Inconveniences

For almost 15 years I live now in this apartment and almost every year without a doubt a flood comes from the ceiling, starting in light drip, drip, drips and ending up in huge leakages. The ceiling will be opened up, engineers will come and peek inside, this or that will be declared the reason for the damage, and every year, once it is all dried up again, a painter arrives and paints the whole living room again. Nice and new.

This year, or better last year in March it happened again, horrendous floods arrived from the top. Except this year new Management had decided to fix it once and for all and permanently. No objection from my side of course. Two huge plates cover the ceiling holes "for the time being",  two buckets are installed inside the ceiling to catch the drips;  every week, sometimes twice a weeks, these buckets are emptied. A parade of so called "engineers" walk in, climbing up the ladder, taking a good look of the crawl space and the pipes above, photographing it all, but unfortunately until now they could not agree on the cause of the damage.  I think each engineer comes up with  his own but different solution. And I have my own opinion; it is the poor infrastructure of the building which sits on wetlands. But of course I don't know and I am not an "engineer". I am told,  it's the fault of the penthouse owner above me, then it is leaking pipes, then it is leakage from the outside of the building and men are ordered to fix the cracks on the outside, hanging there in their seats above the 21st floor and they are smiling. This or that and nothing helps. I went to the Management today again to show my impatience (what a waste) and I learned that tomorrow another "engineer" is supposed to come up with a new solution — another permanent solution I am told! Am I supposed to believe it? A quite amazing and hair raising story. This is now my one year anniversary living with a damaged ceiling and flickering electricity. I am exhausted and mad, but fortunately I am also more than occupied with other things and problems, and I stay patient. But honestly I feel a great helplessness has crept up in me. Let's see what tomorrow brings.

Jay's Book about Samuel Roth

It's done, after 6 years Jay finished the draft of his book. It's neatly packaged on two disks, one for the text, one for the images and off it goes to University Press of Florida. What a job it is to research and write and proofread and proofread again and again  a scholarly book. Of course this is not the end, just the opposite and the beginning of a new chapter: the reading, the editing and so on will follow now. The headache won't stop. But I think Jay was very happy that this part is done. Congratulations and good luck Jay!

President's Day

Yes the bad economy is felt all over as everybody knows. But here is a surprise. On President's Day, a shopping and day off day, I realized there was splendor out of my window. The side beams of the GW Bridge were fully illuminated; gorgeous, peaceful and splendid.

Is Spring around the corner in February?

I could not resist and picked a few branches of forsythia on one of my walks and yes within a few days the first bright yellow flowers appeared before the green leaves also peeked through. A joy. Looking out of the window and seeing the ice and snow and looking at these flowers is a good thing to do.

More discarded art

On one of our outings I found this old yard with plenty of old and discarded sculptures, hidden behind a fence. "A junkyard  for art". The most striking was this lone and sad rider, so downtrodden and so permanent.

I took this rider and colored him into  a vivid red with a glow and positioned him as background on some ice on the Hudson. Well I thought some lights in the background would add a good contrast and express the doom.

Once finished, I had it put on canvas in an enlarged format. Well, it looks good although, as always, But I am the only one who thinks so.

It conveys the looks of a painting — thanks to some unknown modern technology.

Is this macabre?

I mentioned before that I once discovered this yard.
It was fenced in and all cluttered with old discarded art,
Yes, it was a junkyard with art!
Boy this was a feast for my camera. 

And here it is now and I like it. 

Everybody else thinks it's sad and sick. 

Bad luck!

This same old friend of mine who had many mishaps in her life approached me again a few days ago. She had fallen for a scam and thought to make quick money. Of course it did not work like this. She was requested to do some surveys and as payment received two huge checks. She opened immediately a saving account and deposited the money. She also cashed $300 against it and spent the money. But bingo it did not work of course  and the checks bounced and she had to repay the $300 plus fees. Crooks!

A long long winter it is this time.

The first snow came down before Christmas and ever since then the world is white. The snow is shoveled into big mountains waiting to melt in Spring. The river was frozen many times. And it is plenty cold. One yearns for summer. At least I do. You cannot argue — it's pretty alright — but a summer day is pretty alright also. This here is a sampling of non-stop winter; simply said: "Enough already" (and we only have February. Well.

Winter time. Time to create.

Boy, none of my jobs seem to work out. A few months ago I was invited to make a billboard on top of a store in Weehawken. The owner, it's a Marble and Granite store, wanted to expand his business and he certainly needed some good art on his old building. The most surprising thing was that he offered me some money beforehand, $100. He also promised me the future design of stationery and business cards, etc. Why not, I grabbed it and immediately bought myself a black parka for the winter. Then I went to work. Looked good, I was happy ... and then it got stuck. He ran out of money. I called and called and called and it has been postponed. Apparently... apparently just for the time being. But again, bad luck. Here is the store billboard as I envisioned it for him. But it is still not mounted.

And so it goes all the time. I was asked to help out the last moment at press time of a newspaper, production time. Ok I came, I worked 13 hours and submitted my bill. Never heard from them again. Upon my inquiry I heard that the newspaper folded the next day, this had been the last issue. The end. I was not too surprised to hear that since I was laid off from my job a while ago at a newspaper and knew how difficult it is to survive.

So I do lots of free work to stay with it ... but where are we all going. Sort of frightening.