Spring floated down onto the city like a billowing blanket, wafting away the turpid guise winter paints gray over everything, leaving the soft noise of glasses clinking and children’s laughter rubbing up against my window screen. Yet despite this fecund season of sex and bird song I’m followed where I go by an air of aimlessness; I lay awake at night and think: what is it, after all, I’m getting at with this Journal. I wander and wonder and I tell myself, it must end in August, one year is enough, then you have to move on, even if to another project, even another Journal, b/c this is leading absolutely nowhere, it is an insipid void, a cyclical series of questions that lead to answers that lead back to the original questions, one year is enough, then onward, even if onward is in fact regression, one step back two forward… This is what I tell myself…before beginning it again.

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007

The thing of it is that I started this Journal because…well, I can’t even remember why anymore; it’s that kind of thing. But the thing of it is that it has come to be that thing I do which I possibly shouldn’t be doing, a bad habit; in this regard it is much like a depraved wonderful ruinous lover. She is fun and lusty, but awfully time consuming and energy consuming; in short, there is a lot of other work that needs tending to.

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007

This is too serious, I know. But taking pictures is very hard for me, something you should understand, a dire own worst critic sort of situation, so it’s necessary that I consider these things heavily.

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007

Back to the point though, for me (or my sanity) I’ve recently managed a reason (excuse), being that the unifying theme of this Journal is the attempt to reveal hope. It’s not nearly as profound as it makes itself out to be, but in amongst the strife, fear, loneliness, laziness, and all else we as people are gloriously skilled at, I wish to reflect that which is otherwise, to lift a rock and find, well, anything really. All of this is in explanation of the new official title: NYC Journal, or an Exploration into the Origins of Hope.