Dating and Other Natural Disasters...

A happy couple I saw one evening on the Subway

When I was 19 years old, a young art student with long beautiful locks of hair (golden like the sun, I might add), I received one of the best pieces of advice that I have ever come across. I was casually seeing someone in some undefined artsy bohemian co-mingling of lives who I felt was way out of my league. He was a very well educated, well groomed and well built man who took me out for Tempeh burgers one evening (back in my Vegetarian years) at this little hippie café decorated in macramé just off the university campus, and in my wild naïveté, I was smitten. I couldn't understand why such a dreamy guy would ever have any interest in an awkward, skinny little ne'er-do-well like me, but he did. This was in my younger, more unsophisticated days - before I had blossomed into the wildly saucy and vivacious individual that I have now become, and I was often perplexed that he enjoyed my company as he did. One night, in a lavish moment of brutal self awareness (or perhaps just graceless angst), I asked him what my appeal was to him. I wondered if I was part of some social experiment he was conducting, or if he genuinely found me attractive. I will also point out that he was a bit older than me, and perhaps wiser, and he responded to me saying, "we all have a target audience, and it's just a matter of finding it..."

To look at me, you wouldn't assume I'm a person who gets out very often, much less on dates, but it's just not true. Although throughout my teens and early twenties, I was a perpetual loner aside from a few rare blips on the radar (one blip lasting for two whole years), when I arrived in New York, I found myself in a new world. It could be just the vastness of the population and the unfathomable variety of people from every situation imaginable that have all been crammed together in this one little space, but suddenly my "target audience" seemed to have expanded. Before I knew it, I was going on dates and meeting new people at a pace that I had never before thought was possible (I realized this is what life must be like for pretty people in the normal world outside of the city, only I am neither conventionally pretty nor very normal). For the first time in my life, I was five feet and six inches of "Grade A" eligible dork, and people other than me were noticing. I went through some sort of brief re-adolescence, only this time without curfews or watchful eyes noting my every movement until after about two months I realized what a drag dating actually can be.

After a while, I feel like meeting new people is very similar to going on endless job interviews. You both show up on your best behavior, generally dressed nicer than you would typically care to be, putting on a very one-sided show, selling an image of  yourself that is far from accurate. You both tell bits of a memorized and overly rehearsed monologue highlighting a very brief summary of your general life story, one which you've told before and will probably tell again. Just like a job interview, you can often tell within the first five minutes that the position is really not right for you, and then you spend the rest of your time making polite small talk, forcing a smile of courteous interest and hoping that you'll make it through without breaking character and revealing your true and dismal feelings about the situation as a whole. At least half of the time, one or both of the members of the party feels this way. The worst is when it's not you, and you're actually buying the act the other is putting on.

Although I feel lame for admitting this, I mostly date online. I've never been good at talking to new people at bars or in social gatherings. I believe the last time I was set up on a date by a friend, I seriously contemplated leaning too close to the candle on the table, just so I could "accidentally" catch on fire and have a reason to leave. At least with online dating, you can weed out the folks who list interests like World of Warcraft, Romantic Comedies or the Republican Party on their profiles. You can politely judge them from any number rubrics (I often choose written grammar and photographic lighting to start), and then fill in the gaps of what isn't said with your own imagined version of who this person may be outside of their collection of words, pictures and categorical taxonomies. Even with my very skeptical eye, and my overly cynical imagination, I sometimes make complete misjudgments and realize that I've stepped in something worse than dog mess on the sidewalk. Some folks are really more photogenic than they ought to be, and some must have aspiring fiction novelists writing their online profiles. I try not focus too much attention on appearances, remembering the Sunday School lessons of youth like "Judge not, lest ye be judged" (and I probably "be judged" quite a great deal as it is under that adage), but there is a big difference between saying you're 37 and actually being 50, or showing an image from before you discovered the extra 63 pounds that found their way around your belly. If one has obviously lied about such noticeable things, how can one be trusted about anything important? I'm not actually expecting a response to that question, but I feel there is a difference between leaving out things like your dislike of children or your secret collection of Friends DVD's (both of which I'm guilty of), as opposed to fabricating a completely artificial person who doesn't really exist. I'd much rather be disappointed by "the real you," than a psychotic delusion.

I have been fortunate enough to meet some very dear people and I've even made some great friends as a result of my delayed foray into the world of dating, but ultimately, I go on a lot of first dates that are left at just that. Some people have had potential, and some I genuinely liked, but often the stars just don't align themselves as one's romantic heart would hope. For being such a misanthrope, I am always surprised at my drive to meet new people and see what is out there. I know that I'm no easy pill to swallow - I'm often too harsh, too critical and too eccentric for my own good, but the irrational thought of finding someone to share all of my rantings with who may even show me new things to over-analyze is a pleasant little brain morsel that occupies the realm of demi-thoughts that occur somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. I just need to keep on burning through that "target audience" of mine I know now is out there until I am either satisfied that I've exhausted my supply, or I've finally found what I didn't even know I was looking for to begin with.

When Autumn Leaves Start to Fall...

The Bethesda Fountain in Central Park in Autumn

There is an air vent in the sidewalk just outside of the stairs on one of the subway exits of Penn Station at 34th Street which is situated in the shadow of Madison Square Garden. Droves of people pass over it every day while coming and going, most-likely not taking the time to look at the gray dirty ground with glistening sights like the Empire State Building, the New Yorker Hotel and the great cylindrical mass of "the Garden," standing tall overhead. Down in the cracks beneath the metal grate, there is a lovely little patch of green leaves growing under the surface, surrounded by a sea of concrete and footsteps. They have been sheared off to be precisely level with the surface of the ground by the loafers, sneakers, boots and stiletto heels of the 8th Avenue work force and all of the others who pass by. In this rather unlikely environment, a little patch of green plants decided to make their modest home, when they could have just as easily lived by the river or in a park where sunlight would have been easier to come by and there may have been more room to sprawl out and relax. It seems that this particular plant colony desired something unique out of its short existence. Perhaps these leafy little fellows had a desire to be in the middle of something bigger and greater, seeing life first hand, rather than hearing about it from a distance. I'm sure that many of their green counterparts looking at their cramped quarters and small rations of sunshine might think the very idea to be rather silly, indeed. Every morning on my way to work, I walk over this little community of brave weedlings and smile a bit, but then I continue on with my own little weedling day...

Once again, Autumn has taken over the city, and everyone is surprised that the days are getting progressively shorter and colder (as though nothing like this has ever happened before). As a child, my parents would load us all up in our little Subaru wagon for long drives in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado to go "see the colors" every year in the Fall. Although containing three children in one back seat of a rather small station wagon for a drive that would often last all day long was no simple task for my parents, they would diligently suffer through endless streams of words that would spew from us, especially as my sister Ginny would always become motion sick after the first five minutes, every single time. Once we finally reached the highway out of town, and the mountains came into full view, slowly the streams of consciousness flowing from our open mouths would diminish as our eyes took in the sights before us. Driving up high into steep and rocky back roads, we passed abandoned little mining settlements from Colorado's days of legend, and found ourselves in places where the world seemed to be frozen in time, or perhaps outside of it completely. We would get out and take little hikes into meadows and along streams, my father pointing out which plants were edible and my mother collecting herbs and flowers to be dried and placed in jars for purposes never revealed. I remember walking through cascades of yellow and orange aspen leaves, illuminated by the sun above like a heavenly canopy with jeweled specks of the deepest blue skies peeking through the cracks. When the breeze would pick up, the leaves would float gently to the ground in a lovely dance, as if orchestrated by God himself. Of course time has probably amplified these images in my memory and inevitably aggrandized them, but I remember waiting for Fall every year just for those drives high up into the Rocky Mountains to see the world so briefly transformed.

Just as Autumn would transform the mountains of my childhood, it transforms the city into something even more beautiful than usual. The Autumn light seems to bend and hug the concrete and steel surfaces of the buildings and streets in such a soft and gentle way, while the trees put on great shows for passersby, much like the ladies walking along 5th Avenue in their in their tweeds and colorful woolen sweaters. The whole town seems to be making one last triumphant dash into the light, taking one final step out onto the stage before the ice and the blackness of winter shut everything away in blues and grays as the final curtain closes until Spring. Walking through Central Park in these last weeks of comfortable beauty is quite an experience. The Park, in general, is always an experience, but the colorful trees and the romantic feeling of the season make it even more of an attraction for tourists, families and ferrel children from the Bronx and New Jersey who seem to run about shrieking with the leavings of cheap hot dogs all over their sticky little hands, just waiting to run into a stranger's dry-clean-only wool coat with atomic force. Cameras seem to flash upon every leaf and every tree branch, trying to document the ephemeral majesty of a state of being that seems to ache with its own urgency to express and then expire. Everything in the park seems transformed by this deluge of vibrant color and light that signifies the end of one thing and the start of another. Like the sap that I am, I always think of the old jazz song "Autumn Leaves" (originally "Les Feuilles Mortes"), and hum it to myself as I walk the streets of New York during this time of year:

"...Since you went away,
The days grow long,
And soon I'll hear,
Ol' Winter's song,
But I miss you most of all, my darling,
When Autumn leaves start to fall..."

 Though the Autumn has been lovely, it has brought about the demise of my little weed colony outside of Penn Station. Each morning as I walk on the sidewalk and look down the grate below, there are fewer and fewer little patches of green. Once the last of the leaves has withered away into the darkness of the cavernous hole below, I will know that winter has come and will stay for longer than we ever feel should be possible, much less legal. I can only hope that the spring will revive them like Lazarus in the Biblical tale. Until then, I shall enjoy the last days of color and beauty that will be afforded to me before my balance is spent and my winter debt will inevitably be owed until paid in full.

Summer in the city...

Seventh Avenue in Midtown on a hot July afternoon...

There is a strange sense of joy that is produced by the smells of ripening garbage baking in the sun mixed with taxi exhaust and the aromatic smoke dancing about in the air from food carts along the streets of Manhattan. When the air is heavy with moisture and you can actually see the heat waves bouncing up from the sidewalk, the thought diving headfirst into the pollution of the Hudson River seems like the happiest of retreats from the sun overhead. It begins in late May and lasts through September. Generally by the second week of June all of the stores are sold out of window air conditioner units and herds of dejected looking sweaty wanderers can be seen staring at their empty spaces on the shelves in disbelief and utter devastation. Now that summer in New York City is drawing to a close, I feel my heart sink ever so slightly when thinking about all things I will miss as three seasons must come and go before she returns again. New York is a town that embraces all seasons, but summer above all...

My last summer in the city, or rather I should say my very first, was so frantic that I hardly had time to stop and enjoy it.  Being that I had just moved to New York with no job or prospects, my main goal was survival. Between finding three different bizarre jobs and inventing my "I'm too poor to pay rent AND eat multiple meals a day" diet, the hot summer months quickly melted by as a very strange and colorful blur. When I think back, although it was chaotic and difficult, I can't imagine who I would be now without all of the craziness of that initial adjustment period. This summer, now settled in and a bit more well-nourished, living my glamourous Manhattan lifestyle from paycheck to paycheck, I found myself much more aware of my surroundings and all of the lovely summertime experiences the city has to offer.

One evening in June, I was visiting with a friend in Central Park. He's a very lovely and very peculiar sort of fellow. Partially French and partially Californian, he devotes a great deal of his time to the study of Eastern philosophies and meditations. I think in his "legitimate life" he's some sort of lawyer, but I am horrible with remembering such things. Generally when other people talk about their jobs, I just sort of glaze over and ponder things like, what kinds of dreams might cats have, or what would the world be like if humans were amphibious. By the time someone has finished explaining their profession, I have successfully nodded along while absorbing absolutely nothing. I think that this, by some definitions, may make me a "flake," but I can't be bothered to really care. In any case, I met my friend of unknown profession in a meadowy part of The Ramble while he beat some sort of animal skin drum made specially for him by a member of a Native American tribe with whom he was trying to become affiliated for the purpose of ritual spiritual practices (I think he met up with them sometime before of after Burning Man one year, but I sort of glazed over for that story as well). It was a beautiful evening, and I enjoyed meandering about barefooted in the grass while my friend drummed away in some sort of trance, communing with the "nature" in Central Park. Once I had stepped on one too many cigarette butts in the grass and my companion had finished speaking with the trees, we decided to walk through the park and enjoy the setting sun. We strolled along the winding tree-lined paths of the ramble, up and down the rocky hills until me reached the lake and the Bow Bridge, which then lead us to the Bethesda Fountain and up into the Central Park Mall. Upon passing all of the stoic stone statues of the Poet's Walk under a canopy of stalwart old trees, we began to hear lovely and strange music playing in the distance. As we drew nearer, we could see a large crowd of people moving about in beautiful motions ahead, swaying around like flowers in a breeze. They were all dancing to Argentine Tango music, some dressed in fine clothes and others wearing shorts and t shirts. Under the pink light of the sunset, the swirling mass of people of all ages and colors dancing on that summer evening was a hypnotic scene to behold. It's not often one stumbles upon hundreds of people dancing the tango in public, but it's just one example of the many unexpected happenings that are so easy to come across in New York. It was like viewing a piece of a dream, only the dream was simply one of many realities of the city in summertime.

There are other less pleasant realities of the summertime, such as the amount of tourists crowding the sidewalks and the sight of exposed sweaty cellulite on the subways, but they are all manageable when mixed with the number of outdoor farmers' markets, musical performances, street fairs and bizarre parades from cultures you would  have never known existed. On holidays like the 4th of July, Gay Pride or the Puerto Rican Day Parade, an influx of overly tanned young people with an abundance of hair products find their passages through the bridges and tunnels on the west side of Manhattan from their native New Jersey and they graciously stink up the city with the sounds of elongated vowels and the smells of cheap caffeinated booze. They run about the streets, throwing litter and tragedy along their path, and eventually go back from whence they came, somewhere in suburbia, leaving New York in shambles. In August, Europe comes to the city in droves, enjoying the generous vacation time granted to citizens by their social-democracies and labor practices that would make members of the Tea Party shutter at the thought of the taxes that support such a human-friendly system. Walking about neighborhoods like SoHo and Greenwich Village or the shopping districts of midtown, one can hear a rainbow of languages spoken by strangers in posh sunglasses and sporty shoes (Europeans always have the best shoes for some reason, and it makes me jealous). I always find it curious to see a large group of Italians or Brits completely enthralled by the squirrels in Central Park. Don't they have squirrels in their own countries? Then this line of thinking gets me to wonder if they mentioned that at some point in high school biology class, but I was too busy glazing over and pondering the dream life of cats or the thoughts in the heads of those monkeys they used to send into space before they allowed humans venture that high into the atmosphere...

Now the summer is drawing to a close, and the feeling of change is in the air on the streets. Billboard advertisements for fall sweaters and snappy jackets are popping up everywhere along with window displays in shops incorporating images of colorful trees and smiling porcelain white mannequins in tweed. My second summer in the city has come and gone, but I feel like I embraced it this time around. Now, as the days become shorter and school children with grumpy faces pass me by on my way to the train in the morning, I am beginning to look forward to the crisp mornings to come and the opportunities to wear my favorite cardigans again. I am anxiously awaiting another beautiful autumn in New York, but not without a tiniest bit of mourning for the lovely summer gone by. The summer of 2011 was a very nice one, and I feel very lucky to have spent it in such a wonderful place.

My closest and dearest of strangers...

Anonymous portrait, captured somewhere underneath New York City...

I have said, on many occasions, that riding the Subways of New York is a much richer source of entertainment than one would ever find from cable television. Being that I do not have access to cable television, I see the inherent reasons to question my credibility in making such a statement, but I would argue it to the death, regardless. I have recounted stories of humor and woe, mere moments in the lives of others witnessed while moving from one place to another, and I've told narrative tales of things which people are willing only to divulge to strangers in moments of vulnerability, happiness or anger, but the truth of the matter is that the best tales are those untold by the folks who seem to just blend in to the background...

Moving about the city via the Metropolitan Transit Authority is a mess of sensory chaos that closely resembles the lunch room of a junior high school on the day before Spring Break, amplified by one million impatient people trying to get to work on time using a system designed to best-accomodate a significantly smaller population. Getting everyone on the train in the morning is much like trying to squeeze toothpaste back IN to the tube. With so many sights, sounds and smells (yes, smells of every sort) occurring simultaneously, it is a wonder that transit passengers are able to even remember where it is they were going to begin with. Generally when the homeless man is screaming and ranting about his missing foot and all of the people to blame for life's inequalities on one corner of the train, an obnoxious teenager is blaring intentionally-offensive music on a loud speaker at the other, and in between are the haggard and frazzled folks just trying to keep it all together so that they don't murder anyone by the the time they get to work. It is generally in the faces of these people, forcing themselves to disconnect from the massive orgy of events going on around them, that I find something very real and beautiful; perhaps something more human that is expressed when the pressures to engage with others around them are taken away.

A few months ago, I jumped on a certain chic and electronic bandwagon and purchased a mobile device, which needs not be named lest everything in the world eventually become branded, but this unmentioned gadget (for which I have great affinity) has allowed me the pleasure of capturing images relatively quickly, easily and, in many cases, "on the sly." Prior to obtaining this new tool, I would always look about the train on my way from here to there and see the most captivating scenes of the most mundane of life's available moments, and wish for a way to share them. I have found in life, that my inability to easily connect with others has only increased my fascination with watching them from a safe distance and making observations. With as much time as I spend eavesdropping and staring at strangers, one would think I could write an anthropological study, but I've yet to draw any solid or insightful conclusions about my fellow human beings. In my quest for understanding, my prize is generally just additional confusion, however, without a full understanding, there has been at least an acquired appreciation for the aesthetic of the strangers I see around me, just passing the time until they are required to be productive again.

Now, each time I get on the train, I'm looking more intently than ever before, because I've started to document the beautiful nothings I see all around me. I take portraits of people I don't know, people who don't know me either and who are (most often) unaware of my presence. Discretely, I snap silent images of other passengers who strike me during these moments in limbo when we're together. Some are happy and hopeful, others look like the most sorrowful to ever have been thrust about underground, but many are just trying to get through their days with as much pleasantness as life can afford them. In these moments when people are so inwardly focused, it's like seeing them in a state between sleep and wakeful life. For whatever reason, I feel such a strong attraction to these moments and I can't stop my compulsion to capture whatever it is that I find to be so lovely. There is a comfort in being a part of this phenomenon. To be a part of a big swirling soup of the most diverse of human experiences all stewed together inside of a moving train for minutes at a time before the next scene change is something I hope never to take too much for granted.

Although my ethics have been questioned and issues of privacy have been brought forward, I feel like my anonymous portraits of my dearest and closest of strangers on the train have been one of my most effective ways of embracing my city and my love for its citizens. Perhaps I'm deluding myself to think that they're anything more than a mere annoyance brought forth out of sheer boredom, but I feel like my intentions can hopefully be felt in the images produced thus far (be they as low quality as they must, given that I am in no way a real photographer, nor will I ever claim to be). I'm just a friendly subway stalker who steals moments of the lives of strangers. I'm sure one day I'll have grown tired of paying attention to the others around me, but for the time being, I can't help but explore their beauty.

To see more of my subway portraits, click the image below for a public album:

A Year in New York City...

Self Portrait; One year in New York City and still going...

At the end of my street there is a little café on the corner complete with warm red-bricked walls, canvas awnings, a lovely wooden patio and windows that look in on candle-lit tables dressed with warm meals and cool drinks all year 'round. I walk by this little café nearly every day on my way to and from the train. It's one of the first sings I see in the morning, and one of the last things I see at night. This little corner establishment at the bottom of my little hill tells the story of each season. In the summer, the long narrow windows open wide, the tables are set out neatly on the patio with umbrellas and the patrons sip on drinks with lemon garnishes. In the fall, they decorate the exterior with pumpkins, gourds and straw bails while the windows slowly close and the tables eventually disappear from the outside, leaving a warm cozy scene behind the glass to be viewed in passing. In the winter the patio is covered with snow and ice while warm light glows from the within the frosty windows as guests hold tightly glasses of mulled cider and hot buttered rum, toasting the the year's end and the new beginnings ahead. Then, finally, the spring comes and the windows begin to open again, flowers begin to appear in the window boxes and a hopefulness fills the air as the tables and chairs return outdoors on evenings when the rain decides to take a short rest. I have witnessed the passage of each season on my street corner as I hurry from place to place. A year has come and gone, and like this rather insignificant genre scene that I have grown to love in my daily life, I am still here, a tiny little piece of the big city, with no sign of eminent departure...

A year in New York City, and what a year it's been. Although it's been a difficult year in many respects, I never knew I could love a place so much. From my humble beginnings in the rural mountainous American-West, to my now even humbler lifestyle in the heights of upper Manhattan, I have learned that even a year in the Big City can't change the fact that on the inside, I'll always be a just a scrawny little ne're-do-well from the sticks, and happily so...

In my first year as a New Yorker, I really feel like I've packed in a great deal of that good "character-building" life experience that teachers in high school always warned me about. My search for steady employment, having no skills or useful education to offer, lead me to a number of rather peculiar occupational adventures throughout the city. I managed to be both hired and fired in the same month by a pair of narcissistic old queens living in Liberace's meth-addicted playland (a.k.a. their lovely home) where I had the distinct task of recording the quantity, frequency and consistency of their dog's bowel movements, and helping them reorganize their collections of sequined fabrics and other bedazzled costume accessories. I learned that one can survive on little more than hot dogs and water for extended lengths of time, and still look like a million bucks. After working for several months as a receptionist for very wealthy clients in a very "zen" environment, I was able to appreciate my mother's old saying that "money don't buy class" is shamefully very accurate. Through my stint in holiday retail on Fifth Avenue, I learned that just because one comes from Europe, doesn't necessarily mean they have any more taste, manners or good breeding than trailer park housewives in rural Florida (in which case specimens from both locales were available for empirical observation). I learned that working 75 hours per week for three months in a row between multiple jobs can easily make any person lose their grip on reality. Most importantly, I learned that any ruts one may fall into in terms of career or any other facet of life can easily be transplanted to a new situation, and even after promising oneself never to work in a certain field again or repeat any other sort of habitual behavior, sometimes it's easy enough to creep back into old familiar places, temporarily of course, just to find oneself there 9 months later with no end in sight... (strictly hypothetically speaking of course).

Even with all of my apparent character flaws and personality defects, I feel like the city has been good to me. Even on my worst days here, there is always some moment when the clouds seem to part and something wonderful is illuminated, reminding me why I came here and why I love it. There is an energy to the city that is so easy to become wrapped up in like a warm blanket, and there is a comfort in knowing that you never really can be very lonesome with 8 million other people all around you (many of whom are much more miserable than you will ever be, so really, just get over yourself and enjoy life!). I love that if there is anything you could possibly want to experience in the world, there is at least some little piece of it available in New York. After my first year here, I feel like I've only just begun to see and know all of the things I want in this place, and I still have so much before me that is just waiting to be discovered.

I am very grateful to be in a city that I find so inspiring. Although I do miss my mountains and my big blue skies of Colorado, and the rustic and bizarre way I grew up with my hippie parents out in the middle of nowhere, I'm learning that many analogous rules can be applied in both the wilderness and in the city. Learning to make something from nothing really has proven to be useful as I'm poorer now than I can ever remember being, and so I'm grateful to my parents for raising me so uniquely. I now feel it is appropriate to raise my glass and toast to my first year in the city, and to as many more as life sees fit to give me...

The gift of nobody: A private day in the Met...

The mezzanine of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's modern collection, while closed to the public...

Although I like to constantly remind myself (mainly because if I do not, then nobody will) that I am still both young AND fun, sometimes I need a little coaxing to actualize such a belief. As the once beautiful golden hairs that so loyally adorned my knobby head slowly say their goodbyes, leaving an ever-growing bulbous forehead in their place, I am coming to terms with the fact that youth is fleeting and aging is inevitable. I've traded acne for developing crows' feet and I've become acquainted with the joys of late-night heart burn and the fact that all of my belly skin seems to be slowing migrating south for the winter. I suppose this is just one of life's little passive-aggressive paybacks for the hell we all put our parents through during our teen years. This year, as I approached another birthday, once again commemorating my descent into the inevitable senility that awaits me near the end, I decided that I would focus on the fact that although I'm living paycheck to paycheck (paychecks which I earn through a job that it is no way related to my educational background or my lofty "career goals"), I am still a neat guy.

As I have made mention in the past, since moving to the city, my refuge to which I always default during any times of trouble or instability is the Metropolitan Museum of Art. If ever I am in need of re-assurance or a replenishment to my own sense of purpose in the world, an afternoon wandering through the galleries in the Met sets me back on course in no time. Upon hearing my birthday woes, a very kind friend of mine offered me the best birthday present that I've ever been given...

Every Monday, the Met closes to the public to take the time for maintenance and also to give the building one day of reprieve from all of the grubby snot-nosed children and their equally endearing aloof parents who trample upon the sanctity of the museum the other six days of the week. It is also a time when museum employees are able to come into the galleries for their own private study and enjoyment of the collections. This year, my birthday just so happened to fall on a Monday, and my friend, who happens to be a Met employee, invited me in for my own private day to see anything my little heart desired without the intrusive presence of the masses usually present in the space. Owing to my love of art and my abundant misanthropy, this was the best possible of all ways I could have imagined to celebrate the start to another year of aging and accelerated hair-loss.

Having the entire museum at my disposal was sort of a spooky, but wonderful sensation. I spent a whole afternoon wandering through the vast galleries, most of which hadn't a soul in sight (aside from an occasional guard listening to an iPod). It was eerie to see everything in the huge structure perfectly lit and set in place, but silent and still. I felt like the world had ended and my friend and I were the only two people left, although the fact that the cameras were still on and security teams were still in place killed most of my urges to run about dancing and touching things behind the ropes. I was able to get up close to many paintings that are always surrounded by large crowds and have my own personal interaction with them. Seeing images that I've known since childhood in books, and standing before them all alone is as close as I can imagine it would be to stand in the presence of God. Being alone with beautiful works by Van Gogh, Degas, Klimt and so many others that I love was an experience for which I haven't the adequate words to describe. Art museums, to me, are like beautiful cathedrals where I can go and deepen my sense of what it means to be human and inspire myself to become something more and feel uplifted. For all of my foul personality defects and my apparent neuroses, on the inside I am still the little kid who spent most Saturdays at the public library pouring over pictures in art history books and dreaming of what life had in store (although I don't let him out to play often enough). My special day in the museum helped to heal the numbness of spirit that can so quickly take over unnoticed while living in an adult world full of obligations and compromises. For one day, I was in a little world where everything was available and anything seemed within reach.

Through panes of glass...

One of the many windows in the city from the old Custom House, now the Smithsonian's NYC Branch of the National Museum of the American Indian.

My oldest sister, Sariah, had a fascination with windows and the world outside of them. From the time she was a baby, she was attracted to the things on the other side. There is a yellowed photograph from an old battered album documenting the brief history of the (remarkably dull) events that occurred in my family during the few years before I was born (a remarkable event which illuminated their drab little lives). The image in the photo was Sariah as a baby, climbing up to the window in a shanty farm house my parents lived in for a brief time, and she was staring ever so majestically into the sunlight, looking as wise and as noble as an 18 month old can. She began her existence already enamored by life on the other side of the glass, and she never quite grew out of it. While she was always looking at the world outside of the windows, I often found myself taking the alternate approach from the outside looking in...

In the City of New York, there is no shortage of windows. On sunny days, much of the city shines as if tiny jewels have been embedded into the masses of stone that aim toward the sky, full of busy hives of people all trying to stay one step ahead of impending poverty. In this way, the city can be reminiscent of a really colossal ant farm, if all the ants had smart phones and caffeine addictions. Most of the people milling about in the buildings of midtown are so busy trying to get through the tasks of their day, they hardly have a chance to look up or follow Sariah's lead and peek out a window every now and again. I make it a point to look out of windows every chance I get, but generally, I just find myself looking into other windows as a result.

My office is situated in a very "no-frills" district of midtown Manhattan, just below Pennsylvania Station. Although there are several windows in the room, they all have a fantastic views of the rear-facing brick walls of the surrounding buildings. There is enough of a view to at least clearly see four or five floors of the buildings to the side and the back of my own, and during the moments I need to avoid the insanity of my job the most, I escape into the views of the other offices around us. Directly across from me there is an office full of clean looking thirty-somethings, sharply dressed in smart business casuals, and different members of the group meet at least once a day, sitting around a table facing a large flatscreen, where I assume they either do video conferencing or else they just really like to actively talk back to television programs for sport. Their workspace is brightly, but not TOO brightly, colored in a sort of "retro-mod" motif and there are always bagels (I wish my office had bagels). There are certain members of the group I have singled out as my favorites, and I periodically look out my window to see if they've entered the meeting. There is one man, tall-ish and balding with a cocky face - always wearing some sort of tasseled footwear, and I've decided I don't care for him. He's probably one of those people with a name like "Preston" or "Dayton" who drinks brandy out of a gold-rimmed snifter discussing his salary with members of his prep school alumni association while making jovial guffaws about his subordinates. When I get to the point where I begin fancying him to be a womanizer who has broken the hearts of all the female members of my office window soap opera, I know it is time to stop and get back to whatever task I've been avoiding by spying on my neighbors.

In the floors above and below the office full of young active people are two very dull views that rarely provide more than a momentary distraction. One window, the office above, peers into a room piled high with disorganized books on sagging shelves, where a very uninteresting old man sits in front of a computer all day, occasionally visited by a secretary of some sort who brings in beige folders full of what appear to be multi-colored forms (I like to call her "Helen"). He often eats his lunch out of a brown bag, prepared by some wife called "Marge" or "Barb," no doubt, and then he leaves every day, promptly at 4:30. In the office below, there sits a middle aged man with bushy peppered hair who seems to do little more than read magazines or the New York Post all day with his feet up on the desk. One time I saw him take a swig from a flask. I always try to see if I can catch him do it again. The only other point of interest in the views I have available to me is into a building directly behind mine. There is an office occupied by two uptight women who do not seem to get along. The sit, all day long at their computers, not speaking, one often pulling her hair back tighter and tighter as the day progresses. At least once a week, the tight-haired lady has to sit and listen to a paunchy older man, who has nose hairs that are visible from a building away, angrily talk at her for fifteen to thirty minutes while making severe hand gestures. I imagine he has bad breath. She then tightens her hair some more and furiously pecks at her keyboard until she leaves.

I realize at times that I may get a little too carried away with my imagination when escaping into the ambiguous scenes of the lives progressing around me through panes of glass, but I feel it's generally a way to connect with a much larger reality that is so easy to feel excluded from. Leading up to my apartment on Amsterdam Avenue, there are several little cafés that attract neighborhood residents and their visitors each night. Often when I'm walking home, and especially on cold nights, I like to look in the windows at the people sharing their evenings together over warm food and cool drinks and I like to pretend I know them and I can hear what they're saying. Often I'll see someone I recognize from the subway platform or the market or one of the apartment buildings on my block, and I feel glad, as though I've seen a friend (when in reality I rarely ever talk to my neighbors unless absolutely necessary). For a split second, in my glance, I've shared a moment in time with a familiar face, and in a city of eight million little ants running around behind glass, it is a comfort to feel human every now and again.

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My weekend museum adventures in the city: indulging the curiosity of my inner child...

One of the many beautiful statues adorning the Brooklyn Museum

Growing up in the mountains of Colorado, sequestered away in a tiny town, I always dreamt of taking off on spontaneous adventures to far off places and seeing exotic and beautiful lands and people yet undiscovered. Although the San Juan mountains were beautiful, they acted as a barrier between me and the world outside. In my imagination, I would fly up over the snow-capped peaks to worlds beyond my own grasp and comprehension. My weekends were often occupied by bicycle excursions in the wild adobe hills or the alleyways of the town, but more often than not, my end destination would be the small public library I affectionately revered as my tangible portal to the places and things on the outside of the scope of the Rockies. I would find piles of books about art, history, fairy stories and travel to wonderful places. The stern and humorless librarian, Rosalie, who seemed to hate all living things - especially children, took a strange liking to me and she would tell me new subjects to explore or even hold new books for me as they came in. During my nerdy Saturdays of youth, while my peers were playing baseball or having slumber parties, I was immersed in the alternate reality of dusty books, socializing with misanthropic librarians and perpetuating my budding eccentricities...

Now that I live in New York City, there is no shortage of imagination-inspiring curiosities and/or world view-broadening places to see. As a sort of New Year's Resolution, I decided two things; I really need to start taking more photographs and I have to do all I can to take advantage of living in this city - I owe it to the dorky small town child inside of me. As a means to satisfy both desires, I have begun planning little weekend "adventures," mostly focused on museums or historical sites where I can feed my hungers for my childhood love of exploration and brain-filling afternoons spent around ideas and artifacts from the past while having many subjects to photograph. Rather than the outdated books and magazines that somehow made their way into rural Colorado, I now have the privilege of seeing concrete and attainable pieces of the vast world which occupied my youthful daydreams. Even in college, earning my second undergraduate degree in Art History, the closest I could be to the things I so dearly loved were the slides projected onto cold and empty walls in darkened classrooms, like phantoms, so far from anything physical or "real." Now a sampling of anything existent in the entire world is just a subway or bus ride away.

Over the past four weekends, I've made it a point to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art (one my favorite places in the world), the American Museum of Natural History, The Cloisters Museum, El Museo del Barrio and the Brooklyn Museum, as well as the neighborhoods around these wonderful places while documenting points of interest with my camera. New Yorkers, overall, seem to have a stigma when it comes to going any place where there may be an abundance of tourists, especially to take photographs and appear to be a tourist like the other "riff raff" infesting the pristine utopia of our urban habitat. I do, so badly, want to one day be worthy of being considered a real "New Yorker," but I know I still am in my "training wheels" phase and have a very long way to go. Since I am still quite a rookie, I figure it's reasonable to indulge in childish fancies and idiotically bring my camera to the sacred and hollowed ground of these wonderful places and look at everything as if it were a moment to be captured for future use. Being a tourist in my own new home has been an addictive and wonderful thing. I want to see and know every corner of the place. I want to have it all imprinted within me. I want to feel my footprint on the pulse of each street and feel like the city knows me as well as I may one day know her.

Erring on the side of childish geekdom, I would love to say eventually that one day I've seen every museum in the city, but as there is no conclusive or agreed upon figure for how many "true" museums there are within the five burrows, it makes seeing all of them a rather subjective goal. The various declarations are that between 70-200+ museums exist in New York, but the definition of the word museum, I have found, varies quite curiously depending upon who one may ask. The town in which I was raised had one museum, dedicated to the local Native American group that had been mostly forced out and ostracized from the area over a period of prolonged struggles and hardships and scattered about in reservations. To see such an abundance of institutions dedicated to the triumphs of human progress and achievements in one place, rather than a necessary and important, but quite grim reminder of human tragedy, is a tremendous thing. Overall, during my time in the city, I've been to a dozen or so of these museums, but now I'm on a mission to to see them all.

I will continue my quest for experience and knowledge indefinitely among the museums of New York. I will also continue my photographic exploits, as well, to connect with my inner tourist. Most of all, I will prove to the anti-social child I once was, that the anti-social adult I've become still understands. I wish that I could somehow find Rosalie, the people-hating librarian of my youth, and thank her for all she un-knowingly did for me. Rosalie, wherever you are, this one's for you...

A Small Sampling of my Photographic Experiments:

Tiny dancers by Degas at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Butterflies at the American Museum of Natural History

Outdoor courtyard garden, frozen for the winter,  at the Cloisters Museum

Neo-Classical sculpture at the Brooklyn Museum

On my way home one evening, I stopped in Battery Park to see the sunset, and look who I found...

How shaking my behind made me who I am today...

A small visual sampling of my awesome moves...

In retrospect, it seems that during the time of adolescence, there were at least three distinct genres of people: the people who were "cool," the people who were willing to do anything or die trying to "be cool" and those who had college to look forward to for any small hope of a social existence. I definitely fit into the latter of the categories. Unlike my mother who, by the age of 12, was tall, beautiful and charismatic with long, formerly-blonde hair (she still claims to be blonde, but it's just not the case), I was a scrawny four-eyed runt with a big mouth and an overly-active imagination. The fact that I survived junior high school was by divine providence for certain. Had I been born in a more primitive time, I would surely have been phased out quickly under the auspices of "survival of the fittest," that is unless dorky butt-shaking and high kicks to eclectic and out of style music would have been considered a survival skill. If that were the case, I would have at least been able to puzzle my predators before making a quick getaway...

For me, college was the time I finally blossomed into the amazingly wonderful person that I am today. In art school, nearly everyone was a little off-center, so having a few bizarre personality defects wasn't looked at in a negative light. I went to a large state university where the visual art department was sequestered safely in a forgotten and undesirable corner of the campus. Aside from required general education courses, I rarely left the little art bubble which was always engulfed in a cloud of cigarette smoke, the aroma of cheap coffee and fumes of paint-thinner. It was there I learned how the fantastic side effects of prolonged sleep deprivation and mental over-exertion could bring people together to form unlikely bonds over seemingly meaningless common experiences. I also learned the importance of letting loose every now and then to deal with sleepless nights in the painting studios finishing countless assignments that have since been forgotten completely. All that remains are the friends I've held on to, and the knowledge that we were all part of the common struggle that has lead us all on sordid paths of ruin and financial instability. Every Thursday night, a particularly special group of friends would all meet at bicycle shop/bar for $1 local microbrews (oh, how very Colorado) and old music on the jukebox. To the tunes of James Brown, Michael Jackson, Devo and other fabulous entertainers from the murky recesses of the available albums in the machine, I learned that although I may not have looked very smart or conventionally "cool," my bizarre and inventive dance moves made me quite popular among the well-libated college crowd of artists, hippies and other friendly drunks.

Although my undergraduate years, all 6 of them, were filled with many good times and happy booty-shakin' memories, I quickly learned that life after school became progressively less exciting. Slowly all of the bicycle bar buddies from Thursday nights of yore went our separate ways and, for the most part, we all found new adventures to pursue.  Upon finding myself eventually in New York City, far away from friendly faces and familiar beers I had grown so fond of, I realized just how precious those quirky experiences were. I've also realized that age is a funny thing, and although I still believe myself to be both "young and fun," youth and amusement are very relative terms...

This winter I was thrust into a lively social situation during a seasonal job in holiday retail with Esprit on Fifth Avenue at Rockefeller Center. I worked there, folding sweaters and swiping credit cards during my evenings and weekends for three months, in which I decided to forgo sleep and/or sanity. The majority of the people I worked with were not born until after the ball dropped in 1990, and for the first time in my life, I was one of the "older people" in the group. This was a startling new experience for me. Given that even in my own age group I am quite a bit out of touch, to all of these people, I probably seemed like a space alien. I know very little of current TV, as I've not had cable since Friends was on the air, and I know even less of popular music. I should also mention that by the time I arrived at Esprit every evening, I had already worked 9 hour shifts at my "real job," and my mental clarity had been worn quite thin. In addition, I should also mention that when tired, my socially awkward tendencies burble to the surface and my concern over the rules of propriety wanes. As the environment was one of fashion retail in one of the most exclusive shopping districts in the world, a horrible mixture of utra-hip music was always pouring out of surround-sound speakers abundantly furnished around the store. To pass the time, I did what any frazzled idiot might do, and I would channel my youthful days of Thursday night splendor and make my own dance party on the sales floor of Esprit Rockefeller Center. Doing my own modifications of the mashed potato, the Charleston, strange references to high kicks by the Rockettes and variations of moves from Frankie and Annette films, I would blithely pass my time physically making fun of the Lady Gaga remixes and Rhianna songs I was subjected to as my coworkers stood by. After a while, I was accepted as the funny "older" nerdy guy who made people laugh by making an ass of myself. Some of the people would even join in and try to either match or out-do my awesome moves (which really isn't hard to do). Eventually, my willingness to be an idiot paid off and made me quite popular in a strange sort of way with the crowd of retail workers, mostly in their late teens.

From the experience, I learned that even in the unlikeliest of circumstances, a positive attitude and a lack of pride can go a long way in breaching certain social barriers. As time moves on and I slowly settle into being a "grown up," I know that I have a great deal of youthful "joi de vivre" to draw from in the form of moronic body movements. I am certain that even in the most taxing of circumstances, such as working the equivalent of two full time jobs at once, there is joy to be found when you can let go and dance like nobody's watching (even if you know people are staring and pointing and laughing)...

Life in a frozen metropolis...

A day spent walking in Central Park, enjoying the balmy New York winter...

The fact that there is any sort of tourist industry at all in New York City is a testament to the number of cultural offerings and fine dining establishments for which the city has to boast, for nobody in their right mind visits for the weather. I have concluded that there are roughly 4 weeks of pleasant weather during the entire year in the city, two in the spring and two in the fall. During the summer, the heat and humidity are reminiscent of a moldy locker room shower stall in a junior high school located on the outskirts of hell, and in the winter the howling wind and black snow that refuses to fully melt is a happy reminder that frost bite isn't just something you were told about in stories, but it is an experience available to all. This being said, my first winter in the city, although rather uncomfortable, has been filled with many crystalline wonders which are inexplicable to me considering how much I dislike cold in general. Somehow, with chattering teeth and cheeks burned raw by the icy winds, I have managed to find the frozen world of the city quite beautiful...

Although my childhood was spent in the snowy mountains of Colorado where my father taught specialized courses in winter survival with the sun shining on high alpine peaks and the birds singing songs in the fairy-tale-esque environment of the Rocky Mountain winters, I feel completely ill-equipped for the season "back east." When we would have blizzards back home, it just meant we'd turn on the 4 wheel drive in our Subarus, get out our polar fleece lined Columbia jackets and lace up our Sorels while continuing on with our lives. Sure, a foot or two of snow on the ground would slow us down a bit, but it wouldn't stop us. In my entire K-12 education, despite numerous heavy snow storms, we had one "snow day" ever, and that was in 1990 when there were two feet of snow that fell over night, and the school buses couldn't be freed from their ice-prison before the morning.

On the day after Christmas this year, we had a snow storm in the city that shut everything down, causing chaos and pandemonium for all five boroughs. I happened to be working my temporary job in holiday retail that night as the blizzard was in full force. Even snow blowing in horizontally from all cardinal directions wouldn't stop bargain shoppers on Fifth Avenue. As taxis slid past stop lights and hot dog vendors drug their carts out of the streets into unknown shelters (where do they go at night?), the lure of 50% off on all outerwear accessories kept salivating bargain hunters going through the thick of little Jack Frost's temper tantrum. By 9pm, the buses had stopped running, but the sales went on. By the time I got out of work at 11pm, the scene was akin to a cold war era film about nuclear holocaust. Taxis had stopped running completely, and bicycles were abandoned in the middle of the streets. Half the trains had been shut down, and so the few subway stations still in operation looked like bomb shelters with weary frozen souls huddled together hanging on to the hope that the train would eventually come and warm beds would be waiting at the end of so many long journeys home. I saw one woman with a rosary clasped in her hands, whispering prayers to herself while a herd of tiny children clung to her soggy legs.

The train finally came, and slowly it slid into each stop on the icy tracks until I finally made it back up to the Columbia University station. When I made it out of the frozen little hole in the ground, back up to the street level, I had to walk in the tracks being made by a woman 3 feet ahead of me. We made an unspoken agreement with our eyes that whosoever should be blown down by the wind into the snow would be the responsibility of the other. It just so happened that she turned two blocks before my street, and I was blown on my backside down into a snow bank exactly one block after we parted ways...

It took nearly a week for all the streets to be plowed and for the city to begin operating on time again. I found it humbling that in one of the largest metropolitan cities in the world, filled with vast resources and cutting edge technologies, life could still be brought to a lurching halt by a phenomenon as basic as the snow. It seems that only in a "state of emergency" will the city slow itself down and take a bit of a needed rest. It was a beautiful thing to wake up in the morning without the sound of a single car horn or ambulance rushing down the streets. Everything was still and calm, and for the first time since moving to the city, there was a soft quietness in the air. Once the snow had stopped, the sun came out and children were sledding in the park outside of my front window. It felt like some sort of Frank Kapra type moment that should have been experienced in black and white. By the following day, life was delayed, but slowly went back to the normal loud and intense hustle I have grown accustomed to. I was glad that after a season of working 75 hours per week between two jobs, New York had given me a much needed snow day to sit back and catch my breath.

The underground kingdom of Dr. Zizmor...

The good doctor himself, looking down at the world from above...

As a child, my relationship with daily transportation was one wrought with toil and grief provided by a succession of partially-functioning automobiles my parents seemed to attract like lost kittens. Often, our Volkswagen Microbus would only start with the aid of my mother's prayers, said aloud in the front seat after numerous failed attempts at getting the wretched thing to start. On occasions when the prayers went unanswered, during particularly cold winter mornings, she'd have to get a hammer from the glove box and crawl under the car to beat on the machine's underbelly, which did the trick, and off we'd go to church. Getting from point A to point B was frequently a great deal of work, especially when relying on divine intervention. Now, relying entirely on various forms of public transit to make it from one place to another, I have become a mean and surly urbanite with sharp elbows and a furrowed brow. Transportation in New York is proof of Darwin's theories regarding the survival of the fittest. He who doesn't fight for his life doesn't make it on the morning train...

Deep under the ground, there is a world that exists free of sunlight and taxis and the warbles of dirty pigeons. It is a world where the rules of the vertical world seem vaguely inconsequential and a subterranean horizontal reality takes over. Surrounded by strangers, packed into small metal boxes that are controlled and thrust about by unseen hands, one tends to pay more attention than usually given to any brightly colored distraction from the rush-hour transit claustrophobia festival at hand. Peering out at the huddled masses from illuminated placards running along the ceilings of the subway cars are static faces offering promises of varying nature. Some promise wealth, some promise speedy divorces and some promise medical miracles, but the faces promising eternal youth and beauty are the most powerful of all, especially when surrounded by so many specimens of the human race that appear to have seen better days.

There is an undisputed king of these purveyors of affordable hope; he stares out from a backdrop of sunshine and rainbows. He is the great and powerful Dr. Zizmor and for an agreement of mere financial servitude, he will make you beautiful in as little as one lunch break with his collection of magical potions and mystical secrets. Somehow, although time keeps passing, his likeness in his photographs hasn't changed in 20 years, nor has the quality or aesthetic sensibility of his graphic designer. Having never met the man myself, he seems like a mythical creature, akin to the great Oz behind the curtain. While the other subway wizards may offer things like "free" abortion alternatives, help with sexual dysfunctions and speedy bankruptcies (seemingly grand and complicated problems with even grander necessities for resolution), Dr. Zizmor tells you that YOU TOO can be beautiful with little to no effort on your own part. Although he uses outdated and rather pathetic methods to do so, there is a simplicity to his offer that is warm and inviting, and besides, who can be very intimidated by a man who looks like a muppet? I find that the testimonials from his loyal subjects, which are a key component in every version of his subway posters, add that little something extra to make you feel like you're reading the cliff's notes from an infomercial, and who doesn't like that?

Anyone who has lived in New York for any length of time knows of the technicolor subway skin doctor, but perhaps not all have the fondness for him that I do. There is something endearing about the way his images seem to be frozen in the late 1980's, and they never seem to progress or innovate. His schtick hasn't, and most likely, it will never change. He connects us with memories of an increasingly less-tangible past, one without wifi and text messaging and photoshop, a simpler time when lots of labor would go into making a single mix-tape on cassette. I suppose that my recent fatigue brought on by working 70 hours per week between two different jobs has taken a toll on my sanity, and this is why Dr. Zizmor is speaking to me in such a way. At least he hasn't animated himself in my mind when I am stuck focusing on him rather than the fact that I've been physically violated by everyone who has gotten on and off the train while I patiently wait for my stop. In a city that is so focused on forward motion, I find it sort of wonderful to see something that refuses to move on...