28 March 2012

An Underground Past

I'd recommend to all readers that you watch this video, taped inside the Times Square subway station in the '80s. It's interesting to see what looks the same and what looks different. Of course, the most notable difference is all of the graffiti on the trains! 

Also - there was a "K" train?! Where did that go?

I'd like to find some videos from even earlier than that; if I find any good ones, I'll share those here as well. If you know of any, let me know! I'm very interested in the different stages of the New York City subway system.

22 March 2012

Understanding

“I sat beside Brett and explained to her what it was all about. I told her about watching the bull, not the horse, when the bulls charge the picadors, and got her to watching the picador place the point of his pic so that she saw what it was all about, so that it became more something that was going on with a definite end, and less of a spectacle with unexplained horrors. I had her watch how Romero took the bull away from a fallen horse with his cape, and how he held him with the cape and turned him, smoothly and suavely, never wasting the bull. She saw how Romero avoided every brusque movement and saved his bulls for the last when he wanted them, not winded and discomposed but smoothly worn down. She saw how close Romero always work to the bull, and I pointed out to her the tricks the other bull-fighters used to make it look as though they were working closely. She saw why she liked Romero’s cape-work and why she did not like the others.”
- Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

20 March 2012

Signs of Spring

red berries
awakening bud

life over death

cotton candy boughs

15 March 2012

out of hibernation

when the day was warm we went out from the office and squinted in the sun
and we all sat on benches to eat deli sandwiches that we had purchased with 
what little cash we didn't put into the bank, what we allowed ourselves to spend,
what we weren't stashing away in hopes of saving up for vacations or books 
or going back to school or to someday have just enough to purchase a plot of land
and some seeds to grow a garden and build a hut with sturdy wooden planks
and then we could live forever as a community of clasped hands out in the sun.

Oh, if life were that simple, what dreamers and poets we all would be.