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Odes to Disneyland’s “It’s a Small World After All” ride are even more disturbing than the real thing. These dolls – displayed in a pharmacy window along with bottles shea butter shampoo, multi-vitamins and the words “Baby Yourself” – jerked around in bizarre, haphazard lunges and pirouettes. I expected them to go all Chucky at any moment, pull out carving knives and start ravaging NYC. Instead, even worse, the “It’s a Small World After All” song began looping through my head and stayed there the rest of the day – the horror, the horror.

It's a world of laughter
A world of tears
It's a world of hopes
And a world of fears
There's so much that we share
That it's time we're aware
It's a small world after all
 

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So I grabbed up the skeleton thick
    sunflower and stuck it at my
    side like a scepter,
and deliver my sermon to my soul,
    and Jack's soul too, and anyone
    who'll listen,

- From Allen Ginsberg’s 1955 poem, “Sunflower Sutra.” Read it in its entirety here (highly recommended). Earlier in the poem he writes, “memories of Blake--my visions,”  which references one of Ginsberg’s big influences, William Blake, and Ginsberg’s reaction to first reading Blake’s 1793 poem, “Ah, Sunflower.”

 

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The umbrella was probably bought off one of the many street vendors who somehow eke out a living along Broadway selling a menagerie of all things cheap, plastic and made-in-China. However, at 3 bucks a pop, they are no match for the storm winds that funnel through Manhattan’s urban canyons and they break like matchsticks – the umbrellas that is, not the street vendors. This particular parasol didn’t seem content with being discarded though. Instead, it took some initiative and transformed itself from a broken, useless umbrella into an appendix of the trash can, helping to contain the approximately 50,000 tons* of trash York City produces daily. [Sidenote: In case you were wondering, 50,000 tons of trash would fill up the Empire State Building more than twice in less than a week, and is equivalent in weight to roughly 12,500 elephants. How the city collects most of this with any modicum of success is mind-boggling.]

*According to the New York State Solid Waste Management Program.

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This is an extremely large hole you want to avoid driving your off-road vehicle into while exploring Iceland’s backcountry. It's a caved-in section of a five-mile long lava tube, and is at least a quarter-mile long and four stories deep. They look like they were created by those gi-normous worms Kevin Bacon fought in that movie Tremors, but click here – lava tubes – to find out how they were really created. Adventurous? You can hike the length of the tubes, just pray there’s not a cave-in or that you get lost like Tom Sawyer and Becky in McDougal's cave.  If you happen to be in Iceland and want a guide to take you to see them, try Mountain Taxi and ask for Asgeir Asgeirson. Tell him the American sheep chasers from 2003 sent you.

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Meet Chef BUG-ardee – a.k.a. Gene Rurka – a man who likes to have a little scorpion and cheese with his wine, and man who’d like you to do the same. Rurka is the head honcho of exotic foods for the New York City-based Explorers Club, a 102-year-old organization that includes Everest climbers and at least one astronaut. Every year they use to have an exotic food banquet. Last year, EC teamed up with Redwood Creek wines to take the event to the public, or at least the public willing to eat creepy-crawlies while discovering what wine goes best with Pigeon Pate (Sauvignon Blanc). They call it Off the Eaten Path, and Rurka is in charge of sources and preparing the delicacies. Last night’s menu items included: Black Currant and Roasted Ant Tarts, North American Cricket served with Pear Cactus Jelly, Rattlesnack Cakes, Baked Worm Pretzels and Scorpions served on Sun-Dried Tomato Cream Cheese and Endive. I can definitely say none of this tasted like chicken. In this pic, he's pointing at a scorpion, and worms are sticking out of the tomatoes. Near his sleeve is a tarantula, which was unfortunately not served at this particular event.

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Every photo tells a story and so does every bike. This hoopdee “lives” in front of NYC’s Ohio Theatre – a performance space that was once a hat factory. I imagine the hoopdee’s creator to be an avant-garde  performance artist who also wields one mean arc welder. The artist has a kid or two, or maybe a really short girlfriend, and on Sunday mornings, when the streets of the city are quiet, they wheel around singing "On top of spaghetti/all covered with cheese/I lost my poor meatball…" on this bicycle built for two.

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She dropped her face into her legs as I approached. I could not hear her crying, but I could feel the heat of her tears. There on the sidewalk she was beginning to fall apart in the public anonymity a city of 8 million people provides. I drifted by with a camera held upside down by my leg, and not wanting to disturb her misery, I never stopped walking.

The following poem is by Dr. Maya Angelou.

Alone    

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Sri Baba is a guru who lives and meditates on top of Mt. Arunachala, a sacred mountain that rises above Tiruvannamalai in southeast India. When our paths crossed last year he’d been up there for 16 years. For the first eight years, he sat cross-legged. Then, just to spice things up, he switched to a squatting position. I wasn’t able to get a picture of Sri Baba himself, though I did participate in a ceremony that allowed me to see him squatting in a little cubicle beneath a menagerie of tarps. This teenager, however, is one of his many assistants who oversee the ceremonies, as well as ensure there is food and water for Sri Baba and all those who hike up the mountain to be blessed by the guru.

In Hinduism, Mt. Arunachala is where Shiva appeared as a never-ending column of fire to teach Brahma and Vishnu about not letting their egos get too big for their britches.

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O.K., this photo wasn’t taken in the last 24 hours, but Tuesday at St. Tropez’ farmer’s market. Still, I thought I’d finish out the week with another photo from the south of France even though I’m now back in NYC. Anyway,  this guy was one of the few actual farmers at the “farmer’s” market, which instead was full of people selling clothes and shoes and tchotchkes. I particularly like the Miami Vice patch on his hat. And, fyi, those cherries in the foreground? Each one was like a tiny orgasm exploding in my mouth. Wow!

The following poem by the great Shel Silverstein – R.I.P. =( – contains only a passing reference to St. Tropez. It’s actually very un-St. Tropez in that it's sad and kind of disturbing.

CLOONY the CLOWN
I'll tell you the story of Cloony the Clown
Who worked in a circus that came through town.
His shoes were too big and his hat was too small,
But he just wasn't, just wasn't funny at all.

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Èze. Èze is fun to say. Èze rhymes with Peze. Èze clings to the top of Mount Bastide about midway between Monte Carlo and Nice, and has origins that go back to 2000 B.C. The Romans hung out here back in the day. In around 900 A.D., the Moors attacked and occupied Èze for 80 years. Fun! These days it’s full of art galleries, a luxury hotel and amazing views like this one from the window of a cozy, little restaurant called Le Nid d’Aigle. Rumor has it that Bono and the Edge of U2 recently bought summer houses along the coast down below.

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Imagine a tranquil Italian hillside town with its stucco walls, window shutters of multiple hues and undulating, red tile roofs. Now rip it from its foundation and slap it into a hillside that overlooks a valley of vineyards and the Mediterranean Sea

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Bonjour from St. Tropez. It seems the cliches associated with St. Tropez are all about the sun, the water and Bridgette Bardot, who put this place on the map in the 1956 film And God Created Women. But for me, it's the narrow streets and hidden restaurants that give this place it's character. August and July are the hot times here both literally and figuratively, as temperatures soar and the trendy and famous jet-setters jet in. The Mediterranean waters may be a little cooler now, but I'll take the slower pace and sparse crowds over back allerysjammed with the ostentatious

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	Shoemaker 
 
   A skillful shoemaker 
   throughout his life 
   he has pounded the nails 
   and smoothed the leather 
   for a variety of feet: 
   feet that depart 
   feet that kick 
   feet that plunge 
   feet that pursue 
   feet that run 
   feet that trample 
   feet that collapse 
   feet that jump 
   feet that trip 
   feet that are still 
   feet that tremble 
   feet that dance 
   feet that return... 
   Life is a handful of nails 
   in the hand of a shoemaker. 

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