A flock of honking geese just flew past and over my Brooklyn window.

Anne Briggs has her own page on Wikipedia.

Good! All is as it should be.

It’s too late to make a proper post, so, here’s a photo:

It’s wonderful living so close to Green-Wood.

Ah, the forgotten borough. Staten Island, the humblest and lowliest of NYC locales… why are you on the brain this morning?

Been leafing through Forgotten NY, that’s why. Cemeteries, Blue Heron Park (bet it looks great in the fall), creepy old hospitals (okay, I’ll probably leave that to the professionals), Victorian mansions… what’s not to love?

Did I ever mention that I lived on Staten Island, for about three months? ‘Twas my very first home in NYC back in 1994. I used to crawl through weeds and chain link fences (past a boarded up crackhouse) to get to the apartment I shared with three NYU film students. It was on the tip of the island, a stone’s throw as the crow flies from the ferry terminal. Ergo, I never did venture very far in. “There’s nothing there,” I thought. Silly me.

Staten Island, it seems, is one of those places where the city meets the earth.

One day last fall, I found the Canal Street 1/9 subway platform covered in brilliant fallen leaves. I wish I’d had a camera with me at the time. I can’t think of anything else that sums me up so perfectly, so much so that one of these days, I’ll probably stage a photo shoot to get the moment back (as dorky as that is).

As the weather gets colder and that red-haired beauty, Lady Fall, whispers to us from around the corners of buildings, I keep thinking about those leaves on that platform. And I’ve been trying to think of other such juxtapositions: liminal spots (accidental or not) where the city and the earth shake hands. Citynoise has a good one, today:

(picture’s on my server to save them their bandwidth — go click on it for more)

Couldn’t have come up with anything better myself.

These days, I’m very careful not to rush time, because time rushes along far too quickly for my taste as it is. But over the past couple of days, fall has been peeking her head around the corner, and it’s taking everything I’ve got not to roll out the welcome mat. I mean, not like I’ve got the kind of superpowers that can bring fall in from her long rest, or get her to stick around more than a few blissful nights. Laws of physics, mere mortal, all that.

But you know what I mean.

Time to interrupt the BEA madness for a quick show of hands: how many WATERSHIP DOWN fans do we have inna house?

Come on, get ‘em up there. You’re among friends here.

All right. Now, check this out:

Visiting the Real Watership Down

How cool is that? I’m wigglin’! I’m wigglin’!

Lots of thanks to my friend Izzy for tossing the link my way.

Leland and I returned from a couple of lovely days in North Carolina with my family on Saturday. Yes, it has taken me this long to recover. What can I say? From the plane’s initial descent to kissing the cats hello took three hours — you’d be useless too.

(Don’t get me started on the MTA. Don’t get me started.)

Delicious moments near the Atlantic ocean made up for the suburban eerieness of the gated McMansion rental community. (Yes, the houses are… rich. But they were just so damn empty, and that was a little weird.) And hopefully I can whip up a post on turtles in a day or so. Because, you know, turtles are the new rabbits. (Well, not quite.)

Spent the entire day in Prospect Park, brainstorming and note-taking about comics projects. Consider me recovered.

And lo, for no reason, pictures.

North Carolina knitting:

The Strength tree:

My favorite shirt:

The necklace says “patience”. Of which I’ve had very little, historically. I’m not sure what’s going on, but I think the turtles have something to do with it.

Midori found the coolest thing in the New York Times the other day:

HELIGAN is the Rip van Winkle of gardens. Nurtured by successive generations of the Tremayne family for four centuries, it fell into disarray after almost all the workers who maintained it marched off to war in France in 1914. By the end of the 20th century, a jungle of ivy, bramble and laurel had engulfed flower beds and shrubs.

Three years later, a chance meeting led to his excited discovery and exploration, sometimes on hands and knees, of the overgrown acres. He and a group of enthusiastic associates subsequently leased the property and launched a crusade to save what they christened, with an unerring instinct for public relations, “The Lost Gardens of Heligan.”

Gorgeous weekend in New York City this weekend, absolutely delightful. Perfect for walking in Central Park and taking reference photos for certain artists, both of which I did. Unfortunately, the Treo camera wasn’t in top form, else I’d share some of the photos with you. Nonetheless, wow. It’s no Maine wildwoods of my youth, Acadia National Park or Pacific Northwestern forest, but that Central Park has a few things going for it. Lilac, for one. Which brings me to a message for all flower-selling bodega owners of my fair city: quit it with the charging me eight fricking dollars for a sprig of lilac, you cheapass bastards. I know that you’re just trying to make a living and everything, but you’re just alienating your clientele, at least those of us who grew up up north and know what nature shouldn’t cost. Or something.

Anyway.

Don’t mind me; I just remember what those lilac bushes in the back of my house, back in the day, and I get a little worked up.