April 2005 Archives

by the way, it's spring!

Light can do wonderful things.

Somehow you stumbled into my little corner of the world. I was born in Texas in 1974. So, that puts me in my 30's now. I was: a shrimp salesman, a lawn mower, a curb spray painter, a peep hole installer, a firewood dealer, a construction worker, a cashier, a cook, a restaurant manager, a bartender, a student, a graduate, an airplane loader, a help desk support, a systems administrator, an on-call-computer-geek, a web programmer, a coordinator of information technology, a corps member, etc. I am: a significant other, a cook again,a concessionaire, an avid reader, an amateur writer, a photographer , a painter, a printmaker, a book collector, a experience lister, a part-time runner, a pancake lover, a recipe breaker, an exiled texan, a brooklynite.

Somewhere along the way I picked up an interest in language and learned to speak and write English enough to communicate to you. Like many lucky Americans, that was my only language for a long, long time. Things are different now. Now I know a spattering of a few more languages and am still only fluent in one. Nonetheless I love language and hope I do not abuse it on too regular of a basis. This is the public face of my bad writing and self-effacement. This is not me it is a part of me. If you'd like to talk to me make a comment or send me and email (contact page coming soon).

If you want to see some of my photos go here. If you want to know more about my best friend and better half, try here.

This is my experiment in having a public face and being open to critical review. Nonetheless, it isn't working out that well. I don't try very hard to publicize myself and I rely on friends and families occassional visits and infrequent comments to improve my writing and content. I started this, because I knew how, I've heard that is a bad reason and yet I still continue. Some call that tenacity. I received an award for that in my brief stint with the boyscouts. That is before I refuse to make the pledge ande had to leave. Who knew it was so religious? Not me.

Today, April 25th, 2005, I'm a student at The French Culinary Institute in NYC, paying too much money to pursue a potentially hard living as a cook, perhaps someday chef and restauranteur. I work 4 days a week for zero money and "don't have enough experience" to receive a decent wage for what I do. I love food and I have great fun cooking, but I haven't really gotten into writing about those experiences publically yet, I'll leave that to others for now. I love to eat. I love coffee. I love Tracie my girlfriend and now fiancee. I love our camera and my cameras and free-time. I love to walk around and catch fleeting moments and put them into the visual and digital nebula of encapsulated reflected light.

The idea of an empty highway brings me a bit of delight and anxiety. Somehow that popped into my head as a good home on the internet (the information highway). Maybe you've felt this feeling before... perhaps you heard a song or saw something, or thought of something, or read somthing that just makes the hairs on the back of your neck tingle; or maybe you've walked around the corner and felt it too. A pursuit of the impossible makes life bearable and often wonderful.

As the air begins to warm up and the leaves emerge from their many month hibernation, so does the sounds and shouts of spring and summer. Just after drifting off to sleep last night I awoke to shots, shouts, screams, and sirens. I looked at the clock and it was around 12:48 am. I must have been asleep all of two minutes, so it scared me even more than it normally would. It was like a falling dream where you wake up before you hit the ground, but this time the scary part was the awake time.

We live on a block in between Fulton St. and Atlantic Ave. nearly atop the Franklin Ave. C subway station. Our bedroom wall and backyard is on the Fulton side of the block, so as summer nears so do the sounds and chaos of Fulton/Franklin and Fulton/Classon corners. The distance between Classon and Franklin is like a 1/2 city block. Both corners look out onto a calamity of transients, unemployed, and generally unhappy people throughout the days and nights. The Franklin Ave. subway stop, according to a guy I overheard coming up the south exit stairs one day is "...the stinkiest mother f*%#!@$ subway stop in all of New York City!"