This is water

This morning I woke up at 10 a.m. to a soundtrack of Top 40 R&B slow jams, courtesy of a guy sitting outside my window in his car, drinking a 40 ... windows rolled down, no regard for those of us trying to enjoy a slow Sunday morning. After two hours (I'm not kidding), he walked across the street and peed on the apartment building across from mine. When I left my apartment at 1:00, he was still there; though the soundtrack had changed from Rhianna to some sort of Mexican polka.

Sometime during this whole debacle, I collected myself enough to sit down and read the NYT online ... only to discover that David Foster Wallace committed suicide on Friday.

I think this is as good a time as any to break this out: 2005 Kenyon University Commencement Speech. My mantra for the past several years. Ringing especially true these days of new and rude and dirty and uncomfortable and unfamiliar.

This is water. This is water. This is water.

R.I.P. D.F.W.

Old photos of people I've never met

My favorite spot at the Fremont Market is a booth in the covered area full of old things I always promise myself I'm going to buy and do cool, artsy things with (haven't once yet, c'est la vie): old watch faces, typewriter keys, Victorian-era French postcards, oversized Dick and Jane books. What really draws me back to this spot, Sunday after Sunday, though, are the boxes full of old black and white photographs. Hodgepodge boxes of other people's photos with lovingly written descriptors on their backs: "Sue and Davy at Nana's House, Christmas 1947" or "Joe: Wish you were here! Fried chicken better than aunty's. Love, Chug and Zipper, Tennessee 1962"

I've a bit of a thing for old photographs.

So, when my mom sent me home this weekend with a CD full of old photos of people I'm related to, yet have never met, I popped that thing into my mac with the same perverted curiosity I impart on the boxes of other people's memories every Sunday afternoon. She was mostly right; I don't have a clue who most of these people are. What I did find, though, are some incredible shots of my grandpa (one of them is up above).

My mom's dad died a few years before I was born, so my knowledge of him is pretty scattered, and before these pictures, I'd maybe, MAYBE encountered five pictures of him total in my entire life. What strikes me though, is how much we look alike. It's actually little bit freaky, staring at a picture of someone you don't know and seeing yourself. Actually, my mom looks exactly like him, but I also happen to look exactly like my mother, so, two and two, well ... Anyways, I made Claire confirm this last night, and though there was wine involved, we concluded that the resemblance is actually pretty weird, and I think we're totally right. Case in point:

I mean, look at those profiles! Now I know who to thank for this nose, this square face and this pouty chin.

I also love this picture of more people I don't know, plus my grandma and grandpa there on the far left.

I think this one sums up why I'm drawn to old photographs, and I realize, I'm totally projecting here, but whatever. Something about this smacks of a time when people weren't so fucking distracted and self-involved and were okay working hard and being happy and in love. I love it. I want it.

And here are a few more, thrown in for good measure. My grandpa was kind of a handsome devil.

"Screwing things up is a virtue..."

i'm pretty sure with the death of mr. robert rauschenberg, we've lost not only an american art behemoth, but the one person on earth who can claim he both erased de kooning and made out with cy twombly AND jasper johns ... aside from me, who says these things and is totally, totally making them up (jealously). RIP, sir.