Minneapolis/St. Paul

Postcards From the Art Shanties

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Yesterday a few of us caravanned to The Art Shanty Projects on Medicine Lake. It was twelve degrees and nobody wore warm enough socks — only because after a certain point, warm enough simply doesn’t exist.

Enjoyed: hot dogs and coffee, the giant manipulable robot, Billy Joel and “Thriller” in the Dance Shanty, ice bikes on skates and skis, cold letterpressing with the MCBA, and watching all of the basketball players fall, at some point.

I have no idea who the girls, pictured above, are; but we had a pretty excellent time together in the twirling shanty until we all wanted to hurl. Earlier, Will was holding someone’s child on his shoulders so she could reach the robot’s arms. People passed out tweeted newspapers in the dance party, passed donuts to the artists in the letterpress house. “Would you like your naughty fortune read?” someone asked me. “Would you like to know how we built this?”

“Yes!” I replied, over and over.

What is it about the unbearable cold, that makes us all so eager to connect with one another, strangers?

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Detroit, Road Trip

Niagara!

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We were not prepared for the brute force of Niagara Falls. The wet wind, coming at us from all angles, billowing our flimsy blue ponchos from the ground up. The boat, heaving and churning in the cold, a cockroach dogpaddling its way toward a vomiting giant. We weren’t getting closer, were we? We were. Hold on to the railings, folks. The water’s about to get real choppy. I squealed and clung to your soggy arm; you squinted and peered into the mist, as buckets of water were thrown against our legs, my cowboy boots overflowing Niagara, the hood on your coat overflowing Niagara, we were happy.

Documentation (Larger)

The Approach (Larger)

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Boston, Detroit, Maine, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Savannah

Tonight a 3-Year-Old Read My Tarot

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First, I needed to ask a question, before I could get any answers. I thought about that for a moment. “. . . Where should I live?” I asked her.

She placed her pajamaed arms on the coffee table and examined the cards.

“This one says you should never live in a palace, or a castle,” she said. “And this card says . . . don’t trust anyone. And this one says you should remember to take a bath and use shampoo. And this one says, just go someplace, and when you get there, tell someone.”

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Photos From Weddings

Outtakes From a Wedding

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From my first gig after graduating from Salt, Brian and Wilson’s wedding in Cambridge: perhaps this asks the question, “do you really want a documentary-style photographer shooting your wedding?” This is still one of my favorite images from that day.

But lest you get the wrong idea of how the day generally went — that’s not good documentary! — here is this picture, also.

Did I cry at this wedding? Of course, always.

What a strange, lovely thing we do, promising something as elusive as feelings, guaranteeing something as uncertain as the future. The potential for my own marriage has always alarmed the hell out of me, but weddings make it look so . . . natural. If you can love and give yourself to someone, you should. Just be there, take his hand. We create rituals for this kind of thing, so that you know what to do. We grant symbolism to the shape and materials of jewelry (forever, forever), to the weather that day (good luck, bad luck), to the color of your outfit (purity, beginnings). Everything means something today, if you want it to; everything can predict something else.

And everyone else you love is here too — like the circles we would form backstage in high school before opening night, chanting I will hold you up.

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Uncategorized

Crash Crash

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One late afternoon I woke up cluttered with the remnants of a nap’s dreams. I’m not even sure I’ve ever seen you drink, but in my dreams you are perpetually the drunkard — cruel, incisive and swinging, your body a wrecking ball through the stage set of my subconscious. If this were real life I’d ask you to leave. If this were real life I’d stop laughing at your jokes, saying “it’s not like this even matters!” Ha ha ha.

I decided to take a walk to clear my head, but it’s dangerous, walking alone in this state, on this beach, at this time. Everyone else you see here is walking alone, too, looking meaningfully (really, is there any other way?) into the ocean. Oh vast expanse! Oh perpetually shifting shore! Grackles swoop from the sky like chimney dust, vomiting SQUACK! SQUACK SQUACK!

It’s too easy to assign the people you see here with secrets, small troubles. They lean against the pier, squint a little, sigh. They pull their coat tighter around their shoulders and walk on. Crash crash, says the ocean. You think: wouldn’t it be great, to stop one of them and ask to trade? Suddenly the only thing stopping you is physical, a lack of sound in the throat.

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