Brown Fire Day

"The Queen of Bitches"  She gets the job done.

Sometimes not enough fire is just the right amount.

Pretty much take this stuff, put it in a blender, and fire comes out.

Out My Back Door (Click to view animation)

Imagine you are standing on the edge of a great lake.  On the horizon there are tall pines, reduced to dark tufts of fur.  The next moment, the trees are only soft clouds with dark undersides.  You can't be sure.  It's the middle of the afternoon, it's impossible to tell how long you've been there, but everything has the warm color of dusk in the summertime.  You are extremely drunk.  Are those reflections the dark lines of a sailboat's mast, or are they low hanging branches?  There's almost no way to be sure.

Evening Investigation

The backyard is a magical place.  Most folks completely lose sight of the great big world somewhere along their journey.  I think a big reason many people use drugs is to bring that magical mystery of being a child back into their life.

Our backyard is full of snails and slugs during the warm months.  Every now and then, there will be a slug bloom.  They'll be everywhere!

These Striped Leopard Slugs are big enough to pet.  Big enough to cuddle if you really wanted to.  They can really get moving too!

What is out there in the darkness?  A trained human eye could see so much more than a photo-  A burned-out fire, a pile of broken twigs, a chain link fence decorated with flecks of spray paint, plastic sheeting laying in the dirt, pieces of the neighbor's shingles...  Imagine what the cat can see.  Tiny insect eyes, death throes, city smells, a caterpillar panting, weeds breaking through the soil.

Giant Leopard Slug Close-ups

Get really close to what you find interesting.

You'll be surprised.

What do you have to lose?  What do you have to be scared of?

Understanding the world around you is a good way to understand yourself.

Contact Sheet

I don't think places are as different as some people think.  Usually there's a bottom part and a top or upper part.  In the middle is where we usually move around.  People tend to build little walls and things so that other people have to move around them, or into them, or maybe something else.  It's kinda like the circulatory system in the human body.  There are all these different ways to go, but after so many twists and turns, you have to turn around to go get charged again.  Places in the world are different though, in that almost everywhere can charge you up.

It was a snowy winter

So this winter was crazy.  New York never got much snow in the years I lived here, but this one year was really crazy!  Emily and I went to Omaha for Christmas.  It was the first time I'd traveled during the holidays in a really long time.  Sure enough, New York got snowbombed and we had to extend our trip for about 4 or 5 days waiting for the airports to clear out.  Omaha was pretty cool though.  There were a lot more hills than I would have thought.

When we got home, there were still a lot of roads that hadn't been plowed.  Even our street, Lafayette Ave, still only had one open lane!  The snowstorm hit the city so hard and so fast, no one was ready for it.  City buses were abandoned in the middle of intersections, cars were stuck all over the place.  There wasn't enough space to throw the snow.  Some sidewalks were more like hallways, pointed towards the main arteries leading to work.

Maybe we worked after getting back, I don't remember.  What we did do was get ready for our New Year's Eve party.  There was enough snow in the backyard to build a giant, u-shaped couch for our guests.  Brian helped me set up the wood stove in the middle to keep everyone warm.  It was so good.

I miss the snow of my childhood.  Drifts went up to my shoulders.  My dog had to hop between our footfalls to keep above the crust.  The neighborhood kids would build enormous snow caves in the piles left in the middle of parking lots.  I could jump off the very top of the playground equipment and not get hurt one bit.

Hang it out to dryClo

Clotheslines are pretty damn homey.  Mmm, it smells fresh!  Put it on my face!

Professional businesses sometimes do the weirdest things.

Order and Progress

I've never been to Brazil, but their flag has become an important symbol in my life.  Maybe it is an important symbol of my life.  The words "Order and Progress" seem like good ones to have on a flag.  It's strange to juxtapose them over a field of stars though.  Is outer space the direction Brazil would like to go?  They have a space program, and can launch their own satellites.  NASA says they have an ideal launch site since the country is right along the equator. 

I don't know much about Brazil, but it seems like a good place.  "Order" isn't something I'd associate with Brazil, but I don't know.  "United" doesn't seem to describe a lot of the USA, so it's not a big deal one way or the other.  Maybe that's unfair as well.  America sure does have a lot of different people in it and it sure is really big.  We are probably more united than it seems.  Large media is starting to look more like reality television programming all the time.  It's just not that way in real life. 

Final Magic Hour

These photos are really important to me.  This was one of the last days we had on Skillman St.  The times at Skillman were full of change.  I was living a different life there.  It wasn't like any time before it.  It was when Emily and I fell in love.  Skillman St. taught me a lot of lessons.

This backyard made me feel wonder.  It had a timelessness to it that only comes from well written fairy tales or something.  Some people have all the luck.  Those people are us.  It's never just luck though.  Everyone earns it. 

What a weird place.  We should have checked passports at the door.

These are artifacts of those times.  I'm not sure what one might make of them if they didn't already know.  Some clues we left behind are pretty clear, others rather mysterious.  I hope they are appreciated, but it doesn't really matter.  I remember as a child I would leave behind misleading clues.  Maybe I'd fashion a little doll out of sticks and leave it in the woods like in the "Blair Witch Project" or build a harmless wall of leaves that blocked a seldom used trail.  I'd cover my tracks, walk backwards in the sand, and tie strips of fabric to branches at random.  Once walking back from sledding in the park, I got a bloody nose.  Instead of trying to stop it, I left a long line of bright red blood spots in the snow thinking someone might try to follow it through the park.  It sure was creepy.  Sometimes these clues had a purpose, but most of the time it was just to keep my hands busy, just to leave a mark.  I'd leave little totems around my school too.  Once we were reading a story about the KKK in English class.  I made a tiny little KKK man out of a scrap of white paper and left it near the black board.  The next day when we came in our teacher had a serious look on her face.  She found the tiny paper man and was very upset.  I told everyone in the class I did it and I didn't know why.  I didn't do it because I liked what it represented, it was a monster.  It didn't seem like it was wrong, but all the teacher saw was a symbol of hate, a symbol made by one of her students.  It was a mistake, I guess.  Mysteries scare people.  I guess I got a kick out of the idea of freaking someone out in the woods.  Philip Guston painted hooded figures quite a bit, and supposedly he hated the Klu Klux Klan.  Art critics sometimes say his hoods are masks, and the artist is wearing the mask, hiding.  Maybe that's true, but it's probably not so clear, it's just a mystery. 

The Silver Screen

This is the Silver Screen.  It's seen better days, or rather, it has been seen on better days.

It's like a bar code, or DNA code.

When I was a kid, I saw Carl Sagan's "Cosmos".  One episode he explains gravity.  By using a large flat plane of elastic fabric and rolling orbs of different sizes around the surface, he illustrated how the masses of great bodies exert pull on one another.  It had a profound effect on my perception of the universe around me.

100 Posts, 100 Legs

A Tool for Every Job

Bows for the Backyard

Backyard Props

Skillman Ladders

Back in the Day BBQ

House of the Holy Ghost

Loupe Looking