Discovering Beauty in Everyday Life

As we New Yorkers know too well, many people attempt to leap over turnstyles and crash through alarmed gates (SCREEEECH) to obtain free access to the New York Subway system. Well, Brooklyn has had enough! A posse of Anonymous Toll Collectors has recovered the dreaded Brooklyn Mouth of Truth and installed it near the access to the Brooklyn Museum and Botanic Garden Station. As many of you know, a Mouth of Truth confiscates the hand,  foot, or at least the sleeve and cuff of any person attempting to perpetrate a fraud while drawing near to the Dreaded Slot.  How, you may ask, does one seduce a subway fare thief to stick anything into such a thing as the Mouth? Well!  This Mouth has been equipped with an original Star Trek patented Tractor Beam!  Be very careful. La Bocca della Verità (Brooklyn)

Harsh lights gritty sidewalks, squeaking grating doorways, Metal glass chrome doors, decals pealing and maybe a bell, Hard to remember where I left those cut-up dreams. I let one go the other day, just a crumple and a toss and a "So what now?" There’s another one around the corner, right? Dim-lit yellow hallways, bathroom down the hall, Shredded carpet, bruised and dirty, Don’t even think about the paint. A single cot, thin mattress, square table made with wood, That single bulb hanging on to a cord. There in the corner, I saw the crumpled might-have-been. Missed the rusted basket; poor shot. I walked out with it, of course I should have left it there along with the rest of the picture. Instead I spread it out on an ironing board, Ink worn through and faded, edges broken and frayed, But maybe it could have been salvaged. I think I see a painted house, light green, and a stoop. There’s a bay window, I remember now, pink reflected in the window pane,

Beautiful Brooklyn Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, August 2013

The night dies and a day is born, when do we turn on the timing? Is it the lights and the dramas, or the harvests and the noon time bells? Go ahead and take the stars, for I have no more use for them. Take the sun away and let me cope as best I can, pale blacks and white greys will cover the differentiations. Madison Avenue and 106th (dawn/dusk) Your Mission, should you choose to accept it, is to pause midway between, say, this and that; or between, say, here and hereafter, where and why, or whichever and whichnever. Take a pause only long enough to see the commonality of things, and then--back to splitting seconds!

Mamma and Children in the Harlem Meer, July 2013

A too bright day of dappled paths and sun stripped fences, Light shards bouncing, scattering, scampering, Hanging sheets, white and playing, Laundry baskets pulled along, close pins pinching, towels flapping, Hunting berries down the canyon, Pulling onions, shelling peas, Harvest coming, ripening, softening, Swelling in the summer sun. Central Park Reservoir Berries

Happy Blurry Buds (new lens, please)