The town sent a fire inspector over to where I live not long ago who decided that most of the doors needed to go, as they aren’t “fire rated” under modern codes. So the landlord was good enough to shell out for some solid, custom-made new doors last week. Steve, our part-time building superintendent-of-sorts, decided to store the old doors out behind the garage until the next junk pickup by the town.

So, here are some pieces of wood that were once doors, out in the morning sun. Ah yes, doors. Aside from the name of a “heavy” rock group from the 1960s (RIP Jim Morrison), doors are an important but mostly un-thought of part of our lives. We need doors to keep out bugs, bad weather, dust, and other people from important places (like our houses and apartments). Doors give us privacy, comfort and security; a modicum of control in a largely uncontrollable world. It makes you wonder, what would it be like to live in an environment without doors? Is there still a culture on some island or in the heart of the Amazon or the Nile where doors are hardly used? Some animals and bugs also make use of doors to protect their nests and provide shelter from predators.

So these doors have seen their day. But despite all the changes to the world over recent years, despite all the stuff now going out of style like land-line phones and postage stamps and televisions with antennas, doors aren’t going out of our lives anytime soon.

My cell phone is old and has a crummy camera. But it’s still good for capturing something of those boring moments of ordinary life, the moments that you wouldn’t normally think to bring a camera to record. Like waiting in line at a supermarket.

But hey, life is what you make of it. Boring moments are better than no moments. Life has a lot of different flavors, and sometimes the flavor of the moment is boredom. Sometimes we do feel “Lost in the Supermarket”, as the Clash song goes.

But remember, you’re still alive, you’re still part of the ultimate network of time and space and consciousness — a bigger, more highly dimensional version of the digital social network that the guy in the pic is accessing with his smart phone. I don’t mind supermarket lines; it’s all part of the big space-time network of real life, of being.

A few shots from the front yard, of one of the many, many, fat and hungry squirrels in our neighborhood. These guys can be real pests, and I have no great love for them. But at least this one is earning his food honestly, like a squirrel should, by keeping his nose to the ground. It’s when squirrels become innovative around humankind’s various interventions (garbage cans, bird feeders, cookout supplies, etc.) that the trouble begins. Ah, we do bring out the worst in nature sometimes.

Almost like an MC Escher image, except . . . the stairs actually end, and in a boring, everyday fashion.

Just like life, such as we live it.

 

Here’s a recent addition to my “kitchen forest”, a “hen and chick” plant, also known as sempervivum. That must be a Latin word of some sort; “semper” as in the Marine Corp motto, and vivum relates to life (I think). Always alive? Well, we shall see. I haven’t had much luck with “succulents” (given their preference for dry deserts over humid forests), but hope springs eternal. Maybe this will be the one that finds itself a place in the little potted houseplant forest near my kitchen windows.

 

Remember “Nighthawks“, that great Edward Hopper painting of some people hanging out in a coffee shop, seen through a window late at night? Here’s something of a 2012 version. I.e., some people hanging out in a computer game store in northern New Jersey, seen through a window late at night.

I pass this building most every day on my way to work. But only recently did I notice it. Pretty sad looking. I wanted to get some shots just to capture the down mood of it.

But it also reminds me that there were once many old buildings like this in northern NJ; I’m old enough to remember that. The ones out in the suburbs were mostly knocked down and replaced by new housing or shopping malls in the 60’s and 70’s. A lot of junky buildings survived in the urban neighborhoods into the 80’s, but gave way to re-development efforts by the mid-90s. Somehow this one, in the Central Ward of Newark, escaped notice thus far.

There are new townhouses and condos all around this site; it probably would already have been redeveloped but for the mortgage crisis of 2008. Looks like it was some sort of mini-factory, maybe a fabric sweatshop of some kind (Newark used to have a lot of those). Whatever, it will soon be gone. Take one last look at the funky grunginess that was once common throughout the older neighborhoods in NJ.

Spider webs under a fan, in the winter sun.

Valentine’s Day is over for another year.

Bloomfield Avenue, Bloomfield, NJ.

I made a food run up to my favorite fresh produce market in South Paterson, NJ about three weeks ago. Whenever I go, I stock up on all sorts of veggies and fruits. The prices there are still very good, about 2/3 of what the cheapest supermarket here in the ‘burbs charges. It’s like going back in time about 10 years, pricewise.

I bought some winter Chilean blueberries, and I’m still munching on them with breakfast most every day. This is definitely a welcome little mid-winter treat. The blueberry container is a short lesson in multi-lingualism, with English, Spanish, French, Chinese and Arabic words on it. I think that the French word for blueberries best captures what they are about: “bleuets”.

Ah yes. BLUE – ETTES, to crudely Americanize the word. Little blue things. Yep, a great way to describe blueberries.

But Spanish best captures the origin of these particular blueberries: Producto de Chile. I have no idea how the Chinese and Arabic script break down. But it’s an interesting little part of an otherwise drab winter morning here in New Jersey.