A Day at the Beach.

In Brooklyn.

Every Morning.

To do. (Thanks, Marc).

Notable elements: leotard, hair, blush, earrings, voice, semi-crossed eyes, that list, the breath intake before the pose begins, the full-body shot - hands gripping the knees - version and, best of all, the desperation of the pose. Tremendous.

Impresses me.

3.

3 years.

Lemonade Stand.

Came upon them and a rush of early-entrepreneurial-flights-of-fancy memories followed. I love lemonade stands.

Times Square.

Times Square is the most terrifying place in New York City. (This was so long before the recent bomb scare). When I go there, I feel like I am not even in the city anymore. We got sidetracked walking home one night and somehow ended up smack in the middle of it. It was a zone awash with strange humans, their faces lit by very eerie light. If that were New York, there is no way I would live here. We did run into this long line of hogs, with their counterparts standing nearby, chewing the fat in a tight circle. A safety shield of sorts. I felt much better.

Poetry.

One night after work this week, I met up with one of the very first friends I ever made in New York City (~2005, before Paris) and we headed to the banks of Brooklyn. Nicholas is an extraordinary fellow. He has harnessed himself with a Clark Gable mustache and he bears the weight of it so perfectly. This is not a joke (as he says). He likes the immediate affinity he experiences with old ladies when they wonder aloud...Clark Gable? And he nods in affirmation. He really was thinking exactly that going in to it. Nicholas has a master's degree in poetry and is printing his first book of rhymes this week entitled, Inside me a Whale is Taking Shape. I'll let you know how to get a copy. It will be worth it. (And when the whale surfaces - that will also be worth it).











Down there, Walt Whitman commands the railings (Crossing Brooklyn Ferry) just near Wallabout Bay:

Flow on, river! Flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the ebb-tide!
Frolic on, crested and scallop-edged waves!
Gorgeous clouds of the sunset! Drench with your splendor me, or the men and women generations after me!
Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers!
Stand up, tall masts of Manhattan! Stand up, beautiful hills of Brooklyn!

4 Things.

I would like to name these four things numbers. Here it goes.


# 888079


# 191


# 4


# 555435

That is how they go in my mind.

In a line.

Esplanade.

We have this terrace at our apartment. As my friend Chris said, "it is like the set of a film." Not because it is glamorous. Oh no. But because when you walk out onto it, you are confronted with a wall of windows (a much higher wall than our 5 stories) - a good 250 apartments whose residents, at any moment, might be looking in your direction. Unnerving to some, glorious to others. There are no sweeping park or river views. However, now that the sun is high in the sky, we get sunshine galore. We also like to have barbeques on the terrace. Additionally, a few plants are growing, including one tomato.


That, there, just beyond where those boys are chatting, is a 5-story plunge.



Perhaps best of all was tonight's movie session. Xavier is a big fan of projectors and big screens (remember Top Gun in our apartment in Paris?). The terrace is now officially outdoor-big-screen-movie-space. All those window-people (neighbors) get to watch too. We blast the sound for them. It's like a drive-in.

Somewhere I went...

Just like I wanted to. Mast Brothers Chocolate. Chocolate bars galore. You can buy their chocolate on the world wide web even if you aren't lucky enough to go to Brooklyn. It is all dark chocolate, made with beans that are sorted and selected by hand (by this lady's hands and that guy's down below too - 8 people in total).















It is rumored that Mother's Day Tea at the White House even included Mast Brothers' Chocolate...

A new goal:

...to get the wind knocked out of me. Naturally. Not like beaten out of me, but for it to occur as a result of an activity I'm doing (falling hard off a swing - something to that effect).

I posed the question to a co-worker yesterday (When was the last time you got the wind knocked out of you?) and we both agreed it had been far too long. Remember the feeling? Total panic, suspended pain, gaping eyes. Talking about it made me feel wistful, almost apologetic that my current life does not often include fertile opportunities for such a thing. I love how physically turbulent childhood is/was. Hmm...

And on the recommendation of a certain bodyguard extraordinare that we know, if you do get the wind knocked out of you, bend over foward. When you straighten back up, you'll be better rigged to breathe.

Somewhere I'd really like to go...

MAST BROTHERS CHOCOLATE
105A North 3rd Street | Brooklyn, NY 11211

...maybe this weekend (Xavier found these guys, so maybe I'll invite him).

4 Copains et le Voyage Méditerranée.

Xavier unearthed something amazing when he went home to Paris to drop Mlle. Marguerite off - a video of his dad circa 1966 (he was 18 years old). The video features Vincent, one of Vincent's brothers and two friends on a boundless road trip (15,000 kilometers) that started on the Champs-Élysées:

Paris ---> Greece ---> Turkey ---> Egypt ---> Libya ---> Tunisia ---> Morocco ---> Spain.

[Left to right] Jean-Pierre, Pierre, Rémi, Vincent- 4 Frenchies on a grand adventure.



This picture was taken at the very end of their voyage and they all look so skinny because they hardly had "un sou" (a penny). They pulled over and slept on mats every night. They had several crashes along the way, one of which included rolling the car four times (much to the displeasure of Vincent and Rémi's father, who had paid for half the car [the classic 4L by Renault], on the condition that he would get it back at the end of their trip...).


That is Xavier's dad on the top left.



The video itself is poetic, there are scenes that are pastoral magic. Those boys, the freedom, the era that is gone, the sensation of the sun - it is 15 minutes worth watching:

Along the Hudson.

Blue by installments.