After returning from the Nationals, Kristen and I went up into the Catskills of New York to spend a few days at the Dai Bosatsu Zendo.  If you want seclusion you can’t do much better than this place unless you know of somewhere that has no electricity.  We spent several days in what they call Beecher House; it has some connection to Harriet Beecher Stowe, but I am not sure exactly what that connection is as of yet (I haven’t researched that hard, though).  Regardless of the connection, it is a great place to write.  I took a few photos of the lake, from the lake, and of the family of 7 snakes that lived under the patio, who would come out every morning and sun themselves on the grass.

   

   

Kristen and I took our first walk across the Brooklyn Bridge yesterday.  You get a whole new appreciation for the structure walking it, much more so than seeing it from the shore or even driving over it.

The New York City Waterfalls exhibit is currently running. The most striking aspect of it, to me, is how insignificant the falls look in their setting.  I do not mean that in a bad way, they are quite impressive, and when you stand on the eastern side of the Brooklyn Bridge over the falls you get a real sense of their scale.  But what really struck me is that you have these four man-made, 90-100 foot tall structures cycling over 2 million gallons of East River water every hour, and still the structures are dwarfed by their surroundings.

I read that the artist wanted the exhibit to be as much about the negative space as the structures themselves, and on that he truly succeeded.  The Brooklyn Bridge fall is impressive, but completely dwarfed by the Brooklyn Bridge column that it sits adjacent to.  It’s very fitting that a massive exhibit built by man to mimic nature is lost among a massive city built by man.

Yet again we’ve gone from cold rainy weather to hot and sunny in no time at all. Spring seems to be something that now only exists for the pharmaceuticals to push allergy medication. But hey, it’s warm and sunny, so I don’t care.

After a long night drinking in Hoboken to celebrate Matt’s exodus to Brooklyn, Kristen and I walked over to Jersey City today and I snapped the above photo of a railroad overpass. As-is the photo was too sharp on the borders, so I plugged it onto a border filter and then tweaked it out a little more on my own. Shot with my Canon SD700is. I was too hung over to be dragging around the big Rebel today.