New Jersey train station.
Downtown Manhattan garage. 
East River ship.. 
Flying Point Beach.
Category Archives: other places
A Tree Swinging Upside Down and Marine Animal Noises in the Park Avenue Tunnel
Kris Salmanis installed an upside down tree that swung back and forth in the Latvian Pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennale. 
Carnivalesque and thrilling on first view, the work entitled North by Northwest, eventually becomes macabre, offering only mechanical doom.
Jana Winderen’ installation Dive – staged this August in New York City’s normally congested Park Avenue Tunnel – also had an initial amusement park feel.T
he multi-layered recordings of marine animals from rivers, lakes and oceans from around the world creates a trance-like sound-scape that is intensely thought-provoking.
Indeed it occurred to me in both venues that, no matter how hard we try to wipe everything out, life on our planet just keeps hanging in.
Kimsooja’s Needle Woman at Cornell University
Nano-technology, used by scientists in the past to isolate cancer cells and purify water, is now the key to a towering figure of art. 
Artist Kimsooja’s Needle Woman was unveiled this week on the campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. The effervescent glow of the plexiglass, produced by two polymers in active conflict, creates a hue akin to abalone and butterfly wings. 
And offers a light that is always changing.
Surprisingly, the needle does not dominate Cornell’s Arts Quadrangle but blends in, as Kimsooja says, “like a needle among paths of thread”. 
Originally the idea was for visitors to visit the space inside, one by one, but the artist came to the realization that the piece was better appreciated from without, forever outside.
It is on display until December 22 at Cornell University.
You Can Go Home But It Will Be Landscaped
My childhood home had a wide open front yard; there was a stone wall and a low bush that came straight across the front. That’s all been sculpted away.
The new people created a precise maze of flowers and trees.
Many years ago, my parents commented that all of our neighbors were landscaping like crazy. So now it’s come to where I used to live. 
But the biggest thing was that none of us were home; we had all moved – or died, leaving this place all but forgotten. 
Except for the fire hydrant; it’s not like any of us could forget that.
I’m the Most Fucking Balanced Person Alive!
We had the misfortune of renting our house to a most demanding and impolite person this August. We were inundated with shrill emails, even before she arrived, that were terribly demanding, often angry, to say nothing of being typo-graphically challenged:
We ve Rented enough houses out here to know what’s acceptable and this is not. Rented us a house where there are several issues and if you would like me to leave a favorable response on VRBO which could make or break your rental business you should fix these problems ASAP. 
We addressed every one of her concerns, sometimes three per day, and all of them minor; nevertheless the invective flow would not cease:
Could not use the pool at night due to no lights since we checked in. Had to fight to get CnN & basic cable. There is no gas grill. We also did not expect to have to remove our own trash — this has become like camping. 
She sent this last message from her work email, from which we learned she was a yoga instructor, and more than that, an author of a yoga book; she in fact had a Facebook persona that promoted herself as a balanced and thoughtful individual. 
Accepting the ” what is ” of many situations allows for a lot more peace … Many times we are stressed or upset up from our own desire to make things different than they are. This applies to love relationships. friendships locations — life & The world.
As exhausting and frustrating as this person was, the difference was stunningly amusing.
Indeed she was something that is likely becoming common in our bandwidth world: a social media Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde.
Driving an Old Chevy Sportsman
It was a long hill, the town another hundred miles, when the shot rang out, pulling the van sideways like we’d been hit by a low bull. 
I swung the wheel against it, thinking there was some kind of battle ahead, a force to contend, something big and threatening, and pulled over. 
‘What the fuck was that?’ Mike’s eyes were wide.
‘I think the tire blew.’
The rear tire was in shreds; the spare was threadbare.
‘You need new tires, man.’
‘I know.’
The jack was broken and the bolts fused.
We sat and drank and finally got the tire, off bolt by bolt, and I thought about how much I loved my van.
Bob Pollard Plays Mark Twain at The Stone Pony
Micaela says I’m pushing it, but while watching Guided by Voices last night at Asbury Park’s famed The Stone Pony, I was thinking that Bob Pollard was a Mark Twain superstar kind of guy.
Click the image below to see him nail Tractor Rape Chain. 
True, he got so drunk that he not only told the audience to “Fuck off” more than several times and played I am a Scientist twice, but also fell down in a heap at the end. 
But I stick to my theory, based not only on his out-spoken, sardonic nature and belligerence, but Bob as an exhaustive, creative force. 
And he drinks a lot too.
Pay Attention to the Signs
Murder of a Chinook in the Johnstone Strait
The weather was warm, the water dark and cold; we were trolling for salmon down the Johnstone Strait in British Columbia.
My rod snapped and I reeled in a good sized fish, some two feet, my first catch, and in only 30 minutes on the water. I pulled it beside the boat and watched, in surprise, as the guide gaffed it in the head and then dropped the flopping thing into the boat, bleeding profusely, and bashed it again and again, leaving a trail of thick blood pools across the brilliant white bottom. At last it was dead.
“Oh…no.” The guide picked it up, examining its fins and then measuring it. “We have to throw it back.”
“What?”
“It’s a Chinook and it’s only 24 inches. It has to be 24 and 1/2.”
“But it’s already dead.”
He picked up the carcass, both of them pale. “I would get into trouble if I brought it back to the docks.”
We watched him sink the dead fish into the deep dark blue. I looked at Micaela, both of us in an odd kind of shock, thinking this was akin to murder, and then Micaela’s line went taught. She half-heartedly reeled it in, but it jumped the hook. 
“Yes.” She smiled. “It got away.”
Mortality on Crown Mountain, British Columbia
I did West Vancouver’s Grouse Grind in 52:20 – a straight-up climb of 2800 feet – and was ready for more.
Goat Mountain
We carried on over Dam Mountain and then around Goat to the steep descent to the Lynn Valley Saddle. And then It was time for the climb up Crown. 
That’s when it hit me. I was flagging, bumping into branches, tripping over roots. I was stopping, looking up, thinking too much about the daunting journey ahead, psyching myself out, getting more and more exhausted, staring at my sweat dripping onto the rocks. 
I had to stop again and again, seriously considering turning back, Micaela far ahead, waiting. I thought I might not make it but moved my foot ahead, toiled on, step to step, dragging my inert legs over root ledges, and at long last made it to the top. 
I sat, mute, only able to think about the long descent and that horrible climb back up Goat and realized that this might indeed be the last time I would be here on this mountain.
Peak of Crown Mountain
I ate and ate – something I had stupidly neglected to do on the way up – and we began our long return, which amounted to a lot of slips and half falls through the labyrinth of exposed rock and dirt. We devoured our final batch of chocolate and attacked the ascent back up Goat. It wasn’t as bad as I expected. Not at all. It was almost a game again. 
We were going to make it after all. I was elated to be back, whole, in the parking lot and then in the fair city of Vancouver with a cold Steam Whistle in my hand.
The next morning was not so joyous. My knees were done. I had suddenly degraded to a state of gimpy and old. I glowered across Burrard Inlet, at the distant mountain top, and wondered when I would return. Soon, I promised myself. As soon as I could.