Pen and Ink

Who you gonna call?

My house has had one previous set of owners: Ray and Alice.

The bought the house when it was built in 1991. Ray died in 2002, and then Alice sold it to Mike and me a year later.

I think Ray is back.

Ever since Mike moved out a couple of weeks ago, I've noticed a couple of weird things.

1. There have been two mornings now that I have gotten up to find a light on in the family room. Two of my lights are on timers, but this particular one isn't. And I KNOW I turned it off the previous night.

2. Yesterday, I noticed a stain and drip marks high up on the wall of my bedroom. Just about an inch below the ceiling. They were kinda dark -- the color of cola.  But there was nothing on the ceiling. So how did it get there?

3. Then this morning, while selecting a tie to wear to work, I found a Calvin Klein tie that's been missing for months. I had been looking for it, as it is one of the few that go with a particular jacket. I searched high and low, and now, all of a sudden, there it hangs, crumpled.  (I suspect John may be to blame on this one.)

WTF?

I don't really believe in ghosts, but you never know.

Hey Ray, Alice doesn't live here any more.

Catch up.

Thanks for calling back S.  I enjoyed the conversation.

Ow, that hurts.

I learned a new Cuban phrase recently.

A couple of weeks ago, R came into my office.

"I have to talk to you. I just got a pau-pau from our boss." (I may be spelling this wrong.)

"A what? What's a pau-pau."

He thought about it for a moment and said, "It's kind of a light spanking. Not too hard, but just enough to know you were bad."

A pau-pau.  Hmmm...I filed that away.

Today I opened up my Yahoo account and found an email containing a pau-pau from my friend S.

"I thought about you this weekend. It was because you never call and I never get to talk to you."

Pau-pau.  Ouch.

S lives in Canada, so it's not like we can get together for coffee or drinks whenever we want. I wish we could hang out, because he's funny and intelligent; I really like him. But we have to settle for phone and email.

So I called him on my way home. More than an hour ago.

S, the phone is sitting right next to me.

Sprinkle it with WHAT?

"Who can take a sunrise
Sprinkle it in dew
Cover it in chocolate
and a miracle or two?

The candyman
The candyman can
The candyman can cause he mixes it with love and makes the world taste good" *

Remember when your mother told you not to take candy from strangers? This is what she was afraid of.

* Lyrics from "Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Ripped off without permission.

Time for change.

Sitting center square at middle-age, I sometimes reflect on how much has changed in my (almost) 46 years on this planet.

Technology changes at a dizzying pace. Laptops, cell-phones, iPhones, Blackberries -- all are expressions of technological change. They also serve as agents of change themselves, connecting us in ways never imagined by our grandparents and even by our parents.

I'm fascinated by the ways the applications for these pieces of technology can alter and enhance our lives. They connect us to people we might never have the opportunity to know. Couples meet, marry and divorce, all from websites. Social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace let us share our lives with the world.

Blogs do the same thing. I have friends, people I don't get to see all the time, who say to me, "I keep up with your life by reading your blog. I like knowing what you're doing and thinking."

Social networking sites and blogs have allowed me to reach out to authors and performers that I just want to say hi to. Not mega-celebrities or even celebrities, but just people doing what they do. Before, you would have to send a letter to an author's publisher and never really know if it was being received. And more likely than not, you probably wouldn't get a response. But here, you can send a note to a Johnny Diaz and say, "Hey, I like what you said." And usually receive some kind words in reply.

When I logged on to Typepad to write this morning, I hadn't meant to talk about technology. My theme was change, inspired by something I saw in the Times.

While it doesn't happen as fast as cell phones evolve, great social change is happening right under our noses. Today we have a woman and a black man fighting for the presidential nomination. History is being made right before us.

What struck me this morning was just a photo and a few paragraphs of text: a wedding announcement in the Sunday Styles section of the paper.

Victor Self and Christopher Fraley had a commitment ceremony last night in St. Bart's. And it was technological and social change that allowed their bright shiny faces to be printed in the New York Times.

Yes, there they were...a black man and a white guy. It wasn't all that long ago that they'd be considered in violation of all natural laws by marrying outside their respective races. I'm sure there are readers of the Times who still can't stand the fact that the paper would even publish a wedding such as this.

They met through an on-line dating service. And they are working with a agency in Los Angeles that arranges surrogate mothers to have babies for same-sex couples.

So let's review: same sex couple, mixed-race couple, an on-line meeting, a public commitment ceremony, a baby in the future. And all of it in the New York Times. (I was even able to yank a picture of the happy couple off the website!)

My grandmother wouldn't know what to make of it. And I wonder what the drag queens at the Stonewall Bar in 1969 think of it. Was this what the early activists of the GLBT movement envisioned?  I don't know.  What I do know is that I am thrilled and delighted by it.

Some catching up to do.

In addition to my usual weekend errands, chores, and visit to the chiropractor, this weekend will include some visits with friends I haven't seen in awhile.

This evening we're driving down to Coral Gables for dinner with Alan and Danny. I haven't seen them in months and months and months. Alan and I used to work together and I learned last week that he may be losing his job.  I emailed him when I heard the news and a string of back-and-forth emails led to plans for dinner tonight.

So we're going to some new Indian restaurant that has opened in the Gables and apparently is really good (it's tough to get good Indian here in South Florida.)  Note to anyone who ever wants to be nice to me: a good batch of chicken saag and some naan are high on my list of comfort foods!

Tomorrow, Paul is coming to visit. Paul is part of the Boston family, but he's been living in DC for the past 8 months or so. He's driving down from Washington on his way to Miami, before heading to Brazil for two years for work. I usually only get to see him during our annual Ogunquit weekend, so this is a treat. He's stopping by the house around noon. We'll go over to oh-so-gay Wilton Manors for lunch at Rosie's or some place like that.

To top it all off, the weather is unbelievable. It's the end of April and I still don't have the air conditioning on, which is great (especially for my checking account). So for now, I'm off to do things in the gardens.

Miami Gringo.

Blog-hopping (kinda like bar-hopping, but without the headache the next morning) can often lead to some interesting discoveries.

Last night, I ended up at Beantown Cuban, written by Johnny Diaz, a Miami Cuban living in Boston. I had heard about him before, as he writes for the Boston Globe. Plus he has a novel out -- Boston Boys Club -- which sat on my shelf for some months until this weekend when I read it cover-to-cover.

He had an interesting post on Monday about missing his hometown, Miami. About all those little things that we see and do everday, things that make a place an actual home.

I posted a comment on his blog tonight and said that we are polar opposites. He's the "Miami Cuban in Beantown" and I'm the "Beantown Gringo in Miami."

Maybe we're not complete polar opposites. I didn't grow up in Boston, but it was the city I chose to be my home for 17 years. It is where I came into my own as an adult, gay man. So in many respects, it's more "home" than my actual hometown of Pompton Plains, New Jersey.

Johnny talked about the changes in Miami that he sees everytime he comes back. He talks about stopping by Epicure to get a cake for his parents. About going to the Navarro Pharmacy with his Mom.

It makes me think about the similar, little things I miss about life in Boston.  Popping into Garden of Eden on Tremont for a giant dark chocolate chip cookie in the middle of the afternoon. The smell of the T (Boston's subway), which for some strange reason, I love. Watching the seasonal changes in the flower beds in the Public Garden. Going to see Snappy Dance Theater, a company that I helped get off the ground. Or Thursday nights at Club Cafe hanging out with my friends and colleagues.

Most especially I miss the wonderful, casual times with my friends, Chris and Drew. Sunday night "family dinners" followed by watching Queer as Folk. Or playing "DJ," taking turns picking out music tracks to play, at considerable volume, on the stereo.

Johnny wrote that every time he leaves Miami to return to Boston that he does so with a heavy heart. I kinda feel that way about returning to Florida after my visits to Boston.  I miss the place.

To mimic the close from Johnny's post: you can leave home, but it never leaves you.

Same age.

Happy birthday Martin!  We're now the same age.

Where did this come from?

Checking out my site statistics on Site Meter, I found something curious.

One of the referrals came from www.giantfootball.com.

Huh? A blog for the NY Giants?

When I looked at the corresponding entry under "Location," it said it was unknown.

Hmmm...maybe some deeply closeted guy from a football site?  Ha!

I went to the blog and couldn't find anything on it that would link it to my little blog.  Besides, it is the complete antithesis of Pen & Ink.

Very weird.

Smile for the camera.

My father is a photographer. Not professional, but a bit more than amateur. Many of his photos have been published in several volumes about lighthouses up and down the East Coast.

As kids, we'd be dragged around and made to stand and wait while he would take pictures of whatever it was that struck his fancy. 

It was boring, but as an adult, I've come to appreciate the art of photography. In fact as the visual arts go, it is my singular favorite.  I've started to take my own, as you have seen on this blog.

I'm also collecting.  It started with some of my father's works from the 1970s and 80s. (As soon as I can figure out how to put a watermark on the images, I am going to post some here). Some of them are hanging in my home -- I'm turning the entry foyer into a gallery, complete with appropriate lighting.

I've also started to do a little collecting. My first two acquisitions were some very tasteful black and white nudes by Glen Mitchell and Steve Jerome (see links to their websites to the left) that are hanging in my bathroom.  There's also a black and white portrait by a student at the college that I am mesmorized by. It's going to hang in the entry hall next to a portrait of my sister, taken when she was just three years old (or so).

Aside from my nudes, which are just 8 x 10 format, the first piece of art photography that I've purchased is by Julie Schwarz.  It's called "Travels with Donovan."  I'd show you a picture and direct you to the website, but for some reason it's no longer working. I'll take a picture of it when it comes back from the frame shot.

It's a really interesting piece. She uses Poloroid technology and "smushes" the emulsion around by using a variety of tools. She then scans and prints the images in limited editions. It's really cool.

I wasn't sure how to start collecting photography. I did a little reading, but then remembered what someone once said. 

"Collect what you like."

So that's what I'm doing.