Today on Umbrellacide: Skeletal

Since this All My Blogs Rolled into One, this is what I posted on Umbrellacide today:

Seen in Brooklyn, December 1, 2013, 91st and 4th Avenue

And So It Begins...

Starting this blog is troubling. 

I have been blogging for many years and this is yet another rope ladder thrown over the cliff in search of an escape.  Or, in search of something coming to find me. 

I am worried it marks the end of Tattoosday, an integral part of my identity over the past few years. 

It's part of my process. 

As you'd imagine, the concept is to be a platform for all my blogging interests: poetry,  tattoos, discarded umbrellas, dead writers, books, whatever can't be classified. Or what can. I hardly know. 

Maybe I will share it, maybe I won't. 

So what do I talk about? How about a common New York problem - going from point A to point B during rush hour? To suburbanites, going from work to a doctor appointment with a stop in between is not a maze of humanity.

But behold: in a little over an hour I left 30 Broad Street and grabbed the Z train, transferred 3 stops later at Canal for the N train.  After what seemed an unreasonably long wait for rush hour, I took the N four stops to Union Square where I disembarked and went 2 blocks to a week-before-Christmas Strand, quickly found Guns Germs & Steel by Jared Diamond for my younger daughter's History class.  

I paid, picking up this magnet for my Secret Santa gift, as well:

Left Strand, headed back to the train station.  Caught the crosstown L to 8th Ave where I got an express A train to Columbus Circle then switched for a B train, which dropped me several stops later on the Upper West Side. 

All in under an hour, with 15 minutes to spare.  Dude.  Even I was impressed.