Ink Lake

The Other Way

By Marvel Comic’s Graham Nolan

Periphery

Kevin Smith and John Romita Jr.’s contribution to Marvel’s “Moment of Silence”. Follow the link at the bottom of the page for the rest.

From Periphery - From Marvel Comics' "Moment of Silence"

Check Your Head

This morning on West 96th Street, the “largest rice-paper bell lantern in the United States” certainly caught my eye.

What’s it dong there? Well, it was the Buddha’s birthday on May 10th, and it has to be somewhere, right? Pretty cool.

Brooklyn Light

Photo courtesy of Josh Derr

One of my favorite things about where I live.

(Speaking of that, I’m again considering putting in a west-facing window. Stay tuned.)

Dumbo Arts Festival Winner

Photo by Jane Kratochvil

Via Dumbo,NYC: A video installation by Sean Capone, “Floral Wall:Skull & Void” won the festival’s  grand prize. He gets free studio space for a year, and a thousand dollars.

Last year Capone “painted” the Manhattan Bridge archway. I really like that one.

Photo by Oleg Lugovskoy

My Outlook On Life, Part 3

Crossing Brookly Ferry by Walt Whitman

Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious
you are to me!
On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning
home, are more curious to me than you suppose,
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more
to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose

Others will enter the gates of the ferry and cross from shore to shore,
Others will watch the run of the flood-tide,
Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the
heights of Brooklyn to the south and east,
Others will see the islands large and small;
Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half
an hour high,
A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others
will see them,
Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the flood-tide, the
falling-back to the sea of the ebb-tide.

It avails not, time nor place--distance avails not,
I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many
generations hence,
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,
Just as you are refresh’d by the gladness of the river and the
bright flow, I was refresh’d,
Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift
current, I stood yet was hurried,
Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and the
thick-stemm'd pipes of steamboats, I look’d.

These and all else were to me the same as they are to you,
I loved well those cities, loved well the stately and rapid river,
The men and women I saw were all near to me,
Others the same--others who look back on me because I look’d forward
to them,
What is it then between us?
What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?

Whatever it is, it avails not--distance avails not, and place avails not,
I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine,
I too walk’d the streets of Manhattan island, and bathed in the
waters around it,
I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me,
In the day among crowds of people sometimes they came upon me,
In my walks home late at night or as I lay in my bed they came upon me
It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall,
The dark threw its patches down upon me also,
The best I had done seem’d to me blank and suspicious,
My great thoughts as I supposed them, were they not in reality meagre?
Nor is it you alone who know what it is to be evil,
I am he who knew what it was to be evil,
I too knitted the old knot of contrariety,
Blabb’d, blush’d, resented, lied, stole, grudg’d,
Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak,
Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant,
The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me.
The cheating look, the frivolous word, the adulterous wish, not wanting,
Refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, laziness, none of these wanting,
Was one with the rest, the days and haps of the rest,
Was call’d by my nighest name by clear loud voices of young men as
they saw me approaching or passing,
Felt their arms on my neck as I stood, or the negligent leaning of
their flesh against me as I sat,
Saw many I loved in the street or ferry-boat or public assembly, yet
never told them a word,
Lived the same life with the rest, the same old laughing, gnawing, sleeping,
Play’d the part that still looks back on the actor or actress,
The same old role, the role that is what we make it, as great as we like,
Or as small as we like, or both great and small.
Closer yet I approach you,
What thought you have of me now, I had as much of you--I laid in my
stores in advance,
I consider’d long and seriously of you before you were born.
Who was to know what should come home to me?
Who knows but I am enjoying this?
Who knows, for all the distance, but I am as good as looking at you
now, for all you cannot see me?

Ah, what can ever be more stately and admirable to me than
mast-hemm’d Manhattan?
River and sunset and scallop-edg’d waves of flood-tide?
The sea-gulls oscillating their bodies, the hay-boat in the
twilight, and the belated lighter?
What gods can exceed these that clasp me by the hand, and with voices I
love call me promptly and loudly by my nighest name as approach?
What is more subtle than this which ties me to the woman or man that
looks in my face?
Which fuses me into you now, and pours my meaning into you?
We understand then do we not?
What I promis’d without mentioning it, have you not accepted?
What the study could not teach--what the preaching could not
accomplish is accomplish’d, is it not?

***
My Outlook On Life, Part 2, here.

My Outlook On Life, Part 2

A Little Tooth by Thomas Lux

Your baby grows a tooth, then two,
and four, and five, then she wants some meat
directly from the bone. It’s all

over: she’ll learn some words, she’ll fall
in love with cretins, dolts, a sweet
talker on his way to jail. And you,

your wife, get old, flyblown, and rue
nothing. You did, you loved, your feet
are sore. It’s dusk. Your daughter’s tall.

I first saw this poem while riding the subway. The MTA picked it as a part of their Poetry In Motion program. Each poem stays up for a few months, before another takes its place.

Clyde Haberman of the Times, a fellow fan of the poem, spoke to the author, back in 2007, as “A Little Tooth”’s run was drawing to a close.

Lux, who teaches poetry at Georgia Tech said, “I’ve gotten more feedback on that poem than I’ve had on any other,”

Haberman continues,

He wrote it after his daughter, Claudia, was born. She is now 19, a student at Sarah Lawrence. Until she noticed the poem while riding the subway and told him about it, he didn’t know he had been chosen.

Don’t take everything about it literally, Mr. Lux said. “Only some of that stuff came true — about cretins and dolts and sweet talkers on their way to jail,” he said.

Just give her time, we said unhelpfully.

“Yeah,” Mr. Lux said with a laugh, “give her time.”

My Outlook On Life, Part 1, here.

Two Of My Favorite Things

via newyorkshitty

Eat pizza, not octopuses.

One Of My Favorite Gags

Duck Dodgers in the 24¹/₂^th Century, from 1953, and voted 4^th greatest cartoon, of all time. I laugh at this bit, every time.

Really Good Stuff

Hat-tip: LGF