“Human beings are funny. They long to be with the person they love but refuse to admit openly. Some are afraid to show even the slightest sign of affection because of fear. Fear that their feelings may not be recognized, or even worst, returned. But one thing about human beings puzzles me the most is their conscious effort to be connected with the object of their affection even if it kills them slowly within.”

-Sigmund Freud

I wish he hadn’t done enough coke to kill a horse, nor that most of his extrapollated work has been well-refuted by now.  Sometimes the things he says are really spot on.

I’m proud to say I’ve done this:

Today, I am flying from here:

To a location 2,158 miles away, where things should be different.  Au contraire.  I will likely see and walk on this:

Replicas of things always creep me out.  Replicas of the place I call home with the inclusion of neon lights?  Well, we’ll see how this goes…

My brain is already feeling more fractal than a Derrida hypothesis and I can feel the spirits of DeLillo, Pynchon, Wallace, and Thompson descending upon me.

Wish me luck.

That last post was a little harsh.  Anyway.  This is what’s really been happening:

On Thursday, I rode the subway all the way through Brooklyn, to the AirTrain, straight to the ever-festive, newly remodeled Terminal 5 at JFK.  I fly in and out of this terminal quite often, as I’m building JetBlue points for free trips to such charmingly demure locales as Bogota, Colombia soon.  Nonetheless, it never ceases to amaze me.  This place makes me feel like Schaumburg, Illinois took a Woodfield Mall-sized dump on Queens and JetBlue decided to jump on the shitstorm that ensued and open shop.  What results is an airport terminal complete with fountains, skylights, plants, a LaCoste store, numerous places to get drunk and eat Buffalo wings, and a food court:

A quick vid of Terminal 5:

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I’m currently in Illinois, in the suburbs of Chicago, and I just got done paying all of my medical bills.

I think this is about how I should be feeling.

Laced and happy, seething underneath.  Where is Brooklyn?  Where is cheap coffee?  Why is it that I have to drive a car everywhere in this town?

Most of you know that I get around this city on a bicycle as much as possible (yes, my surgeon okay’d me to ride again.  I’m so happy).  There was an article in the New York Times recently that proposed some interesting viewpoints on how cyclists are viewed in this city these days.

It’s an interesting article, even if I don’t agree with the “proposals” he makes (I’m a bit more militant about demanding respect from everyone despite me running red lights.  I do endorse more signalling though.), at least it gives some perspective on how we’re actually seen by pedestrians.  If nothing else, that’s a bad-ass picture of Tone on the front page, rocking the same frame that I’m riding.

Click through here.

I was turned on to this project by my friend, Anna.

21 Maps of New York, real and imagined by amazing artists.  It really draws out the idea that this place, where I am, where you are, wherever we go, is just as much experiential as it is the numbers on the buildings on the labeled streets.  It makes all this asphalt animated.

My favorite: Lordy Rodriguez re-imagines Manhattan in an almost Blade Runner mindset.  Fragmented, angry, outposts of calm, a downtown financial district fortified by a wall and extensive security.

See the entire project here.

I’ve been having flashbacks.

Download a full wallpaper size here.

A while back, I was given the challenge of writing a short piece about “air.”  That was the only guideline.  I wrote about all the things that air does, who it goes in and out of, what it effects in our day and age, how it’s changed.

Long story short, I made a case that the air is really heavy these days.  That it’s hard to breathe because of all that is going on and every little thing that every single person does is right in front of us.  Sometimes it can even hurt people.

But sometimes it brings them together, for better or worse.  I made an audio recording of it, with a little experimental work backing it. Continue Reading »