taqueria, Tucson AZ, September 2010

"It is the hour of the dressing room, when actors are not quite off the street but hardly yet onstage."

André Aciman, on 4:30 in the afternoon

from his essay Counterintuition

leaf pictures after Charles Burchfield (do NOT miss the Burchfield show at the Whitney Museum, it closes on October 17)

His heart was broken by a doctor without borders.

of course I can't eat rabbit, I used to be a rabbit.

decorative door-panels, 18th street, Philadelphia PA

Perhaps there is another way?

gorilla, The Philadelphia Zoo, 2010

good leaf brooch, Philadelphia PA

Maybe they are twins, but that still doesn't make it right.

"Of all the male dress designers visible in the world of American fashion, some 95 percent, if not more, are homosexual.

They have a variety of ways of being gay. John Prince was individual in his solid British gentry style, noticeably masculine and tempered with good midwestern roots. Others were austere functional-gay, given to wearing dark glasses at all times and dressed in a careful, unvarying uniform of a dark turtleneck and dark trousers, as if they had come out of the future by first-class spaceship. They lived in steel, plastic, and glass apartments, so spare and fined down that people felt tense just looking at their living rooms in which no trace of comfort was permitted. Then there is the sweet flock of Gatsby-gays, young beauties who dress in perfectly cut navy blazers and white pants, innocent, Ivy League open-necked pale blue shirts and shetland crew sweaters, impeccably ready for a yacht to sail in and anchor at their feet. There is also a block of elder statesmen-gays who have been secure for long enough to affect jeans and beards and amulets and strange-looking jackets without buttons. All of these designers are in enormous demand as guests and escorts by many of the most powerful-but single-women in the country. Without her priceless list of gay reliables, few society hostesses could put together a party."

from Scruples, by Judith Krantz, published in 1978

It's an empty promise. They say they will, but they never actually move out.

"With Cheri out of the house, Léa became herself again, very much alive, cheerful, and on the spot. Within an hour, she had been given her bath, followed by a spirit-rub scented with sandal-wood, and was ready dressed, hatted, and shod. While the curling-tongs were heating, she found time to run through the butler's book and send for Emile, the footman, and call his attention to the blue haze on one of the looking-glasses. She ran an experienced eye-rarely taken in-over everything in the room, and lunched in solitary bliss, with a smile for the dry Vouvray and for the June strawberries, served, with their stalks, on a plate of Rubelles enamel as green as a tree-frog after rain."

-from Cheri, by Colette

Kill the lights and get her out of here.

rolls of material, W.46th Street, NYNY, August 2010

street studies, Philadelphia PA, August 2010

"Perhaps there had been some excuse for him. He, too, had been dressing for the party, and all had gone well with him until he came to his tie. It is an astounding thing to have to tell, but this man, though he knew about stocks and shares, had no real mastery of his tie. Sometimes the thing yielded to him without a contest, but there were occasions when it would have been better for the house if he had swallowed his pride and used a made-up tie.

This was such an occasion. He came rushing into the nursery with the crumpled little brute of a tie in his hand. 'Why, what is the matter, father dear?'

'Matter!' he yelled; he really yelled. 'This tie, it will not tie.' He became dangerously sarcastic. 'Not round my neck! Round the bed-post! Oh yes, twenty times have I made it up round the bed-post, but round my neck, no! Oh dear no! Begs to be excused!'

He thought Mrs Darling was not sufficiently impressed, and he went on sternly, 'I warn you of this, mother, that unless this tie is round my neck we don't go out to dinner to-night, and if I don't go to dinner to-night, I never go to the office again, you and I starve, and our children will be flung into the streets!' "

J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

gray studies, Philadelphia PA

Office Supplies, NY NY, July 2010

She was a formidable woman, even at a lunch meeting.

Provincetown MA, August 2010

menu, Chelsea NYC, July 2010

popcorn box (circa 1980) Philadelphia PA, July 2010

Coffee please, very hot...

He was always a bit of a disappointment.

All I left behind

should come as no surprise

to me since I fell

through the black hole of your eyes.

Only little things

inconsequential I could say

of all I left behind with you along the lost highway.

Silver earrings in Wichita,

beaded moccasins in Tonopah

but I had you so

I just let them go.

The flannel shirt I wore

to keep me from the cold

when we drove from Boston all the way to Buffalo.

The leather boots I bought

so many miles ago

I took them off to follow you

into the Ohio.

from All I left Behind

by Kate and Anna McGarrigle

I only wanted to try a small bite.

very good butterfly pin, probably 1960's-70's

"Performance is all I cared about as a child and it's all I care about now. I don't go to see a play to see a great play. I go to see a great interpretation.

Everything is interpretation."

-Diana Vreeland

Saguaro National Park, Tucson AZ, July 2010

pins, Philadelphia PA, July 2010

They no longer shared a belief system.

look at the work of Andrea Modica if you want to see what Bruce Webber might have done if he was intelligent and/or brave.

http://www.andreamodica.com/minor-league/index.html

cement dots, Philadelphia PA. July 2010

ice trays, Brunswick, Maine. July 2010

The moon wouldn't come out and the air was very still.

interior, fruit ice stand, Tucson, Arizona. July 2010

fruit ice stand, Tucson, Arizona. July 2010

"The police said that while performing at Plaid, (Courtney Love) hit an audience member, identified by officials as Gregory Burgett, 23, of Kentucky, with a microphone stand. The owner of the nightclub said Mr. Burgett was cut on the brow and received three staples at Cabrini Medical Center."

"Several people who were at the Plaid concert said they had noticed nothing amiss. 'I was in the V.I.P. area, and Boy George was wearing a very big hat, and I couldn't see over him,' one person said."

excerpts from an article by Shaila K. Dewan,

NY Times, March 19, 2004

pile of cushions, Maine 2010

His little teeth are like needles.

Pegboard, Philadelphia 2010