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I’ve been planning to move to New York as soon as graduation rolls around and start my life. I’ve been looking forward to this for about two years and now graduation is jsut a couple weeks away. I have an opportunity to spend a month or two traveling across Europe. As soon as I found out, I figured I would just put New York off for a couple of months or whatever and do it because it would be an amazing time. That was like three days ago, and now I’m beginning to think I don’t really want to go!

Europe’s not going anywhere and I’m dying to, you know, get it going, not that I have any particular plan for that per se. I think it would be a terrific time to see all these amazing places I’ve never seen and take a million pictures and meet tons of people, etc., but I’ve got myself going in a certain direction and I don’t really feel like changing it at the moment - especially after my weekend in the city last month. I’m sure a trip like this would be formative, etc., but mostly it would be fucking around.

So, I’m deciding this in the next week or so. I’d love for you guys to weigh in.

It would be a lie to say that I wasn’t thrilled to meet so many of the people I admire in New York over the weekend. I would recount the whole thing blow by blow but my good friend Shane Lavalette has already beaten me to the punch. He has been far more thorough is his recounting of Friday night than I ever could be. I will say though that among the folks I got a chance to hang out with were Jen Bekman, Eric William Carrol,  Joerg Colberg, Amy Elkins, Shane Lavalette, Christian Patterson, Richard Renaldi (guy’s got serious muscles, by the way), Amy Stein, Alec Soth, Brian Ulrich, Zoe Strauss and Shen Wei. All the photographers and bloggers from all over the country in New York for the same bunch of events made this one of the most exciting weekends I’ve had in a long time.

It’s hard to have any regrets about a weekend like this one, but I do wish I had been able to talk more with Christian Patterson, Richard Renaldi and Joerg Colberg. I also didn’t even get a chance to say hello to Edward Winkleman, Lesley Martin, Paddy Johnson and Martin Parr. Even so though, I can’t say that I have any real complaints. I was amazed that everyone I met was so incredibly nice - it was practically like being with family. I also want to say that Amy Stein is just about the sweetest person on earth.

I also got to spend a good chunk of my weekend apartment hunting in various Brooklyn neighborhoods. It’s still just a little too early to really get serious since I’m not moving until mid-August, but it was really helpful to get a feel for how much you get for your money in the various places. And since I have no money (checking account: $133.60, savings account: $43.60) it looks like Bushwick is my best bet. Luckily, it seems like it’s a terrific neighborhood. It’s a quick shot to Williamsburg and into Manhattan an I particularly like the Puerto Rican flags that fly over many of the blocks I wandered down - it will be like living inside a Winogrand photograph. My friend Emily and her boyfriend Ian were kind enough to let me crash with them for a night at their place in Bushwick and I had a great time.

Now I’m back in D.C., and it’s time to run to the grocery store to get stuff for dinner. Then, I’m going to hit the books. Tomorrow is my last day of Biology.

GWB Operative Josh just sent me this dispatch from London:

Former Vice Magazine Photo Editor and Tiny Vices proprietor Tim Barber opened a new exhibition at the Gallery Soho in London tonight. Because I love my friend Greg a great deal, I flew out to see it (don’t worry, he promised he’d pay me back for the ticket). The exhibition is set over two floors in London’s Covent Garden neighborhood, not in Soho as the name of the Gallery suggests. Despite this semantic disturbance, the show is pretty interesting. The first floor is about what you’d expect at something curated by Tim Barber: lots of bright, punchy shots of young people in varying levels of nakedness, plus a few drawings and a badass picture of a van on fire.

The second floor, though, is where the action is. The uncredited photo series appears to have been taken almost entirely in Germany onboard subways or on their platforms. The photos are arranged either alone or in groups of two or three, in neat rows contrasting the scrapbook feel of the first floor. This ordered style gives the impression that the entire scene is visible from within one train car, and what a scene it is. A few large, central figures — mostly locked in embrace with a loved one — capture the attention of the people in the images around them. A covetous feeling exists within the exhibition, as though everyone in the smaller images wants to be the people in the bigger ones. Or maybe I just wanted another one of the free canapes.

There you have it, sounds like a great time. Thanks, Josh; I feel like I was there. And your check is in the mail.

I forgot to post about this before. But. I was on the early morning train from San Diego to LA yesterday trying to sleep of course. This old guy who’s probably like 4′9″ get’s on at like Santa Ana or somewhere, serious Scottish accent, bald, big glasses, brown suit wearing a Dallas cowboys ski cap, talking all the time. He sits down across from me (the seats face eachother, or course) and continues talking, even though my eyes are obviously closed.

So. These are the things he tells me.

1. His name is Gerald Scott. He is 82. He is Jewish.
2. He is on his way to make an Aliyah to Israel which means that he’s becoming a citizen there.
3. He used to be the head engineer (i.e. “Scottie”) on British Naval vessles.
4. His wife just died, handed me her death certificate.
5. He scattered her ashes from a Israeli battleship off the coast of Haifa.
6. He spied on Arab states for Israel throughout his career in the Britsh navy.
7. He recently had a doctor check his sperm count discovering he’s fit to have children.
8. He plans to “arrange a marriage” between himself and “a young, 18, 20 year old Israeli soldier” and he intends to “produce” his own babies.
9. He is completely fit. He “wakes up every morning with an erection” and “masturbates twice a week”.
10. Since his wife was ill for a long time, he hasn’t “had sex in 22 years.”
11. His new job in Israel will allow him to carry a machine gun with which he intends to bag himself a few Hezbollah before he dies.

This man asked me for my phone number so that we could keep in touch.

New York was a blast, as always, though I didn’t get to do as much as I wanted to since I slept so god damn late every day. The biggest bummer is that I didn’t get a chance to even call Katarina. So that was a bummer. But focusing on the positive I got to go to this crazy party after the opening of “The Fever,” (David Byrne, Parker Posey, Sam Rockwell, Alan Cumming were all there) and I met the famed and wonderful Jen Bekman, who gave me lots of, well, encouraging advice about grad school. Sigh. And then Josh Lehrer took pictures of me naked.

A little later today I’m getting on a plane to go back to Houston, which is where I’m from. I’m going to be there for 8 days and I’m really excited about it for a couple of reasons. The first is that I haven’t been back there since May and it’s going to be good to sleep in my old room and all that. When I go home, life is easy and action-packed. Mom is always thrilled that I’m back and loves to be a hostess. It’s going to be great to see her and also to eat well. Ha. I’m totally out of money right now. Ex 1,Tonight’s dinner: Mug of instant oatmeal, two cups of apple sauce, Coors. My friends are usually stoked to see me since I stay away for such long stretches and they don’t have time to get sick of me, so it’s a whirlwind of activity. And then there’s this guy.

Going back to Houston is also turning into more and more of a creative endeavor. I have use of a car there, which makes indulging a photographic whim pretty easy. Plus, I have months to think of all the stuff I want to shoot when I’m down there (it’s going to be churches this time), make lists, and then execute them with military efficiency*.

So, the next few posts will either not happen or happen from Houston. It should be a good time for everybody, except for, say, the people who have to clean up after us.

*The use of this idiom hearkens back to a day when the American military was, in fact, efficient. There was a time in this nation’s history that it’s military prowess actually saved freedom and did so in a mere four years. This phrase is quite obviously anachronistic and I apologize for any confusion my use of it may have caused.