There is something you should know about those stars painted over Grand Central.

They will not tell you exactly where you are; they are not an accurate map. Those stars are instead reversed from north to south, with the exception of Orion.

If you looked to them to guide your way, you’d be lost forever.

(It’s still nice to read some Billy Collins when you’re riding around below ground, thanks to the MTA.)

"Basically, I realized I was living in that awful stage of life between twenty-six to and thirty-seven known as stupidity. It’s when you don’t know anything, not even as much as you did when you were younger, and you don’t even have a philosophy about all the things you don’t know, the way you did when you were twenty or would again when you were thirty-eight."

Lorrie Moore (via snpsnpsnp)

Whaaaaaaaaat noooooooooooooooooo *lays on floor; cries*

(via katecarraway)

(via katecarraway)

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Wishing I had woken up on a boat this morning. (at Greenpoint)

Image credit: Mike Brodie + Yossi Milo Gallery

A Period of Juvenile Prosperity, Mike Brodie’s photos of the five-year span he spent riding trains for over 50,000 miles through 46 states, documenting the people and places he encountered along the way, are on view at Yossi Milo in NYC and M + B in LA. At Yossi Milo, there are two edits of the images, the show and the book, published by Twin Palms Press.

The show is never-ending—an unselfconscious, ceaseless cycle of days stretching out under a low slung sun. Evenings are spent sleeping soundly in fresh air. There is snacking on hatfulls of blackberries. Oil-caked hands are offset by wind-scrubbed limbs, faces, and swept hair. Dependent only on each other, the wildflower rail riders are forever young. Poking at maps, they know exactly where they’re going.

Image credit: Mike Brodie + M + B Gallery

In the book, grey-bearded elders appear. There is a distinct beginning, middle, and end. There are run-ins with cops. Illness or injury lands one fellow in the hospital. And eventually, the fresh fruit runs out; they’re forced to forage in the trash for food. The ride doesn’t last forever.

The former, is of course, an easier sell. As it should be, the prints, offered in small editions were in low supply, if still available at all. But, I’m not sure which one is better.

Image credit: Mike Brodie + M + B Gallery

Image credit: Tyler Beard

Really excited to see a couple things at the MCA Denver: William Lamson video and new work by recent CU Boulder MFA grad, Tyler Beard (above).

Image credit: Margaret Kilgallen
Art21 just released a previously unseen segment of an interview with the late Margaret Kilgallen (1967-2001), recorded in 2000. In it, Kilgallen talks about her heroines, saying:

I like to paint images of women who I find inspiring, and I don’t like to choose people that everybody knows. I like to choose people that just do small things and yet somehow hit me in my heart.

Among the women she favors is Australian swimmer Fanny Durack (pictured center, below). After initially being refused permission to compete in the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, Durack became the first Australian woman to win an Olympic gold medal in a swimming event when the New South Wales Ladies Swimming Association allowed her and friend Mina Wylie (who took silver) to go provided they bore their own expenses.
Watch the video and read more about Kilgallen’s heroines on the Art21 blog.

I drove out of New York in the middle of December.

In the last few months of 2012, I left a job that I had loved for almost five years with no idea of what I wanted to do next. Suddenly untethered, I headed west, looking to the territories I knew and loved before arriving here, and more specifically, to skiing and fresh air, for a little help in figuring things out. After six weeks of that, I returned to New York for a four day layover before heading east, first to Bali, then Burma, via Bangkok, by way of plane, bus, and boat. The farther I went in any direction, the farther I was from the entire life I felt so connected to here in New York (a home I’ve always thought of as temporary, but which has carried me for what’s now nearing seven years). I took notes along the way, thinking it would all make sense upon my return.

My leaving was gradual, starting slowly in a car, from Brooklyn to Fredericksburg, through Asheville to Nashville, from Memphis to Little Rock, city-hopping until the sky opened up over Oklahoma and I gunned straight through still dry and dusty reservations to Taos in sixteen slippery hours. Arriving in single digit temps and finding my way by memory instead of map (I was pretty giddy when Google said: “We were not able to locate the address: 8 XX Lane, El Prado, New Mexico”), I was welcomed and warmed by the familiarity of friends who have known me for a decade.

From there it was a five-week whirlwind of family, more long-time friends, and their children, more driving, skiing, sleeping in toasty cabins, tucking into the backcountry in search of more snow, more skiing, touring, skinning and snowmobiling, more sleeping (I never sleep so soundly as when totally physically exhausted), the breathing of thin, brutally cold air, sledding, sun-soaking, hot spring-ing, star-gazing (the sky seemingly so close, I could always see the mysterious helix of the Milky Way on cloudless nights) and miles of isolated highways through Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, and Utah.

On an unnamed day (I lost track a few weeks in), I eventually found myself driving to Bozeman, MT, from Jackson, WY, through a silent Idaho. It had snowed overnight so I skied in the morning before hitting the road, leaving me driving into the dark. It was still snowing as I went north by northwest, rendering the infrequently traveled two-lane indistinguishable from its edges. It was simply white all around—a flat, ambivalent light. By night I was totally lost, the GPS on my phone mostly useless, my traveling reduced to a series of turning arounds. Slowly, I crept along alone, cursing the skiing I had been so excited about hours before and worrying about the tire I had patched in Taos for ten dollars.

It was easy to imagine (entirely naively, but in my exhaustion and delirium, how I wanted to believe!) at this point that the stars, bright and brilliant as they were, were guiding my way, serving as reliably as the highway safety poles and guard rails that intermittently reflected my headlights in silvery sparks when I approached the otherwise disguised shoulder of the road. At least, I hoped that they were. Lumens fluxing above and plastic rectangles flashing ahead, everything glittering was taunting. I had no real idea of how to read either. I was fucking lost. (It was only then that I realized it would have been wise to take an atlas or a map that didn’t require some kind of connectivity.)

I thought of all the recent conversations I had with my mom about traveling and how she claimed her biggest fear was getting lost. I had chided her saying she could always return the way she came, perhaps enjoying a nice lunch wherever she happened to be. Getting lost, of course I told her, was the best part of traveling! I had forgotten you could be so far gone that there was no turning back. Until I was. So far from where I came from, so far from where I was going, my only food a few frozen energy bars stuffed in the console of the car.

But I was also on one of just two roads: I had passed another running perpendicular to the right not too many miles ago. Since every small ounce of courage and smarts I had left in my otherwise empty tank told me that the road I was on was really, probably, not the right one, I circled around, one more time, holding my breath as I eased onto the other, watching mileage and the gas gauge obsessively until I saw signs for Ennis, MT (population 838). I don’t know why or how, but I had picked the right path.

As I came into cellular range my phone began chirping sweet messages from my sister: “Where are you?!” “How far away?” Good questions, I thought. “I got off work early so dinner will be ready when you get here.” Thank goodness.

I was found and fed and all was well. That’s true, but this is not the end: It turns out it takes more than retreating and returning to know how to put these things together.

I hear it’s snowing in New York.

I’ve been away, far away. Actually, after a few weeks out west (more on that later) I am now about as far away from New York as you can be before you start to get closer again (more on this later, too). It took me twenty hours to get here and yet, I’m only thirteen hours ahead of you.

It’s hot here. I don’t know how hot, but hot enough that everyone who is not from here shares the same special sheen of sunscreen and sweat well into the evening.

I’ve been mostly away from the internet, too, save for Instagram. So when I checked in today, I was happy to see that everyone is talking about a storm, the accumulating mass of snow strangely named Nemo.

It seems, in fact, to be the only thing happening, which is a huge relief as on the last few occasions my feeds were full of the same news the news was not at all light or fluffy. So, from the far side of Saturday—by the way, since I’m now seeing the end of the day, I can tell you, you’re in for something wonderful, something sparkling—all I have to say is selamat pagi.

Sweet dreams. Good night, New York.

"If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather, teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

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Taken Aback by Iwase Yoshiyuki

I first saw Iwase Yoshiyuki’s photographs of ama, female free divers, or “sea women,” who swim to depths of 80 feet for abalone with basically no equipment, via the NYT’s 6th Floor blog. The photo story was related to/inspired by this week’s Sunday Magazine cover story on a potentially immortal jellyfish.

I didn’t have to read the cover story though to know that if jellyfish can tell us something about living forever, sea women must know the secret, too.

More of Iwase Yoshiyuki’s photos here.

Also related: Ian Baguskas’s photos of haenyo.