Waiting for the light to change. Waiting to cross the street. Waiting to get out of the rain. Waiting to get inside the bookstore. Waiting to be absorbed into the sea of people already in the bookstore. Waiting to touch covers, turn pages, climb stairs, circle back, sniff paper, debate with myself, be surprised, be amazed, be overwhelmed, consider, consider again. Every selection means the elimination of something else. Every book wants to go home with me and be read and then wait while the other books shift to make room. Waiting for the light to change is the time when anything is possible.
Inside Blue Stripes Cacao Shop, East 13th Street, in Manhattan. The above photo is the second of two I took of the glass case closest to the entrance. These are delicious brownies, I was told, and they taste lighter than air. I'm struck by how perfectly lined up they are, like an abacus, and that makes me think about digits and math and people, our need to count, to account for, our need for order. This need doesn't seem to translate into a need for parity. What I mean is a need, or an intention, for a world where, like the ideal kindergartner, we share. The loaf at the end of the lines of brownies looks a little like a heart, not the anatomically correct heart but the fanciful one. Or like the good character in a fairy tale, or maybe the sweet cottage in the woods where we go for safety and succor. I wonder if I'm reading too much into this. I didn't buy anything at the shop. Maybe next time.
Inside Blue Stripes Cacao Shop, East 13th Street, in Manhattan. The above photo is one of two I took of the glass case closest to the entrance. Look at those carefully placed cherries! Are they real? Stop time. Go back.
We're little, my sister and I, maybe five and eight, six and nine, and our mom has only enough money for one ice cream sundae. The sundae comes with one cherry. A simple math problem becomes a painful moment for a mom who feels guilty about not being able to afford two. Guilt becomes a grid of power struggles. Power corrupts, damages, prevails. to be continued... What is edible? What is appetite? What is far-fetched?
What would it feel like to wear these shoes on carpet? Oh, how I love these colors. Why are the toes so pointy? Once upon a time I did wear shoes like these and a short skirt and I even stopped traffic, in Rome, strange men calling out from their cars and I wasn't even alone I was with a man and my hair was in a ponytail and I was young, so young. These shoes make me think of kindergarten, of chewing, of teething rings, of danger, of misstep, of agony, of black light posters, of velvet paintings, of candy, of twisted ankles, of too much to drink, of just enough to drink, of nothing to drink, of money, of debt, of loss, of time, of too much to eat of nothing to eat of panic of satisfaction of denial of parties of paintings of women, of anguish. Clicking down the street. The sound of feet. (Macy's Herald Square shoe department afforded me this photo.) How does one read an image? What catches your attention here? Is it the multitude of curved lines? The captured heads of the shoppers? The mottled surface of the mirror or maybe the lights that bounce behind it? There's also that tiny yellow and black sticker warning a generic mother to hold the hand of her generic child on the escalator. Initially for me it was the disconnect between the text in the sign and the illustration below it.
I took the photo in Macy's on 34th Street in Manhattan. Missing from the photo are the happy sounds of people walking and talking. It was raining hard outside and the place was packed. I had just detrained at Penn Station. I was there mainly to dip out of the weather on the stretch between Sixth and Fifth, though I did try on a pair of bubble-bottomed running shoes. I wanted to see what they would feel like. They were okay, kind of nice, actually, and way outside my idea of reasonably priced. But I bet they'd be great on wet sidewalks. |
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