Top Of The Rock

Old Rocks

I loved these post ice-agey rocks in Maine.  These pictures can't really do them justice, but up close, the rock actually looked like petrified wood.  Thanks geology!

Away Away Away

I've been laid off for nearly two weeks.  My first week off was a waste and a total haze.  I had post midtown depression syndrome.  I didn't want to wake up and then when I did, I had no idea what to do with myself.  You can't really hit the ground running with unemployment.  Thank god Sunday came and I could fly down to South Carolina for a lakeside Krause family reunion. I turned off my phone and my computer and read magazines and a book about a brain scientist who had a stroke and had to start all over again.  Kinda felt familiar.

Off to Maine today with Pam (thanks Pam!) for some continued R&R.  I don't really remember who I am or what purpose I had moving to New York in the first place and in this first phase of recovery I am totally confused.  Some days I think the internet helps and others I feel it overwhelms.  Being outside is the best thing for me right now - I just need to remember to bring my camera along and start taking some notes.

In Maine I want to read, bike, tennis, lobster and swim.  Pics to follow.

Species

Beached

There is currently a whale washed up ashore at Jones Beach:

I think its interesting how the beaching of a whale draws so much media attention - its like when a D list celebrity dies of a drug overdose and they become posthumously famous (Britney Murphy).  I get it though.  I think if I encountered this Goliath while beach combing I would be fixated.  25 feet long! You could make an airplane out of that thing!

Some research led to a few interesting revelations.  Most beachings involve the toothed whales (Sperm, Pilot, etc) rather than their baleen relatives.  Its rare that a live whale washes up onshore though it did happen recently in the Hamptons.  Because thousands of sea creatures die each year, factors like winds and tides push floating carcasses ashore for us to enjoy.  More likely than this though is a phenomenon called Whale Fall which is basically a term for when an ecosystem builds up in a whale's carcass that has died in the open ocean (rather than shallow waters).  The whale's body will fall to the ocean floor and there many creatures will take up residence within the walls of its blubber.  One whale's carcass can provide sustenance up to several decades for the critters of the deep to feast upon! 

There are mass beachings too.  These are attributed to many factors including pods following the distress calls of their beached buddies and shallow water tidal mix-ups that become unnavigable.  Either way, it looks like this:

 Imagine the smell! 

According to Wikipedia, nearly 2,000 ocean animals beach themselves every year.  How come we never see a Great White washed up on Cannon Beach?  Are sharks not beachers?  Do whales have a unique physical make-up that makes them more likely to beach than other sea creatures?  Last summer while walking the sands of Fort Tilden, I nearly stepped on a dying ray.  Its gills were foamy, eyes glazed and it lay there in a desperate, fishy stupor; drying out, waiting for the sun to kill it.  I knew if I threw it back, it would still die anyway, not to mention it was a mess.  There was no way I was going to touch it.  I sat there and stared at it as it lay in its sandy hospice and thought how about how a sea creature's beaching must be equivalent to a human's drowning. Even if its a crab, a ray or a whale - when we watch, is it like craining your neck at a car accident?   Is it okay to stare because they aren't some body's mother?  Are mass beachings like Heaven's Gate?  I dunno.  Something about the Jones Beach whale, to me at least, is a 25-foot reminder of my own mortality.  Lets bury that thing.  Stat.

Necromancy On Norman And Lorimer

My house is haunted and I need a ghostbuster.  Evidence of a presence has been amassing and then something happened yesterday that makes me think a presence is undeniable.

This all started almost exactly a year ago when I had that going away party for Sophie.  Remember that? Ok.  That morning, I woke up and was inspecting the previous night's damage to my face (wrinkles, redness, barf) in the bathroom mirror when I heard a piano playing.  The pianist was not playing a song, but rather banging on the keys then playing a snippet of a tune, losing interest and banging away again.  It sounded like someone who was trained to play the piano trying to practice but getting too distracted to do so. 

A few things ran through my mind.  One - I didn't know there was a piano in my building.  I live in a three story walk up, so I would argue my living situation is somewhat intimate when it comes to the residence's other tenants.  Secondly, I thought it was funny I could hear the sound so clearly where I was standing.  You see, my bathroom is in the basement and shares a wall with a garage and the building next door.  It has no windows, so having such a clear sound in such a isolated area seemed strange.

Night fell and the party began and as people came and went, my neighbor wandered in with his sister.  I handed them both a beer and then being the horribly boring drunk that I am, isolated them in the far corner of our living room and started my piano diatribe.  I explained the noise and how the nature of sound was weird and how the building was old and then followed up with the fact that I didn't realize there was a piano in the building.  My neighbor froze.  There was no piano in the building. 

Then he offered this tidbit: His roommate had been wanting to move out because he had seen a girl in his room.  In the middle of night, a change in temperature had woken him from his sleep and he rose to see a girl standing near his bed.

Shiver.

So its been a year of that.  The piano every now and then with the occasional footsteps over head.  I sleep in the basement below our living room, kitchen and dining room.  I remember clearly last fall being home alone one night and hearing someone doing what sounded like rearranging furniture upstairs.  When I snuck up there, defense weapon of a hammer in hand, I found nothing but my dinner's dishes in the sink. 

Honestly, I have no idea how I have managed to joke about it for a year without really freaking myself out.  Cursory research shows my house is on the Jacob Meserole family farm plot which spanned from Norman to Meserole on Lorimer and Manhattan Avenues.  There is no doubt in my mind a prominent family such as the Meseroles had a piano and maybe a young brood of practicing pianists.  However, without hitting some serious archives all I have is geeky message boards on the web which honestly are so weird its kinda alienating.  But I think I may finally have the motivation to do some digging after yesterday's incident.

I was home doing some studying in my bedroom and got up for a break.  I went into the bathroom and the piano was at it again.  When I first used to hear the piano, I would pray that whomever was playing it would break out into 'Benny and the Jets' or some other contemporary song.  This would confirm that I was right, sound was indeed weird and came from odd places and that I just had gay neighbors that liked sing alongs.  But I have only ever heard older, sort of jig style music being played.  So yesterday, when I was in there listening to an upbeat rag, really I just ignored it.

Next I went upstairs and ran into Nadja, my roommate, and made a joke about the ghost piano.  She laughed, it was casual and I got a glass of water and went back downstairs.  I think I was probably out of my room for ten minutes total but when I returned to my room, someone had lifted my mirror from my dresser/vanity area and laid it on the floor.  Some logic:  had the mirror fallen two things would've happened.  One, it would have disturbed the contents of my dresser, which remained in place.  Two, wouldn't it have broken?  The final oddity to this story is I have a picture tucked into the frame of my mirror that is constantly being blown out of its position at the slightest gust of wind or air.  But the picture lay completely unmoved in bottom left hand corner of the frame of my mirror now on the floor.  There is no way the mirror could've slid off my dresser.  The only way it could've gotten into its new position on the floor is if it had been lifted and then set down again.  Double Shiver.

 Immediate research ensued and a search of 'signs you have a ghost' turned up the following:

1. Strange noises - piano, furniture moving, footsteps - CHECK

2. Sightings - girl upstairs - CHECK

3. Moving objects - mirror - CHECK

4. Weird animal behavior - this is interesting.  I didn't indicate this above, but I live with a poodle that will be resting and then out of nowhere will be spooked into a barking tantrum for which there is no anodyne.  I always thought it was just the realm of poodle-dum that made Rex behave so erratically, but now I'm thinking maybe he occasionally gets disturbed by something or SOMEONE.  so - CHECK

Anyway. I want more information but I don't want to piss off any presence (if there is one).  I feel like in scary movies, 'research' into the haunting always aggravates the already restless spirits and as soon as you do some digging that's when the shit really hits the fan.  I don't want to lose any hair, sleep or friends over this, but it could be a really fun summer adventure.  Does anyone want to ghost bust with me?  Maybe we could have a seance the next time my cheese of the month shipment comes in - you bring the baguette, I'll bring the psychic?  Spin the bottle with the ghost? Do you think the ghost is reading this right now? Ugh. Terrifying.

Hi

8th Highest Peak

Ireland was okay, I guess.

Mother Nature Said

If You Haven't Already - Donate Some $$ To Haiti

Red Cross is a good place to start. There is a minimum donation of $10.00 - but that isnt that much considering...

An easy way to help too, is texting “Haiti” to 90999 and a $10 donation will be given to the Red Cross. The 10 bucks will be indicated on your cellphone bill for the month. Ta-Da!

Also - I think its interesting that our response to Haiti was faster than Bush's response to Katrina, blah blah blah, I know not that interesting...but kinda?

Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls (because youll sit in traffic for 4 hours and then it will rain when you get there)

We went to the Delaware Water Gap on Saturday for a swimming hole adventure. A couple of wrong turns landed us in some ridic traffic. As dj, it was hard to find a station that wasn't playing Michael Jackson. I wanted to keep everyone calm, so we settled on 96.1 - contemporary country. A song about giving someone the right directions really stung.

Washing the sins away and the barbecue sauce off.



The sky darkened as we approached and when we got there, cloud cover was dense and the rain began to fall. By the time we got to the swimming hole, it was coming down like a shower with great water pressure and the "swimming hole" was more of a "hellish eddy." Pam and Tim dipped and both reported extremely cold temperatures. The day was very Lewis and Clark Fall Break - remember those weird four days in October we got off for no particular reason?

Just What McCarren Park Needs

Whatever Happens In Portland, Stays In Portland.

XXX(L).

And God Shines Down Upon Us

This is Pelham State Park on City Island. Dont be surprised by how remote it seems, its actually in the Bronx and is accessible by the 6 train. We traveled here on Sunday, for some beautiful vistas and good air quality. This pictures make me think of that Sting song that goes "...as we walk in fields of green..."