The other day I dropped my PowerBook while making the bed and though it survived -- a tough little laptop, I once got my leg caught in the power cord and send it flying across the room -- I no longer had my WiFi connection. Since it landed, closed, on the front end I figured the card dislodged but, um, where the hell was the card?

There was a soft rapping on my door and when I opened it there was a lovely young woman who, I thought, was my upstairs neighbor and asked to look out my window. I invited her in then found she'd actually said "was you lookin' at me." I work at my laptop on the window sill across from the building I thought might be a brothel, and I guess it is.

Tonight at the liquor store on Franklin Ave. and Eastern Parkway (it was a bad day at work and I needed some fortification) the man in front of me, after buying a bottle of white rum (he said he wasn't prejudice) started going off about Obama and why he wasn't supporting him.

Bedford-Atlantic Shelter

A blog from last year by someone living in the Bedford-Atlantic men's shelter named Nathan:

http://bedford-atlantic.blogspot.com/

It's a pretty accurate, day-to-day description of what it's like in the shelters though I was never in this one. I do, however, now live up the street from it in what I've finally decided is Crown Heights and I can tell you the outside of the building is pretty ominous. My own journals from Bellevue, Camp Laguardia and Wards Island will be posted here eventually.

Once you find yourself in any system you adapt to it or you are ejected whether it's shelter or a job or a relationship or a computer network like the Internet. You find your own equalibrium and work with it. I hope Nathan found his.

"Cardiologists hired by the companies offered short briefings on ways to reduce radiation doses, while sales representatives in business suits quietly talked up the benefits of the scans and the clarity of the images. The sales atmosphere was low key, more art gallery than "Glengarry Glen Ross.""

Before there was a Starbucks on every corner of New York City there were laundromats and hardware stores and Greek diners and liquor stores and Irish bars. My new neighborhood doesn't have a Starbucks (yet) but it doesn't seem to have many of the other necessities either. There are, instead, several places to have my hair braided if I ever get that drunk and lots of West Indian takeouts.

Well, technically Bed-Stuy but now called either Stuyvesant Heights or Franklin Heights. Twenty years ago if anyone told me I'd be living here I'd have thought they were out of their minds. But then who would have thought Richard Serra would give the Commencement Speech at Williams College telling them basically: you should be like me. I've been black but now that I'm back ...

http://www.williams.edu/home/commencement/2008/serra.php

Richard Serra
If Not Now, When?

It means a great deal to me to receive an honorary doctorate from Williams College, because so many graduates from this institution have directly contributed to and supported my artistic life. I want to take a moment to mention a few before I get on with the address: Glenn Lowry, Kirk Varnedoe, Michael Govan, Tom Krens, Rusty Powell, Jack Lane and James Wood. When I think about it, it’s remarkable that this institution has had such an impact on the culture of this country.

Sunday, September 17, 2006
The first bad sign is at the intake center on 30th Street in Manhattan. It's in the old Psychiatric wing of Bellevue Hospital. Shades of Edie Sedgwick haunt the place! Time for my screen test Mr. Warhol?

Monday, September 18, 2006
Wards Island to
Central Park by way of
Walkway from Wards Island to Manhattan

"Of all the state prisons of France, Fontevrault is the most disquieting."
Miracle of the Rose
Jean Genet

The 30th Street Intake Center for Homeless Men in Manhattan is in the old Psychiatric wing of Bellevue Hospital. When I finally find the entrance on 29th Street the words "Warhol" and "Edie" and "Live Fast Die Young" float through my head and they haven't done much to spruce the place up since that time. They do give me a baloney sandwich and put me in a room with a friendly man who tells me his name is Power and offers me his milk. Power seems to think he's going upstate to see his wife and kid as soon as they get through all the paperwork. Me, I have no idea where I'm going but follow the arrows to intake room and submit to questions and am eventually put on a bus that makes its way though Brooklyn ending up on Wards Island somewhere in the middle of the East River.