city decided it was a good idea to stick the big metal globe that used to sit outside of the WTC, right in front of the entrance to the Staten Island Ferry.

Maybe I did know this but completely forgot. Whatever, my psyche locked up when I walked by the bashed in globe. I'm not sure what upset me more. The thought of every commuter, twice a day walking by this thing, or the gaggles of tourists who where pointing digital cameras and cell phones at it.

Why must this city feel compelled to terrorize its commuters? What a nightmare it must be to work on Wall Street with all the flash bulbs and police in riot gear on the podiums at Federal Hall. They look like living gargoyles

After my fill of lower Manhattan, I went up to the International Center of Photography, which by the way for $12.00 I should see more photography then the splashing they have on their walls. All combined, there are more photos in the bookstore then in the gallery. Hell, I think I have more photography on my walls at home then they do in their weird little layout of a museum.

Either I have subliminally shoved the knowledge of where the displays of tragedy are located in this city or I'm on some karmic game of real time Stumble Upon. At ICP I walked into a room filled with over 100 newspaper front pages from around the world, dated the day after things blew up around here. It was the world enouncing the day the world ended, in full-page, full color photographs from every angle and in every language.

It seemed so fitting that it was down in the basement in a dark hole of a room. As I stood there surrounded by three walls of horror, I felt the air slowly leaking out of my lungs and I was unable to take in a breath. It reminded me of when I was a kid and fell out of a tree. It knocked the wind out of me when I hit the ground. Next to me, sitting on a bench was a woman crying. The sound of her blowing her nose snapped me out of it and I turned, walked out of the room, ran up the stairs, and pushed my way out of the front doors and into the bright sunlight of a beautiful Manhattan day.

It seems like all this city has to offer visitors is glossy nostalgia and tragedy. I don't see New York that way at all. I've been here too long, I've walked around too much to only see the highlight reel. I understand that the WTC is one of the top ten tourist stops on the Hop On Hop Off, All Around Town Double-Decker Bus thing. I mean I get it; Broadway in nothing more then one big strip mall, Times Square is Disney and Ground Zero is tragedy as a destination. The dollar is in the tank and the world is coming here with empty suitcases so they can load up on crap. We are nothing but Wal*Mart.

I get it. I get it, but I just didn't realize how it has all evolved seamlessly. I can't help but notice how things have become so streamlined in a very short time. It is getting harder and harder to find the kind of miscellaneous mixture of creativity that was so abundant just a few years ago.

A woman walked up to me and asked me if I spoke English. She was an American visiting New York City. Lost and frustrated, could not find anyone who actually lived here, spoke English and could tell her which way Carmine Street was. After I pointed her in the right direction, I just stood on the sidewalk, struck by sadness at the weirdness of that question.

Well, last week the siding people finally finished up. Jesus Christ they are gone. There is still some caulking that Martha and I are going to have to handle. If we don't fill up the seams, when the wasps come and you know they will, our house will once again be one big hive.

After the massive rain storms that pounded the shit out of us over the weekend, Martha noticed a drip pattern in the hallway. Having just put a new roof on last year and new siding all over for the past five weeks, the only drip pattern in my life should be in my head. I was supposed to go out on the roof and see if I could see anything but my heart just wasn't in it. And you know, if I'm on a roof and if I'm not feeling it, then I probably shouldn't be out there in the first place. Oh yea! Here come more noise making workers to find the mystery leak. It is endless.

Like everyone else around here we have a little bit of water in the basement and we have a small pond, or as I like to call it, a seasonal pond, in our back, back yard. The birds like it and of course, the ducks are migrating to it. When it freezes, we will then have a little ice-slaking rink. Standing at the kitchen window it is fun to watch the birds play in the water, seeing how I have all this time now to do things like gaze at ducks.

I went into Manhattan on Thursday for a no charge dental checkup, Martha's favorite kind. After that, the day was all mine. Now of course on the day I have to go in there was a bomb in Times Square.

It was just a coincidence that I had already planned on going over there to shoot a little and maybe go to the International Center of Photography. Boy, if we had some extra money, (isn't that funny) I would take a class there. But as it stands, I can't even join with an Individual Membership running $75.00. Most of the classes that I might be interested in are over $600.00.

When I left the house at 7:00 am that day, I read that they had closed Times Square. By the time I had finished my three hour pilgrimage (I mean commute), and in true New York City fashion, traffic was back to normal. When I had finished with my dental appointment at noon, they only had the island where the recruiting station sits, and the flash point of the bomb, blocked off. I actually walked right up to it and shot some film and a few photos with my snazzy new cell phone.

Having nowhere to go and no real agenda was despite being awesome, a little stressful in that 'where to go to the bathroom' kind of way. I have a few spots in the village, but midtown, I'll need to explore that further. I can't keep asking my friends to let me in their buildings so I can pee.

For lunch, I tied my purse to a chair and ate soup in Bryant Park where I sat two tables over from an Indian man who was practicing the violin. Sitting in Bryant Park I noted that most of the folks around me were nothing like me at all, which is a sensation one would think I would be used to by now. But uptown is so very, very different than the village. It's not that I'm not familiar with it, I so am. When we first moved here, every damn day I commuted into Manhattan via Times Square. I had to walk down 42nd street and catch the subway downtown to 8th Street. It was a twice-daily nightmare. I also think Times Square is where I started loathing anyone not from here.

Later on in the day, I met a friend and after a cookie and some sunshine, she took me back to her office. Someone that I used to work with has been freelancing for her. I hadn't seen him in over two years. He quit the Voice after the merger, along with a bunch of other people from the web department. Seeing him was sad and happy at the same time, if that makes any sense. I suppose this city is littered with shell-shocked ex-Voice employees. I feel like I was in a cult or something. Some kind of Heaven's Gate thing, except I got out before the Phenobarbital and plastic bags were passed out.

I remember someone telling me years ago that once a Voice employee, always a Voice employee. I kind of knew what he meant at the time and now, I really understand.

I'm done, I'm done. Its' January and we all know what that means. It's a new season of The L Word! Hurry, mute that fucking theme song!

Like all bad relationships that do not end in gunplay, eventually someone either leaves on their own, or walks away after being told to get the fuck out. I have been in a nasty staring contest for about six-months with the mothership and finally, they blinked. Of no real surprise to anyone, I was officially laid-off on Monday, I was asked to leave.

I have numerous mixed feelings about all of this but the foremost reaction I have is the desire to take a sauna everyday for about month so I can sweat the past two years of ugliness out of my pores.

Having worked there for over six years; the last two being one of the worst professional spans of my career, forced to watch well over 100 people leave either voluntary or involuntary; I am a little weirded out by the length of it all. It was the longest job I have ever had, so it will probably take me some time to get my bearings.

I guess the best way to gauge my state of mind is to review what I did upon leaving the building for the last time. I walked down Bowery, deep into Chinatown and shot two rolls of film. As I slowly wiggled my way back up to C-Lab to pick up a roll of color film, I stopped and had coffee at Starfucks, where I openly and aggressively applied Tiger Balm to my back while sucking down a tall coffee. Walking further up Broadway, I slid into Best Buy and bought the new Cat Power with a Christmas gift card that I had been carrying around with me. All extremely normal things.

I was hired at the Voice on my 39th birthday, one week after my unemployment had run out and three months after the Towers fell. The pit would continue to burn for another two months and every day on my way into work, out to lunch and on the way home, the air smelt like a combination of chemicals and wet earth that would get up in the sinuses and linger on the tongue.

How I got the job was a simple matter of having a friend who used to work there. He made a call for me and before I knew it, I was hired. The funny thing about my interview was, deep down in my gut I just knew I was going to work there. Before my interview, I sat over in Cooper Square Park smoking a cigarette, looking around I could just see myself there. The other funny thing is that for the past two years I haven't seen myself there at all. Long gone are the folks whom I respected and enjoyed working with, replaced with people who never wanted to have anything to do with me; an interesting environment to say the least.

Yes, my last day at the Voice ended quietly. After shooting for several hours, I made my way to Hoboken where I jumped on a train to meet Martha. I dived right into the post-apocalyptic nightmare that is known as The Road, which I am right in the middle of. Then something completely unheard of happened. I managed to have a whole three-seater to myself all the way to Suffern, New York.

Crazy Isn't Stupid, Stupid is Just Stupid
Moving on, spring is coming, I can tell even though we still have white snow and brown deer poop in the yard. We start this week out as week five of the siding people and with the exception of some kind a weather issue; they just might finish the job. No. Fucking. Way. I know, right?

Martha and I did what we always do when one of us is let go and our financial future is sent into a tailspin, we bought something pricey. We consider it the layoff gift, because we're that damn weird and being laid off isn't a big enough gift in and of it's self, we bought art. Excuse me we bought Photography, apparently, a dying art form, which complete strangers delight in telling me once they see a Holga around my neck. People are so damn strange.

I remember years ago when Martha bought me a digital camera for my 40th birthday. I fooled around with it for days, shooting in all different modes and all the different settings. Eventually I settled on a programmed setting of no flash, white balanced, ASA 400, no beep, no sound and one shot only. Basically over time I navigated as close to my 35mm as possible. I goofed around with the Black & White setting but the whole thing felt stupid. I shot hundreds and hundreds of digital images over the course of two and a half years. The very first version of my website was almost all digital. Roughly all the Voice work I shot was digital, except for a few features where I was able to use the Holga for that 'Holga Look'. On a side note, I find if very funny that the last thing I shot for the Voice was this, although, it is not the one I would have picked. I would have chosen this one, but I'm just a picky bitch.

Countless times when I am out shooting or just walking from one place to another in New York the soundtrack in my ears perfectly matches the visuals of my path. Some are obvious like walking down McDougal Street while listening to Dylan or walking in step to Marquee Moon, over by Bowery and Bleecker, even though all that exists down there are hi-rise apartments full of Upper East Side Blonde girls who suddenly want to live the 'Downtown Lifestyle'. Thank god for places like Avalon Bowery Place, (Studios starting at $2,895) that can make those dreams safely come true. For Martha and I to live there, it would cost us around $6,500 a month and I wouldn't be able to have a darkroom.

Anyway, despite New York's continual slide into wealth management, I am talking about the delightful musical surprises that happen. Things like listening to Elvis in the middle of Union Square, or the Pixies in SoHo. Weird little bits of musical chance that can make the most miserable event tolerable.

One such moment happened last week when I was on the 6 Train going uptown to what I thought was to be a routine dental visit, but more on that in a minute. I had to stand on the train, which normally I don't mind but when the train is crammed full of shithead foreign tourists coming fresh off a Ground Zero stop, I turn into one big cranky face.

Just when I decided that I hated everyone, through my ear buds the sounds of the Butthole Surfers, Leave Me Alone flowed faintly in the background. In the process of yanking my hand up to adjust the volume control, I smacked the ass of the girl in front of me.

She jumped up and around allowing me the full on force of her lunch choice involving buckets of garlic. I smiled, she didn't, I rolled my eyes and shifted my direction by precisely one inch to the left and turned up the music. Standing three inches from my face and mouth breathing garlic at me, she glared at me for exactly one whole subway stop, and then looked away once we passed 14th street, having taught me a harsh, harsh lesson. (Like that had any effect on me, honestly now, all you did was stare at me and make my eyes water.)

This particular 6 train was being driven by Mr. Fuck-You-I'm-in-the-Union-Driver. You know the guy. He doesn't give a fuck about any of it and pushes the train to go as fast as he can, stopping on a dime in every station, laughing to himself in his little booth at the sounds of bodies banging about each subway car. He's the guy that we've all seen get off his shift and slide out of the subway car like Superfly, saying "Hey Baby" while pointing to all the female Transit employees.

Riding with Youngblood, you know the drill, find a nook and ride the wave. While traveling between subway stations and well beyond 60 miles per hour on some of the long stretches, for a split second your feet can actually leave the ground. It's the slamming on of the brakes that you have to be ready for. Every stop, all the tourists went flying, yet oddly, they never stopped talking to each other. Hands on pole, legs in the air, yak, yak, yak. I know they are talking because I can see their mouths moving around, but thankfully, all I hear is Butthole.

Once we get to my stop, I birth myself out of the subway car and immediately moved into the salmon upstream sensation of 59th street at lunch hour. It doesn't matter what direction you are headed, it is always the opposite of the flow. It's like a blizzard, always in your face and way too bright.

I am late when I get to the dentist so within seconds I am in the chair with the little napkin thing around my neck. Things move along like normal when the hygienist notices something about my upper left molar. Great. Okay, well, let's see what it is.

Now my relationship with this particular dentist is long and strong. For years, she was the only professional of any kind that I was seeing. That means that she was my therapist, my doctor consult and a life coach. She went through Jasmine's cancer with me where I would go there for check ups, just lay in the chair, and cry. Sad but true.

All this drives Martha crazy because:
a: Dr B (as she is known) is out of network;
b: she's fucking crazy Park Avenue expensive; and
c: I simply will not consider anyone else.

I can guarantee that as Martha is reading this, her hands are sweating and she's getting a headache, combined with a little stomach upset.

Dr. B pokes around in my mouth and does not like what she sees. Three shots of Novocain and a laser procedure later, I am numb and slightly shaken. But it wasn't as bad (meaning I wasn't as bad) as it can be. In fact, Dr. B touched my shoulder and said, "I just want you to know that was the most normal I've ever seen you. You're almost like a normal patient."

Drugs and therapy baby, drugs and therapy.

So, good feeling gone when I go to check out. The total for the day came to $4,500. Upon hearing that, I just started to ball. Dr. B walked over to me and hugged me then told the billing clerk to cut the bill in half.

Half is still crazy but not $4,500 crazy as I pointed out to Martha later on that evening, when she about had a heart attack.

I may be unemployed but as Martha pointed out to me while lying in bed one morning, "Thank god you're on medication."

The funny thing about shooting in Manhattan is that every day that I am on the street it is inevitable that I will see some form of celebrity. This city is crawling with them. So much so that I've done the sidewalk dance with a few on them and I've even had my photo taken with Colin Farrell at the insistence of Jasmine who was screaming in my ear via the cell phone.

So about a week ago, when I was down around SoHo shooting graffiti and street scenes, I walked past Heath Ledger and thought nothing of it. Why would I? Sure, it's cool to see these red carpet people, but this is New York and we don't fawn. It's one of the few times that we smile at someone but then we just move on, which is what I did. I smiled, he didn't, I moved on. Even with a camera around my neck, I never shoot their photo, except for that Colin Farrell thing. It's just not my interest.

I've seen Olympia Dukakis on Broadway trying to hail a cab in the rain with her husband standing under an awning. Martha and I had lunch a few tables over from Susan Sarandon and one of her son's who is the spitting image of his father. I've walked past Candice Bergman on the Upper East side, and I've seen Parker Posey (and her mouth) at least four times in the East Village. I was in a restaurant sitting by the door when William DeFoe walked in looking for a table, and at work I sat one cubical over and listened to Vincent Gallo yak on and on about some idea he had for a piece he was writing for the Voice. Considering that he is such a fucking Republican, the whole event bothered me more than anything. I couldn't wait for him to leave.

Law & Order (all versions) is forever filming all over the Village, once right in front of the Voice where I had to walk past Ice-T to get in the building. He actually said to me, "Hey baby, what's up?" as I walked in the front door.

Christ, I've even seen Jodie Foster standing on the corner of 9th Street, obviously waiting for someone.

I saw a split second of Robert De Niro in Tribeca and walked right on into a weird sidewalk thing with Andy Garcia on 42nd street for the premiere of Ocean's Eleven. I've seen dozens and dozens of various band members wandering around the Village; most surprisingly to me, because I've stood next to him on the street in three different cities; John Doe. I watched totally amused as Michael Stipe ran around Lafayette Street shooting photos. He's another one I seem to run into a great deal, so much so that I've seen him do a double take when he sees me. It's the bright red hair but now I think he thinks he knows me from somewhere. Or that I'm stalking him.

I used to walk by Patti Smith's house every day on my way home and because of that I walked right by her at least three times. One of the funniest things I have ever seen was Sebastian Bach acting like a total screaming fucked-up asshole on St. Marks Street in the middle of broad daylight.

I am sure there are countless other folks that I've walked right by and never noticed or have forgotten about over the time I've lived here. I guess the weird thing about seeing someone like Heath Ledger a few days before he's found dead is that much like everyone else on the planet it simply weirded me out to hear he was dead, and yet Britney and her English doppelgänger, Amy, live on and on and on.

Britney walks around under the steady strobe lights of paparazzi flashbulbs; kind of like a disco, only she is at a germ-infested gas station smoking cigarettes near the gas pumps. Hanging out at gas stations is not such a good image. It's just one coke line away from Truck Stop Whore.

Then there is Amy, sporting her new Dr. Frankenstein bob; all 80 lbs of her pacing around her apartment looking for a kitten and smoking crack. Are you fucking serious?

You know, just the other day I stood next to Sylvia Plachy at The C Lab while I was picking up film. I smiled at her and she ignored me. All totally fine, except that she used to work at the Voice, and we saw each other countless times (and I've met her son, Adrien Brody) so some kind of acknowledgement might have been nice. But whatever, it's fine. This is New York, and we only smile at folks that are more celebrated then we are. It is the natural pecking order. Besides, as long as Martha is happy to see me, well then, that's all that matters. I'll be her superstar if she'll be mine.

The last roll of film I dropped off was free and if I would have know that I would have brought more then one roll. But as it was, they all had just found out that January 4th would be their last day. As we hugged goodbye, there were tears in everyone's eyes. After thirty years in the neighborhood the photo lab that I use for all my custom print work and color developing is closing. No more Spectra. They are the only photo lab I have ever used in New York. I feel slightly untethered from the earth, and no, that is not an exaggeration. The folks at Spectra KNOW me. They KNOW my daughter. They KNOW my work. The same people have worked there forever. The one woman I hand over all my unprocessed color film, negatives for custom work, instructions for custom print work and special requests like, don't cut the film, cross-process, and an occasional fast deadline I have know for seven and a half years. She has worked for Spectra for twenty-two years.

In my studio, I have binders full of negatives that Spectra has processed for me over the years, roughly 400 give or take a hundred, if one is counting.

Oh sure I'll find another place, probably C Lab but that is not the point. Handing someone a roll of film is a trust issue. I trust them not to fuck up by stuff. All the rolls of film I have moved through Spectra, they have only screwed up one print, which was reprinted immediately; two rolls of film that was lost for a day and then found in a different drawer; and once they overcharged me for a contact sheet and that was corrected the every next day. That's it and that is why I would walk out of my way to drop off film and pick up contact sheets no matter where I happened to be in Manhattan.

This comes on the heels of a lot of change in the neighborhood. Little places are gone, lost their leases, or pushed out by bigger fish. What's weird is even the big fish leave. Barnes & Noble is closing, which is kind of like when the Tower Records on Broadway closed. There are mixed feelings about it all. I could buy super cheap books and records at both of those stores, even though I should and do support Other Music, Shakespeare & Co. Booksellers and my personal favorite, St. Mark's Bookshop. But when a big tree falls, it makes everyone wonder what hell will crop up in its place. Astor Wines & Spirits moved from its location and a Walgreens crawled up from the sewer lines, even incorporating the old corner sign.

Yes, yes I know change is good but at what price? Is a Toys R Us better then a Tower Records? That is a tough call isn't it. How about this; is that place that I used to buy vintage purses at of more value then a Fusion Sushi restaurant? Is a used record store better then a candle shop? Does a Chase Bank bring more ethnicity to the neighborhood than the Second Avenue Deli did?

I know I sound like one of those 'old New Yorkers' but deep down I think in my heart I wish that the East Village would, at the very least, try and 'fail better'.

Tripping Out With The Money
I had to take the train home the other day solely because I am out of my goddamn mind.

I was so freaked out about a pending snowstorm that I convinced Martha to let me take the train home instead of riding in the car with her. Yep. My mind is a terrible thing.

See I just cannot seem to behave in the car when there is snowy weather. I know, I know, we live upstate what the fuck did I expect but see, there are different kinds of snowy weather and it is the ice combined with the 'two inches and hour' storms that freak me out.

When the roads start piling up with ice and snow, I become as a wild animal might behave while trapped in a car. Open-mouth hyperventilation and chewing at the windows makes for a stressful drive, to say the least. I could jump from the car.

Knowing all this and unable to talk me down at 7:30 in the morning about a snowstorm that isn't supposed to start for twelve hours, Martha agreed to letting me take the train home. She, the more rational of the two of us, would drive parallel to me on the other side of the Hudson River, meeting me at the train station in Hudson. I'm not quite sure why this woman loves me.

The good thing about the train is that I managed to snag a window seat in business Class while only paying for a coach ticket. Business Class is where the folks who take the two-hour train every day get to hang out. These people can afford to pay $126.00 a day, five days a week, every month all year long. That is roughly $57,960 a year in train costs, allowing for 6-weeks vacation and miscellaneous days of not riding the train. As I sat there among the prime rib of New York's Business Class, I wondered just how much one would have to make in a year for almost 60k not to concern your bottom line. You know, my gross yearly salary is what these suits spend on train travel in the same amount of calendar time. So what I make in a year is of no real concern to them. I am a travel expense, that is probably somehow expensed back to the company they work for.

I noticed that much like in the Coach Class travel these folks have the 'both of these seats are mine' mentality. The guy directly across the isle from me set up his very own travel office. Headquartered in the window seat, with the stunning views of the sun setting over the Hudson River out of his un-smudged with city crap/hair gel window he was in command of his domain. In 'his' adjoining passenger seat, he had pulled down the tray table where he had placed his laptop, (opened to some very important Excel Spreadsheet), and his cell phone which was blinking signals to the Blue Borg earpiece sticking out of his head.

On the front of 'his' passenger seat, and behind the tray table he had hung his suit jacket with a special suit jacket hook, (probably from Sharper Image) and on the floor, he had placed his shoes. I noticed the shoes and strained to look at his feet, (because there is no way I would let my socks touch the floor of an Amtrak train) and I noticed that he had slippers on.

On the passenger seat, he had a large blank yellow legal pad, a few pens, what appeared to be a voice recorder and a stress ball. I think I also saw a stapler but I'm not so sure.

I was able stare at this guy for so long because he had pushed his seat all the way back, his head nestled in a travel pillow; he was reading a small used paperback book. I tried desperately to see what he was reading but was never able to get a good look at it. Plus, I got bored with him once the sun went down and then I became fascinated by the woman in front of him. Wearing the female version of the upper crust business suit she too had her own little thing going on. Complete with opened laptop, various electronic devices and instead of a legal pad, she had The New York Times; she was ready for the all-important workload that might come screaming at her. I watched her inhale a medium size cheese pizza and two chocolate glazed Krispy Kreme Doughnuts before I found myself too sleepy to pay attention anymore.

Jasmine and her friend Weber rode for over thirteen hours on an overcrowded Greyhound bus across the state of Pennsylvania, through the bowels of Jersey and directly into NYC's Port Authority on Friday night. They arrived at the edge of Times Square after ten o'clock, hailed a cab and made it to Brooklyn by 11:00, where they were staying with a co-worker and friend of mine in his semi-roach invested (he tries relentlessly to deal but it's the whole building) one-bedroom apartment in the bad part of Brooklyn. You know that area where the trust funded yuppie pups are afraid to live in because it is more Bushwick instead of Williamsburg. It's the part of Brooklyn where his own neighbors call him "white boy" as a term of street endearment, with a slight hint of menace just for shits and giggles.

Saturday morning, Jazz and Weber got up early and headed out for their big day of NYC and the Siren Music Festival. This is one of the main reasons they came here. But first, they had to get on a bus to the subway, MTA is forever fucking with the subway over there and the L Train shuts down on the weekends, so you have to take a bus to the subway.

Once back in Manhattan, Jazz and Weber had lunch at the super model café;, where indeed the people are beyond beautiful. After a few more errands and a quick trip to Times Square and then a stop on Prince Street for a knock-off designer purse, they hopped on the good old F Train to Coney Island. In the five hours that they were at Coney Island, they saw some great music; (Detroit Cobras and M.I.A) from the comfort of the VIP area; road the Wonder Wheel; drank at the backstage open bar; and of course, got a little too much sun. They left before the New York Dolls came on and I completely understand this decision. If you end up staying at Siren to see the last band then you end up waiting for hours to get on a subway. Add that to the hour subway ride back to Manhattan and well, even Jasmine understands that is just too much to put up with.

Jazz and Weber, rode the train back to Union Square where they bought dinner at Whole Foods and ate in the park. After dinner, they jumped back on the L Train, rode that for five or six stops, got off the train and then got on a city bus with everyone else from the subway, and rode that for six or seven stops until finally, they were back at my friends apartment. She called me just before midnight to let me know she was safe. Jasmine had had a fifteen-hour day.

Sunday morning, she and Weber packed up their bags and were waiting for the subway bus by 7:30 am. She took the bus to the L Train, transferred to the E Train and got off at Penn Station where they boarded an Amtrak train for a two-hour train ride to Hudson.

To hang in Jasmines other world must seem like a visit to a foreign country to her friends in PA. This trip alone was the first time her friend Weber had ever been on a Greyhound bus; been to NYC without field trip supervision; been backstage at anything, let alone a massive rock festival or the first time she had ever been on an Amtrak train. Then there is the whole, hanging with Martha and me and all of our well-established middle-age lesbian lifestyle with talks of cats, yoga, the new Prius and chronic back pain.

Martha is having a few issues around letting go. I need to remind her that she managed to sell my Jeep Wrangler, a vehicle I actually really liked until it was stolen and left stripped and foul in an abandon lot in south Newark. Once they fixed it, it did look just like new, the thing just never felt right and the love was gone. Anyway, Martha managed to sell my car, without my signature and buy the Jeep Liberty. She went to work one day in my Jeep and came home with the Liberty. So now, she has to give it up and sometimes, Ms Harvey is only five.

After a long lesson in the Jeep ownership and the newly installed Satellite radio, all four of us went to the Diamond Street Diner for some lunch.

Lots of hugs and photos later there was a ceremonial passing of the keys to Jasmine that looked similar to a knighthood. We went for a test drive to the store for road munchies, then a lesson in gas fill up. Maps and directions, the 'do not drink and drive' talk, oil changes, gas prices, thoughts on keeping it clean and the wearing of seatbelts. I gave Jazz all of my cash and a small drug supply to be used in case of future mental breakdown, magazines, a book, Siren swag and a sleeping bag.

Stories upon stories unfolded and laughter was everywhere but then before I knew it we were driving to the Park-N-Ride for hugs and kisses. Jasmine got back in the Jeep and drove away while I hugged Martha telling her how proud I was of her for letting go of her Jeep.

"That was hard. I deserve a cookie." She said.

I miss Jasmine and four hours is not even close to being long enough time to spend with her. Yes, that was hard, I thought. Happy Birthday, Peanut.

Oh and yeah, one more thing, Jasmine Rai Northrop has a nose ring.

Sometimes, I just can't seem to get into the rhythm of New York City. It happens. Things are just slightly off and you know it. You can feel it before it even really lets you know just how off it's going to get.

Walking to work last week, I came upon a construction area where the sidewalk was gone and a section of the street was being used as the pedestrian walkway. A little cement barrier was set up so that traffic could not just mow people down. At the entrance to the walkway I had to step out into the street because a delivery truck was parked at the opening. Two guys were unloading stuff from the truck. I looped around the one guy just as the M8 cross-town bus skimmed by me lightly touching my right hand. I shifted over just a little so as not to be run over and as I moved to the left, the guy who is unloading the truck grabs a big ice chest full of clear liquid, turns slightly to the right and dumps it all over my legs. I totally stepped into it. I am wearing shorts and flip-flops and that shit was ice cold. I freaked out, ripping my headphones out of my ears while screaming "WHAT THE FUCK?!"

He didn't see me, I know this, it was totally an accident so I'm not really bitching at him, and he's apologizing like crazy.

"What is it?" I questioned, looking directly into his eyes, my face mere inches from his face.
"What is what?" he looked at me, confused.
"What'd you mean what is what? What is the water? Is it fish water?" I said.
"No, just ice, see." He says as he pulls me over to the curb where there are big bags of ice already pulled off the truck and lying on the sidewalk.
"It's all good. Just water, I promise, feel good eh? Nice and cold. Nice and cold. Hot hot day, right? Just water, no worry."

I rolled my eyes and walked away. Yes, it did feel good except that my brain was convinced that it was acid water and I was going to end up with a weird rash or something. I get to work and wash my legs and feet with anti-bacterial hand soap in the sink. My shorts however will have to wait.

At lunch, while out shooting and walking down St. Marks I see a homeless guy a good half a block away from me. We are headed towards each other and I don't think to much about it except that I notice he is wearing a heavily stained light blue overcoat, he happens to be barefoot and he has eight inch drinking straws sticking out of both of his ears. Somehow, and I'm not really sure how this fucking happened, he walks right into me, or I walk right on into him, it doesn't really matter. We both misjudged and the end result is that we touched. Like touch touch. Like my hand touched his chest and I gently pushed off of him. My face was inches from the bits of NYC that were stuck in his beard.

I pulled away from straw man and immediately turned around, and walked directly back to work. Shooting is over, more anti-bacterial soap, water and hand sanitizer are in my immediate future. I am trying to cross 3rd avenue but while in the middle of the crosswalk, where there is plenty of room to move around, a Cooper Union student manages to get her pen caught in my hair as she passes by me. It flips out of her hand, (at least she let go of it) and around my head to my face, lightly smacking me in the nose. And again, I'm like "WHAT THE FUCK?!"

"I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry." She cried.

I just stand there in the middle of the street, pull the pen out of my head, hand it to her and walk away.

Like I said, sometimes the rhythm is just a little off.

Prick Me, You Prick
You know what's funny? Not funny, funny but odd funny? When I was a kid, my mom use to take me to the doctor's office on a pretty regular basis. In my head, it seemed like a monthly thing but in hindsight, it was probably every six-months or so. But the general reason she would take me was to get a shot. Almost always Dr. Goodman would inject me with something, usually penicillin. Penicillin in the 60s was given out at alarming rates, at least by Dr. Goodman, and that's why I am now allergic to all cillins and sulfas. Much like Zoë's booster-induced seizures, I have booster-induced allergies and my guess is that a good chunk of the kids who grew up in Meadville do too.

From the age of around three up until around seven, whenever my mom would take me to the doctor I would ultimately flip out on her. I hated shots. I always ended up getting a shot and I fucking hated them. The minute I'd figure out we were going to the doctor I would start planning my escape. I can it trace back to this precise moment of my childhood as to where the fantasy of me jumping out of a moving car began. So easy to do then with no child locks, car seats or sober mothers. Hell, I wasn't even wearing a seatbelt. It is a fantasy that became a solid staple in my playbook until I left home. Jumping out of a moving car just to get away from my family. Tuck and roll.

Dr. Goodman had a home office. He lived in a very nice ranch house where the bottom part of the home was his office. The waiting room was always filled with a thick layer of stagnate cigarette smoke that would come to life whenever the door opened. Everyone smoked. My mom smoked, Dr. Goodman smoked and his wife (the nurse) she too would be smoking. Off of the waiting room were two or three exam rooms equip with metal tables, wooden tongue suppressers and plaid beanbag ashtrays.

When I was four I got the measles. According to my mom, I was very sick for days and days. My memory of this has always been condensed into those few moments when I was conscious. I remember the ice bath she gave me because my fever soared to 105 degrees and she was out of her mind with worry. I remember puking up ginger ale and saltines off the side of my twin princess bed and into the blue bucket that she usually used to mop the kitchen floor with. And I remember Dr. Goodman examined me from head to toe in my bedroom, just before he gave me a shot in the ass.

I was never safe, at any moment Dr. Goodman could show up with his little black bag full of needles.

After about a week of that shit, I was finally able to go to the doctor's office instead of him having to come to the house. My mom drove me down the street to his office and once inside I made a run for it. I ran all around their house, upstairs into the kitchen, around the dining room and into the master bedroom. It was freaky weird, with my mom and the nurse chasing me. My mom body slammed me by the doctor's double bed, shoving my head under the bed frame, where I saw the doctor's scared to death white poodle barking at me. Just as I looked into the little dog's eyes, the nurse came up from behind and jammed a needle into my ass.

Ah yes, memories. What has me thinking about all this is the current state of my back and the direction that treatment has taken.

I just had three shots in my back muscles. That's right, three of them. It fucking hurt and I had to sit there and take it. There was no running away because at this point in my life, no one would chase me. Only the pain would follow and I'm sick of the pain. I want to break-up with the pain. But sitting there, all bent over while two-inch long needles were slid into my back and buried into the tesre minor and trapezius muscles, I thought of Dr. Goodman, my mom and how I really, really wanted a cigarette.

So we had Orkin come to the house and spray for wasps and various other kinds of things that freak us out. Wasps are all I really care about so we did the bare bones treatment. Of course the normal neurotic mess that I am when someone is in the house was already the baseline for the day (also known as Wednesday) when he arrived, everything was heightened a few notches by my total conviction that deep down this was going to kill that cats. I can't help it, I tend to get a little wacky when poisons are sprayed in and around my home. Green smeen, there is no way all that shit is 'pet friendly'. Besides, I know a misuse of a buzzword when I see it. Right, all of your poisons are Green. Right, define Green. Please, it is poison; you cannot kill EVERYTHING the Green way. How about you just don't kill my cats, K? K.

So the Orkin guy thinks I am a total loon. Well he's in good company. Everyone who has ever met me knows I am a total loon.

The whole thing had me so frazzled that long after he had gone, as I was vacuuming the floors and getting ready to scrub them, I noticed that I had left the lid open on the washer while it was running. I was staring at the agitating bubbles, all frothy on top of the washer, when it occurred to me that I didn't remember actually putting any clothes in there. I pushed the vacuum towards the machine to look closer. I stopped next to the machine, still holding on to the very loud and very on vacuum cleaner and replayed the last ten minutes in my head. I remembered turning the washer on and putting soap in there but I didn't remember loading it with clothes. I looked back at the laundry basket in the bedroom that was still full, but then I couldn't remember how much laundry I had had to begin with. So check this stupid shit out; while holding the extension hose to a running vacuum cleaner I stuck my hand into a swirling washing machine that was full of soapy water. There where no clothes in there, but then it occurred to me just what the hell I was doing as I snapped my hand out of the water and said out loud,

"Oh my god! You did not just stick your hand in tub of water while vacuuming! What the fuck is wrong with you!"

It is as if my inner voice actually yelled directly at me you dumb motherfucker. What an idiot. See, this is how I'm going to die. Something so beyond stupid that Jasmine will have no choice but to become the greatest short story writer ever. I mean how she could keep her shit together when telling the tale of how '...my mom died when she electrocuted herself with a washing machine and a vacuum cleaner'? It's already the beginning of a bad lesbian joke.

No Flash Needed
Ah yes, it is New York and spring is very much here. In Manhattan, things are full on blooming. I love shooting NYC in the spring. Winter is good for the 3200 black and white film but spring, the flowers, the sky and the people are just alive with color. Even the midtown people strip down to their suit jackets and the reverberation of pounding high-heeled open toed pumps invade the sounds of my iPod. Everywhere I go, someone is there and they are up my ass. So what do I do? I decide that it's a great time to shoot Times Square.

Lunch hour on a Friday and I was there, in the thick of it. I started at the bottom at 42nd Street, but could only handle it up to 48th street before I bailed and turned around. Up Broadway on one side and then turned around at the M&M World Store, which is right next to a massive Hershey mega store. Crazy chocolate up there, I tell you. Seriously, we are talking about a whole block of chocolate and you know, it didn't even smell like chocolate. I know in Hershey, PA it smells like chocolate miles before you even get there. But not in New York.

Anyway, I went up one side and came back down the other and for the first time in the entire seven years that I have lived here, I saw The Naked Cowboy.

I ran to the island in the center right before the light changed and it was only after I landed there that I noticed I was stuck there with him. It was just the two of us in the middle of Times Square. We chatted, he posed and I shot photos. The only time that I didn't have throngs of tourists touching me was when I had a man with a cowboy hat, boots and wearing only underwear sharing a ten foot space with me. It was the calmest I had been since I started shooting in Times Square. I'm not sure what that means but it's somehow comforting. Standing there with him was just the break I needed.

Finding something indigenous to New York in Times Square has become a serious challenge. Walking around there is like walking around Vegas. Nothing is real, everything is bigger and more obnoxious than the thing next to it and the idea of fake is excessively celebrated. On some level, it has always been this way but before I could always see slivers of old New York. I don't see old New York anymore.

Times Square has finally pushed through to pure middle-American plastic and Middle American pours in like crazy. They travel across the country to visit a place that looks exactly like what they left behind, minus all the day-to-day annoyances of their individual lives. Everything costs triple what they would normally pay, unless you are from the UK, then everything is dirt cheep. They can shop, eat and walk down a sidewalk five wide (complete with strollers) just like at their local mall. In my walk, I could have pet a NYC police horse; gone to the bank and had lunch at anyone of the three-dozen or so "Family" restaurants. If I were from somewhere else, or if I was someone else, it would have been great.

Of course I could have grabbed a slice (if I ate pizza), walked and shoved food in my mouth. Just like a true New Yorker, I could have collected city bits and hair on my food, except that a true New Yorker would never have been in a Times Square lunch crowd unless they were shooting it, stealing from it or most unfortunately, working in it.

The oddest thing about being up there is knowing that every second of my journey was being filmed. Times Square has one of the most intensive security camera set ups (that is not a military compound or Ground Zero) in the Untied States with over 600 cameras within at 10-block radius. Everything I did was recorded and archived, for what purpose I am not sure. This is not original to New York and ultimately is not really for the individual citizens' protection so much as the protection of the corporations that now live in Times Square. It gives the allusion of safe but has nothing to do with safety. I could be mugged or groped but no harm will ever some to Toys R Us.

Oh and the noodle shop that I love to stop at every now and then, is gone. The whole building is gone replaced with some unknown slice of the New Americana. The even weirder thing was that most of the crowds seemed perfectly happy with the massive absurdity of the volumes of people on the street. Like it was okay for it to be that congested. That's kind of weird when you think about it. But then again, why am I there? To photograph part of the insanity and to be part of the insanity. I know that very early on Sunday mornings when no one is around, Times Square is eerie with its absence people. All that neon and animation still going on and on yet no one is there to absorb it. The whole thing is down right spooky. A very different kind of disturbing then the ant settlement mentality of the lunch crowd. If no one came to Times Square, would it still be interesting?

I've been shooting a great deal in Manhattan again. The weather, my fucked up commute and my totally screwed up back had all caused me to only do the bare minimum for the past several months but considering that taking pictures is supposed to be something that I WANT to do but instead I find myself making excuses for not doing, well then something isn't right. Actually, a whole bunch of stuff isn't right. At work more people are quitting. This is so not a good thing and will have a direct effect on my small sliver of daily work happiness. Anyway, I went up to Central Park last week after some dental work, and even though the trees and flowers are not quite there yet, it still is an amazing place.

I found myself walking around the edges of the insides, around the pond and parallel to 59th Street. People watching is what I am doing. Who are these folks? They can't all be tourists and if I look closely I can see the New Yorkers in the crowd, shoving through the middle with their pocketbook sized dogs leading the way. God I'm jealous. I want to be able to walk my fat Chihuahua down West 59th Street at 1:30 in the afternoon with not so much as one financial bother on my brain. What could there possibly be to worry about?

But back to the shooting, I've been trying to at least just get out of my normal pattern and wander around a little. As the weather warms up, folks start to come out of their apartments and shake off the accumulation of dead skin cells and winter psychosis I feel the need to get out and shoot it all. So every day I'm dragging around my Brownie, or the Holga with (or without) the Polaroid back and I've even been eyeballing my 35m.

To the far extreme of Manhattan, Martha and I went to a sheep show on Saturday. I have never seen anything like it. The whole event was small and more of a craft type of thing but it had three things that we were interested in. The first thing was that it was at the same location where I shot this. Second, was the border collies and third was well, the sheep. Last time I saw sheep was at a petting zoo when Jazz was around four and before that I think I was four.

There were only three sheep and while I took a few interesting, but odd holga Polaroids Martha has video that is just to funny.

We will be in North Carolina until the 28th so after the 20th I will be on a break. No new photo of the day and no more rambling.

I spent the majority of last week working on a 911 package for work. The Voice is doing a piece that I can honestly say I am proud of. Been a few months since I've felt like that.

But what all that meant was that I spent three solid days either looking at photos of the Twin Towers falling or I was down at Ground Zero with my camera, shooting everything from tourists to the actual pit, via the Path train. Instead of walking through the space like when I used to commute through there, I had to linger around the edges of the fence and shoot photos. All around me was a massive photo exhibit (complete with minute-by-minute timeline) that folks were driven to with the customary display of astonishment or boredom on their faces. Ground Zero is a fucked up tourist destination. Aside from the obvious reason that it is a fucked up tourist spot, there is no food or water, no bathrooms or even a place to sit down unless you want to sit right on the sidewalk. There are no trees and the whole area is void of any life except of course for the commuters, tourists and Port Authority workers. But I did notice a bunch of rag weed growing over in the southwest corner of the pit, so life is returning I suppose.

The WTC site is full of life, but lifeless.

Prior to my being down there for two days straight, I had been holdup in my little town in the woods for six solid days. I had very little human interaction outside of the sushi place and the chick at CVS. Thankfully, because I've lived here for so long, I know how to shove hysterical emotion deep down inside me, only to have it come out at odd and inappropriate times of course, but that's my problem and I've learned to deal with it. I had a job to do and there was no time to flip-out with a bunch of untamed emotions.

They say that what happened on 9.11.01 was the largest man-made disaster ever. Except for the Ice Age, I'm thinking that every disaster is man-made considering how we manage this planet. Just about everything the goes wrong is our fault.

Like most folks who were in New York City five years ago, I chose not to go into work on Monday. I was in Manhattan on the one-year anniversary of the whole thing and that was about as fucked up as anything can get. All the stores weren't just closed, they all had flags or signs of remembrance hanging in their windows. The only thing that was open besides The Voice, was Ground Zero. I was also in the city two years ago when the fucking Republicans had their convention here and used New York City as a political backdrop, while behind the scenes the city was in lockdown. Step off the sidewalk and you just might be arrested.

This year I just don't want to play. I'm good thanks and I don't want to think about it any more.

NATURE OR NURTURE?
Martha had the windshield replaced and it cost a little under $300. About half of what I thought it was going to be. It was beautiful but after an hour and a half drive in the country on a Friday night, it is now covered with bugs and looks like every other windshield around here.

Saturday, Lily went to the vet and it turns out she has fleas. So that means Zoë has fleas. So we are currently undergoing 'flea treatment'. Fantastic. We had an Orkin guy come out on Saturday to look at the spider problem that, honestly I have never, ever seen anything like in my life. Thursday morning Martha and I woke up and noticed that everything and I mean EVERY THING in the town of Hudson was COVERED in spider webs. There were webs all over the bushes, trees and fences. The stop sign at the end of Union Street and 3rd was covered in a web that was bigger than my upper torso. I am NOT KIDDING. Even the power lines, you know where the birds sit, were incased with web work. The spiders had a busy night that's for damn sure.

No we didn't have spiders in the house, which is all I really care about but even I was a little shocked. Martha was totally horrified. We live in spider town.

So we thought the Orkin guy might have an idea or two as to WTF is up with the spiders, plus we wanted him to check out a wasp thing we got going on. He said the spider phenomenon is actually a good thing and that they come out in droves after a long rain. Spiders keep the bugs down, blah, blah, blah. By the time he got to our house most of the webs in the whole town were gone so it was kind of hard to stress the complete coverage we had but he is a local and has seen it all before. We were more of show to him than anything going on in the woods.

While he was at the house, a green garden snake slithered across the path to my front door and appeared to slip down a hole into our basement. So we made the Orkin guy go in the basement. He doesn't think the snake went in but he did find a salamander down there. And again, we heard how now salamanders are a good thing and they keep the bugs down with that whole food chain thing. So my question is this; will the snake eat the salamander? Where do the cats fit into this? They suck you know. Our pets are broken and have no idea how to actually kill even the simplest bug so just what do you think is going to happen if a garden snake crawls upstairs and sticks it's tongue out at them. I'll tell you what would happen, Lily would run to the highest point in the house never to be seen again and Zoë would shit herself. That is what she does when she is terrified. She poo's.

After it rained all day last Monday and well after I had been sitting at my desk, cold and wet for hours on end, I came home to two notes. One was attached to the elevator informing the residen