standing in line...

adam and i hung out only with each other today, which is nice because that's both our favorite things and it's been a while since we've had such an extended period of open time to just be at home. 

we went to fairway today.  the food store.  it was interestingly pertinent to my thoughts as i'd just finished reading White Noise. this world we've so unwittingly constructed is impossible to circumvent.  no matter how much tv i don't watch; no matter how many magazines i don't read; no matter how many stores i don't shop in; i can't seem to avoid the mundane predictability of american life. 

but at least i finally made homemade oreos :)  i have literally wanted to do this for years.  (the source of my fears: will i lose all motivation???? that scares me more than anything, honestly).
for your viewing pleasure:

i leave you with these words from Delillo:

“The supermarket shelves have been rearranged. It happened one day without warning. There is agitation and panic in the aisles, dismay in the faces of older shoppers.[…]They scrutinize the small print on packages, wary of a second level of betrayal. The men scan for stamped dates, the women for ingredients. Many have trouble making out the words. Smeared print, ghost images. In the altered shelves, the ambient roar, in the plain and heartless fact of their decline, they try to work their way through confusion. But in the end it doesn’t matter what they see or think they see. The terminals are equipped with holographic scanners, which decode the binary secret of every item, infallibly. This is the language of waves and radiation, or how the dead speak to the living. And this is where we wait together, regardless of our age, our carts stocked with brightly colored goods. A slowly moving line, satisfying, giving us time to glance at the tabloids in the racks. Everything we need that is not food or love is here in the tabloid racks. The tales of the supernatural and the extraterrestrial. The miracle vitamins, the cures for cancer, the remedies for obesity...

The cults of the famous and the dead."

Poconos.

weekend in sum:

(in words)
hot tub
all my favorite people (ok, i guess it would have been better if my bros came :) )
beer and candy in one amazing store
thumper
"not-winning-right-now-hat"
snow
sleep
not-skiing
flea market

(in photos)

and, again, the poconos were a success.  adam even made his very first Robin Is Good sale!  

I don't know what I did for myself.

When I was a kid...

I played soccer.
I never felt like going to the games.
Everyone on the travel team made fun of me.

I played basketball.
My dad coached.
I was never very good.
Never very invested.

I played baseball.
It was weird.
Different from the others.
I was actually good at it.
But, I stopped.
I know there was a reason, but I can't remember.

I was in the A.V. club
The chess club.
I played the trombone, not the drums. 

None of it was me. 

It's weird sometimes the shit that will fuck you up as a kid. 

i'm the same as i was when i was six years old...

when i was a little kid:
1.  i listened to music to hear the words
2. i brought soft pretzels home for my little sister
3. i put all my money in the poor box at church
4.  i pretended to be a teacher
5.  i wrote poems
6.  my teacher asking for a strong boy to carry something... made me mad
7.  i pretended i lived in the woods
8.  the city was home
9.  i took long walks with my dad to learn about the world and how it worked
10.  i got sad a lot
11.  i cried when kids were mean
12.  i had to leave the classroom when my teachers taught about slavery cause it was too much
13.  i sang in the car
14.  i hated wearing dresses
15.  i made things that took a long time to finish

so i've been thinking... i don't think i've changed very much at all.

i'm never gonna tell on you...

growing up, sometimes my siblings would annoy me.

really though, they're my closest friends.

this song made me think of them cause, well,  i wouldn't tell on them unless it was absolutely necessary. sort of like a sibling pact or something. 

besides this is just one of those songs that insights nostalgia- and... i miss them. 

depressing christmas music.

one year (our second year living in greenpoint) adam and i decided not to worry too much about celebrating christmas. 

that was a strange year for us.  needless to say winter was LOOOOONG.  i mean with not celebrating christmas, there was nothing to break up the thick intensity of the frozen new york wind.

greenpoint is the brooklyn i find myself missing. 

wh

when i'm really honest with myself, i know it's not greenpoint that i miss, but the mystery.  when adam and i lived there we were officially 'young'.  we had no clue where we were headed.  where we would live.  what our life would look like.

of course, mystery still exists in our lives now.  but i miss the brooklyn artist magic.

park slope ruined brooklyn for me.  inwood revives manhattan on a daily basis. 

finding a home will be my infinite struggle- a struggle i love.

for now, i will celebrate things like christmas.  i will hang decorations.  i will relish in the fact that my adorable super hangs more tacky dollar store decorations in the lobby of my apartment than i even realized existed.

this is a good year.  this is a good home.  i think i will just be forever unsatisfied- and maybe that's ok.  


adam took the above picture in our lobby.  i love it.  it suits my obsession with depressing christmas music:

inspiration.

as a teacher i try to find focus... a 'theme' for each school year.  interestingly enough as i approach my seventh year of teaching, i've realized that regardless of the theme i present to my students, my ultimate focus is based on my real life.  what i'm really going through. (what a scary thought? teachers basing their lessons off of their lives... yikes.) anyhow, the 'true' focus of my class this year is: inspiration.  why in the world to we feel like writing?   why do we feel like reading?  what is the meaning of all this stuff we learn in ELA class???

unfortunately for the ELA curriculum, i have outright TOLD my buddies (students) that writing compare/contrast, five paragraph, 'Now I'm going to tell you about' essays are GARBAGE.  a waste of their creative minds... not to mention a waste of my time in terms of how long it takes to grade them.  countless 'teachers' have paved the way.  i don't think i'm the first to suggest that my students write about something meaningful, BUT unlike many of my predecessors, i actually have a degree in education and am not just trying to become famous by teaching for two years (oh and also exploiting my students through facebook albums and blog posts that actually only focus on myself, my accomplishments, how GREAT  i am for teaching in the... cue scary music... inner city) before i procure a law degree...

ANYHOW, enough of my ranting (stating the truth?) my REAL focus for this year happens to be 'inspiration' and so i present to you a photo adam took a while ago.  it inspired one of my buddies to write an incredible poem (i will soon post it), maybe it will inspire others?

there are times that i miss my old self; brooklyn. i'm intrigued by the space it takes up in my brain.  pictures like the following  portray (as acurately as possible) my love for that time in my life. everything was magical.  'above all the roofs of the houses' if you will.