Archive for the ‘weather’ tag
Tearing up the plaza…
The plaza around work is going. and because of the new barrier wall, we only get glimpses of any attractive construction workers, not that I need such distractions in my life.
All my resolve about not running the air conditioner too much this year is vanishing in the face of the swampy solar onslaught. My apartment is a surprisingly efficient heat trap, leaving me gasping when I arrive home in the evening. I’m pretty sure that next year will be the time to upgrade the front unit, since I’ve had it for about five years and cleaning the filter has produced some improvement but not all that much.
I always say that I love steamy New York Summer Streets, but that’s the catch – I like it out on the streets where we can sit around drink Ballantine Ale and chat, not in my bed with me where I spend the evening wringing out my pillows and wishing that I had more layers of covers so that I could toss them off of me to get some relief.
Tags: daily photo, new york life, weatherRelated posts
Blown…
Last night’s wind was brutal. I walked downtown from Chelsea to attend a dinner, and my hair whipped my face for blocks. The wind also exacerbated my allergies, defeating the Claritin in my system. I was a little rumpled and disgruntled by the time I got to the restaurant, but a couple of red wines and a fastidiously prepared beef tenderloin returned me to an even keel
Still, I feel like the weekend has gotten away from me. I’ve cleared a few more boxes out, And processed some more piles of paper. I got rid of a bunch of video tapes, cutting the cord on some stuff that I now know I’m never going to watch again. I’ve got a lot of reading to do and have been experiencing some real energy swings, feeling wiped out in the middle of the afternoon.
Maybe what’s happening is that as I’m getting down to the more difficult decisions in terms of this clutter, there are more psychological effects. And that’s what’s causing my stress reactions.
Tags: daily photo, decluttering, weatherRelated posts
Still coming down…
Yes It’s snowing here in Brooklyn, and blowing. It’s piling up in the street because plowing doesn’t happen so much in the minor boroughs and certainly even less in our little particular back water. It’s not bad news. I’ve had a good day all in all, sleeping off the bad vibes of a brutal work week this morning until Lehigh licked me awake, and I got started preparing for company. The scattered, clumsy energy I seemed to have around me persisted today, as I kept knocking things over and spilling stuff into the middle of 2009′s last poker and cigar party at my house.
Folks arrived early, and I was at a loss given how utterly filthy the house was, and how I had only just begun to clean the most offensive spots when the bell rang.Luckily my friends quickly tired of my apologies and made me take it easy. After a couple of hours of play I began to unwind. I ended up losing a few bucks but won some good hands early on and had a great time, happily seeing Jeff, Ed, Scotty, Scott, Thor and Mud. Bears, cigars, poker, pizza, what more calming influences are there?
Tags: Cigars, daily photo, friends, poker, thor, weatherRelated posts
Say your prayers, villain!
Shoulders aching. It’s been a bumbling weekend. A little sketching got done. Things interrupted other things. Saturday’s weather was simply wretched: sloppy not snow not rain, falling so slowly that it didn’t count as sleet either. But its damp and cold penetrated everywhere, especially for under-dressed me. I finished up reading The Year’s Best Science Fiction 14, but it was probably wrong to read it all at one go. I think the editors favor a kind or story that hits very predictable marks, and by then end of the anthology I was too often anticipating the plot twists to b e able to enjoy the writing.
Lately I’ve been trying to gingerly re-approach the things that were important to me as a kid: science fiction and comics and it’s a little bit rough going with both. There’s so much out there, and as in everything else, so much of it isn’t very good. I left comic fandom in part because of fatigue over drawn out punchfests that padded stories into multi issue affairs with very little actual payoff. In trying to pick them up again I’m seeing the same thing at work.
Of course genres are only as good as their individual practitioners, and my sample has been pretty small, so I shouldn’t really leap to conclusions. Still I’m much happier reading obscure kiddie comics from the fifties than today’s superhero offerings. And learning more from the drawings, too.
The new book is Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us, which is the kind of light non fiction that I love, but which always makes me faintly embarrassed, like I should know all this this stuff already, should have read the tougher science books that he is popularizing here. Truth is, it’s like a science fiction book itself, with the bones exposed: post apocalyptic, right? I’m comforted by the notion of the earth being able to continue on its way without the noisome presence of human beings, and even though artists are supposed to be in the immortality business, making things to outlast ourselves, I’m happy to contemplate the oblivion which awaits all of my works.
Tags: books, comics, daily photo, fandom, food, friends, weatherRelated posts
This is the look that says: “Take me out, you lazy, lazy sod”…
It’s clear and warm in Brooklyn. I’m going to go out in it (again) in a little while. Got to soak up any autumnal pleasantness as I find it. For the first time in many days I’m not waking up with an immediate deadline or meeting hanging over my head. What lightness!
Last night I also got to see the fantastic work by a group of Alumni from ICP here. I was thrilled to see people going out in to the world and doing new things. There was so much pride flowing throughout the room, and I loved being able to add my little bit to the pile. So here’s another way I’m lucky: I read people complaining about the privileged, know nothing, whiny students they have to deal with, and I’ve got to say that that is not my case at all. People have varying degrees of commitment and success, it’s true, but overall, I have nothing but admiration for them. They set up an organization, sheetrocked the walls, and threw a New York art event. So very groovy.
It’s all about moving past fear, fear that nothing will happen for you, that you’ve got nothing to say, that other people control your destiny. Action puts the lie to those fears.
(as if to underline all of this, itunes just threw up Chic’s “Good Times”. Clams on the half shell, and roller skates, roller skates)
Tags: daily photo, lehigh, teaching, weatherRelated posts
Unswept away…
As anyone in New York will tell you, autumn has come in earnest. This morning the leaves on my block were beginning to pile up, with the rain making it even harder for my fastidious neighbors to get them swept clean quickly enough. I went with some friends to drive upstate and do some fall type stuff, and then attended a party in Manhattan this evening where there was talk of the “last outdoor sex of the season”. But let’s not kid ourselves: the dank and the chill make the outdoors appropriate for only desperate, doomed Wiemar style couplings why the streetcars grind past, hauling the despairing back to their scanty coal stoves. We’ve officially entered “Raw out here isn’t it? Come back to my place and I’ll warm you up” weather.
And that’s fine by me too.
Tags: daily photo, friends, my block, weatherRelated posts
Blow, wind, blow…
My final day here has been punctuated by the most aggressive winds and downpours that I’ve seen so far. It’s a real reminder that we are on the sea, dammit. It gives me a bit of insight into what the off season must be like here. Every time I think about heading down to Westerland for a couple of final purchases, the sky will dump buckets of water outside the window. Some folks may not end up getting the presents I thought to pick up for them.
Could be it’s just nature telling me to stay in and get my stuff organized and try to knock out another couple of drawings before I pack it all away. If I could just resign myself to that course of action I’d be much happier. Instead I keep hopping up when it clears and thinking hmmm perhaps now I can get down there.
I do much better with limited options.
There are also still a couple of pictures I want to take around here, and at least I got my laundry done. I think this is the first time I’ll be coming back from a trip with more clean clothes than I arrived with. Which is good since I’m thinking about the massive amount of cleaning that has to happen at my place upon my arrival.
I am looking forward to getting back, I must say. There’s a lot of dirty New York I’m hungry for. And I’m hoping that I have the courage to retain some of the lessons learned while I was here.
Tags: daily photo, Sylt, travel, weatherRelated posts
You can’t make this stuff up…
Since I’d walked into town today, I almost took the bus home, but I was feeling pretty good and decided to make the trek on foot. About four fifths of the way back I started to notice how crazy the sky was getting, with huge clouds piled up across the horizon. No rain, but the sorts of canyons of fluff that you just don’t see all that often. I took a bunch of pictures and then walked on and before I got much further I just had to stop and shoot more. And then I saw it and hopefully you can see it too: the rainbow just to the right of the center of this picture. I have some where it’s more distinct, but I’m choosing this one to show you because It shows where it’s touching down. That building you see there? The kind of large one? Well, right behind it is the place I’m staying.
I didn’t want to goose the color in the shot, so this is pretty much what the camera saw. If I were a suspicious man I’d call it a sign, but instead I’ll take it as a bit of good fortune, a reward for walking.
Two other very nice things happened today as well: the post that I put up on the 13th of this month the one called “In Response” has garnered a lot of kind words over on facebook, and has been reposted here, in a great blog called Little Paper Planes, which has one of the most comprehensive sets of interesting gallery and artist links out there. Well worth your while.
And a very nice (and talented, and cute) artist, Joey Veltkamp has published a short interview with me here, on his blog. SO if you haven’t read enough of my yammering, you can go read some more. Or just use the links and go look at Joey’s stuff.
Tags: daily photo, good news, Sylt, weatherRelated posts
Mutability…
It seems that you can always predict one thing about the weather here: at some point during the day it’s going to rain. And it’s going to be sunny. Whether or not those events will coincide with your plans or serve to thwart them is the unpredictable variable.
Rented a bike, and now I have to reacquaint myself with riding one. It’s been about ten years since I was last on a two wheeler that wasn’t bolted to a gym floor. Pathetic, right? Truth is I’ve had an uneasy relationship with vehicles my entire life. Learning to ride the bike was dicey in the first place. The best efforts of my family were for naught. It wasn’t until I had time alone in New Bedford that i finally got the knack of it. I even have memories of trike training being difficult. So I plan to spend some time at a local parking lot exploring my incompetence before hitting Sylt’s open roads.
One of the things that is happening here at the residency site is the MeerKabarett, which I gather is a series of shows, a bit of a festival with different act each night. Last night I joined my hosts and some of their friends for the first act of a satirical sketch show , performed by a troupe miming to a taped soundtrack. Probably a bit like English panto, the show was full of cultural references, some of which I caught, some of which went sailing by: A writer wants to capture Blackbeard the pirate, which devolves into two famous kid detectives sort of like the Hardy Boys searching for a kidnapped Parrot through Mexico and ultimately into a confrontation with the Samuel Jackson/John Travolta characters from Pulp Fiction. At that point there was a break, to enable the patrons to order food and drink, and I made my excuses and returned to my room to do a bit more drawing.
This morning it’s a bit chilly, and I woke out of an elaborate dream. I finally feel like I’m settling in.
Tags: bicycles, daily photo, entertainment, Sylt, weatherRelated posts
Abandoned robot costume…
It’s tough out there for a robot.
It’s officially claratin time for me. The pollen is making me groggy and itchy.
Tags: daily photo, robots, weather