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new hampshire

north carolina

santa cruz

salinas

big sur

carmel

monterey

i really need to hop back on the holga train. i am constantly vowing to myself to take more photographs, and then kicking myself for letting moments pass sans camera. some folks say these are the best years of our lives (though i desperately hope this is not the case), and despite one's ability to hold on to moments- like my dear friend katrina who can recall with absolute detail something such as what she ate for breakfast on the morning after her third birthday- i am having difficulties. this, to me, is beyond saddening. the memories i am clinging to are already sun-faded and blurring. my ultimate intention (unlike some others) is not to bombard facebook and consequently the hordes of uninterested pseudo-friends with extraneous images, but rather, to document the youthful (maybe) versions of myself and company...you know, before it all goes to shit. i don't know what that means. i do not want it to go to shit. i am on the brink of turning a year older and this pains me.

i caught up with a high school friend over beers in new haven this past weekend, and he recounted his own experience turning twenty-seven; how he suddenly, for the first time in his life, felt his age. and also how he suddenly, for the first time, realized he had acquired a sizable set of love-handles.

miranda july

The Hallway from The Hallway on Vimeo.

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many random men spoke to me in passing today; smiled, winked, called me sweetheart. normally this causes me scowl; however, today i slipped up once. i parted my lips and smiled just a crack- no teeth, but just enough to make some 60 year old man's day. did you see that? he nudged his friend, i made the little lady smile, she smiled! but let's face it folks, it's fucking humid out and i am a sweaty summer-time sicilian. mm alliteration. i'd conjecture that such attention has less to do with the beauty of my greasy brow and frizzy hacidic jew curls, and a whole lot more to do with the fact that today i was wearing a skirt which looked more like something to be worn underneath an actual skirt for modesty i.e. a 1940s bathtub gin-miss hannigan slip.

today feels unusual again. i wish so much that the sky would blacken and open up and unleash a hellish storm on this city, cooling us once and for all. that is, until tomorrow. the air is electric; i hope to wake up in the middle of the night to thunder and lightening and the sound of rain on window glass. i always love that, as much as i love only half-remembering the fright of it in the morning time. and what a glorious mark of the summer season; if only i could hear my crickets.

it is about that time of week where my brain has turned into a soft pool of stupid. i've somehow, in the midst of such idiocy, just managed to download WinRar and finally convert the hordes of music i had collecting electronic dust into audible formats. the achievement of this is grand not only because i am technologically retarded, but also because rufus wainwright's new album is now successfully ripping my heart out of my ass. thank goodness for that.

* * * *

things which i am thoroughly enjoying at the moment:

verna's donuts, down the street from my apartment. dense as a set of bricks and old-fashioned liked your good, new england mamma done. what i like more than verna's donuts: the old man who works in the kitchen (likely the son of son of verna's son, or something to that effect) who like clockwork is basking in the spatspat of the frialator as i stumble home drunk from the bar. what i don't like about verna's donuts: my growing ass (?) i need a scale, or another hispanic boyfriend.

mom & pop hair salons (especially like those of winter hill and north cambridge) which may or may not contain any or all of the following words in their store name: unisex, connection, international. the salons where every chatty-cathy stylist looks like my neapolitan mother, all of whom still offer permanents and deem their hair waxing to be "professional" as per window signs, hand-written on computer paper.

sessa's italian market- i like my prosciutto the good old-fashioned way; wrapped in butcher paper with its price by the pound scribbled in pencil by thick, callused deli-man fingers. also- marinated eggplant, fig jam, and chocolate pizzelles. most of all, staring at the variety of malocchio chotchkes available for purchase at the checkout counter.

sitting in front of a fan and not moving- sleeping in front my wind machine, my bed, my antique lace, morning a.m. radio.

denying the reality of student loans and pretending that my pockets are very deep; the subsequent wildly indulgent, late-night etsy escapades. i buy vintage shoes- i'm sorry granite state management & resources.

the homeless lady at park street station- cracks me up on a daily basis, sprawled out as if someone has thrown her and she was never ever able to recover, drowning in illegible cardboard signs, banging a tin can to the concrete and singing her ever so catchy song, "i need foods-money tuh-day, i need yo gen-oh-rah-sah-tay." all day, every day, bless her schizophrenic heart.

* * * *

tomorrow's eve i will be homeward bound on a luxurious peter pan bus to new haven. while solitary train rides are near and dear to my heart, i have clearly had to downgrade. it will be okay- hopefully the bus will have those snazzy carpeted seats of electric blue & neon confetti splatter designs, and the driver will use his microphone frequently. this is sure to ease the pain.

it's a cocteau twins kind of day

static electricity

there is something strange in the air; everything is a bit off these recent days.

years and years ago i had a serious boyfriend with whom i would share everything. it could be a perfectly ordinary day when all was well and good, in order, as planned. we would be content and satisfied and cool and full-bellied and calmed. and then, for no real reason whatsoever, i would feel it- the subterranean pit in my stomach, that deep-sick feeling, gnarling and reaching up for my throat. a sense of some thing off kilter; a throbbing heart and the nausea of a steadily creeping, impending doom. make it stop, i would plead him pitifully, curling into the fetal position and biting my bottom lip, make it stop.

in hindsight, i realize these moments may have made him feel so helpless and probably very confused, unable to empathize. at least now, as this peculiarly re-surfaces (and despite its unsettling nature), i can rest assured that i am not vexing any bystander with these panicked episodes of [nonsensical] clairvoyance. a blessing, and a curse.

and so changed were our lives

scene: two earthy, unassuming twenty-somethings drink hoppy mountain beers and play a drinking game in their grassy somerville side-yard on a warm june's eve. she is a giggling kind, with an affinity for gourmet cooking and records on vinyl. he is a mild mannered fellow who builds and rides bicycles, and maintains a flourishing roof-top garden. it is dark, but the warm glow of a bedroom light illuminates their rustic wooden playing table just enough for them to finger their way through the dirt and retrieve bottle caps to toss, haphazardly intoxicated, toward partially filled ceramic mugs. they listen to music, namely of the hippie variety, which emanates from an ipod set atop the window's ledge. there are twangs of the banjo, the mandolin, heady voices, songs about skies and moons and rivers and things.

and then, all at once, it happens. ipod shuffle. a song, downloaded from a file-sharing application and labeled as by the artist "belle & sebastian" begins. only not. legs twitch, hips thrust, prudence is abandoned. a shut up triggers their inner but latent passion for mid-nineties german dance club pop. and so it goes...