SNOW AT DARK

December 28, 2010. The snow once made a perfect dome over this car. You can see how it slopes in the dark and hung over the edge, until the outer edge was cleaved from the whole. Before that though, look at the skirt flowing from beneath the overhang. What miracle of water and cold and wind does this?

UNDER SNOW

December 27, 2010. Not my picture, but wish it was. It isn't often (if ever) that snow goes underground and covers the subway platform. The cleanness of the snow covers the grime on the rails and floor, the bench, floating down through grates, muffling the steps of feet walking through the station. But the rigid columns, from track to ceiling, push back against the softness of the snow. It is a push and pull through the station as they echo each other the length of the line.

MY WEARY HEAD

December 26, 2010. This little patch of moss off the trail looked like a soft place to lay my weary head. The moss was covering a rock, but still a restful place, the green a moist emerald, already giving succor to stones, twigs and leaves. My head would simply be placed in the open space, joining the rest of nature that found peace here. The weather has been cold, bitingly so, but the moss holds its green, it beckons and promises a gentle repose to those who take its bait.

DUCK DOTS

December 25, 2010. Ducks on a pond in a random pattern, paddling, circling, waiting or not. In the shivering of the morning on a cold December day, the sunrise reflecting on the water, these ducks don't huddle for warmth, but they stay in a flock anyway. From far away, do they make a pattern? If I connect the dots, what will the image become?

REED CASCADE

December 24, 2010. The long leaves of a lily field, battered down by wind and rain, and maybe hands and feet, cascades down the foot of Cleopatra's Needle. It is on my routine walk in the park, green and tall in the spring and summer, then yellow and wilting in the fall. And now this, like a fall of water down a stony drop in a river, mimicking that universal force of nature - water. Do we all want to go back to water? People, plants, animals?

TABLEAU

December 22, 2010. Central Park is filled with surprising scenes. Winter's embrace on the formerly lush landscape, lets you see things you could not during another season. A turn of the head, walking east or west, sunny or cloudy, the views change all the time. This little gazebo, sheltered by a tree that refuses to relinquish is summer beauty only reveals this serenity when you look at it from between the bushes that obscure the view in the summertime.

RIDER

December 19, 2010. Columbus Circle. A woman rides through the square, maybe after having just been in Central Park. She and her horse are dressed for New York. The bronze is open, giving us a view inside, but not too much, just enough to know that there is an inside. Where are they going? Home? Where is it? Or is it just the ride?

ICE BUCKETS

December 18, 2010. Giant cubes of frozen water, outsized in an outsized City. The day was frigid, but the cubes were nestled safely in their bed of leaves, dropped from the elms surrounding the Library. I was on my way to Bryant Park. The colors of the leaves and pine branches are muted by the ice, the lines blurred and flowing into each other. It looks so quiet under there. It looks soft.

BABY, YOU KNOW

December 12, 2010. Any surface is a canvas. Some surfaces, and some expressions just invite participation. Who was the author trying to reach? And did the lover appreciate the public nature of the speech, not to mention the public nature of the response. But does baby know how you feel, or do we just hope so? Are we relying on intuition, gut, body language as somehow more meaningful than words, which our kind spent eons developing, in an effort to add clarity to our interactions? "But baby." I can hear it now.

LOCKED OUT

December 11, 2010. Is it a comment on the lock, someones heart, or a relationship? In New York, it can become confusing because every surface is a potential for communication. This message may be intended for a locksmith, who was called while the owner was out of town and who had to return to the shop for parts. It could have been intended for the lover, who has been shut out, and the message meant to alert him not to come up. It could have been a reply to betrayal, a response to the breaking of trust, leaving the loved one in a state of despair, unable any longer to even make the attempt to reconcile. I wonder if the message was understood.

CONTAINER

December 5, 2010. Our affinity to the sea is primal, lasting, pulling, wild and deep. If life crawled first from there, or from some other primordial sludge what does it matter? We cannot live without it in any event. Whether salty, brackish, cool and clear, cold or warm, it calls to us and we each answer it in our way.

MATING RITUAL

December 4, 2010. What was this? It looked like dozens of snails in their nautilus shells clustered around a rock in a mating ritual. The colors are all soft greens to creamy beige. It looks so otherworldly, that I am not sure you should eat it. Maybe it should just sit on a table and be displayed.

BRICKS AND MORTAR

December 3, 2010. These bricks made me think of mud and hands. There was so much texture and irregularity to their size that I could imagine some group of people making them by hand, continuing to pass on a tradition that started with dung and dirt and water. The colors changed, smokey, dusky colors, as if seen through the haze of kilns and dust and ash. Hands have passed on this tradition - words couldn't do it - you had to feel the texture. What a wonderfully manual task.