No one is waiting for me
Chloe waits patiently at her perch for Brendan to come home, she keeps her vigil watching over the front of the house. I don’t think she waits like this for me.
Still others wait for the ride home, or maybe to work. Maybe they’re just going anywhere their whims take them and they don’t mind the wait — maybe they like it. Sometimes waiting gives one the time to make a game plan, or to relax and recharge for a moment. Waiting isn’t always bad.
Looking down the tracks for the train, waiting. Some people pace about nervously, others lean over the edge of the platform looking for the lights and distant illuminated number of the subway. Some people read, others chant. 59th Street and Lexington Avenue stop.
While others are just waiting for bats to fly from under a bridge, dinner or maybe a package to arrive. Some are possibly waiting for a plane to arrive start a new adventure. We’re all waiting for something, but no one is waiting for me.
Brendan waiting for a package to arrive by FedEx.
Waiting for the different buses that circulate to and from the Kel-Lac bus station in San Antonio.
Airmen on their way to follow-on training after recently graduating basic military training at Lackland Air Force Base. They’re waiting for a pre-dawn flight at San Antonio International Airport. Waiting, sleeping … waiting.
Waiting in a Manhattan Starbucks for the rain to clear and for that friendly face to emerge through the door, through with the city’s cacophony of uncommon speed and commerce slip through with a growl and a whisper. It’s a small city with a large population and everybody is waiting for something. She was busy with her book, punctuating her reading with looks to the street, but, she wasn’t waiting for me.
Dusk falls in Austin, waiting for the bats to fly from Congress Avenue Bridge as they normally do, but not always. Many people wait on the shores of the river, some wait in boats floating below. Still, they’re all waiting.
What’s on your mind?
The places I love the most have a promontory.
I used to sit on the vacant lifeguard chairs in the night-time fog of the late summer night of Narragansett, RI. The fishing boats would pass in the channel close to my perch.
I would sleep in my car and awaken a few hours later to watch the sun rise over the Atlantic Ocean. These times, these mornings there by myself I knew everything would be right.
Maybe our thoughts were echoing with each other, maybe they passed each other like the training exercises of the F-16 fighter pilots who roar from the runway close to my office; rattling windows, engines growling with anger and fury as they punctuate the Texas sky. (I forget about the purpose and environmental issues of such planes and remember to be in awe of the speed and grace at which they fly.)
Here I have no promontory. Well, maybe I do now that I think of it. I watch the sun rise over the runways of an Air Force base where the insanely huge C-5′s are parked.
Do you ever think your thoughts and mumbled questions into the quiet of the cold night ever reach listening ears? I wonder about that sometimes. I wonder if maybe a discarded idea of mine finds its way into a mind that uses it better making it into a good plan or delicate prose of poignant delivery and noble ideals.
What’s in your mind, muttered from your lips upon this perch from which you survey hither and yon?
From San Antonio to Fort George Meade
03 November 2008
San Antonio International Airport
SAN ANTONIO — Four a.m. ticks slowly closer as we wait in line for the ticket agent from American Airlines to arrive. We’re from a few flights in a few training squadrons in the 737th Training Wing from Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, TX. We’re all en route to the next leg of our training adventure, tech school. We graduated Basic Military Training Friday and were gone from Lackland in the unmentioned hours of the morning Sunday. The weekend was spent either packing or with families or discovering parts of the base previously off limits, such as the bowling alley. As we walked around, the Blue Angels practiced in the skies above San Antonio for their performance in the big air show on Sunday. That weekend we became officially airmen — no longer “trainees”.
The last night in basic Military Training was spent in the quiet calm of anticipation of where this journey will take us. Those who were able to sleep in flight 665 did so on the grey, hard linoleum floor of the dayroom in dormitory B-10 — our home for the past 6 and a half weeks. Some in the flight decided to stay awake talking or watching movies on laptop computers set on a desk or the floor. I remember seeing parts of a movie as I slipped in and out of consciousness, worrying about oversleeping and missing the bus.
Read more 
26th Annual Moonlight Cruze in Austin, Texas
14 September 2008
26th Annual Moonlight Cruze,
AUSTIN, Texas — Several hundred cyclists and “bike people” of all stripes and badges met on the Lamar Street pedestrian bridge at 2:00 this morning and rode through the damp and darkened streets of Austin until just before dawn. The ride ended at a parking garage near the capital at about 5:30 am. If the ride went on from there, it was in small splinter groups. At that point, the showing was much smaller than a few hours before over the Colorado River as not every rider went all the way. I saw three guys playing music in the initial group on the bridge. Two of them had acoustic guitars and the last had a violin. Some people handed out flyers, a few people rode some wheelies, flexible chem sticks (the plastic things that glow in neon colors) were given out, music was consumed with beer. Friends met, people talked, bikes compared, fun ensued.
Fireworks were launched from the bridge at the beginning and at the rest stops along the way. The displays were impressive – probably just for the sake of someone riding a bike carrying fireworks. And alcohol … lots of it.
One bike had fire spewing from it, just over the rear tire. Read more
1894 Miles without Looking Back
George Bush Intercontinental Airport
Houston, TX
21 February 2008
HOUSTON — Under grey February skies Stacey and I were on the road from Bethel, CT to San Antonio.
14 February 2008 began the first leg of the trip: To Bethel from Brooklyn to help Stacey pack and run a few last-minute errands. From there, the next day at around noon, we departed for an 1894 mile move to Texas across 8 states, 3 days and 1 time zone. I have no idea how much coffee I drank, how much caffeine, taurine, high fructose corn syrup and whatever else is in Monster, Rock Star, Jolt (they sell the stuff in liter size aluminum cans in some places – not NYC). By the second day both Stacey and I were drinking V8 and having fruit and/or cereal for breakfast but still eating crap along the way.
Read more
Strong coffee and high speed
I’ve developed a strong taste for cheap coffee, the sort of rot gut one can buy very cheaply from the stainless steel carts on the street. It tastes like a sweet mix of blood and dirt.
Last winter, while working as a bike messenger – NYC’s finest; the fastest and strongest thing on the street – I kept a stainless steel travel coffee cup in a pocket in my messenger bag. It fit perfectly as if it were designed for the cup.
For $.75 I could refill the cup with the cheap coffee I’ve grown to love. It fueled my legs and lungs, warmed my core and kept me going for a very modest sum of money.
Sitting here now in Starbuck’s with a cup of their Columbian blend, which is a light roast and supposedly a little sweeter, it is very bitter. Almost undrinkable …
Coffee is the fuel of work and ideas and creativity. Coffee is a late night effort to sneak in under a deadline. Coffee is a lazy Sunday morning brunch in summer in a shaded seat on the Upper West Side. Coffee is a 35 mile per hour sprint with traffic on a bike with no brakes carrying extremely urgent packages labeled “triple rush”.
No free coffee refills in the city that never sleeps
MANHATTAN, NY — I’m sitting darkly in the corner of an East Village Dunkin Donuts (2nd Ave, between 9th and 10th Streets) watching the rainy night passers-by on the sidewalk outside. Their thoughts and ideas and memories focused on a distant target or a damp memory of a long-lost time.
I was thinking about coffee as I drank the last stale sip of black mud from the Styrofoam cup.
No refills at Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks, unlike any decent diner at any time. No hemispherical ceramic cups … each one with its own galaxy of mismatching stories. Each cup absorbs the dreams, nightmares and failed plans spoken over it during the course of decades.
Single use. No Big Plans. No dreams forgotten or promises lost. Even Starbucks’ recycled paper cups have beginnings in a tree farm someplace. The recycled paper contained ideas, hand-written death threats, love letters … it was held in human hands.
Styrofoam is a petroleum distillate. It was never held fondly in the hand of an anxious lover or hidden in fear of scorn.
I thought about my preference for Starbuck’s or the gritty sort of coffee one gets late at night in a diner. It’s good for planning big adventures over the ground-earth aftertaste of an unclean carafe. It has tooth to it, you know its coffee. You get a feeling of its organic beginnings – its “roots”, if you will. This kind of coffee is an eagerly invited part of the group … its like trying to escape an avalanche and tastes about the same.
I’m going to drink a lot of coffee
I’m on my second cup of coffee for the day.
As of this past Friday I’m no longer a bike messenger. I welcome this change with open arms with anticipation of the positive changes in the works but also it leaves me with no income – as meager and unable to pay my rent as it was.
Interviews, phone calls, email, resumes … the job-search process is itself a part time job for the casual practitioner. That, of course doesn’t count the time waiting for editors and hiring people to read resumes, talk to their people, drink coffee and decide. 
I just sold a camera to another photographer for exponentially less that I paid for it originally. I’m trying no to think about it so much and just moving forward. I still have 1.5 working 35mm Nikons and a collection of plastic cameras including a Holga. I have a mountain of film to develop and scan/print … even if I never took another photo I still have quite a lot of work to do. At some point I want to get my Nikon F (with DE-1 prism!) restored to 100% working condition – at least the innards. I don’t care about the dents and wear on the outside. Another wonderful thing would be setting up my darkroom somewhere in the city instead of having it in storage in Connecticut. I think if I have an apartment of some sort with either no room mates or other photographers where they wouldn’t object to having a B&W darkroom in the apartment.
Outside of the window here: (asa 400) f5.6 @ 1/250 should work fine. I can get by without a meter … maybe lose two stops for inside and maybe just one for the guy near the window. I’m rusty …
As always, I’m limited by funding. That’s a universal problem not just with photographers so I take some comfort with it. There are a wealth of resources and an almost equal wealth of money floating around to fund people like me. The real question or challenge is figuring out how to get it.
These few days of moving about slowly allow me the rare chance to see the boring details that I was previously unable to stop and see. Even on my busiest days as a bike messenger, I still tried to stop and look around once in a while but now I’m almost forced to.
I left the bike at home. I only have a few places I need to go today and my feet or the subway are just fine for that. We were supposed to have some icy weather which confirmed my decision … so far, its just cloudy.
Never mind that.
I love this city that never sleeps as much as I hate it. I want to stay forever and study every brick and foot print but I want to get the hell out ASAP. Some days I feel the opposite; some days it just doesn’t matter. Its as if anything can happen for good or ill. I have a renewed feeling of infinite possibility and a renewed passion to pursue the reasons I moved to this damned city in the first place.
I’ve decided to drink a lot of coffee, it seems like a good idea.
