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freewaying

freewaying, originally uploaded by aesop.

yet another picture from the Philadelphian transmigration. I'm using it as the basis for another book in the "Morning and the Evening" series, overlaying it with the names of hundreds of stars. Atop all that, I'm going to overlay a constellation in the form of a quotation. There are eight pages to the book as a fold-out, accordion structure, and my intention is to find a quote about space, travel and navigation that can be broken up into 8 short sections.

icecapades

icecapades, originally uploaded by aesop.

Another picture from our trip back from Philly. Icy, hmm?

On the way back from Tierney's

DSCF0061, originally uploaded by aesop.

Long exposure shot of Atkin-san on the way back from Tierney's

Whew. A full day of tip-ins, followed by a few drinks at Tierney's. Seemingly a Montclair institution, this place is all sportsy and Irish and wooden. That's about it, really.

We plan an exciting day

V and I, noble creatures that we are, have offered, perhaps under the influence of Mexican food, to spend the day with Atkin-san helping him dry-mount the tip-ins (a strangely nautical phrase, no? "Dry-mount the tip-ins!" "Aye Cap'n!") for his book Street Life in London Redeemed (bits of which will shortly become visible at Atkin-san's website. This will involve him "showing us the machinery", which he almost never does on a first date.(...umm, sorry...)and bringing us into the mysteries of the dry-mounting process. My own vast experience recalls one particular dry-mounting press which looked like a prop from a James Bond move, a glittering behemoth that no-one in the workshop ever used.

Anyway, looks like we'll be sat doing repetitive tasks, snacking and making appalling puns all day long. Atkinson has promised us music while we work, but I worry that this means he will bring his vast collection of inscrutable classical guitar recordings to bear.

I was reading in Alberto Manguel's book On Reading about how workers in Cuban cigar factories would pay for someone to read to them as they worked:

"... Sanchez mentioned one man who was able to remember the entire 'Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.' Being read to, as the cigar workers found out, allowed them to overlay the mechanical, mind-numbing activity of rolling the dark scented tobacco leaves with adventures ..."

I for one would love it if someone would read to me from The Tin Drum about little Oscar's adventures. But I think and fear that a steady diet of Antonio Lauro and his chums from the guitar store is to be my fate.

At Eagle Rock

IMG_9066, originally uploaded by blind sam.

At Eagle Rock, a couple of nights back.

aesopabstract

aesopabstract, originally uploaded by blind sam.

from the trip blind sam (Atkin-san) and I made back from Philadelphia last night

Tin Drum

Not actually an American classic, but the second thing that caught my eye at the Montclair book centre. (The first was "The Baron in the Trees" by Italo Calvino, but I often find Calvino's flattened, heraldic style faintly annoying in anything but the most abstract of moods). I rejected several possibilities with New York or Jersey themes as perhaps over informative and maybe a bit touristy in the circumstances. A bit of vanity, to think that I am not immediately apparent as a tourist- and why would I want to fit in- nonetheless, I am going to spend parts of the afternoon in postwar Germany and Montclair in the winter sunlight simultaneously. Both the Baron and the Drum invoke themes of otherness and commentary on the generality of the world, so perhaps my choice reflects my mood.

Philadelphia

DSCF0149, originally uploaded by aesop.

a shot from my recent, short and sweet visit to Philadelphia. Good job we didn't decide to stay for a couple of hours or God knows how we'd have fared on the mysteriously constituted herd migration that is the New Jersey turnpike.

At Café Eclectic

I'm the only customer at Café Eclectic, a pair of rooms in Montclair that do not offer a cup of tea. When asked for one I was offered Lipton's Brisk. A product I do not identify with, despite its many doubtless appealing qualities. I have instead opted for a cup of filter coffee to accompany me to the divan near the window where a cold draught is shooting up the back of my jacket. I'm looking at the café, a random assortment of scuffed, worn velvet and encrusted, overdone embroidered upholstery that manages to be somewhat comfortable whilst being a bit lurid at the same time. It would all be a lot more bearable if it weren't for the sports metal being broadcast for my individual enjoyment over the café's speaker system. Fortunately I've got my little set of headphones and a small but potent lump of digitally-encoded Bach to drown out what appears to be a sort of second-rate Chili Peppers thing I can hear occasionally between the pauses. My socks are quite full enough with my feet, thanks, chaps.

More impressive is the sunshine and snow and the odd combination of lushness and tackiness that seems to embody Montclair's spirit. This is such a strange part of the planet, the more so I think because of its seeming closeness to my own native habitat in the U.K., which it superficially resembles. I can't put my finger on it. It seems more ruthless and temporary, and also more filled with possibilities. A comparison between a motorcycle and an armchair seems apt. Which is more beautiful? Which more comfortable? Which, as Lipton put it, more "brisk"? Perhaps it's a necessary condition of being a tourist that I feel detached and aloof from whatever makes people tick here. It's a homeless sort of place, this suburbia. Everything seems like a facility, like a sort of institutional provision that one cannot take for granted. This doubtless has a positive connotation, but for now it seems a sort of coldness that rivals that of the weather.

I'm skewed, of course, towards this feeling, by my actual lack of a home here. I'm out of the house, trying to give my hosts a wee bit of free time whilst I roam the streets in gloves, and what V refers to as a "Toboggan" - what my own argot deems a "Bobble Hat"- and a pair of painful artificial boots I bought in haste from a "Shoe Source" when it became apparent that my existing footwear wasn't going to carry me across the surface of this snow-covered continent in anything resembling dry comfort. They are the colour of cardboard and the texture of suede under anaesthetic. They are very uncomfortable and a false economy. I curse them in their waterproof bigotry. My toes want to breathe and be free. Returning from my toes to my head, a traverse that takes in the grateful expression occaisioned by the hot coffee that is the inevitable alternative to a nice cup of tea- to my hat, in fact, a black and scarlet thing that causes my hair to rear up in amazement when I extract it from the depths of the toboggan like a conjuror's trick, it's kind of strange to be in a place cold enough that the scarlet orb atop my bonce doesn't attract the odd sidelong glance from passersby and sniggers from overexcited schoolchildren. Here it is merely sensible.

I have just discovered that i have forgotten to pack my reading material. The copy of the Montclair Times provided by the local newspaper emporium has failed to engage, but I can see what appears to be a second-hand bookstore from my coffee-scented eyrie. I propose to go and extract some neglected classic from within. Well, one lives in hope anyway.