Pepper of the Earth – The Home Office Record & Mostly Daily Gazette

June eases down into the cradle of Last Year’s News, day by day. In a week I have my last shift here at the office until fall or so, and I couldn’t be looking forward to it more. Seven shopping days until I don’t have a job, and no shopping days thereafter, I guess, ever again. With rent and health insurance and the gym and utilities and a modest allowance for food, the rest of my life will have to coast on faith. Faith and staying home on the weekends, those two things. It’s a good thing it’s summer. Good? It’s a grand thing it’s summer.

Really, these days are gloriously busy. Not the hair-still-wet hellacious busy of “whoops forgot the rent check, again, because I was late this morning, again,” but rambunctious Tom-Cruise-in-a-sofa-shop busy, minus the disturbing maniacal Tom Cruise part.

I’ve been out shooting pictures a lot, which has a nice tendency to make things happen: it’s a social activity at heart. A big weekly newspaper may be running one of my shots of the Bubble Battle from last Friday (more of that here on Flickr); I sent over pictures today, and we’ll know next week. I had to appreciate this because in my decade of trying to get their music section — which doesn’t work there any more — to review our records, I never once managed to get in touch with anyone of substance in their office. Now that they want my picture, I call up and ask for the Managing Editor, and get him. “So the mountain,” opines Pierre, “comes to Mohammed in the end.” Now if only the mountain wanted to pay for the shot … but hey, foot in the mountainy door, you know how it goes.

My three-day weekend goes down like this:

• Friday there’s a noontime dance piece I want to shoot at North Cove, involving choreographer Stephan Koplowitz and a habit of pretty dancers performing in and out of the focal plane of a camera obscura he has set up outside the Winter Garden (a very cool installation).
• Saturday is the annual Mermaid Parade at Coney Island (yes, of course I have pictures from last year, thanks for asking). I’ve also been asked to shoot, for myself and for charity, at the Mermaid Ball afterparty — or I think I have; they said to come and then I never heard back from them, which sounds like “Guest List” to me.
• Sunday there’s a tentative shoot involving the Upper West Side, a yacht, a Hummer, and a ladle or two of scallywag actors for a show their cheeky chic company is doing later in the summer. We’re still waiting for details on that to shake into place. I’ve worked with one of the actresses before, and we had a great time, so I hope this comes off as planned.

And last weekend there was a long hot dusty portrait walk with the lovely Jess in Williamsburg: I haven’t had a free second yet to start chowing down on those pictures. Yep, June rounds third and is racing in hard to home. Me, I’ll be wandering somewhere vague in the outfield, where it’s roomy and fun and the grass is longer.

I took the last two weeks of May off, to figure some things out and plug some holes where the rain comes in and nurse the broken heart that bled over these blog pages lately. (Watch where you step, some of the corners are still tacky.) I thought maybe I’d take a few swings at an idea for the, um, (whispering:) book I’ve been thinking about for the last couple of months. I always want to write books and historically never actually do, but this time I appear to have some plot and story arc and characters hovering around clearing their throats. So.

But the main thing I learned in my two weeks off was essentially this: Two weeks is not enough time off.

My genes don’t run toward leaving well enough alone, so I booked too much photo work during my two short wonderful weeks: some portrait stuff, an event shoot at the loopy cool Red Bull Ascension ‘06 party, and a feature piece on summer sun and parks in New York. By the time my time ran — and two weeks run fast, even when you bookend them with weekends — I was just starting to relax, liking the happy feel of blue jeans every day, loving the new gym regimen (five days/week and six where six fit). And I was getting past the hysterical binge drinking, see broken heart, supra.

So two weeks. Like learning how to breathe all over, from scratch. I barely wrote a scrap of actual text, but I added a couple of characters, flipped over a theme, wrote a few bits to test-drive a voice or two. Added a road trip, which might come out later but feels native to the run. Spent a couple of days wearing no socks except in the gym, sat in the park with a book in my lap and listened to the air when I didn’t want to sit at home. Thought about cleaning up and didn’t. Thought that maybe one of the things we shouldn’t ever have given up is summer vacation. I remember as a kid being free until I got bored, and I wondered what that would feel like now. And then it was time to go back to the Job, and of course once I got in it was like I’d never left.

On Thursday, June 29th, I walk out of this office into a Leave of Absence until maybe September, maybe October. There might still be a place for me here at that point, but there might not. I should have the some body parts of a novel to show for it. For pretty much the first time since I graduated from college, I won’t have a job, and I already have no idea where I’m going. Can’t wait to get there.

There’s no real way I can afford this, but it’s one of those moments: if I don’t do this now, I won’t do it ever.

Safety nets are for wimps. Or is that angels? I always forget.

This morning at the Boro Hall subway station, which is where my one-stop commute begins, the 4 train is sitting and seething at the platform. Passengers are bulging out the doors. It’s not moving, and things aren’t looking good.

Loudspeaker: Attention passengers. Due to a passenger requiring medical attention at station stop Brooklyn Bridge, number 4 line service is suspended at this time.
Large Woman in Flouncy Mood: Man, just because some bitch buys it at the next station, now I gotta walk.