SoHo, August 2007

Yesterday I was in the elevator at work when a young woman got in holding a dress on a hanger, wrapped in plastic. She removed the plastic and stood looking doubtfully at the dress, a layered affair of white fabric with very subtle polka dots.

She held the dress up so I could see it. “Is this cute, or weird?”

I assured her I thought it was cute - and it was, in a weird kind of way. I laughed inwardly at the idea of being a fashion consultant for this woman I didn’t know. I thought, “I must have ‘gay man’ written all over me!”

I wonder if she would have asked Larry Craig that question?

Fifth Avenue, August 2007

Practically speaking, if timesaving devices really saved time, there would be more time available to us now than ever before in history. But, strangely enough, we seem to have less time than even a few years ago. It's really great fun to go someplace where there are no timesaving devices because, when you do, you find that you have lots of time. Elsewhere, you're too busy working to pay for machines to save you time so you won't have to work so hard.

The main problem with this great obsession for Saving Time is very simple: You can't save time. You can only spend it. But you can spend it wisely or foolishly. The (busy person) has practically no time at all, because he's too busy wasting it by trying to save it. And by trying to save every bit of it, he ends up wasting the whole thing.

-- Benjamin Hoff, "The Tao of Pooh"

E. 29th Street, August 2007

The strangest thing happened Saturday morning when I went downstairs to get my newspaper.

Every day, the paper carrier just plops the paper down on the front steps outside the building. It gets stolen occasionally, but usually it’s there when I go down for it about 6:30 or 7 a.m.

On this particular day, a whole STACK of newspapers was waiting for me. The carrier, for whatever reason, dropped all the papers for my entire block on my doorstep - about 20 of them, including Sunday sections, magazines and inserts. It was not a small stack!

Why this happened, I have no idea. But since I work for a newspaper - and since fewer and fewer people still get home delivery, opting instead for the Internet or no paper at all - I decided to deliver them myself. Must keep those readers happy!

Here’s what I learned. The Catholic church across the street gets the Times and the Post. The apartment building two doors down gets a whole bunch of papers, mostly multiple copies of the Times and the Wall Street Journal. My building gets only one: mine. The Times is delivered on my block far more than any other paper.

An interesting sociological study of news delivery on East 29th Street!

SoHo, August 2007

I read an interesting article in The New Yorker last week about the disappearance of the dark night sky - how there are fewer and fewer places in the world where we can see the stars as people would have seen them 200 years ago.

Imagine - back then, with everyone using candlelight and oil lamps, you could probably have seen a vast array of stars and planets even from the middle of New York. Now you can see only the brightest of stars, and they look like pale specks floating in an orangey, sodium-vapor-tinted soup.

When I was a kid in Florida, we used to be able to see the Milky Way galaxy from our front yard. We looked straight up, and there it was - a wide, pale band across the sky. (I couldn’t quite figure out why anyone thought it looked like a candy bar.) Even then, though, the sky to the south, over the city of Tampa, was too bright to see stars well.

It was only in Morocco, where I lived in a village with no electricity, that I saw a truly dark sky. Not only could I see the Milky Way - I could see satellites spinning across the heavens, not to mention dozens of shooting stars. I didn’t need a telescope, either. I remember lying on my roof one night, listening to a new mix tape that my friend Kevin sent me, watching the show.

One of the few things I dislike about New York is the absence of stars. We lose something as a species when we can’t look up and be amazed. We forget that there’s no ceiling to our world, and so much more than just us.

SoHo, August 2007

Another piece of street art by one of my favorites, Bloke. I felt this way all last week - like I was flying in opposite directions, buffeted by variable winds, backtracking and zig-zagging!

Now, however, I can settle down and get back on course. I’m happy to report that both my photo session with the poet and my expedition to move the Zen center’s stuff went well. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the guy who helped me pilot the moving truck - he did the driving (and the parking) and I basically just wound up being co-pilot, which seemed to work well for both of us. (He drives regularly and knows the roads, so that cut down on a lot of our uncertainty!) We even found a parking spot and were able to unload everything pretty quickly and effortlessly. Whew!

Often when I get stressed about things, I’m looking at them in the aggregate - I see everything I have to do looming before me as one huge entity, and I feel overwhelmed. I forget that small steps are the way to accomplish big tasks. You just do one thing and then the next, and pretty soon the big challenge is behind you. Why can’t I learn this lesson?

Have I mentioned that it’s very hard to type with a cat lying on your chest?

Meatpacking District, August 2007

Thanks, everybody, for the words of advice and encouragement yesterday. I’m not making any immediate changes in the blog - you helped me see that I was being sabotaged by my own doubts and expectations!

I think I was just experiencing a sort of down day - a down week, really. This has been a very intense time, with changes on the job, the trip to Florida and a family illness. After this weekend I’ll be in a position to relax a little more.

I’m going back up to our retreat center in the Hudson Valley today, to help move the Zen center’s belongings (mostly dozens of meditation cushions!) back to the city. This was originally going to entail me renting a U-Haul and driving (and parking!) it in Manhattan - the source of a lot of my stress! But as it stands now, another guy in the group who drives more regularly, and who already has insurance, will probably take the wheel. I’ll just navigate.

Another member of my Zen group knows a poet who’s about to get a book published, and she recommended me to take author photos for the book jacket! So I’m going to meet the poet today. I’ve told this woman that I’m not a professional photographer, and that I only have a point-and-shoot, so I hope I’m not over-representing myself. I’ve told her I’ll do it for free. It would be cool to have a photo credit on a book jacket, wouldn’t it?

Lexington Avenue, August 2007

I’ve been at my blog now for about 15 months. During that time I’ve posted a photo and written a little something every day.

And now, I’m reaching a point of blog exhaustion. I need some advice.

As many of you know, I originally started this blog to show off my photos. But that purpose seems to have diminished as I’ve come to use Flickr, which is really more suited to photo display.

Over time, I began writing a little more each day to go with the photos. But for me, the writing has never been very satisfying. I love to write, so I’ve often wondered why I don’t feel more fulfilled by it here. I think there are a couple of reasons.

I’ve never felt free to really open up about a lot of stuff. I don’t particularly like writing about my love life (such as it is) or any deeply personal issues, given that this IS the Internet, and God knows where it will wind up. And I can’t discuss a wide range of political and social issues, given that I’m a journalist and airing my political opinions is expressly forbidden by my employer.

Last night, for example, I went to see “Sicko,” Michael Moore’s latest film. But I can’t really tell you much about my reactions to the film or the issues, because doing so would compromise the objectivity I have to publicly cultivate. (I also can't do stuff like sign petitions or march in demonstrations.)

So what I’m left with is a kind of tepid, limited blog. And I guess it’s seeming like more of a burden than a joy. I often find myself forced to just come up with SOMETHING to post, and that’s not a feeling I want to have. It also takes a lot of time, and I’m unable to keep up with reading and other stuff that matters to me.

What should I do? Stop blogging? Blog less frequently? What do the rest of you do when you’re tired of your blog?