August 12 2010

Natalie Nunez, a friend of mine from high school gave me a call on my cell phone and asked me to cover her shift for her at the Maggie Moo's in Port Richmond. I wondered if the Maggie Moo's in Wynnewood would actually transfer me just to work there for a day. After debating this with her, we both actually didn't care if the system worked that way and I covered her. When I got there, I realized I actually was in the Wynnewood store and I was working with my co-worker Joe Garber. The lights in the store were off and we hadn't opened yet, late morning light pouring into the store.

Suddenly, the fire safety sprinkler system went off, water pouring into the ice cream and down the walls and onto the floor. I call up my boss, Patrick, on the store phone but he doesn't answer. I leave a frustrated voicemail asking if he even cares about his business at all and if he does to come down and fix the problem. After complaining to Joe about how much I hate this job. I leave to run from something in Pennypack Park with Alex Willis.

On May 8th

John Slavin and Jeff Hall asked me to be their fifth roommate they were going in on with some boys and another girl. The house is somewhere around Temple in North Philadelphia with hardwood floors with a lot of old white doors and not too many windows. There's a huge backyard where the clouds are dark making the green grass appear saturated against the ominous clouds. The wind picked up and I felt unsure. I sat in my old bedroom of the house I grew up in on Farwood Road staring at the foot of my bed, the old white radiator, my dresser the old creaky floors.

"No, I don't want to leave home. I like it here."

Even though I knew this isn't mine anymore.

A little after Christmas...

It was night and I was walking around 5th and Berks where I walked into a little corner grocery store. There I found my two middle aged co-workers Jackie and Evelyn. Jackie smiled to me standing at the counter and didn't say anything to me because she only spoke Spanish. I talked to her and Evelyn as I walked up and down the isles full of cereal and canned soup. Since it was after Christmas, before I left the store Evelyn handed me a gift bag. Inside was a glockenspiel. As I stood outside the store on the corner I thought to myself,
"Eric would appreciate this glockenspiel a lot more than I would."...

Over the weekend

I couldn't sleep so I decided to develop some photos despite the fact it was 4 or 5am. I was under the El, along Front Street by Berks station because there was a communal storage tub of developer there, next to the abandoned store fronts and overgrown lots. As I began to dip my photographs into the solution, I took notice of the withering prints in the tub that had been deserted by artists. They were all photographs of young women who must be grandmothers by now, either that or far gone from this place.

The Other Day

A few days ago, the house I grew up in became a farm house. One you see driving through rural New Jersey. The land was flat and the air was warm, a purple haze along the horizon as the sun set. My mom and dad got back together. They loved each other again, just for a day, but I'm so thankful for it. Something that hasn't happened for 13 years, at least. They were all in the family room watching television together with my twin and our dead family dog. This was when I was upstairs and discovered that my great-grandmother has possessed the dresser in my room. Her spirit angrily shook and rattled the wooden drawers. I flew down the steps to go tell my mother, only to find myself in North East Philadelphia up near Pennypack Park off the Delaware River. I frantically began gathering people, people I didn't even know, to come see the spirit of my great-grandmother. We never made it there before the sunset.