it seems somehow fitting that everywhere you go there's a radio blaring "Billie Jean" or "Beat It." on the boardwalk at Brighton Beach kids see the lights of Coney Island in the distance and exclaim, "A carnival! We haven't been to a carnival in a year!---a month!" before settling back on a year.

there are a lot of reasons to hope summer lasts forever.

I found myself barely reading the words in most of the LED pieces in Protect Protect. In some ways I agreed with the poetry designation, if only because on the rare occasions that I read poetry, I go quickly and don't analyze much. Here, the words themselves go quickly, not giving you much time for analysis. Sometimes the lines overlap or reverse out in a way that makes it seem purposefully difficult to read very much.

The overall spareness of the show helped make this feeling manageable. And I love how the walls glow where the letters flow in and out.

At the next stop a bunch of kids, likely on the cusp of teens and twenties, got on. Upon noticing the singer, one of the dudes hurriedly pulled out an acoustic guitar, instructed his friends to clap along, and busted into "Tomorrow," kind of in the same vein as this Me First and the Gimme Gimmes version.

But did the "Ave Maria" singer give up? He put his hands over his ears and attempted to keep singing. In a stunning display of NYC-style apathy, a few people on the train managed to gaze blankly at the floor, pretending none of this was happening (everyone else was appropriately amused and bemused). Yet by the time the train pulled into 8th Street, the "Ave Maria" was starting to sound like Annie.

Coincidentally, the sun will come out tomorrow.

the current reality is that it takes some effort to delineate the days. not massive, but sufficient that the even the weeks start to blur together. at least the increasing evening daylight will counteract the feeling that the best hours of the day are swallowed up indoors under a fluorescent glare.

I hoped to cobble together a text equivalent of the week in pictures, but the days have already blurred together.

the kid's words begin to slur together in one, high-pitched "lemmeout-lemmeout-lemmeout-lemme(etc.)" whine.

"oh! I didn't realize you wanted to get out! you can't get out!" she replies with a chuckle.

this goes on endlessly. he kicks his boots off into the lady in front of them in line --- she had previously tried to reason with the kid that it really was much nicer and less tiring to be pushed around in a chair instead of having to walk. he bucks like he can burst through the mesh stroller straps to freedom. he attempts to make his shrieks shriekier, but he's already at top volume yet not quite wearing himself out.

finally the dad and other son come back to retrieve the stroller child and go home, where, yes, he can get out. dad elaborates, "you can't get out in public. you've already run away too many times today."

there has been a decent amount of snow, including the sort that accumulates as well as the type that drifts prettily on top of whatever was still there from yesterday. there has yet to be any in which you might see your entire shoe disappear though.

mostly it's still novel enough to be entertaining. except when on an outer-borough food mission on a night that feels like single digits (thank goodness it only felt like) and there's a green light about to change on queens boulevard. I was all too willing to dash the rest of the way across as the light turned yellow, despite the sign declaring "a pedestrian was killed here" --- as having to wait on an island for the light to change again felt like certain death.

I'd been hoping for some milder winter weather, but it hovered around freezing the whole week. I missed most of the sunlight while in Cambridge, so I didn't take any more photos. Even in the last morning hours before leaving, it was too chilly to expose fingers for focusing and shutter-releasing.

But there was a steaming bowl of soup at an empty restaurant table, lots of golden windows one twilight along Trumpington Rd, and sparkling lights for the season, including arcs of stars bursting off the sides of buildings.

Thirty Pieces of Silver by Cornelia Parker --- thousands of silver objects, from silverware to teapots to flutes, steamrolled flat. They hang from the ceiling, arranged to make thirty "pieces," like silver coins, hovering about a foot off the wooden floor. The strings holding each object in place create a sort of curtain or scrim. The subtle tones of silver create a texture in each piece, as well as the shapes of the objects themselves or rather the space between the objects. It's an interesting study in parts of wholes --- together a piece of silver, individually pieces of silver. The overlapping shadows can often be identified as their objects, and sometimes these shadows on the worn wood floor seem like the best part of this piece of pieces.

Gerhard Richter's Cage 1–6 paintings also have a flattened quality to them, but here instead it's paint scraped across canvases. They are large squares maybe eight feet across, bases primarily of white and gray with areas of mottled, yet vibrant, color. I get the sense that you could decode or reveal the image, as if lines were just shifted out of alignment when the paint was scraped into abstraction. The title of the series refers to John Cage, and the title here is a quote of his.

And then Dan Graham's Two Correlated Rotations: One-minute films looped on two projectors situated at a right angle. It's a small room filled with the nagging the sound of the projectors. The images are warmly grainy, though it seems like it was cold out that day. The cameras' gazes jolt, fixed on each other as they follow a spiral pattern around each other, clockwise vs. counterclockwise.

BM's First Saturdays are probably one of the best monthly events in the city: the range of people who flood the museum each time is impressive. You might find a crowd out front for a marching band and hoards of kids wearing handmade 10th anniversary crowns waiting in line for cake.

As for the Gilbert & George retrospective, their work certainly has a span with thirty years of collaboration, though in many ways they just seem do the same things in slightly different ways. I found myself drawn more to the lo-fi works --- including a series of large drawings with comic-style captions and smaller printed works in the first gallery. Of their photo-montages, I gravitated to the older ones, like the melancholy Dead Boards series. The black and white photography and occasional hand-painted color was more aesthetically pleasing than their later digital montages, which show heavy Photoshop filter abuse. Not to mention that some of those later works are just plain creepy. It might just be that those earlier works are far more subtle, looking at their lives through simpler lenses.

if only for one last hope
I wanted my time with you to be over

everything is new but also familiar: slaloming through the construction on 5th ave until taking the sidewalk next to the cemetery, lit by blinking clouds of fireflies. late nights around 19th street, you might see breakdancers in the middle of the street.

we're always getting older, always getting further away.

all along the dreary ride up the A414, I wanted to take photos of road signs: triangles with exclamation points inside; the equivalent of our yield signs that say give way; mysterious symbols with no obvious meaning.

I can tell I'm going to finish my book on one of my subway rides yesterday, so I dig around a box in the apartment looking for something new, landing on Invisible Man, which I've always meant to read. later on, someone is talking about works of fiction that go on for a good two-hundred pages longer than they should. example? Invisible Man. I am quite emphatic in my "i just started reading that today!" not at all bothered that I've just started a book that is a classic representation of books that are too long.

I probably find such coincidences more interesting or meaningful than they actually are.

they might be on sale, which will seem like the perfect reason to buy them in and of itself. but they might also inspire you to clean off the kitchen table when you get home and stop using it as a dumping ground.

even better the flowers might catch the attention of an authoritative employee who will tell you to go ahead to the customer service desk instead of standing on the "express" line that is literally snaked halfway across the store. you'll feel a little nervous leaving the line with such a dubious password, but those flowers could end up saving you from fifteen minutes of meandering by pricey baked goods and rows of chocolate bars.

if you're extra lucky, the A train will be just sitting there waiting for you when you get down to the platform. and it will feel like each little thing was meant to be.

there's a guy driving down grand street, windows open all the way, blaring that journey song. you can tell he's in a good mood, even though the traffic is, as always, terrible. but he squeezes through the intersection before the light changes, just barely clearing mercer. then the light at broadway turns green, and he's gone.

several moments later, I hear someone belt out a block away, "don't stop, believin'!"