I was watching a red fire/rescue boat & a small police launch circling about a 100 feet off-shore,
on what looked like a search mission for someone lost overboard. Suddenly, as part of an
ongoing outdoor arts festival on the island, this pre-recorded chorus of ethereal
female voices starts looping out of a loudspeaker @ the end of a nearby pier, singing,

"Where are you going?... Where are you going?... Can you take me with you?..."

Becoming an instant soundtrack to this haunting, mournful moment...

(There's no audio, but scroll down to Susan Philipsz, to get a sense of the piece:
http://www.creativetime.org/programs/archive/2009/plot09/artworks.php )

The same 3 kids from the last piece, hiding behind a hedge in the same riverside park
in Brooklyn:

1rst kid: "Imagine--imagine--imagine--that we are in the middle
of a Terminator War. & we are hiding out here cuz we're the last
3 humans on the planet..."

2nd kid: "You already had this dream before."

1rst kid (wistful): "I know..."

3 kids (aged maybe 10 to 12?) walking by me in a riverside park in Williamsburg, Brooklyn,
looking like a friggin' United Colors of Bennington ad: a white kid, w/long, blonde, hippieish locks,
a black kid w/a full-blown afro, & a Hispanic kid w/an over-grown Moe-from-the-3-Stooges bowl cut,
all obviously the product of post-ironic hipster parents.

(Now, bear-in-mind, I overheard this after they were out of sight, so I don't know
who was saying what to who, but...)

1rst kid: "If we were GI Joes, our lives would be alot more fun."

2nd kid: "& dangerous."

1rst kid (mock-tough): "Oh, yeah..."

I've been in the same apartment in Brooklyn for years, & over that time, every surface--
the walls, the cabinets, the fridge, the table & counter tops--has acquired a free-form,
hodgepodge decoupage of scraps of found/homemade/friends' art &/or various kitschy
tchotchkes & totems & emblems. I've heard my apartment described as either a museum,
or one big, oversized collage. Needless to say, it's a pretty strange environment.

So, my landlady hired some contractors to fix a leak in my plumbing, & they showed up out of the blue
one afternoon this week. I'm stuck in my kitchen with the assistant, a gangly, 20-something white kid
with paint-spattered jeans & a red beard, while his boss is off rummaging for supplies. He looks around.

"Nice place," he sez.

"Thanks," I sez. "I do what I can."

"It looks like you're a person who enjoys using marijuana..."

To which I can only coyly respond, "& what makes you say that?..."

He hands me his business card, which I gotta admit, is a cool idea:
a sticker w/his name & personal information
adhered to an old Metrocard ("Never bends," he sez),
& launches into an excited spiel about how he's a recycled
junk sculptor, who just sold a piece,
is on a Facebook page (couldn't find it, BTW),
& is working on a new piece based on "1984," involving
a broken TV screen, w/Big Brother's face inside it,
lit up, but made out of junk parts ("Sorta like that 80's video...")
So, my best guess is, he means:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYecfV3ubP8

& then his boss calls him off: "Jesus Christ, Chris, let's go..."

I hear him ask his boss, "You like to smoke, right?"

"Yeah, but only when the job's done..."

Gods bless us all, everyone...

So, it was on my to-do list to go to Governor's Island for the last year or so,
& I finally made it this past Labor Day weekend. Incredible, panoramic views of
Manhattan, Brooklyn, Jersey. A recent New Yorker article that rekindled my interest
described the place as, "...one of those "Star Trek" episodes where Kirk & his men visit some
far-flung planet that is almost but not quite exactly like Earth." & bustling off the ferry there,
I gotta say, that felt imperfectly right. The low-slung hills held the hollowed-out
Coast Guard barracks & forts, belonging to a race that came before us, who we no longer
understood, & now we wander the grounds, lost to the ways of the Old Ones. "Festival! Festival!"
I got there late in the day, & took it upon myself as my only goal to walk the island's perimeter
before the last ferry ride home. To that end, I wanted to stay outdoors & soak up as much
sunlight as possible, until I spotted this historic chapel, & figured a quick peek inside couldn't hurt.
But the way in was blocked by heavy flaps of black canvas, I stumbled past several disoriented
people finding their way out, & once inside, all I saw was concentric rings of silver light converging
in a Laserium-gone-to-hell scenario & all I felt was the moist palm of some stranger in the dark.
My first impulse was to get the hell out of there. Back out on the front steps, I ask
the cute young park attendant, who was standing by w/brochure in hand: "What the hell was that?
I thought I was seeing the inside of a church?" To which she dutifully explained, it was part
of an interactive art project, blah, blah. For the record, this is what she was talking about:

http://creativetime.org/programs/archive/2009/plot09/artworks.php

(scroll down to #7 or #8: Anthony McCall)

All I could say to her was, "That was...very confusing!"

Of course, if I knew what I was getting myself into, I'm sure I would have enjoyed it more. That said, lemme say:
"Get ye to Governor's Island, if ye get a chance--it's awesome!!"

Walking the Brooklyn Promenade, a little kid
keeps insistently asking his older brother,
"What's a gooey dooper? What IS a gooey dooper...?"

Amidst a forest of towering ship container cranes
a church, its' steeple encased in scaffolding...

Rushing through the maddening catacombs that is
the Canal Street subway station, I pass a fierce-eyed
black guy in one tunnel, banging out a tuneless
cacophony on tin plates perched on his knees, &
letting forth w/a free-form vitriolic rant to any & all
passers-by: "Yeah, there's an asshole on every block,
I'm tellin' you. What you looking @, man? You want to tangle w/me?
You want to go up against ME?! Well, do you? Huh, huh?!..."

Full moon over the glittering new high-rises
in the meat-packing district of Manhattan.
A blank white billboard lit up @ night
simply says, "Space Available."

Ah, the eternal city...

Went to see my friends' band the other night
(the "Gimme 5"--a great soul & funk instrumental
cover band--they only play once every 14 months,
damn them!) & had the luxury of getting a ride there,
thanks to the fact that my friend Eric had his rent-a-car
for an extra day, after a mid-week New England jaunt w/his wife
& 6-year old daughter. Anyway, the gig was on the Lower East Side of Manhattan,
which used to be the stomping ground of me & a much wider circle
of friends back in the wild & wooly '90's (I'm an old man!), & driving
through there gave it a particular air of cruise-controlled surreality.
Where once I visited my friend Kelly past vacant lots
@ her squat on Ave. C, there now stood a French-
Polynesian fusion restaurant, or some such nonsense.
& on the block where I used to hang out @ a hole-in-the-wall
semi-biker bar called "the Spiral" & my friends' band, "the Toads"
were practically the house act there for a while (& one of whose
members is now in the Gimme 5--how's that for symmetry?)
I count a "Sleepy's," a "Blockbuster," a "Papa John's," a "Subway,"
a "Baskin Robbins," & a "Dunkin Donuts." Where was I
when the colonization was complete?...

Standing by an open window on the 23rd floor @ 10 @ night,
watching an incredible thunder & lightning storm lash the skies
over midtown Manhattan, when I notice a lone man walking
across the bare, vacant floor of an office building across the street,
turning off the lights behind him as he leaves...

Riding the elevator in a midtown Manhattan office building.
A middle-aged white hipster dude in shorts & a Kangol cap
gets on board, already talking on his cell. Sez he:
"Yeah, I'm alright. I'm on an elevator. I'm about
to become one of those rude fucking assholes
that I hate..."

I've been in the same neighborhood in Brooklyn (Greenpoint) for so long,
I've seen entire generations come of age @ the local delis & bodegas,
mainly run by Arab-American families. Their kids start off as stock boys,
move up to ringing up your change behind the counter w/pubescent tufts
of facial hair & eventually graduate to short-order grill in later years.

Tonight, I'm bemused to drunkenly stumble past their latest teenage fodder;
a young man who's sauntering outside the news stand, blocking headlines
& looking bored, wearing a black tee-shirt that bears the simple phrase,
"i'm lost"...

Sparrows perched on a chain-link fence,
then flitting off across a vacant lot,
the J-train rattling over the Williamsburg bridge
in the background...

A hipster gal gets off her bike
to pick wildflowers beneath
the barbed wire-topped gate
to the abandoned Domino Sugar plant,
the East River shimmering
in late afternoon sunlight behind her...

Maybe it's just me, but it looked a lot like a lost hipster wedding party
left wandering the back streets of Williamsburg @ the tail end of the night,
one befuddled groomsman saying to a bridesmaid: "Look @ us,
finding out so much about each other..."

3 20-something Latino home boys walking down the pavement,
one of them (clearly the alpha dog; older, bulky, shaved head w/goatee)
passing a joint on the down-low to the guy in the middle, who sez tentatively,
"Oh yeah, I'll take a hit..." to which the alpha dog responds, "Well, if you're
walking with us, you might as well smoke..."

A heavy-set, 30-something Latina woman, talking to another
similar-looking woman (maybe her sister?) & one of their young
daughters on a stoop on a humid-heavy summer evening in Brooklyn:
"I'm running around, sweating my ass off, getting shit done,
while he sits there, blowing on his balls & making like I'm the bad one?
I'd be the bad one if I went up there right now & started beating on him.
THEN I'd be the bad one..."

An overweight, middle-aged black blind man
tapping his red-tipped walking stick to a beat
in his head, riding the 7 train into Times Square...

You stop off to use the bathroom @ the Target @ Flatbush,
& a bunch of black teenagers are already there, yelling & shouting,
& let's face it, your white ass is a little bit nervous as you settle down
in your stall to take care of business. But then as you listen,
they set off the air-dryers one by one & start playing them,
cupping their hands over the exhaust, making a beat box out
of the voided noise, & suddenly you're hearing something you never heard before...