And Another.
one time mythologist
Trying some postcards.
I know I’m a hiptser when…
I’m sitting in a cafe in Williamsburgh with not much better to do that to post on tumblr and after about a half hour of listening to what they’ve been playing in the cafe - Greenday - I reach a breaking point and decide to listen to Grizzly Bear on my ipod.
hobnob
I used the gerund of the verb bob as in “bobbing for apples” at an interview in the sentence “I’m used to bobbing with the bigwigs in Poughkeepsie.” While the phrase “bobbing with the bigwigs” makes for a not unpleasant alliteration the word “hobnob” in its gerund form “hobnobing” is clearly the better fit. Although the word looks fairly strange in print -
hobnobing
it pertains to a fascinating etymology here courtesory of dictionary.com:
hob·nob
intr.v. hob·nobbed, hob·nob·bing, hob·nobsTo associate familiarly: hobnobs with the executives.
[From the phrase (drink) hob or nob, (toast) one another alternately, from obsolete and dialectal hab nab, have or have not : probably Middle English habbe, have; see have + Middle English nabbe (contraction of ne habbe, have not : Old English ne, not; see not + habbe, have).]
Word History: Hobnobbing with our social betters can be a hit-or-miss proposition, a fact that has an etymological justification. The verb hobnob originally meant “to drink together” and occurred as a varying phrase, hob or nob, hob-a-nob, or hob and nob, the first of which is recorded in 1763. This phrasal form reflects the origins of the verb in similar phrases that were used when two people toasted each other. The phrases were probably so used because hob is a variant of hab and nob of nab, which are probably forms of have and its negative. In Middle English, for example, one finds the forms habbe, “to have,” and nabbe, “not to have.” Hab or nab, or simply hab nab, thus meant “get or lose, hit or miss,” and the variant hob-nob also meant “hit or miss.” Used in the drinking phrase, hob or nob probably meant “give or take”; from a drinking situation hob nob spread to other forms of chumminess.
Apparently the word I was actually was looking for was habbenabbe. I can imaging the applications:
Some Dude or Dudette - Yo, what are you up to tonight?
Me - Just a little habnabin’, you down?
“ His eyes entered everything like a needle even yet - punctured, looped, and then emerged - and he hung these pictures on a string like beads around his neck. For hours he fingered the air obscenely and when he moved, he felt they clicked.
- Bill Gass, Omensetter’s Luck, 1965.
For whatever reason this image has been sticking with me. I really want to take a photo of an old man dressed in period clothes wearing a necklace of photos around his neck. He would be reclining like the canonized corpse of a century dead saint. Except of course he would still be breathing and on his forehead beads of sweat would glint in the heat of a July afternoon. He might also sit in a beach chair wearing candy stripe cloth shorts and a ribbed A shirt. His necklace would comprise the corroded gilt cases of daguerreotype’s. He’d sweat. At his feet, dandelion would stir.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
I found thirtyish photos. They are stark and bland.
“Shadows of love gone by,
dark night of the soul.”
Glenwood
I’ve been considering taking on Glenwood Luxury Apartment Complexes in “the upper east side from 86th to 92nd street, the east side from 72nd street to 96th street, Murray Hill from 39th Street to 59th Street on the east side, below 39th street including Tribeca and the Financial District, and North of 59th Street including Lincoln Center and Riverdale.” They’re not hard to find once you know what to look for. The challenge is going to be coming up a way to photograph more or less the same exact building in a variety of contexts. I’m bored already……
